i feel like shit
i am unemployed. results for my graduate studies application is yet to be disclosed. no matter what angle i present, i will always come out as somebody who has nothing better to do. i shall waste my time then, you can always count on that. my time and my parents' hard-earned money, which they have earned by fixing other peoples' mouths.
(they are both dentists, and i have two beautifull sisters--both of whom are taking up dentistry. even denstists have social events. my dad had thrown parties in the grand ballroom of manila hotel and this is what he had to say to his colleagues:
daddy: pare! these are my children, cecilia and camille. they are both taking up dentistry. and this is my eldest and only son, ...(to me)anak, what are you taking me up again?
me: communication arts.
{my father and his colleague exchanges bewilderd looks and then shrug.)
me: it's just like masscom, except that the scope is wider. i'm studying in ateneo.
the bastard my father was talking to: oh good, hijo. good school. when the three of you grow old enough, you will be counting your sisters' money.
bastards. i will die a pauper, but i will always be the pauper who fought for the course he trully wanted to take up. i will never forget how i slid down my bedroom door, crying. "daddy, i don't want to be a dentist.")
but this entry is not about the path i chose in life. it is merely an introduction, if not a digression. it establishes how my decisions throw shit my way. it destroys my capacity as a person who goes for certainty that life could possibly offer. yes, i want to be wealthy someday, and by choosing art, i have effectively
unchose money and security. and i shall further discredit myself. for the past week, besides getting drunk, i have turned myself into a groupie.
i am human.
i get attracted to people. i swoon, i fret, and i blush over another person. i become stupid. stupid enough to actually follow some rising acoustic singers' career and spend money on bars just to be able to catcth his performance.
tonight, i have done the unthinkable. and if there are groupies out there, you must learn from my mistake. i have just turned myself into the undesirable--i bought his cd. maybe i've grown too accustomed of him looking at my direction. he would smile at me, wink and goddam wave. he would talk to me in between sets. how could he not? i have given up my goddam makati nightlife to stay within range of quezon city just to catch the crock of shit he blurts out on the microphone. goddamit, i don't even listen to his genre.
now, i'm stuck with his cd. the dedication on the sleeve is as hollow as the the malinta tunnel in corregidor: historic, yet empty. i have bought his cd, and after that he never looked my way again: i am yesterday's news. i have turned myself from target audience to "sold."
thanks to my stupidity, my sister's cd collection had grown bigger with one more cd.
the birth and death of the emotional orgy
it seems that the hip thing to rant about is love. love. it was able to bring down a great kingdom (i've seen troy twice--i will never have a boyfriend because i'm devoted to orlando bloom. one day i will wake up and set eyes on his socks lying on my bedroom floor, right next to my shorts.); i have no morsel of qualm that it will be able to bring down great individuals.
i was just with my good friends, nika and missy, as well as my sweet sister. (i have two sisters. sister no. 1 is the sweet one, no. 2 took after my groove.) we were in pearl drive and as we were stuffing burgers down our guts, missy's ex-boyfriend passed by. we are talking about an ex-child star of yagit calibre here, and missy has this strongest conviction (superlative totally nessecary) that her list of exes is contaminated with a name spelled in bold glittery pink letters. this guy is the corporal equivalent of that name, but this is beside the point. however, the prospect that the guy he was with could be a date kinda pegged the second to the last nail on the casket of our love karmas. since we took a turn towards the avenue of
exes, love boulevard couldn't be far off. and yes. the crucial rotunda swerved us into this long, yet narrow street as nika brought "having someone" up.
and i ask: why do people suddenly need one person in particular nowadays? has the idea of the emotional orgy been phased out along with the spandex speedos?
nika: it's been raining again.
and now i ponder on this. could it be that love hovers about the collective cultural psyche, and changes its face according to the pictures we see in everyday life? lets take a look at these images: an open beach--arms stretching on the sand, waters falling off the edge of one's vantage
vis-a-vis the handle of an umbrella sticking right through the sight of a drenched city street. the hall--its bay windows wide open to let the breze in, needed to combat the sun's ultraviolet menace burrowing into our epidermis even when under a nice insulated ceiling
versus a room musty with closed windows and nippy, damp yet stagnant air hanging above one as he/she snuggles in a sweatshirt.
when it's summer, everyone thinks of flings. it's all about getting yourself out there where prospects will hopefully swarm you like a lone egg cell amidst raging sperms. you will not be tied down to the house, you will not be seen in a small crowd. you will do alone-things in a nice, open place. the world is large, and you should be at large.
but once the nimbus clouds take custody of the sky, it's suddenly all about staying indoors, and it's about having someone stuck inside with you, to sit with you as you watch your newly washed car accumulate beads of dirt from the rain that passes through that goddam santol tree before it finally rapes the smooth turtle wax finish. it's all about having one person you have the absolute and rightful right to text when you're bored and all the stations are airing reruns. it's all about an eternal rerun of one particular person.
then again, i'm a boy. i really am. so i stare at my palm. there you go. love.
as damp as the weather
these days, whenever people ask me how i am, i go on suspended animation mode. it depends upon the situation: my thumb collapses on the "back" option key; i suddenly drop the receiver; or i suddenly fall silent.
i've always been the emperor of small talk but the truth is i just don't know how to address the question. so let me answer it in as much ways as this freetime can allow.
how are you, charlie?
well, i always tell myself i'm bored. actually, i'm just lazy to do anything. so i end up believeing that there's nothing to do even if there's tons of things to be finished.
how are you, charlie?
i'm living in my bed, only getting up to eat or to intoxicate myself. i've been drinking every night even before i went to galera, and it reached the point where i stopped caring whether with whom ar what im drinking just as long as i end up falling into deep slumber and wake up the following lunchtime still with my socks on, choking on my own drool.
how are you charlie?
i'm actually lost. i'll get back to you on that once i find myself.
but honestly , i have been thinking about things. (i'm terribly sorry if this entry is getting to be too long, but forgive me as i havent posted for an entire week. but you shouldn't stop reading here, trust me, cos this is the part where i actually start to make sense--there's always a first time to everything.) out of all these things, i choose to elaborate on the query "what makes a man gay?"
i have always believed gay men are simply men falling in love with other men. i was just having lunch with my best friend, mickey, and another friend, steve, the other day, and they were filling me up about the latest buzz in the gay scene, from which i have been detached (not that i was ever enmeshed). then it suddenly dawned on me: why do these men (those who incidentally fall in love with other men) choose to make life so complicated?
i love straight boys. i love talking to them (talking, not flirting), hanging with them, getting drunk with them. someday i will be like them. when boys fight, they just do. there's none of this "taking sides" and shit. after punching each other in the parking lot, there won't be any more backstabbing. life is simple.
life is all about ejaculation.
and i wonder why there is a line between straight boys and gay boys at all. because as far as i'm concerned, im a boy who falls for boys, not anything else. everything else (my fashion and shit) is arbitrary. i still could've chosen to look decent even if i fell for girls.
i cant think of a title but i hope it makes sense
i cant think of a title but i hope it makes sense
for the past three days, urban life had meant living in my bed. one would think that this would have had allowed enough space in my world to accomodate the electoral bonanza--to actually bite all my fingernails and to dash to the nearest embassy and get a visa to anywhere out of here. or fret with the rest of the country over the manny paqiao situation. for the most part, it had.
while the world was turning, and while i was rotting in my linen, nika decided that we will go to poorman's bora for the weekend--puerto g. she'd set everything: hotel reservation, transportation arrangement--everything. while she did, i mentally assembled my fashion-line up, which consumed my entire week, basically.
there. i will be giving manila three days and two nights to reconstruct itself to fit in my life plans.
what nika was unable to ensure, however, is herself. on her way to my place, just hours ago, her orange honda decided to get intimate with a ten-wheeler. the good news is that she's fine. (the downside of this is that this gave missy and i leeway to actually get pissed at her.) after much deliberation and assessment, missy and i decided to push through. but this time we would forego all the plans and actually try to embark on an adventure as set by our dear friend nika who decided to pull a daredevil stunt in the middle of epifanio delos santos avenue. now, im in my luau shirt waiting for her.
we will turn this into a little backpacking adventure and hopefully they have burgers there in that island. (i can almost see the bohemians snort.)
for some reason, i just told myself that this has to go straight to my blog. i dont care about the syntax, paradigm, grammar or spelling, i just have to fucking type this thing down cos i'm pissed. hahahaha
nyahahahaha
yes, this is one one of those quizzes.
i know the universe is trying to insult me by assigning me this random image, but somehow, why do i feel that there's a tingle of truth? hahaha thank god im not so much of a visual artist anymore.
yadayadayada
self-seduction
javie: you're such a flirt, but not a slut.
me: huh? (i toss my mobile phone to the side of the table.)
what would i give to be the latter rather than the former. (of course i didn't say this, but im posting it as if i did if not just to sound cool.)
here's the flashback: this guy, jun, had been smsing me. i was in the middle of a drinking session and a moron was asking me how my day went. i believe in the sanctity of alcohol and it is never to be mixed with small talk. anyway, besides the fact that javie and igz were condemning me for actually seeing a guy named as such (well, my dear friends, i can't help it if we are appropriately endowed with glamorous names such as inigo, javier, missy, peachy etc.), i was also condemning myself for entertaining someone who hits the sack at 11pm. so jun was making his text-exit to which i had to reply:
call me and say good night to me. an hour had passed and no call nor text message arrived.
my head was barely buzzing with the rumcola and my ability to connect with the present circumstance annoyed me to high heavens. at 12pm, this guy, jun, was officially declared dead.
oh well.
i'm going to end this with a random realization: somehow my dating karma is totally the inverse of my clothes shopping record: i always end up choosing the wrong style.
look at us
i said in the other post that the turnover gift (joint, may i add) the incoming managers gave me was unnerving. it totally outdid the ones i gave them (which I really spent on, distastefull to say).
truth of the matter is, i already knew from the start that the cd they handed over could only contain pictures. most of which i uploaded myself to the computer from which they copied it from. but something happened as i was going over them, and my stomach started to make the triple-sommersault it only did when i feel stupid.
just look at us and please tell me how the hell would i not miss such a bunch?!?!?!
yeah, i'm staring to miss special priojects team 2004. i hope everything goes as well for them as it had for me. and this is when i realized that i did not really turn into a manager during my stint as spmanager. i turned into a demanding stage mother, and deep down inside i still had those artsy feelings and emotions going on behind my cleavage.
woven dreams
Tala at Tula 2004: Dare to Dream
Dreaming is an activity which should be encouraged. It takes us into the future as it brings us closer to realizing what we want to get out of life. At the same time, dreaming is not just an aimless thing. It is not just flashing random images in ones mind -- not just visualizing arbitrary scenes or favorable situations. Although fluid, there is a certain discipline in trying to define, or at the least imagine, one's future. Behind most the fairy tale moments we’ve had as children (or at least the ones that mattered), there were Fairy Godmothers who reminded us of the things that really matter in life.
It is Heights' vision to at least show the kids of Mater Dolorosa how weaving their dreams--may it be into poetry, stories, visual art or short film--will ultimately show them a part of themselves as it translates into tangible art forms that they can share with the world. This summer, Heights will try to play Fairy Godmother to these children whom without any doubt, have fairy tale futures ahead of them.
--Tala at Tula 2004 Workshop Director
***
its been a good month since i left the the hill of loyola behind but here i am still toiling under his sword. i cannot for the life of me understand why i just don't give up and completely walk away. this isn't meant to be dramatic--hell no--yet it must be the exhaustion venting out. this exhaustion part is self explanatory, but i feel that i should talk more about the apprehenson part.
i should be scared. i should be scared that i dont have a freakin idea about whats going to happen to me in the next six months. the ironic thing is that i took it upon myself to show a bunch of kids how to dream. "not aimlessly," nonetheless. why do people sound so decisive and learned behind letters? im still waiting for my fairy godmother to give me a pair of fabulous shoes. i swear to god i will not leave one in front of some dorky prince's palace.
***
the heights turn-over dinner was so fun, even if we arrived a tad late. okay maybe not a tad, but still... and this just might be the answer to the question i posted above.
i almost forgot how much fun we in the past edboard had, and how much of an arse one member in particular is... well not not in a bad way, but in an inexplicably reaffirming way. it reaffirmed my humanity-- u know having undergone the cycle of getting pissed then simmering down for the sake of being civil then to geniune "nah that was nuthin" feeling.
i opened vittorio and jovitt's present in the computer and everything just came back. (this one i have to write about in a separate entry.)
but for all its worth, i will miss the people i will leave behind. or even the ones who will have to leave as well, for we will all be going different ways from now on... and that's why i don't mind sacrificing over this last project.
