Ultimately Selfish Determinism

Full of character, familiar to happiness, used to loneliness, examined so many answers but left blank, as though the world conspired to answer only with question marks.

I long for lyricism amidst all the mercantile prose of work.

On the weekend of my 22nd birthday, I went back to Subic with my brother, who will be working there all weekend. I’d like to thank him and his company for the ride and accommodations. I spent so much time alone staring at the open sea while having a drink. The only inconvenience were the mosquitoes, pestering you during nights at Scuba shack. I shouldn’t have worn shorts. I took long walks around Subic, and for the first time in my life, went to the beach alone. On a number of occasions, I thought I’d approach someone. But I guess I was too determined by this happy aloneness. All this time alone with nothing to do but savor Paella and grilled squid on restaurants by the beach during afternoons. Sunlight sparkles like a million diamonds floating by the sea. A salty breeze wafts as you drink watermelon shake or as you light your cigarette. The best part of it was sleeping in the hotel all day, in long, long, hours. And of course I was able to affirm that at the moment I was in love with myself. It’s more difficult to dredge up the past now and remember exactly what I thought.

It would have been difficult if things took the route where I persisted on loving someone else. But then, without bitterness, without regret, I have chosen the ultimately selfish end. And I’m glad I did. I would find out, later on, that there are a lot more endearing smiles and dazzling eyes. Very quickly these faces came and went, all to become faceless again.

At the beginning of May, I made an instant decision to join my officemates to Puerto Gallera. Despite how weary we were of work, and how literally tired for coming off the shift and going straight to Batangas and the ferry to Mindoro, my officemates seemed never tired of partying all night squeezing fun out of the weekend. I’ve never seen such determination to be happy. There were a lot of people on Puerto Gallera on our first day, since it’s the Labor Day holiday weekend. The beach was crowded with ladies in their bikinis and bare legs and backs, and nincompoop guys in their board shorts. When the ferry arrived at White Beach we were greeted by other officemates who were already there. All my officemates simply looked better if they had nothing but their bikinis on. Accommodations and food on Gallera were extremely cheaper compared to Boracay. We got them for a really good price, after a little effort. All bars sold beer at thirty bucks a bottle. The beach is not so pristine and the place had lesser character compared to Boracay. Some of the bars played Chicane and some chillout, most of the music were hip hop and R&B. It was more of a party place. Nonetheless, the beach was not much of a hype but still beautiful, and with our crowd it was so much better. And the parties here lasted longer. My officemates never tired of dancing. There was the usual fruit shake by the beach, the massage, banana boat rides, barbeques, seafood and kebab. As we swam in early mornings, had lunch and swam again in late afternoons, there was barely enough time to sleep but still managed to drink again at night. After getting drunk, we lie on the sand and stare at the stars. There was also time to meet someone new. One of my officemates brought a friend with her. I had a few drinks with them during the afternoon, while everyone went dancing to “In the Club.” We shared a common inability to dance. While everybody else got drunk and danced all night, we took a walk. This is the part of the movie where the dreamy music fades up and the romance swells – or at least I took it that way. We met earlier that day. It was beautiful – how she was thin yet she had round features. You know she’d grow up some more to reach that full bloom. She had a snobbish air hanging with her. We talked and drank together on the beach. Later that night, while taking our stroll, she lay her life open and told me her story. I listened intently. She’s the only child of a rich family. Her father has planned out her career for her. She probably has never made a deliberate choice in life. Never had a boyfriend but was also interested in a hunky Filipino-Canadian whom she met in Pravda. They have a house in Canada, and she lives in Alabang. She’s geeky, she supposes, but goes to Pravda a lot. Strikingly stereotypical daughter of the Filipino elite. Not too long ago, I’ve given up my dream of becoming Pepe having her Carmen Villa. In this case, class struggle robbed all the romance I had left it me. When we got back to rejoin the group, her friend remarked, “Where were you? We thought you got kidnapped.”

On the way back home, the ferry to Batangas made me mentally draft my last will and testament. We laughed off the strong waves at first, but as we moved on the passengers were calculating the ratio of available life jackets. As early as noon the waves were strong and boat tilted to as much as a 45 degree angle. In an attempt to assuage our fears, I held hands with an officemate who was sitting on my lap and wrapping her arm around my shoulder. On another occasion, I would’ve been turned on. As the wooden boat docked, I couldn’t dislodge my balls from my neck.

Another summer ends well.

No matter how we choose life, we continue to live a rather passive existence. I remember how walks along La Salle, Ayala, CCP and Nakpil, the books in the library or in Powerbooks brought me such bliss. It made all the absurdity manageable somehow. It made me embrace it.

Does life slowly dip into a quiet desperation, as you grow old? I already imagine my walks along Valero, Paseo, Ayala and Greenbelt, when I find myself in a different spot from where I walk now.

I’ve slept for only three or four hours everyday for the past week. I can’ return to sleep anymore after having my first four hours. My mind’s too distracted to concentrate on reading. I end up getting drowsy over the smell of the room’s burning scented oils, or get too lad back and loungy with Chillout music. Work hasn’t been the hassle it’s been, but has become very demanding. It keeps me pretty occupied. My off is two nights away. I’d like to watch good movies, go to the theater, gobble cheeseburgers, read all day, write all day, get to have dinner and coffee, funny and profound conversation with Nietzschean quips and occasional existential angst or deconstructive art, books, and movies, in these excellent restaurants. Would it be asking too much if she looked like a celebrity?

I look around my room and realize how all chilled out I am and how I hand-picked my lifestyle based on available resources, however I still often feel blank. Full of character, familiar to happiness, used to loneliness, examined so many answers but left blank, as though the world conspired to answer only with question marks.

I love how paper absorbs thick fountain pen ink then dries up, like how memories become indelible and permanent.

Nowadays, everybody seems to dream of just being conventional.

Potentially Meaningful Chaos

I have lost my faith very early in life, and Philosophy has led me to believe that everything is just possible yet I cannot believe in anything or in any of these possibilities.

Life must have some way of letting our choices, wishes, or even our whims win over our own inexorable fate. There is no organized way of explaining this. I have lost my faith very early in life, and Philosophy has led me to believe that everything is just possible yet I cannot believe in anything or in any of these possibilities. I now have a more crystal understanding of why many had just chosen to decorate their lives with love or deluded themselves with a so-called passion.
Looking back into how I have lived thus far, I could say that I will be willing to die tomorrow. Even though life is just beginning everyday. I can’t even say that I still have any dreams left. Even a flat panel TV and a handful of supermodels. I’ve already realized I can live without those.

This realization has been made concrete when ___, after we had a few drinks at Sidebar and went off off to observe the splendor of the stars in the Universe at Miss Universal. He asked me what my plans are. Of course, I didn’t really have any plans hatched for the future. Perhaps all my self-expectations have now fully diminished. I used to have it all figured fucking out. Now I’m a walking fucking cliché. He told me to make them along the way. I wonder how that really works. Like that classic cliché, cross the bridge when you get there. Where is the fucking bridge?
The universe, with all its suns and milky ways --- this entire existence, is all a potentially meaningful chaos. More often, it has been tragic.

Palm Sunday’s Coincidence and Nostalgia. I started reading Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Another serving of magic realism, and everything Garciamarquesan is the perfect read for these summer months. This is the kind of read that completely absorbs and becomes an indelible pigment in your memory, as the summer heat scatters its kisses on your skin. And that smell of the crisp, yellow, bound pages. Perhaps I am merely trying to re-live the summers before, since exactly after that, I’ve lost love and graduated and took on work. Since then, I think I’ve said it before, how I felt like hibernating, as though a long winter of life has passed.
I am burning with nostalgia for those summers, and thus I try to re-live.
Is it not coincidental; Jeremiah de Saint Amour died on gold cyanide, and thereafter, Dr. Juvenal Urbino died falling off a mango tree, on the same day? Now, as I scan the pages of a book I’m having this big time dejavu.
How do I explain the consistent fact that the neighbor’s German Shepherds not only bark loudly but also howls, cries as though it were tormented, every time the clock strikes 4 AM? O. thinks that a specter visits this part of Malate. Must they have habits and schedules?

Even in dreams, all this chaos must have some sense.

I love watching the neighbor’s huge tree dance with the wind during afternoons while I read, and listen to my play lists. Especially when the streets are silenced on a Palm Sunday, and another holy week, my favorite week, comes into my life.

Everydayness

Everyday there is everydayness. Everyday ho-hum. Everyday humdrum. Every fucking day.

Summer and a stream of consciousness. Maybe I was too lazy to even put my thoughts into focus, to establish these words into a more telling order. Someone once told me the writing in the form of stream of consciousness is superlatively effective. Everyday there is everydayness. Everyday ho-hum. Everyday humdrum. Every fucking day. What is it? What is it that I would I live passionately for? What death would make it all justified, and not everybody dies like a hero or a martyr or remembered after a few years except when someone throws a death anniversary ad in the Obituaries with masses heard for even in the most unheard of parishes in provinces? Only death is forever. What is my creative output? My meaningful pursuit? My happy remembrance? Who would be there to embrace while remembering the remembrance. To embrace in my bed while watching my DVDs. This stuff is simply more effective when you’re all boozed up and you are not too conscious in writing in a stream of consciousness. But not too drunk last time with D.N. when my drunkenness ended up asking for the number of the mini-skirted waitress. Bastard. Only to never even call. I love to juggle words and be redundant and the sound of an assonance. I have not done free association for a long time. Perhaps I am afraid and I’d censor myself. Keep it all bottled up and until it explodes nuclear. All these for the sake of having an entry this month. To whittle the worthlessness of it all. To cease time, and encapsulate it. To flow liquid and non-linear through time and just slide through the past and the future and the now and maybe emit all that boredom. To throw this away, and hope to find the formerly barren land but now you have found all the things you’ve lost, like a lost umbrella. All that you have lost that is still part of you somehow. Never look back. Never look back to what you have written and think too much to ruin it. You will regret some of it later on, but would you rather not regret? What is my Truth? I’ve asked myself that like twenty seven thousand times and twenty-four more. Regret Nothing. You can never regret nothing. God knew it all. I’ve always wanted to write that God is the omniscient, cosmic encyclopedia Britannica. I stole that from the Alchemist. A book I hated because it became just too popular although it reminded me so much of basic philosophical themes and sounded like a Little Prince for adults. Although The Little Prince was anti-adult. And Holden Fucking Caulfield never grew to be twenty-one.Now I eat too much again and I love fried chicken and the nuts with roasted garlic that would’ve been honeyed in sweetness went dry and salty. I feel all right. Mozart plays again with quick classical music with the many notes. I am surprised how Microsoft Word finds my sentence construction grammatically correct and coherent. I lack more adjectives, and I do not draw much from the wellspring of images. More similes and figures of speech. More clouds in the sky, and some images that would’ve taken time to think of. Like, I would’ve written something like -- Mozart plays again with music with the many notes sprayed like gunfire in the hands of a killing madman --- only less aimlessly – as a matter of fact, dead accurate on hitting the keys, the piano played like magic in the hands of the supreme sorcerer. I could do that. Maybe I could write a collection of poems, and my or stories enriched by reading so many of those finely thought-of plots and fascinating images. But why have I not? Was I too busy rationalizing myself --- and me me me --- this “morbid self-attention” I have devoted myself to? “morbid self-attention” like I heard it in Scorsese's Taxi Driver. Is it true that so many things are happening in life and they also deserve to be cradled into literature: like how I take the cab at night and ride the bus every morning. Are all those for me? Would someone else take the time to appreciate it anyway? Weaving all these words into a beautiful fabric --- blinding your eyes with a wide sea of shooting stars or big round sequins from which it gently sparkles during these summer nights. Enriched with images carefully placed from raw abstraction into absolute sense, delivering a real sensation and a ponderous effect. How will the story end? Maybe cite something profoundly philosophical or, always smart to deconstruct something in what was done. Not obvious deconstruction, but one that takes figuring out and one that is delivered with a unique literary metaphor and an allusion --- to something like the book of Job in the bible, or incorporating the song of songs into a sexual act and deconstructing it, to answer the question – What are hierarchies do they reverse? I saw this recently in a good-enough Mexican film called “El Crimen de Padre Amaro.” “Summer and a stream of consciousness” sounds nice. I am tired of writing about the summer heat and the memory it brings, often delicious, rarely dismal, or the many sensations I could describe when summer arrives like someone’s lips scattering itself on my skin. Wow. I filled a page. This must be what it feels like to be a cigarette burned to ashes and butted out – with a thin white mist vanishing into thin air --- and feel its emptiness.

This month is the month of Mars, the god of war. This month came with war. It is as though history and mythology and this symbolism is something that is truly alive and organic manifesting itself, like the way stars seal our fate. On the first night of yet another gulf war, the US fired 72 satellite-guided tomahawk missiles on Baghdad. Skies lit up with missiles and anti-aircraft missiles, Apache Helicopters and Jets fly by like the modern day Angel of Death. With fired up oil wells, Iraq burns like Sodom and you can watch it live on CNN, BBC, CNBC and Fox --- preferably with a bowlful of popcorn and Coca Cola as they show the progress in this war. Real life is really a stage. People don’t need to act. History, life, death and conquest unfold live on TV nowadays. News is delivered on a real-time basis. Iraqi TV shows how America makes victims out of the people they promised to liberate, while. Sadam Hussein throwing his speech on how God is on their side in cutting the American aggressor’s throats. Young soldiers struggle in desert sandstorms. Young children in Iraq die or don’t have to go to school since there’s a war. Young people in the world protest this war, or maybe just watch everything on TV. It’s my second serving of a Gulf War in one lifetime. I guess we’ll keeping on having due to the United States’ delinquent defense contracts. Or maybe its all about the oil. At this time, Colaition forces have progressed from Southern Iraq moving towards Baghdad, paratroopers land from the North, jets and missiles fly from the Persian Gulf. All these rockets and their skies, and bombs flanked on their city. Admittedly, little does it impact my life, aside from the many calls that flanked our office since these Americans felt guilty about their vacation packages or felt afraid about traveling. The calls at work became more fucking complicated due to the directives and procedures and policies we have because of the war. H. went to Iraq a few days before the war to advocate peace, to take the stance of these people, form his own wise opinion and have them published on the highly regarded opinion pages of Today. When he arrived, he didn’t even have to tell me stories since I’ve already read them on the daily. As for me, I take no affirmative action. Although I often sympathize with the neighbor who has a more sorry lot, I have no war of my own. And even if I had a war of my own, I feel that I would’ve lost by default.

I’ve recently been asked to give a historical person I’d be interested to have lunch with. It would be Arthur Schopenhauer. Perhaps I could verify if the father of pessimism does have a jolly personality and a splendid appetite. I heard he died shortly after having breakfast.
Room with a view, on a Sunday morning.. The balimbing tree my brothers and friends used to climb when we were children is blooming with small red flowers. I wish I knew the scientific name so I can sound, well, clever. Atis which grew on the tree beside it dries up from the dust, sun and pollution. It has evolved into something which looks like an acorn. Maya birds chirp in a chorus, and the neighbor’s dog barks. Jeeps start to pass by. A cab drives by. Someone is sweeping and I can hear the wooden broom scratching against the pavement. The Benitez side of the house is at least, lined with trees. The summer Sunday sun once again, writes poetry through the gleams and shadows it casts on the green of the trees and the black of the asphalt. Inside the room the air conditioner hums. I light up the oil burner to dispel the alcohol, yosi and the Saturday night gimmick cocktail smell that the clothes still carry. I should buy a new fragrance for the new oil burner. I can’t decide on which film to watch again this morning, or continue reading, or re-read a story. I ate too much again and I’m not happy and am convinced that Chowking is terrible fast food. I wonder how I’d look like in an Amorsolo portrait. I’ve been addicted to looking at the wedding portrait of Mariano Garchitorena and Cardidad Pamintuan. The colors exude the richness of their era and the lavish elegance of the gown. The girl seems to be thinking of someone else and a contemplative silence is seen beaming on those still eyes. The guy looks like an old, true blue coño kid. I wonder how their marriage turned out. At least there was art which became its offspring. I know that people do love one another in great depths and deep magnitude and incredible emotion rare as ghost orchid flowers and filled with profound meaning as voluminous dictionaries. And maybe I am just, truly, incapable of loving someone now. Work is the long agony of wanting, waiting to resign. I’m thinking about a pension plan again. What an encouraging premise to promulgate. It should be the new company statement.

The next day, I went to work thinking it was my last day, savoring every detail of it: from the cab ride and the sodium vapor lamps of south superhighway, to the blue neon lights lining the edges of the RCBC plaza, the yellow edges of the GT tower and the lights at the Enterprise. To all the characters at work.To each and every e-mail, to each furnishing in the office, and the laughs with officemates. To walking to the loading zone. And finally to the bus ride home.

Life Went By

Time really flies and leaves the littlest trace. I could barely remember how my life went by, except for its obstinate sameness I desired and loathed, enjoyed and frowned upon.

It’s the last day of February. Time seems to be passing in light-year units nowadays. Time really flies and leaves the littlest trace. I could barely remember how my life went by, except for its obstinate sameness I desired and loathed, enjoyed and frowned upon.
Though you can’t really remember everything that takes place in your life, little seems to be actually taking place. Dinner and dessert with friends, and laughs, drinking at home with my brother and his friends while they finish their thesis, drinking alone at bars, dressing well, going out and meeting someone new and then wanting to meet someone else, going to work, writing those e-mails absorbed in a professional-sounding disclaimer language, then eating compulsively, watching films, reading these good books, listening to music and writing my journal. I have surrounded my life with these niceties, which seemed to have lightened my need to affirm my existence, like many other people who have not resisted mediocrity.

“This is it.” We’ve always thought. The now is what you have thought about before. Then time fled, and “this is it” becomes “that was it” or maybe even “that was it?” It all became ordinary, as always getting more and more queasy of commonplace happenings, glad at rationalizing that it’s all right and steady.

I’ve always wanted to delve deeper in to the moment. At the back of my head, I am wishing that there was a way to suspend time --- not only to make a memory persist, but to allow a moment outside the plane of time.

I started writing at around 5:00 am today, after a day’s off goodnight sleep. It’s six thirty in the morning now. The morning light begins to rinse the sky, and the sun finds its way into the room filling it with fresh and crisp yellow shine. The sound of vehicles vroom in the streets. The day is a ball rolling. There it goes again.

I went to the mall to buy this 900 peso CD case I never would’ve bought if I still had my more practical ideals set two or three years ago. But then I thought of the welfare and protection of my pirated CDs, and the will to just have the things I fancy and can afford when I’m desirous --- this one for example, books another.
My fancy was also struck by a 600 peso board game. I’ve enjoyed and triumphed in Scrabble even as a child. I realized I’m not a child anymore but I bought it with the thought that it would be fun to play alone, play with the words in Filipino, and even the mere idea of forming words out of a random set of tiles with letters and corresponding scores.
When I was playing alone in the room, my older brother laughed at this idea. He joined in and we ended up playing for six hours. What was pathetic is that it was supposed to be my game but I only won once, with all the words my vocabulary supposedly flaunted.

Eternal Hourglass Trickling

"In the trickle of time’s eternal hourglass, in this little existence of mine, something must have even a smidgen of significance, something else must be worth trying."

Writing requires a strong heart? The writer must be able to withstand the extremities of emotion, to have prudence from being consumed by the fires of one’s own passion, to bear emptiness and fill it up. To turn the must frail gesture into the most pompous event, and the most pompous event into a frail gesture. To take nothingness, to take Being, blend it and put into paper. It takes a strong heart to be a writer, instead of the merely written about.
Instead of just being a big writer-wannabe.

Where did my writer’s voice go? Has it drowned it the drone of Makati’s early morning traffic? Suppressed by the small squabble or the vicarious venting of irate customers? Did my voice die and resurrected into a --- beautiful buzzing bee? The simplest explanation turns out be the right one: Ockham’s Razor. I am suspicious about that and think that this medieval philosophical principle is obsolete, if not terrifically false. Nowadays, it would have been more likely to adhere to a principle such as: the stupidest explanation turns out to be the best one. This is what we tend to believe. Like, the earth was formed out of this big fucking bang. God created the universe in seven days. Jesus Christ is an alien. Human beings came from monkeys. Like, the Truth is a great loneliness.
I think it was Einstein who said, “There only two things infinite --- the Universe and human stupidity… I’m not sure about the former.”

“I’ve given up on being brilliant.” I forgot who said that. Or perhaps I’ve quoted it too often that I forgot it was I, like reverse pumping ego or labelling theory.

With all this fuss about my sky-rocketing blood pressure and having an impending heart attack, I had to eat healthy. And I began running again. Running to have a little less paranoia. (I have discovered that running not only relieves you, but also effectively reduces your fear of anything. This must be scientific.) I ate less, and am grateful for my Ops Manager’s concern. She slated me on dedicated e-mail that made my work not much of a drag. Although required visits to the doctor, and buying expensive medicine actually is a real nuisance. I barely even drink anymore. I smoke 2-4 cigarettes a day.
Life is a series of compromises.

It was my self-love, my excessive indulgence, which weakened my heart.

And why have I not imparted my love? Is something noticeably lacking in my life? I can’t prevent myself from asking silly questions. And I am tired of sophisticated rationalizations, or yielding into self-pity. The answer is simply because this perfect-idea girl of mine has not miraculously popped up from the world of ideas and assume perfect human form to amuse me with her witticisms, be insanely in love with me, my groins, my ankles, and be all that I want her to be. Now, that’s something ultra-hyperbolic. The more obvious truth is that I even though I start regularly meeting up with someone, love chooses to conveniently lurk in a limbo. So I am blissfully alone: loving myself, loving myself too much, and that pretty little figment of my vivid imagination. I’ve sporadically asked myself why I’m alone, but I never complained. In a moment of weakness, I would jump at the chance on anyone who would spread her legs apart. How difficult it is to even fall in love --- to revel in something that is rat’s ass stupid.

Meanwhile, my aloneness steadies.

My aloneness is an oxymoron: it is preferred-adapted.

Success is merely a stubborn insistence.

I’m beginning to collect enough determination to quit my job very soon, maybe sometime around summer. Maybe after (1) saving for a little investment in case I’m bumming for a month or two or three (2) another trip to the beach. Or maybe I should add (3) after tempestuous, multiple-orgasmic sexual intercourse with a dashing officemate while in the office. Right.
When I took this job I promised myself that my maximum length of stay with the company would be two years --- and that is if I get to enjoy what I’m doing. I think the estimates were too rough. It’s been one year and six months, and statistics would say that I actually enjoy myself only 11% of the time while I’m in the office and absolutely enjoy myself 89% of the time when I’m not in the office. I’m closing the time of my life to learn to laugh at the risks I’m going to take, and learn to humble down when it is life’s turn to laugh back at me. This must be a way to allow living to open to my being. I’ve enjoyed mentally drafting my resignation letter. I’ve hatched a few interesting plans, about what to do after resigning, or while being in the torturous, indeterminate state in between jobs. One of them, of course, is to find out what it’s like to have other jobs.
While working on my resume I had to describe what my work consists of:

My work consists of providing comprehensive and quality customer service. It has been my task to efficiently and effectively resolve customer service issues while multi-tasking across multiple channels and capably utilizing technology tools and business systems. These generally outlined duties and responsibilities are performed meeting all client-imposed service levels, with a customer-friendly yet highly professional quality of work that is constantly monitored and assured. This type of work not only requires in-depth client-based knowledge needed to help its customers, but also demands that the representative make sound judgment calls in implementing business policies and decisions, and promote a lasting customer relationship. Given continuous and extensive training on business policies, business tools, and business strategies to handle client-specific needs, (particularly in Internet-based travel service, domain registration, hosting and other website services,) and the skill it thus yields, this work experience earns one an excellent customer service background.

Or what my work may really consist of is:

My work consists of kissing the customer’s ass. A lot of American dotcom companies outsource their customer service department since they see it as a mere necessary evil. They can take advantage of cheap Philippine labor, and cut down on costs. The irony is that the reps in this country are smarter, friendlier, more committed, bred in the best Philippine schools. They are talented, but they compromised to sell their soul to capitalism, intelligent but more interested in having the higher middle class lifestyle, more than willing to kiss customer ass for dough. The companies probably would only have to shed out half as much for these reps. While we try to genuinely help customers, we mostly endure their vicarious venting, bear the burden of their disgust, then muster up excuses, spout our spills and stress ourselves out on a 24x7 basis. Globalization, American Imperialism brought to you by Voice Over Internet Protocol. The land of milk and honey comes to you. They pay the new grads relatively better wages than most companies would, we get sick (physically or figuratively) but also get good health benefits, and the Americans chip off a lot of cost off their shoulders. What this experience thus yields: another newly grad who took on the job discovers how this world really works.

In the trickle of time’s eternal hourglass, in this little existence of mine, something must have even a smidgen of significance, something else must be worth trying.

“Against boredom the gods themselves fight in vain.” – Nietzsche. I haven’t told this to myself in a long time. Maybe, I’m just bored.

How did the rest of your life begin today? The night at work becomes less and less tedious and the least bit stressful since I’ve been slated on dedicated e-mail. Moreover, my stats are impeccable on the performance metrics this month. A perfect 100% for QA sessions for three consecutive weeks, and I’m meeting the prescribed average speed of answer more than 150% above standard. I don’t know long this will last, but with this work I do not feel like Atlas bearing the weight of the world.
I know that going back to the voice channel will be like paying a great penance.
After work I turn on auto-sleep mode in the bus after taking a walk to the loading zone. The January mornings have been chilling. Upon arriving, I eat a light breakfast and take the car to CCP. I’ve been running with increased speed and endurance. I catch my breath while walking around the film center, in the shade of these tall magnificent pebble pillars, and maybe even in the presence of the infamous phantoms of construction workers who built this beautiful edifice by the sea. On one side, the buildings of Makati are clouded with smog. Buildings that has eaten up so many lives.
Compared to other hobbies or sports, the great thing about running is that it’s very basic. All you have to do is run. In it’s basic form, you don’t have to devise sports techniques, coaching analysis, consider team work or any requited concentration. You can let your mind sink deep in thought. Right after running I treat myself to a currant-flavored sparkling water at the Figaro. I enjoy the jazz music that pipes in, and the view of the trees dancing with the wind, behind the window blinds.
On some occasions after work, I wait for the movies to open and have myself one of those chicken popcorns or Baskin Robbins ice cream while watching. Seen on film, The Lord of the Rings is a slightly easier version of something like Homer, Ovid or Iliad. It seems, however, to be something made specifically for blockbuster cinema, a little bit more idiotic in execution, but heavily fancied up with eye-popping special effects. I’m really glad though, that some theaters in Robinsons already have neck rests, cup holders and THX surround sounds, and you only have to pay half as much compared to seeing it Glorietta or G3. And then I’d stay at the mall to get decaffeinated coffee and maybe some sweets, while eying pretty ladies of all ages.
Or after work I listen to my records. I haven’t gotten over MOS Chillout annual 2002, and surprisingly enough, Rivermaya’s live and acoustic is an excellent local find. I also put this compilation of songs from high school, most of which I downloaded from the net on a nostalgia trip. And of course there’s Jazz.
Or after work I read a little and write my journal. When I read the first story on Ian McEwan’s “First Love, Last Rites,” I already decided on getting another book from him. The first story reminded me a lot of Jeff Noon’s “The Cabinet of the Night Unlocked.” Only, I think McEwan’s seems to have mastered that dispassionate tone of delivering themes that passionately. He powerfully produces a familiar estrangement and fascination. You can see all the elements of the story, and each gesture work towards that strong, surprising ending.
And then I sleep it off rid of those disturbing dreams since less distress is due to me.
How did the rest of your life begin today? The rest of my life is beginning to start off better everyday.

December 2002

In the meantime, my life floats aimlessly. Like fallen, dry leaves led to a dance by the wind.

Day after Christmas 2002. Sometime this week I called for fever and I was figuratively sick of work. The next day when I tried to get my medical clearance, the doctor informed me that my blood pressure is shooting up to 160/110. She prescribed some medicine. With such high blood pressure at age 21, I was alarmed by my deteriorating health.
I’m a cardiac arrest waiting to happen.
I can imagine how the arteries and valves of my heart are clogged with cholesterol, animal fat from all that bacon, all in all forming human rust in my heart.
Stirred both by what was happening to my body and my attitude towards life, my subconscious began to feed me strange and unpleasant dreams. Until now though, I have not deciphered what the message is. One day I had a dream of finding a live pig when I opened the bathroom door. One day I dreamt of an airplane crash. From flying above the clouds, the plane tried to decrease altitude. In the extraordinary geography of dreams, the space between the clouds and the water disappeared, or that space has also been covered in clouds. Thus, when the plane moved down vertically, it plopped straight into the water. One day I dreamt that an epidemic hit the city. Many people were half naked, and everyone coughed out in pools and puddles of blood. I was on my way to the hospital. One day I had a dream about a train derailing. I dreamt that a short train ride was constructed, like a train shuttle service, from Ayala Avenue to Greenbelt. I was in the train together with some friends and family. Some angry workers led it off track to an under-construction part of the rail. The train fell. Everyone in the train died, except I. I had a magical ability to defy gravity. I found myself crying hysterically in my mother’s shoulders. Last night, I had a dream about playing soccer again. I scored five goals. The word “Talent” kept appearing in that dream.
My dreams, and my failing health, agitate me awfully. I feel that I am paying the consequences of my over indulgence for food at those pricey restaurants and at fast food chains. I could say that I even minimized drinking during the last two months --- but the bottle is most probably --- also a culprit. My work, of course --- is always a great deal of stress.
My ever tautological issue thus strikes again. The issue of whether I should resign or not, or to regret or not to regret later on, never comes with a smooth and sleek answer. Say I resign. I still wouldn’t know what I want out of life anyway. Say I don’t resign. Can I even continue to live my life this way? This issue never seems to run out of steam. The more I delay a decision with finality, the less I’m likely to arrive with a better answer.
In the meantime, my life floats aimlessly. Like fallen, dry leaves led to a dance by the wind. In this season of supposed merry, this has been a sickening, sad dance.

Somewhere in Italy, scientists have discovered a unique gene in the DNA map of a family. The Italian diet includes a high amount of cholesterol. This family apparently developed a gene that allows them to have a higher than usual quantity of cholesterol without risking heart disease.
How I’d love to have this gene. We do evolve after all.

Despite all of this I'd like to believe that life's all right. It’s December --- and happiness is almost a given. I continue to dwell on my self-indulgent pleasures, although I minimized the more heart-ailment-prone ones. In this “season of conspicuous consumption,” (as it was so accurately termed in of the Jeanette Winterson books) I spent some dough for presents. I also got myself some simple gifts such as pirated DVDs that you can illegally acquire in Harrison Plaza. They are: Dead Poet’s Society, American History X, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Madame Butterfly. I was also able to spend Christmas with my family this year, and got a few more days off after Christmas. I treated myself to a massage treatment, and read a couple of books. The best Chillout CD buy I got this month was Ministry of Sound’s Chillout Annual 2002.
It’s even surprising how some officemates bothered to give me gifts. Thoughtfulness is as rare as interesting women to date.

This year’s Christmas greeting goes (from Jessica Zafra): “In a season packed with fake plastic trees, Styrofoam snow and false cheer, I hope you find something real.”
Something real, eh?
And what is my reality?

I’m twenty-one. When I was thirteen, until I was around nineteen, my greatest fear was to become mediocre. Now, I’m even afraid to quit my job and step into a more meaningful pursuit.
“Oh to struggle against great odds. To meet enemies undaunted.”
As matter if fact, I have the faintest clue of what a meaningful pursuit is, or where to find even a smidgen of significance in life. I just slack around a lot.
“To be a sailor of the world, bound for all ports.”
I once proclaimed to have had my truth, my beauty. I embraced the determining finality of Nothingness, and seem to have understood what it all meant at that time. Now, I cannot get to convince myself to even believe anything. I just drift, go on living, unknowing of what I want out of life.
“Oh I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave.”
Often, I’m afraid, or just mere lazy, or lethargic… to do anything.
“To mount the scaffolds. To advance the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance.“
Sometimes, I am shallowly happy.
“To dance, clap hands, exalt, shout, skip, roll on, float on.”
I thought I had something, a verse to contribute. Nowadays, I’m having a hard time to get fresh ideas for my journal.
“Oh to have life, henceforth the poem of new joys.”
I am mostly alone. However, I seemed to have had the “perfect idea” that God (both of which is highly likely not to exist) would’ve been jealous of. What a fucking consolation.
“To indeed be a god.”