The Inception of Jairus

The mercury plunges and it's a natural tendency to let the temperature control so many things. The flower farmers in Benguet had to harvest early bacause the flowers started frosting. South of the country and and in other countries, there's been a long spell of rain and resulting flood. There is no snow in this sad republic but I see so much white. So much white to see too little clarity. So much cold bringing chaffed lips that hushed me and left my wits to a drought.

I'm always sick at the start of the year, which makes January both a beginning and a relapse. Perhaps it's leaning more towards a relapse because it sounds like I'm going back to my whining ways. I had several cases of existential blues in the office, and I've lost track of a sensible diet. Over drinks last weekend, I confided office woes to my wife. I've also gained around ten pounds that I've previously lost.

I'm reading Roth's Sabbath's Theater. I've been reading for nearly two months now and both that fact and what I read in the book sinks me further into sadness.

I scheduled a run this afternoon. After stretching, lacing up and the warm-up walk to Roxas Boulevard, a drizzle later fully developing into a rain made me abort the 6k-before-work plan. And work, needless to say, is rarely pleasant. The office is another big freezer that makes me feel like a corpse basked in formaldehyde.

And I've been dreaming violently. There must be some kind of Inception taking place. That's also the only decent film we saw in the last quarter. And yes, perhaps that's what's happening
now. Given this tendency to relapse into whining, the agents are re-wiring my consciousness.

After all all that violet dreaming and looking deep into me, the Inception was to have me look at my son's eyes and say: there is so much sunshine. It's from another subconscious item: a Walt Whitman quote.



Remember last Monday? Remember? Upon getting a package notice, you went to the Central Post Office. The tall pillars, high ceilings, the designed tiles, along with a cool breeze and Lawton's pollution made you nostalgic about your childhood. You remember licking stamps to the the letters you sent. And you are getting one now yourself: a handwritten letter. It came with music from a friend in the States who shared the same tastes. The package came with pictures from a strong 10k run followed by pleasant trips out of town.

Remember this morning? Remember? After another tiresome night at work, you were in a coffeeshop. You ordered chicken empanada while waiting for your wife, tweeting and tinkering with an iPhone (what you call your love-at-first-swipe-of-the-finger). Emerald Avenue in Ortigas had so much sunshine peering through thick brown glass pannels. She came and gave you what she called "the second best Meat Trio Sandwich" that she got from a nearby deli. The best of course, being the sandwhiches you make. You had an iced black tea that tasted exactly how you wanted it to taste. Compelled by her kindness, you insisted on getting her a giant peach tea. And on the way home you listened intently about the book she was reading on what babies say and attachment parenting. You both thought lovingly about your son. And shortly after, you were home.

The Inception agents must be saying: be not afraid and open your doors to the elements that made you effervescent with joy.

I'm going to kill myself now and wake up. Let's see what happens.

Month Over Month Twenty Ten Highs

Jan 2010:
With the 11pm cold January evening wind sliced by a jacket, sweater, and our bodies held together tightly, we walked back to the parking lot. Our faces still marked by those 3D spectacles, she was telling me how that kick felt.

Feb 2010:
At 24 weeks and 1 day in your mother’s womb, we saw you kicking and somersaulting through a sonogram. It was a full congenital scan and your body, your eyes, your liver, your heart, lungs were in tact. You are healthy. Early on you’ve already made us happy with the magic of this discovery.

You are the new marvel of this universe. How we marvelled.

Mar 2010:
The precise moment my endorphins begin to gather and kick in began at 5.19 a.m. in Makati Avenue. It’s the countdown to gun start at the 21k coral. The adrenaline of more serious runners forms up and it seeps into you like a movement in a Jungian collective consciousness. An electric jolt surges through my veins and I look up to the SGV building and the Ayala Triangle. I launch the first song, close my eyes for a second, let out a smile, and set myself sailing.

April 2010:
We’ve must’ve had hundreds of these fancy-restaurant lunches and dinners. But with a kid on the way, the last few dates taste more robust in our last-chance savouring. We happily realize that it might be a while before this again.

May 2010:
It’s Saturday, and we are overcome with a liberating feeling that accompanies most Saturday mornings. It’s the beginning of the weekend. I pick up D. in Ortigas and we enjoy cheap but well-prepared tuna or chicken croissants, iced coffee and grape juice. Engaged in conversation, we naturally weed out our work-related worries. We while away all other uncertainties all-too-easily because the imposing presence in a mother’s belly induces the courage to dream a little more.

June 2010:
Very shortly now, a miracle's going to happen.
June 23 at 4:42pm

I., 7.87 lbs strong, arrived shortly before sunset on 23 June, 2010. Hello World.

July 2010:
Aside from soiling washable cloth diapers and disposable diapers, he’s essentially into sucking into his mother’s burst-into-porn-star proportions-milk-manufacturing boobies. His lullabies include music from the Smashing Pumpkins, Eggstone, Whitest Boy Alive, Sigur Ros, Jeff Buckley and yeah those obscure (only because they are not-so-heard-of) bands that comprise what they call Post-Rock Instrumental. He also gets a usual blast of Chopin, some classical and his mother’s wonderful singing.

August 2010:
So here we are, in the fifty-fifth day of watching you grow with an out-of-this-world bliss that's countless and unquantifiable. Your mother, quite literally, has never left you, breastfeeding you exclusively and giving you the kind of love that's even more beautiful than romance.

September 2010:
With having our I., we have been blessed. We may not have been as blessed with having greener pastures but we certainly feel that with our bundle of joy, that grass is also green on our side. All through life, we'll work on having him inherit the kindness we found in the world, which is really worth more than anything.

October 2010:
And I understood why I should long, even more intensely, to repeat the last 124 days and the twenty-nine years of my life. Because in some parallel universe, I.’s fond smiles are flashing again, I am hushing him again, telling him stories of the lower-class Italian families in the 50s and 60s, or shipwrecked Indian Boys in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. I am listening to music with him again. I am watching him sleep with his D. in the morning, or watching him sleep with mama before I leave for work at night, making my woes vanish into thin air. I. is staring wide-eyed into me again, and we peer into each other’s souls.

November 2010:
With having Mighty Mighty, the tides are on tilt to peak at their crest. By now, he’s already turning on his stomach. He’s nearly 7kg strong. I have seen him every day of his life and I see life begin over and over again in him, making me zealously live even more fiercely, repeatedly.

December 2010:
Universe, keep me at my humblest and therefore wisest.

Lord, make me fast and accurate.In my anger and in my restlessness, let me respond quickly and make a calm assessment.

Universe, I am one with you.

Whispers in Pure Concentration

Lord, protect my family.

Universe, keep me at my humblest and therefore wisest.

Lord, make me fast and accurate.In my anger and in my restlessness, let me respond quickly and make a calm assessment.

Universe, I am one with you.

Lord, forgive us and let us learn.

The Forgotten Among the Senses

In the convergence, in the transactions of our noses with the world, we yield a subtle yet powerful perception. Smells, however, are harder to store in the compartments of memory. Smells are rarely celebrated and cherished. Our eyes have pictures and a wide array of art or visuals. Our ears have music, and our taste buds has gone from salty, sweet, bitter or sour to the explorations of molecular gastronomy. But there are no gadgets or even art and too few sciences that aid our noses the way our eyes and auditory canals are given an additional sense of urgency and importance.

Taken for granted, smells are the most underrated of all the senses. There are also, too few scents, and an even fewer emphasis on scents.

I've often divulged how I've developed an addiction to the smell of books. I enjoy the smell of a book often as equally as I read its contents. More important than our sense of touch, we are more deeply acquainted with a book through its smell. It defines it as an object, lingering not just words but through its smell - the worldliness it has contracted. How it grows, and even what were you like at the time you read it. Does it smell of cigarettes, of a floral soap, of a bookmark, of coffee, the ephemeral nature of its inevitable oldness or of mold? And this maybe the reason why some of our new technology does not work for me. I’m turned off by generic smell, or its absence of an aqcuired and unique property. More than the characters in the book, the smell gives it an unseen character of its own.

Now that I've got a point or two established around the forgotten among the senses, I say what I want to say. I don't want to look at my life now. I want to sniff how my life is like now.

It's obvious what my favorite scent is among the prevailing scents of my life. It's how my six-month old son smells. We can take all sorts of pictures of him, but we cannot trap all these exact smells and put it in a bottle. It will never be the same again: this current smell of coming home. So here it is now: the candid smell portrait in free association.

Burt's Bees apricot baby oil before he takes a bath. The soaps that stay in the fabric of his clothes and what my nose absorbs when I kiss his tummy: Perwoll for babies, Perla white bar. The cream we thinly apply on his skin for diaper rashes or skin allergies: Desitin, Indigo Jar of Hope. The smell of his shampoo on his hair and body wash on his skin: Chicco and Top to Toe. The neutral smell of his refuse (as he is still exclusively just having his mother's breastmilk, no solids). His vomit. The milk that remains on the corners of is mouth, the spilled milk on his clothing. And lastly, the most elusive, almost indiscernible and sweepingly beautiful smell: his breath. It is a distinct, pleasurable smell.

His breath has the smell of life and clarity, of someone who drank something so potent. It smelled of my truth. The smell that told me, not only is the little one alive, the little one has a soul.

I sniff deeply. If only I could wear this scent.

The Family Shoe Haiku

a new pair of shoes
to move our feet, our voices
it's a perfect fit

Shuffling Back and Forth

Of the fine tuning and tweaking my work situation required, more than the people I have to manage and the departmental business units mine has to partner with, or the obligations I have to be accountable for, it’s the proximity of the other site I oversee that I really needed to adjust to. It’s what made me hesitate all this time. A matter of location kept that fast lane to a promotion clogged. I didn’t want to be inconvenienced with driving or commuting to a site that’s not fifteen minutes away from home. I wanted to stay with the familiar laps.

Or perhaps I refused to take up promotions because I didn’t want to be in another rat race. On hindsight, all these refusals of promotions over the years and the career drone of staying in a low-key supervisory level for most of my twenties actually paid off. While still gaining hands-on trade knowledge and deepening my competencies, it also helped me account for all other areas of my life and build a lifestyle that I can maintain. That drone also warded off the stress I could have encountered if pushed myself to be higher up the ladder knowing that I need to muscle my way through. If I did insist on success, or to throw all of myself towards a career, I couldn’t have ended with the life that I cherish now.


I often think that the call-center industry grew too fast. The industry leaders are often all too young, aggressive but inexperienced, and pushed into positions because of need instead of merit. If that happened to me, I know I would expend too early.

Here I am now, at my own, still-peaceful pace. In running terms, I won’t be chasing the Kenyans. Somebody else is going to win this race. The only person I have to win over is myself.

Unlike many other players, I didn’t gamble on going all-in. I guess any idiot could have gone to where I am now given the right persistence. But I saw the danger of letting this job eat me whole (or maybe it has). Whether it’s eaten me or not, this is how I played. I chose what I thought was the right time to put my chips on the table. I say cheers to the others who’ve already grown a more sizeable stack. I’ve lived to enjoy certain comforts and I’m still in the game. In the end, while I don’t have that much, I am grateful for the humility and grace I’ve gathered.

I’m amused with how I make out the humility and grace as part of what drives me in my new position at work. It complements the industriousness I imagine I have. On top of the long 11-12 hours I usually spend working, coming home is now a 2-3 hour commute. I shuffle back and forth the two sites, hurrying to make it in time for the office-provided shuttle on the way, and floating sleepless on the bus or train on the way back.

Humility, grace, strangely, blessedly keeps me on. But ultimately, the truth that makes all these ventures worth taking is coming home. Coming home to D. and Mighty Mighty.

For them I’d shuffle back and forth a thousand times over. For them I’d bleed myself dry.