The Existential Sunday Comics

And then I long for the ending, like how we all secretly wonder how our own life would end. Jean Paul Sartre said something like this before...

Thursday night. I went to one of my officemate’s birthday parties. The celebrant was part of the group I went with to Gallera and ___ didn’t have a date so the timing’s perfect. This was a Makati bar that’s frequented by a good crowd. We did have a good crowd that night and you recognize some of them from college. They all looked posh and snobbish. Once you meet them, they are not even snobbish and posh. They’re merely boring, yet often pretty good-looking. Nowadays, the ladies just dress better and better, and become less and less interesting with their rather generic characters. What is there to chitchat and chew the fat about but hows-your-career now or who-you-goin'-out-with?
We had to wear red cloths on our arms so that waiters can recognize the ones who can get free beer. A week ago, a group of around 200 young soldiers wore red armbands during their brief revolt in Oakwood, Makati. I admire their candor for exposing the anomalies in the Army, for standing up to stress their good point in a way that is literally more explosive than firecrackers during New Year’s Eve. Pilosopong Tasyo would’ve commended it. And now it’s also a party fashion statement.
I got all boozed up with the free flowing beer. I joined a few officemates to North Park for a food binge.

Existentialism in the Sunday Paper’s comics section. Of all places. Calvin and Hobbes had always been existential. I have the slightest clue why children are given access to this type of literature. Nietzsche once said something like, of all animals man was the most sorrowful that he had to invent laughter. Now, children just laugh at the most inconsolable human tragedies, or dilemmas shown in Calvin and Hobbes:

“We’re each going to die, our species will go extinct. The sun will explode and the universe will collapse. Existence is not only temporary, it’s pointless. We’re all doomed. And worse, nothing matters.”

This morning, Calvin and Hobbes philosophizes again:

“The secret to happiness is short-term, stupid, self-interest.”

Last week, I’ve resolved to quit my job. I don’t know what to do next. But Calvin is right. You can even translate it to cliché’s: Time flies and life waits for on one.
With this short-term, stupid, self-interest, I’m going to be happy.

Tonight, I’ve been distracting myself from those thoughts and went for the usual terrific dinner alone, then a movie.

Even ants must be tired. Monday would’ve been uneventful, it if isn’t the official day I filed my resignation. I just stopped whining and stopped worrying and just pulled the trigger and jumped the abyss. Self-indulgent as it is, I’m very flattered that my supervisors are still urging me to stay and pep talking me into staying. Nothing much happens in the office except to endure work. Except perhaps, those excellent moments of having laughs with officemates whom I’ve grown a fond closeness with, and enjoying the chillout music which you get to hear sometimes. And there’s a lot of HBO movies to watch at home. My leaves were approved already. One more month. One more month and I still feel drained about working until my 30th day of notice.
Even ants must feel tired. This tired.

Breakfast with other officemates. Breakfast with officemates became more frequent ever since the McDo in Paseo opened. It’s cheaper and closer than the usual North Park. Only, the fucking breakfast stories are perpetually the same. The same calls, issues, accent slurs, and despise for other office mates. The same shit in different versions, which I’ve been hearing about for the past two years. Eternal recurrence must be real. What can I expect? I can’t just change the subject of conversation to the dichotomy between philosophy and literature, or what they think would be the most feasible interpretation of human evolution.

It was St. Dominic’s feast day. Earlier in the afternoon, life dragged on as usual and I was in Greenbelt, having coffee and trying to touch base with a former officemate. She was pretty, pretty interesting with an even more interesting fashion statement. A med school student in UST who went to Ateneo for her undergrad. We had the usual see-you-again-soon. It was Friday night off and I met up with M., DN, and R., for a drink. I was on my fifth or sixth drink when my younger brother called me and told me in a shaken voice, that they were in the hospital.
I was drunk, and it made me feel it less as I absorbed this sorry event. We all stayed in the hospital until the morning.
I wasn’t there when it happened, but I’ve heard about the story around one hundred two times. The usual crowd was gathered in front of the house at around 11 pm to head off to the Friday night gimmick. A group of five robbers armed with .22 and .45 caliber handguns presented themselves as policemen, ranted that they received a complain from our neighbors, and the bastards just started to ask for everyone’s bags and cellphones. My brother protested and one of them pulled the trigger to his chest but the gun jammed. The earth must have stopped. Another one of them shot a .45 to his leg. They fired two more shots, probably in a frenzy, and a .22 bullet hit my cousin’s back. It went out through his left arm instead of his chest, as though fate blew it’s own auspicious wind to keep them alive. The robbers ran rapidly to their getaway car: a taxi named Exodus. Even moments have their allusions. No one caught the plate number. Nothing was taken, but a lot changed. It’s an ammunition of sadness, anger that turned to despair and paranoia. Everyone thanking everyone for being alive.
My brother and my cousin managed to still humor everyone else about what happened. Yes, we still had a lot of laughs when we were at the hospital. Even God must have a sense of humor.

I saw Hannibal with my brother when he was already back home to recover. Lecter tells us to be grateful for the wounds, for they possess the power to remind us that the past is real.

At the back of my head, I’ve always tried to prepare myself for life’s blows, especially for the more fatal ones. I’ve hadn’t seen anyone close to me have a brush with it until now. It fills you with so much of that raw fear that you fear even writing about it. You can feel your heart beat out of your ribcage. I’m thankful that our family was able to bear this blow. Today, I throw my faithlessness away and thank the Saints who gave heed.

It one of the nights I spent at the hospital, I read the entire book of Job.
I spent most of my 7-day vacation leave at the hospital with my brother and my cousin. Some nights, ____ and I watched videos at home while having a drink or two. I even managed to see an exhibition in Cinemanila. The incident kept my mind off thoughts about my recent resignation, which would be effective next month.

The bumming-around, in-between-jobs period is the time to decongest my mind and let an influx of new thoughts enter, and finally let other things to happen.

I went DVD-shopping again in Quiapo with O. Depending largely on what’s available, I usually get something such as:
- A classic I haven’t seen before (e.g., The Piano, Singles)
- A recently-shown, acclaimed movie, recommended by a friend I can trust with for discerning good movies (e.g., 28 days later, Animatrix)
- A good laugh (e.g., South Park)
- All time best movies (e.g., Fight Club, Amelie)
- Pornography
- International films I haven’t even heard of. I usually just experiment on anything with Cannes Film Festival nominations and awards, or fimiliar director's names: Krystof Kieslowski, Pedro Almodovar, Lars Von Trier, Gus Van Sant. What ends up as the best DVDs on my little collection are mostly comprised of these festival films.

Last night, after catching up on sleep, I treated myself to a burger, and even cooked fried rice with Onang at three in the morning. I took a shower while having a beer. Hot water splashes down to me and cools me down as the cold beer slides in to my throat. After the shower, I saw the film I bought, even though I haven’t heard of it before. I just thought the name Gus Van Sant sounded familiar. Besides, this one wouldn’t be too strange since it had Matt Damon on it, and he was a co-writer. But what was there to write in this film anyway? It has the most useless plot: two friends both named Jerry goes to the desert in search of an unspecified “fucking thing,” decides not to search for it anymore. But when they decided not to abandon the search, were already lost in the desert. Throughout the film, they just looked for the place where they parked their car. “Hey Dude Where’s My Car?” was funny, and this wasn’t. The DVD’s jacket pledged visual breadth. The film opened with the shot of a car moving a long the empty highway for a full five fucking minutes while playing a sound song you’ve heard in some soap opera. Most of the film shows them taking dreary walks in the desert. The only visuals were sand, clouds, the endless sky, rock formations, which weren’t even too fascinating, or wouldn’t be striking enough to make you spout a big “wow” like you would when you see the Grand Canyon. Only fifteen minutes of the film had a musical score.
I thought about this film again, and beyond its story, or the lack thereof. And I thought I saw what all the visuals and what this rather existential plot tried to convey. Two hours of a film where virtually nothing happens with its ridiculous plot and preposterous events (like how they survived the desert without food or drink for almost three days) must tell me something. It was all a visual exaggeration. An existential story for Kafka TV. After the first thirty minutes, I started to really enjoy it.
This is a movie that makes us think our own thoughts, of dressing it with our insights and tossing in our own metaphors instead of spilling breathtaking special effects on the screen, or adding zing to it by putting lots of sex, then box a message somewhere in the dialogue.
I have no objections about what this film seems to tell me. We go through life searching for an unspecified thing. We turn our back, and we’re lost.
And then I long for the ending, like how we all secretly wonder how our own life would end. Jean Paul Sartre said something like this before. We either die and leave people behind, or the people who matter to us are the ones who die and leave us behind.

In Fragments

Running, again. Perhaps there is really a lot to run away from.

I followed my mother’s advice to work out and exercise. Mothers are often right. Before my body turns into an entirely lonely lump of fat, before my heart fails after a cardiac arrest, I have to run. I even enrolled at a gym at the Pan Pacific in Adriatico. I like taking walks at that part of Malate, then running on the treadmill for a few kilometers, 30 minutes on the stationary bike and 20 minutes on the transport relieves stress. I’m not counting on losing weight, but together with consistent medication, this has definitely improved by blood pressure. My muscles must be pleased to be flexed. The gym-crowd consists of older ladies with tattooed eyebrows and a lot of time, and middle-aged men in their mid life crisis. Inevitably, there are pretty young women with great legs on short shorts and those little dumbbells.
The workout makes sleep come easier after work. And more importantly, it lets me run.

There’s a jeepney strike today and people are all over the streets with no means of commute. We could all use a little walking.

Thursday afternoon, in fragments. Met up with ____ again, and walked around Rockwell followed by a rather joyless meal at Jollibee. Met up with ___, downed a few bevies and ate pesto pizza at Sidebar. Drank some more at home while watching Y Tu Mama Tambien with ___.

Friday, in fragments. Off to the gym again. A little reading at home while listening to a long chill out playlist, calm water burning. Met up with ____ at Café Adriatico for one drink, the young women of Friday night activating the party mode. There’s not a decent heterosexual place to dance in Malate. Now it’s gay people marginalizing heterosexuals. Temple in GB3 for a beer while ____ had her cosmopolitans and her dancing. I went home and found ____ and ____ drinking with my brother so I drank some more… A.V., her girl and my older brother arrives and we drank some more. I sleep a couple of hours. Rockstar’s on HBO, La Salle wins a game in the UAAP. ____, _____, and _____, hangs out at home for an hour before I run to the showers and prepare for work. Slept all day Sunday. Burned out and toxic at work.

The Alchemist Conceded

Without dignity, without meaning, now is that time to just drift. Like a needle swept by the sea.

This must have been how the alchemist felt when he conceded that lead couldn’t be turned into gold. Even earlier in my life, I’ve already realized that the philosopher’s stone cannot be found. In this part of my life, that feeling is in full blast. Now I’m feeling all this meaninglessness to the bone. Could there have been dignity, or meaning in the search? I feel that I’ve totally given up on that quest. Without dignity, without meaning, now is that time to just drift. Like a needle swept by the sea.

While everyday is a reality check, there is time to watch really good DVDs of acclaimed international films, or read books that retain the dreaminess in me. There are days off to squander a fortune on Greenbelt 3 to watch movies at 130 bucks per ticket and two hundred bucks on cinema food.

I spent some of my days off with H.’s housemates, (the P. crowd) along with some high school friends. "Our own Palm Springs," H. said, alluding to Coupland's Generation X. This is our early 20s, so it goes. I missed how music sounds so much better when your senses are stimulated and your consciousness semi-heightened. I missed how easier it was to perceive yourself as eloquent despite the senselessness of what you are saying, whether or not the senselessness turns into accidental genius.
___ so brilliantly persuasive yet unacceptable: that poetry was futile and senseless. She defended her ideas with a nonchalance that embarrasses any rhetoric born out of passion.
___ says, “we all want to rule the world but end up working in call centers.” We remember Fight Club. “You are not a unique and beautiful snowflake.” We all wanted to be movie gods and rock stars, until we resign to become the nobodies that we are.

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.