March 2002

The unpopulated streets and the unbusy buildings seemed to rest, and that made me feel less weary. It reminded me of the whole sensibility of summer, always with a heat so scorching, so maddening, yet always delightful, always with a soundtrack, always immersed in a growing nostalgia for the summers before, summoning memories at a time were feelings were so raw.

Even your saliva would taste different during summer. It would be more simmered. Soft bubbles of fulfilled longing, boils on my mouth, and I feel the warmth of her skin.

Every year, come summer, I write something like this:
“There is something with the sunrise of summer, something that I loved which never lost its spectacle. I watched its sky from the blinds of the window, the transformation of pitch black to purple to pale white to a glorious yellow. The golden beams bring a blistering heat that brushes a familiarity with my skin, announcing the arrival of summer and all it holds.”
Before, this is what summer holds and this is what I write about: What does it hold? A bottomless well of booze to quench an undying thirst, endless parties, trifling and sensible thoughts to ponder, newspapers and books to read, the idiot box, boredom that can never be effaced, scorching heat and lazy afternoons and a summer to spend eternally in bed.
Now, this is what summer holds: Work, fucking work, except during weekends where there is unwavering desire and an abundance of eagerness, but only little opportunity to go to the beach.


Today summer proclaims its arrival to my skin. Extra salty and extra thick sweat oozes out of my pores, from the scalp of my hair to roll into my beads on my brow. This is the first physical indication. I never attempted to name this feeling. Perhaps there is no suitable English translation that captures the tropical connotation of "lagkit." Not only is it the sticky sensation from the oppressive heat or the drowsiness in your eyes, it is a bed magnetizing your limbs, a spasm of hot lust, the smell of the sea and rainwater on asphalt, a glueyness between your fingers that needs to be washed by garden scented soap, the mad craving for soft drinks on ice cubes, San Miguel Pale Pilsen frosted on its brown bottle, taro milk tea while walking on the mall, or just plain iced tea.
Summer always summons a lot of memories. It has a way of re-cycling what had happened before. It’s composed of the same occurrences bordering on mild differences. Or perhaps, it has been my adaptability that made me notice the differences less and less.
I distinctively remember the summer of last year. It had the same blistering heat and heaviness of the sun settling on me, which I felt again today. I was reading 100 Years of Solitude, lying on the couch in a sweat-drenched shirt. I listened to 98.7’s classical music and some chill out day in and day out. Back then, there was still a sala downstairs. I remember picking up R. from school after her classes, and making out on their house during late summer evenings after we go have dinner or see a movie. Even your saliva would taste different during summer. It would be more simmered. Soft bubbles of fulfilled longing, boils on my mouth, and I feel the warmth of her skin. That relationship ended before the last summer did. I haven’t had one since then.
Although not entirely predictable and pre-determined, I must let this summer create a scrambled version of what has previously happened in my life. I didn’t hatch any plans. My desires remain low-profile: (paraphrased/plagiarized/re-worded/re-thought from The Beach) mine is a desire that the sun will bleach, or will be washed by the waves of the sea.

It is always excellent to expect nothing else.

The journal is suffering from a major backlog. Yes, a lot of things are yet to be written.
Lourd De Veyra cleverly carved it these beautiful words:

Sometimes I would look out the window
And see tiny pieces of poem gathering on the glass like afternoon dust…

…Again I look at the window
And see the dust thinning away, in a fading chaos with the wind
Multiplying into a million of permanently lost poems.

These were the first and last lines of a poem that certainly gave meaning to the feeling of leaving a planned journal entry or an ostensibly important event left unwritten. I think I’ve said before, that I have not lived my life until I have written about it.

For the sake of having another lousy entry on a major burn out day, since the journal is suffering from a major backlog. I’ve been more vulnerable to stress since I’ve started working. Although it remains manageable, and what the stress I am experiencing right now is miniscule relative to others, I still am susceptible to a share of irritability, anxiety, and lesser emotional resiliency.
I feel so fatigued physically. I have been completely sleepless for more than 30 hours. It’s not the first time that I’ve been sleepless for more than 30 hours straight, but it’s exhausting nonetheless. I had to come in at 10:00 pm last night for an update training, and log out at 9:00 am. I’m sharing a workstation with another employee, who’s things occupy the entire table. This workstation is also more cramped than usual --- compared to the more comfortable workstations and areas at the office. I’m able to hit my performance targets but I’m tired as an ant. My throat is growing sore, and my back and shoulders has an ache that slices through my body. The switching from the Siberia-cold office to the overbearing heat outside has been nothing but healthy. As I arrive home, (the morning bottleneck is endured by sleeping it off in the bus) I receive the errands from my mom, and my conscience tortures me when I refuse. Under the merciless heat of the noon sun, I take a long walk to the market or take the car to Escoda. Not that I am oppressive, but the place is indeed festered with, and is, scum scented. I see the unfortunate bums scattered on the streets who are not always blameless as to why nothing is happening with their lives. Our own ignorance always gives us culpability. I take the unpleasant walk back home and the room is a total wreck. Sometimes, it isn’t helpful to idealize chaos. It’s noontime again, highpoint of the house. Each molecule of air is taken over by the thick whiff of liempo or tilapya being grilled, sizzled squid, lamb chops, and chicken. Literally, its like gravy is in the air --- a concoction of mushrooms, corn starch, soy sauce and seasoning. Add that to the summer’s maddening heat and all the hurried tension around the house. Oh, and I almost failed to mention that suitable background music amidst all this from the PVP liner bus to our house is provided by YES FM – a radio station that appeals to the masses awfully with it mindless music. The radio station plays dumb music that melts your brain.
I decided between beer and Berocca (anti-stress medicine). Of course I chose the former. I tidied up the room, closed all blinds and blocked every path of sunlight. I had the lamp on, played the 70’s Italian-porn soundtrack songs from Salinas Sessions, and saw some pornography. I got some of the liempo and tilapya and feasted on it while having some Pale Pilsen.
It’s almost four, and I can get a few hours of sleep. I can’t get that heavy boulder, that planet of tension sitting on my back, but at least, this is semi-relieving.
I may have seconds thoughts about not drinking that stress vitamin after all.


Outlined journal backlogs, before dust settles on them, before they commit to become dust themselves.

3/8
- Thursday night: had a drink with H. in Malate. Upon arriving home - surf for porn, out of nostalgia, boredom. Started chatting people up on IRC out of nostalgia. You occasionally bump into a rare find, a jewel in that septic tank --- not exactly Helen of Troy pretty, but not necessarily ugly. I met someone in chat before whom I found from the UP channel and we had coffee or lunch two or three times in Katipunan and Ayala. She was one of those UP cheerdancers and would pass off with a good rate in the character scale. She’s decent and she has humor. Met someone again tonight.
- Friday afternoon: standard biking session, watch the sunset, let pores secrete sweat, smell the sea while biking leisurely along the CCP Trellis, watch the Yachts and imagine turning them into a surrealist painting. Friday night, I met up with the girl. I bought her coffee at the Starbucks in La Salle. We weren’t able to build good chemistry. She seemed profoundly interesting, but we can barely laugh together. She liked science oriented books and middle age history. I felt too much angst festered in her, much like myself at one point in my life. She said she didn’t link going out for dinner, or going out at night. I cannot delve and dwell into too much angst, not anymore, after I have devised my way to chill out and I’m little deeper into my own hedonism. She prophesized, during the beginning, the end our knowing each other: “I must say that these efforts for hi-ended quips and repartees might result in bitter disappointment.” I probably replied with some heavy and therefore pretentious words… probably even quoted some schmuck.
- Friday night: After the disappointment, I dated myself to “A beautiful Mind” and met up to drink with my brother and some friends in Malate.
- -Saturday afternoon: silence lies afloat empty chairs and tables on the store, formerly the beloved living room… leaves of the trees swaying with graceful gait, humming songs with the wind… the setting sun reciting poetry through shadows and things drifting… six hours away from logging in again.

The weekend after that, I think.
- Thursday afternoon: Came home at around 1:00 because of the HR meeting thing. Bought my godchild, a gift for his second birthday. Attended the birthday party at McDonalds at around 6:00 thereafter. I got so stuffed from the food I slept at around 10:00 p.m.
- Friday Morning: woke up at 4:00 a.m. read a little and wrote some ramblings. Went biking two or three hours later. Cleaned up the room and watched TV during the afternoon, and read De Veyra’s poetry in between.
- Friday night: Taking the ride with K., went out for the 12 AM shift’s dinner/drink in Greenbelt. Ate pasta and had hundred ounce beers and had some laughs. It ended quite early and most of the team had to go work at 12:00 a.m. Had coffee at starbucks and closed service requests at the office. Headed straight to Sidebar in Malate to have a few more beers and spend my time alone, to have some solace.
- Saturday Morning: standard biking session. Since it’s a morning, it’s slightly more strenuous but not necessarily less leisurely than afternoon biking. Went up the ramp a few times, resting besides the Abueva sculpture, catching my breath. Arrived home, went to this air-con specialized shop to bring in the car and fix the air-conditioning.
- Saturday afternoon: started reading on Haggedorn.
- Saturday night: Met up with K. at the Cable Car in Makati for drinks, and met up with some other friends at Mati in Rockwell (one of those places where beer is 80 or 120 a bottle and yuppies reign) A number of shift leaders and production supervisors from the office were there. They kept on teasing Kim and I as an item, as we have perpetually been the object of office gossip. It flatters me of course, since K. is an Aphrodite, a legitimate, nice smelling hottie who cooks splendidly, as she is white as milk, creamy as asparagus, gentle, glowing brown eyes that speak her kindness, or nestle you in good humor. She’s probably the officemate is spent the most time with. I’m glad we’ve grown to be good friends and I’m glad I would never have to fall for her. We ended up cracking some heat, before calling it a night.

The next weekend:

- Friday morning: saw M. at the PVP bus and asked him for a spontaneous drink in high noon, to which I’ve grown accustomed to.
- Saturday night: Kowloon Siopao dinner, standard drinking session at Malate with friends and family. Saw the Subic girls again.
- Sunday morning: I’m not sure why I ended up in my cousin’s house. Kowloon Siopao lunch. It was another cousin’s graduation and we went to Katipunan to buy her flowers. Katipunan is such a serene place during Sunday afternoons with all the swaying leaves of trees, wide, empty school fields, loungy places, and people in comfy clothes.
- Sunday night: dinner at Moomba with the project seven people. Slept so fucking well.


This weekend:
- Saturday: just had a chili cheese dog at Bingo while K. ate ice cream. Saw her again at 6:30 pm at Cable Car to drink at Cable Car. Got drunk enough to sleep at 12:00 am. Before Kim and I met up, I dropped by PowerBooks to browse, and saw that they are now selling Paul Coehlo’s Alchemist at P199, from P519. My recent acquisitions at Book Sale and National Bookstore: Pablo Neruda, Selected poems, from P700-800 to P150, Burroughs’ Interzone from P400++ to P150, and Haggedorn’s Dogeaters, from P400++ to P150.
- Sunday: went to a beach with my family, cousins and second cousins. The beach wasn’t too fantastic, spent all day reading Haggedorn while basked in the sun, listening to the waves on the wide shoreline, drinking San Mig Light, smoking, laying my back on the wooden benches of the hut by the beach.

Holy week wasn’t too holy. Holy, not in a non-religious sense, but in my sense. For the past two years, I had my own season of contemplation, my Holy Thursdays. Although everyone’s quiet reflection was relieving, the traffic eased and the days more laid-back, I still had to go to work. But it was a good week at work. While having breakfast in her car sometime during the week, K. and I took a drive along Valero and Legazpi and around Makati. The unpopulated streets and the unbusy buildings seemed to rest, and that made me feel less weary. It reminded me of the whole sensibility of summer, always with a heat so scorching, so maddening, yet always delightful, always with a soundtrack, always immersed in a growing nostalgia for the summers before, summoning memories at a time were feelings were so raw.

February 2002

The beer tastes better as the afternoon sun fell heavy on us, mirroring its light on glittering waves, disturbed by passing jet skis.

Nothingness – the determining finality of it all. Before that, there is a straight line… of days that simply drag you along like the currents of the sea.

Though you can never rid yourself of uncertainties, though you can never efface boredom, deny your emptiness or the nothingness which is the determining finality of it all, you can still get yourself to say that happiness in manageable. I cannot refuse this bone of optimism that’s growing within my skeleton.
Like most things, happiness is fleeting. But why not savor it while it lasts, why not insist on making it linger a moment longer?
We went back to the beach, and I found belongingness. I found an affinity with the sand and the scenery. To have your feet buried in the continually crumbling sand, flood your eyes with the magnificence of an earthen sunset, let the booze snake down your throat, and listen to the waves as the water ripples, and listen to my chill out CDs. We took a lot of photos of ourselves, as though to make the memory accessible. We had lunch and dinners at grills and steakhouses in Subic and had drink on a dive-shop-slash-bars by the beach. The beer tastes better as the afternoon sun fell heavy on us, mirroring its light on glittering waves, disturbed by passing jet skis. At night, the lamps hung on the trees, and the lights from the ships on the silent sea glowed with the stars. We checked in one of those cheap motels.
I understand the difficulty of not being able to spell out the bliss I’ve been hanging on to. I have been groping for more words that would decorate it profusely, that would explain the eminent richness of experience, but they escape me. It’s probably my job that led me into the lack of finding the intellectually stimulating. Not to mention that this job has added so many of my imagined fears. It increases my insecurities of the future, even to the point of keeping the job itself. But then, it gives me the money I need to squander during weekends, and probably respect required by everyone. I believe that my paranoia has increased tenfold, and yes, paranoia is just the highest scale of reality. My job makes me represent a lot of things which is beyond my control. Irate callers somehow give me the idea that the dreadful anger exhumed in human nature is somehow justifiable, because Corporate America has its glitches. More importantly, it has its greed. And now I have my own. I think it was back October when I said, 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 got a 25% salary increase since I was regularized last month.
Perhaps my muse is frowning at me. She seeing a coldness, growing like a tumor in my brain. She is thinking that I’m slowly becoming a person I dreaded. Sometimes, it becomes less and less important to put things into writing. Maybe I’m merely losing it, watching myself ebb away from me. But then, why let it?
As I’ve said, everything’s still manageable. I’m fetched on a far, better position that most people. Rarely would you think that the grass is greener on your side. This is me and my low-profile happiness. Perhaps there is happiness lurching in the night, when I stare at the unfeeling buildings erected on Ayala Avenue. I see them everyday, and never seem to see them get tired. They would always have some lights up, no matter ho occupies those desks, when the former gives up on the job. Maybe I should always feel like the eager newcomer who is determined to rise up on the challenge. I’ve always tried to stare so closely to the people who go to work during the morning, when I’m about to go home after the shift. I wonder what their lives are like. Do they live like zombies alienated by their jobs? Can they afford to catch the day’s snatch of happiness, or maybe light a sincere passion? What are their certainties and what do they live for? What is it that helps them get through a difficult day? I don’t think they think of it that much.
There is a moment, in each passing day, when you think of your own afflictions. Between that summation of my low-profile happiness, I have the terrors of my own solitude and my own vague aspirations. It’s not that all apparent for now. Somehow, I think they are still is easy to get over. Someday, perhaps things will be more difficult. The future’s not far, with the way I hurry the days. I will be alone long enough, and be alone in the end zone. But why think of it now, when its less difficult to design legitimate alibis, and any affliction is not an urgent, but rather an invented concern.
It’s strange how I’ve gotten to enjoy Monday afternoons such as this one. I woke up early today, and went biking when the sun wasn’t even up. It was so fucking cold I didn’t even sweat. I went up to that spot, on the side of the CCP main theater lobby, after you go up that high ramp. On one side, there is Napoleon Abueva’s Magkasintahan sa Buhay at Sayaw, one of the sculptures I’m most fond of. I wrote an essay about that sculpture once. On the other side, you get the view of Roxas and the buildings of Makati blocked heavy with the city’s carbon monoxide. After that I went home and slept again. I spent the afternoon writing and reading and sleeping again. During the evening, you are served with a comedy marathon on Star World: Third Rock from the Sun, That 70’s show, Everybody Loves Raymond, Dharma and Greg, and Frasier. Oh, and I almost failed to mention that I’m almost drunk now. A rightful celebration to a glorious day, to muster enough confidence to say that the week is going to be easy.


An emotion switches and swings so quickly from one mood to another. One minute you are a five year old in Disneyland, the next minute you are the oppressed protagonist in appalling 2 pm soap operas. We’ve always believed that Sisyphus has ordained life its meaning when he said fuck you to the gods and took meaning in pushing his boulder to the mountaintop. Sisyphus represented my ideals, somehow. He was my hero, my high school thesis.
He represented my drive towards facing the nakedness of reality, my impulse to the truth, to pursue what is passionate and principled.
But now, becoming Sisyphus won’t be too laid-back, it won’t be too hedonistic. It is as though I have found a new struggle. It is the struggle of I don’t know. I don’t know and I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to complain. I don’t want to be too compulsive, or too naïve. I don’t want to be filled with fear, with the ignorance of why I live, or why I have lost my ideals. I want to ask myself why I sound like a self-help book, or why I write so bad? Why do I feel complete, yet sometimes completely empty?
My answer is to press your mouth to the loving, relieving lips of a beer bottle. The answer is to write, to matter how vaguely, or how ugly. The answer is to find your story, to tell the uniqueness of your story. It does not matter what the ending comes to. The answer is uncertainty. Life has not endowed us the favor of certainty.
Have you not gone tired of your struggle? Have we not all gone weary even of our own happiness, struggles, uncertainties, absurdity, faith in God, faith in Nothingness, which is all merely faith in something unknown.
Did you not want to feel nothing? Have you not wondered what nothing feels?
Have we failed to catch the drift of what Sisyphus meant had when he found his meaning? What was it like to love that piece of fate?
We make this absurdity thrive for each day of our lives, with our demeaning occupations. I’m working again tonight, and you’re working again tomorrow, pushing that stupid rock… only to push that stupid rock again. I spur my brilliant excuses to our customers, and once again psur my brilliant excuses to our customers.
Of course, there are always benefits. Somebody always gets richer when the dice is thrown in the craps table. We can have our share of the pot. We should have a job for more salary-dissipating activities for our selfish vanity, and fulfilling not just the needs but the importuning of gastronomic fantasies, or working your whole life for a two week vacation.
Here I am trying to write and be sublime and all. Pretty pathetic attempt, I guess. But then, as you may have noticed, I only write the same thing. I have no new message, no specific event, no new story to tell. “We are all in one boat… and that boat is going nowhere.”
Nothingness – the determining finality of it all. Before that, there is a straight line… of days that simply drag you along like the currents of the sea.


Everyday at twelve noon, the highpoint of the house arrives. I think you can only call it half a house, since half of the place is devoted to our family business. Twelve noon is the busiest time of the day, since a large volume of people come over to have lunch. A thick whiff of sizzled squid, lamb chops, and tenderloin would cloud the air. Utensils would continually be clacking, against the cacophony of 12 PM traffic in the street, the loud and heated hiss of fire on sizzling plates, my parents and our servers moving in a hurried tension.
At this time of the day, the room downstairs would be most rowdy, as it usually is. The room upstairs would make you feel like leftover food being nuked in the microwave oven. It is the most difficult time of the day, especially to find solace. I usually have a beer or two at this time, during regular working days, bum around with my cousin (who would be on his lunch break from school) or watch the telly in my parent’s room.
I miss the sala I’ve always spoken of, and the revelry it brought me during afternoons with its poetry of light and shadows, chillout/classical music, the rich blend of coffee, good reads, and a type of solace more rare than blue diamonds.
I spend maybe half an hour talking to my mom and dad every afternoon while they eat, after most of the customers finished eating. It’s amazing how they always make it a point to have lunch or dinner together. Nothing fancy, but together. And all of a sudden, I am most glad I have them.



I made an effort to read and re-read effort my journal for the past couple of months, and even the entries for the last five years. It was like taking my life in my hands, and clutching it firmly again, listening to my story from my own voice, and noticing how this voice has changed.
I also took it as a point of comparison for the entries I’m writing now. Maybe I’ve grown less eloquent, or maybe just more forward, honest, and less decorative on my choice of words and had lesser things to conceal.
My frustration about the most recent journal entries (since I started working) is that they have been railing against the same things and plugging the same fucking fare to the point that it’s become sickening to talk about it. Undeniably, there has been sameness in my life. However, I failed to dwell into the very details of events that taken place that would probably spell at least a little difference.
In this Friday afternoon, between buttered garlic toast, hazelnut coffee and bossa nova, I resolve to engage more profoundly into the moment and spell out that difference to whittle the worthlessness of writing about the sameness of my life.
Call it as some sort of mild escapism, but I have to lessen all that redundant crap about my job… or even the happiness I managed to assemble.

Pixel Juice by Jeff Noon. This is one of the titles that I got off the rack after a lot of browsing at PowerBooks. I never heard of Jeff Noon, I never heard any reviews for the book, nor received any recommendation. But I guess I just followed my intimations and instincts. I remember buying a lot of books this manner, titles such as Sophie’s World (yes, before everybody started reading it), Zen: Freedom of the Mind, or a poetry book by Luisa Cariño. I initially liked Jeff Noon because it looked like a fusion of Coupland, Hornby and Welsh, and because it had an interesting cover and binding.
Pixel Juice is a collection of fifty stories. The stories range from product recalls for factory-defective celebrity-looking fucking dolls, to instructions for the use of mad gadgets archived from the museum of fragments. There are stories about magic-realist drugs which feed robots their dreams and hallucinations to feed them their humanity. Noon also based some his fiction on the club scene in Manchester to produce stories about eternal groves on jellied-up moments. There’s this story of a DJ that can make echoes of the beat last for six weeks, rapid-fire fingertronics, etch-plate aesthetics and fractal scratches out of human edit --- because her one hand is pliant and the other hand is made of butterflies.
Noon mostly writes about the future, about AI’s that he fondly calls autogens. I think he’s trying to give at least a faint glimpse of how screwed up the future could be, with all the buzzing technology that humans hatched. The language he uses sounds unique because he usually invents words for himself, like names for drugs, drinks, or artificially intelligent beings. I don’t know where he draws it from, video games, porn flicks or classic sci-fi books. Sometimes it’s annoying because it sounds pseudo-scientific, and sometimes it’s downright amusing. Take these definitions for instance:
BABY n. The outcome of unprotected sex between a human male and female.
BORBI DOLL n. the most sophisticated doll of the 21st century. The girlfriend of RoboKen, with whom she produced the baby-data called Borble.
The stories from Pixel Juice always seem to attempt a disturbing effect that runs on an occasional dark humor, or would lead you to an interesting insight. With most of the stories dwelling on the future, what seems to be stressed is that whatever is the result of evolution, desire remains undiminished. Desire only becomes more and more obscure.
Some stories, however, lack detail and are therefore difficult to imagine. And all those stories about robots and AI’s and autogens and chromosofts and magic mirrors become terrifically annoying after you read one or two stories of that kind. It’s really annoying to the point of vomiting. The best stories are the ones which aren’t about that. The most fascinating one would be “The Cabinet of the night Unlocked.” It tells a story of a ritual discovered by a mute monk back in the 1400’s. The ritual consists of activating a “switch” in your body that turns it off painlessly, to give you a pleasurable death. It was most fascinating. I also enjoyed “Junior Pimp” the story of an eleven-year old pimp, “Fetish Booth #7” was quite fascinating as well, although the reason why the character wanted to die was not established, only the “how.”
Out of fifty, perhaps the book provides 10 noteworthy stories, 20 brief and would-pass-off-as-amusing-and-readable stories, and 20 that are annoying and crappy.

January 2002

I have more meaning, more memory, to help me propel my way through life. It will be like a new story, a new poem to tell.

Happiness is simply the management of your desires. You take one simple joy, dream small, and
conquer the joy quite effortlessly – almost with just sheer luck. It’s easier to make simple dreams come true. It gives you the veracity that to dream is not the hope of the absurd.
Sometime after Christmas I told myself that I wanted to go to the beach. I imagined it already --- this clear portrait in my head. And I had everything: the sunset, the beer, the cigarette by the sea, the sand on my feet, and the sound of waves washing their hands. The only thing I failed to mention was the saltiness of the water and the dampness of the air at night. And yes, everything else was there, everything was my moment. I don’t want to write much about it. It still seems too real to me.
This experience affirms once more that life becomes rewarding sometimes. We arrived before sunset, driving along the road that leads to the shoreline, with trees on the road side and a mountain beneath. We even went jet skiing.
Before this hype wears out, I’ll be more often, writing more beautifully and sinking more into the experience.
It’s Monday again, four hours away from work. I’m listening to some more chillout, lamp in the room, and the memory of the weekend just stamps a big smile on my face. It gives the music more images, lets the smile on your mouth widen. Yes, the music and images are more meaningful now. It has more experience attached to it. I have more meaning, more memory, to help me propel my way through life.
It will be like a new story, a new poem to tell.

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.