where am i going???

where am i going???


I took the liberty of reading this blog. At least the first two entries. (Well, it’s my blog anyway.) What a very boring life. And if blogging is mental masturbation, I may as very well remain a virgin until the day I die.

In this pre-established boring life, today is the first official boring day—not quite in between jobs, not quite studying anymore, definitely unemployed. Another crossroads in my life, but it is simply scary to follow one path in particular. (Knowing me, I will probably attempt to take many paths at the same time and end up failing in all of them.)

I will not be a writer.

When I was a kid, the nuns where I attended kindergarten (DML Montessori, New Manila--i've always wanted to go back and visit the school...) practiced a rather open-minded method of organizing a picnic. I will never forget how Sister lifted the chalk one day and wrote two words on the blackboard. Of course I did not know how to read then, so it was only when she read the words did I truly begin to understand what was going on: “Park or zoo.” The boys all howled “zoo” while the girls crooned “park.” I however, true to my bipolar fashion, looked outside the window and said nothing.

Now, apparently the girls in my class outnumbered the boys, so I, along with the other boys, was condemned to an afternoon sitting on the grass while dreaming about elephants and giraffes. Truth of the matter is I really wanted to go to the zoo. Had I said anything, I would have definitely said “zoo.” Then maybe it would have been easier too to just resign, lounge in the park and recover from defeat. Would have. I remember this experience rather vividly up to this day.

I spent the entire picnic munching on wafers while silently complaining to myself. At that early age, I had realized that the easiest thing to do in life is to complain about it. Nothing can ever be good enough; I always deserve something more. Seeing animals is far more exciting than picking flowers. And as I grew older, the park became the world, and the zoo became a dream.

I can never for the life of me get why I was born here in the Philippines. The world map is sprawled with hundreds of countries, and perhaps when God was choosing where to send my soul, his chip went abnormal and landed on these tropical islands. God never went in front of a classroom and scribbled all the countries in the world to make me pick where I would like to be born.

Now, twenty two years have past and I have not gotten used to the heat. I would have chosen somewhere temperate, chosen to enjoy the latest winter fashion trends. I wouldn’t have to go through twenty two years of not being able to acquire a feeling of security in the intense industrial-baroque clutter that we dub as our metropolis either. Fearing for my life while walking up and down a night-soaked Katipunan Avenue is a normal feeling as often felt as hunger is.

Here, the ice pick is a lethal weapon.

Perhaps I will try to be a serial killer and uplift the sorry state of crime here. Crime here lacks sophistication—the use of random kitchen tools for daggers, bad choice of victims and lack of serious planning. I studied in an exclusive school, acquired sufficient class, good taste and élan—I will be the perfect criminal.

posted by carl @ 5:25 PM