December 2001

(Day after Christmas, 2001)

It becomes easier to let happiness rub on you, whether it is hollow, profound, feigned or real. December is the least cruel month. Perhaps this is the month I mostly enjoyed this year.
I’ve caught that rhythm I needed to acquire for work. Although it will become tedious and demeaning (which is the natural tendency for all occupations,) work has been quite pleasant. Being in the chat support has made the task less stressful. I can listen to my growing chill out play list, and thousands of MP3s from the company’s shared drives. I’ve adjusted to this less conventional routine of working at night. What makes December more rewarding is getting greener pastures --- bonuses and premium holiday pays (since we have to work even on holidays.) I’ve bought myself my whims and caprices, and I am wary of my attachment to money and material things.
And of course it is not wealth that makes thing wondrous --- it just meets a primary necessity to afford certain comforts.
It is something else that gives this month a more mirthful tinge. it is a delight to the senses: to feel the delicate, cool breeze of December nights, to see the city glow with lanterns, and bulbs dancing on each house and each street. Even the tall buildings of Ayala seemed less mundane, more compassionate to its dwellers. It makes your walks along high rises more alive, less redundant. It seemed that even these cold, unfeeling stones may be bestowed with spirit. A child would look up, point a small finger and watch this dazzle with entranced eyes. And of course there are smells of gift wrappers, ham, baked chicken, newly open gifts, the perpetually delicious food that comes from treats. As always, life comes with a soundtrack. Only Christmas carols never get gasgas.
Moreover, everybody (at least temporarily,) is kind and festive. Everybody boards the auto-pilot flight of kindness and festivity.
I didn’t get to spend Christmas with my family but I just didn’t sulk. I had my time for myself, of course, during Christmas day, listening to Schopann, lighting candles, burning oils, reading and watching the thin branches of the trees sway with graceful gait against the purple sky. I wish the weather can always be like this – when its more conducive to have coffee because its strong aroma rises in the air.
Despite the fact that I can’t go out during weeknights, I usually make it point to suck the marrow out of the weekends. It’s the time to get all boozed up, and live out your life during a Saturday night. Beautiful women clad in less and less clothing is a site you’ll never grow weary of.
Friends and cousins met a group of girls and they all fancy going to this club in Libis. Dancing for me though, remains out of the question. Nonetheless, it’s always fantastic to drink and watch. It’s a little like sitting down in Classmate: the most cozy, comfy and most classy dancing show I’ve ever been. You get to sit in huge couches and be served by waitresses in micro-mini school uniforms, watch under-or-barely18 dancers who really look like your classmates.
Another activity I look forward to during weekends is biking during late afternoons during sunset or early mornings during sunrise. I go biking along the streets of Malate, Roxas, and around CCP. I make stops at the Film Center, the Trellis, to watch boats sailing, the sunset, the sunrise, and smell the sea. It brings a relieving comfort, to think that you are flexing muscles. It’s amazing to find the uniqueness of images in those places, watching shadows move under the trees, and staring at the open horizon of the bay.
And of course, I still find time to date myself to fancy dinners or cater to my cravings.
What a month this has been. I barely noticed how I conquered such joy, to begin to dream again… to start off with simple dreams. I’d like to travel to go to fantastic beaches, drink beer by the beach, listening to something from Café del Mar. I’d like to go around bars and dinner places and yacht clubs and strip joints. I’d like to take a long trip that would in effect be soothing. I can already hear the waves crashing and washing their hands. I can see the aureate gleam of the sunset and feel the sand on my feet.
This year’s Christmas greeting goes: “I’d just like to remind you that after the yuletide celebrations, life reverts to normal. Merry Christmas anyway. Whether feigned or real, let the happiness rub on you.” I let the happiness rub on me. Nothing lasts, I know. But I’m happy while it lasts, just before it all inevitably decays into sentimental rubbish.

October 2001

My life, more or less, is in a convenient drone. Work is not always so pleasant, but I’ve managed to decorate it with my own cliché: that there are certain things we have to do, to keep on doing the things we want to do. Even your own pleasure has its prerequisites. I’ve got to work so that I can maintain my preferred lifestyle, to enjoy my books, to cater to my appetite, to buy my drinks, and even afford the habits brought about by consumerism. Call it a compromise that I cannot refuse. Until one day you realize, like in Death of Salesman, that you worked fifty years of your life, to have a five week vacation.
I miss poetry, and being poetic. I miss juicing out the poetry written over things. I miss the shows in CCP and drinking at bars at night.
But why would I complain about working, since I will admit that I’ve dreamed of this. I didn’t think however, that it comes with certain complications. I sometimes don’t feel secure about my job. More importantly, I’m not really doing something I enjoy, knowing that I can probably just do something else. I never realized how much I wanted much more time. Sometimes I’m commended at work, and it feels superficially rewarding. I’ll probably stay in this job of another year or two. I’ve got better work than a lot of people and I love the neat office. I love having my own money to buy my pirated chillout CD’s, serviced for pleasure, watch movies, buy books, clothes and shoes.
I realized that I have so much fear in me, as though I never read Nietzsche, and never spouted that line from Russell, saying that fear is contemptible. So young, yet so spent I am. I am afraid of so many things. And I have no dreams, or I have no dreams anymore. Maybe, I have dreams, but I don’t think I could reach out and achieve them. If ever I have dreams, my dreams remain a dream.
And right now, I’m drunk on a Saturday afternoon, and I’m dancing a little.
This ever crummy room is beautiful. I have never imagined that everything would be beautiful when I’m drunk on a late afternoon, set in gray scale, the room and the clouds in chillout music, clouds of yosi smoke, closed eyes, and fingers snapping the keyboard. The fan is blowing lightly on the blinds.

Everything… is… all… right…

September 2001

I don’t know hot to put it without the triteness. I don’t know how to pick up from where I left off. But I remember having to put with all the unnecessary drama whenever I let the months just snap without having a single sentence written. I try to compel myself on what a waste it was, with me not having to tell the tales that transpire in my life, or the thoughts I think. What were those sordid tales of debauchery, what unique shape does can my thoughts bear, how delightful, how hurtful could feelings be? Of course, these questions themselves are vague, shapeless, and insurmountable. I’m looking for something concrete, although not something which is tangible, I want something that I could describe, something that I could determine.

How long will this last? Today, I declare that my life is beautiful. Amazingly enough, the formula comes off from simple ingredients: delicious food, decent reads and decent coffee, images and thoughts to feed my soul, errands to help my family’s business, the company of my friends and family, my work to keep me level and give me money to sustain my lifestyle, and music to give it all of it a suitable soundtrack.
I don’t know what urged me to proclaims this sort of declaration, the nice weekend the came after a difficult week at work. I spent Saturday morning reading a few chapters of Michel Houellebecq’s “Atomised,” and the afternoon burning mp3’s to CD audio. I had great titles, alternative music from High School (e.g., Better than Ezra, Oasis), film themes, and even club. The next Monday I bought the new Café del Mar release, and a mainstream compilation. I think I’m beginning to develop a considerable collection, although I lack a few essentials to suit my taste: jazz albums (of the Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, etc. persuasion) because they are not available in pirated versions. I spent Saturday night, despite the fatigue from thirty-six hours of sleeplessness, getting drunk with ___ at his girlfriend’s place. Sunday morning to fix my drawer, Sunday afternoon to watch a La Salle game and drink a few beers. Sunday evening was a fantastic dinner with my family at Suko Thai courtesy of my brother and I.
What I truly miss are evenings, because it’s more conducive to listen to chillout, or drink coffee. But then I’m beginning to have this love affair with the noon, because it’s the time before I sleep, and then wake up watching something like The Simpsons or That 70’s show. Early afternoons glimmer with the most natural give the most natural renditions of light and poetry of shadows --- on windows, blinds, and pages of books. Undeniably, my office in Makati and the streets of Ayala is a sight and soon, with some more experience, I will be able to place it into words.
Obviously, I can’t box this happiness or put it on record, but this feeling is happiness nonetheless. This is a feeling that makes me less frightened of the future.

June 2001

I have become an official bum. I have been removed from that life of complacency called College.
My name is Jairus Jason, Slacker Incarnate.

Two weeks ago they let me wear a toga and attend a ceremony to bid an end to what is by far, the golden age of my history. Wearing a toga was wearing a cloak of high expectations. It was the day that I felt no confidence, no eagerness to accept the promise of a bright future offered by a meaningless occupation. My ceremonies reminded me of the kid who, by closing time, reluctantly leaves the toy section of some department store. It was a sad remembrance, a somber reflection of a world I’m required to leave behind.

All the disappointment in the world didn’t stop me from enjoying the delightful dinner with my family. I am eternally grateful to my parents for affording my education. I’d like to thank my parents for the priceless, love and kindness to pay for my tuition and support my allowance throughout college. Overpriced as it may seem, I did buy a lot of ideas to chew. I learned things that, seemingly, would help me propel my way through life. I gained the gladdest of experience of being college: reading the books, having a booze binge, lighting a light, listening to records, gong places, making out and scoring with, becoming one of the diligent students --- and getting everything at my parent’s expense. I was so genuinely delighted at dinner, I was practically a glutton. I think I had a subliminal inclination to die of bangungot that night. I waited for it to arrive. I could’ve called it quits with life. Twenty years would’ve been a fair deal if I looked back to how fucking content was I during College: which is now only a memory that glows so brightly as if it were a diamond cut by brazen fire. Both my brothers asked me for a drink, but I just had to sleep this off.

The painful irony was that everybody was congratulating me.

May 2001

Top Three Dream Jobs at Age 20:
1. Coffee Shop Proprietor.
- Get to have free coffee, of any variety, at any time of the day.
- Get to have coffee in a place stacked with your own books on the shelves.
- Get to have your own coffee shop with art hung on the walls, lamps flooding it with light, carefully chosen furniture, strong spirited scent of brewed coffee perfuming the air, bread, cakes and sweets on the display table.
- Get to do fabulous manual labor, i.e., serving coffee, or whatever’s available on the menu.
- Get to read in your coffee place in its idle hours, or eavesdrop from the chatter of customers.
- Get to listen to listen to music that pleases you ears, while you’re having coffee, reading, and making a living.
2. Film/Book/Music/Theater Critic
- Get to watch films, read books, and listen to music, watch plays, (which comprises 66% of what I want out of life) and do it for a living.
- Get complimentary passes, books and music.
- Get to accomplish all your work at home in a chair and a laptop.
3. Any White/Blue Collar Job in New York (or Singapore, or Barcelona)
- Get to get out of this pisshole of a country (and grow nostalgic of it later on), explore and live on Earth’s new Rome, the present center of the universe.
- Get to take long walks on Central Park, within the proximity of what promises to be the most fascinating of people and of things, and live in a city that’s most alive.

The clearest indication that your youth is slipping away from your hands (no matter how tenacious your grip is,) is having to posses a fucking occupation in life.

Disappearing youth, disappearing youth.

It’s like a line snatched from some grunge song. Still at this young age, I could not be afforded the same angst I have previously acquired. I could no longer whine, complain, and hatch a plan to rescue the world from the strangling evils of capitalism and imperialism. Listening to Rage against the Machine, or Incubus, doesn’t help. I couldn’t capture the world, or carve words and ideas and images into beautiful poetry.
I was running from Roxas to CCP last Sunday. There was ballet at the front lawn. There was a digital film and music performance at the re-opened Film Center. That was where I was served a tremendous sunset. The event was aptly called, Digital Sunets. The building’s flight of stairs looked level with the sea, at the top of which were high pebble pillars that glowed with the last beams of the day. It casted beautiful shadows and made all things golden. The winds were moist with the smell of the sea, and the water seemed so thick, it seemed to overflow.
Since there was an event, there were concessions that sold beer. I exclaim: life becomes rewarding, sometimes. I was acquainted with the vocalist of one of the indie bands who performed. We wrote in the school paper together (and he wrote much better). I also envied his current status in life: UP Creative writing student, music critic, song writer, musician. On the other hand, I am, waiting for my graduating ceremonies in June to become an official bum. I also face the terrible, odds of becoming an underachiever. But I could no longer whine. My cup is empty of excuses to give my parents a reason why I’m not working yet, after they have paid for my overpriced La Sallian, world class education. It’s not only a disappointment, but a larger humiliation that offers no indulgence.
What sad event is your life if you remain a spectator of a life that has lost the spectacle. Everybody’s watching you and their eyes speak what you are, that you are a useless fucking commodity.
This is what is it is: self-pitying in the torturous post-college limbo. I have no pride left it me.

April 2001

Another Holy Thursday. Another Holy Thursday emits a radiant happiness to me, which works through a simple formula: day in day out of classical and chillout music, a good read, the silence of the streets. The pavement is fried from this year’s even more ferocious heat. Coffee distinctly replenishes my senses of smell, taste. Days like this, coffee can seep into one's soul. I face my thoughts now and it gives me a hopeful reflection, the way a prayer gives reflection to the pious. I’m halfway through One Hundred Years of Solitude, and every page seems like a climax in its richness, beauty and ingenuity in fiction. It’s only my second sitting for the book, and I’ve read through three hundred pages as if my gaze were glued to the words fed to it, never wanting it left abandoned. The plot thickens every moment, and the events never lose its fantastic and fascinating tinge. I feel quite affected. I would think that I have my share of the madness and magic the Buendia family inherits. I try to dig up whatever deep Dionysian feeling of madness in my little attic of memory, or my chest of emotions to conjure a feeling of madness or magic. But I have felt no loss, no defeat, no great victory or great adventure that could qualify as such. I haven’t collected enough determination to finally commit the death I would want to plan for myself. I have not survived a great war to test and prove my strength. My fears are growing into monsters always ready to bite my head off. Imagined fears, of failure, and not merely being bored, but of becoming boring. I become boring when I lose the feverish enthusiasm and zest I had for more fascinating things in life.
As a less young person in search of a deeper outlook in life, I could say that I should no longer seek life’s meaning in alcohol, drugs, sex, or even in the chatter of Philosophy, or the beautiful images and ideas grazed in by literature (not that their beauty had seemed to me diminished, for they have not). Of course I continue to drink, or smoke on occasion to relax and relieve minor tensions, while drinking has become almost an obligation to nurture friendships, or just a mere habit that ruins your health. But it’s no longer the Dionysian, spiritual experience I shaped it to be. I spent four years with Philosophy and now I’m really uncertain if my interest to pursue it could be compared to an eternal torch or endless quest I formerly conceived it to be. Perhaps philosophy, literature, weed, booze are things that have become irrevocably Incorporated in my life, but they are not all that there is to my life.
There is always an immense set of mixed feelings in venturing out to a territory unfamiliar to you. The best way to put it is that even before making the journey, I already feel nostalgic of the coming home. I cling to the remembrance of things past, and my many dreams of a future that remains many a dream.

I just remembered that I bought my copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude with ____ at Powerbooks, after which we went to have coffee at a Starbucks in Glorietta, seeing the late afternoon sunlight cast its last beams on the buildings, bringing along a comforting breeze that arrives before the beginning of the night. Once again, I try my hand at the trade of the feelings of love. In a way that I could never explain to her, ____helps me mold a more mature conviction. Perhaps it is time to say, what I longed to say, that love has found someone for me, and someone who would think that love has found me for her.