there are artistic and tasteful ways to deal with the crap life dumps on us. there are dignified schemes on how to face a creature you threw all your dignity away for. one would be posting an entry just for the sheer heck of it. sure sure, you'll come off as a big bowl of fluff, but at least the time you spent fiddling on your keyboard was not time spent working a noose around your neck.
congratulations. you have just extended your life a tad bit longer. let's hope it was the right decision.
then of course there's drugs, alcohol and violence. sex would have been an option, if only finding a sex partner is not a requisite. sex is easy. its finding someone to do it with that's the unnecessary challenge. (oh, i said tasteful? well.)
but of course levi could not have put it in a more magnificent way.
charlie: i'm going to ignore him. that's the best way to go.
levi: that's cheap. civilized people don't do that. that only happens in high school. you're already out of college.
charlie: what do i do on tuesday!?
levi: relax. be...friendly aloof.
charlie: um...you realize the extent of my imagination doesn't shoot all the way to the next galaxy? (not verbatim. but doesn't charlie sound witty in this version?) how does that work?
levi: you'll find out when you show him.
charlie: okay. i may as well show myself what it is too, while i'm at it. i have this feeling that it requires me to look beautiful.
levi: it does.
magnificent. i particularly have no problem with the looking beautiful part. it's as easy as rolling out of bed. and spending three hours in front of the closet.
friendly aloof?
by the time i was driving past commonwealth avenue, i have decided that the friendly aloof (the term itself) is the precedent for what it means. it is the art of silent conversation, furious smile and innocent black magic.
it is the vindictive art of rudeness delivered with class.
it would entail one to raise the corners of his lips while keeping one's eyes cold and empty. the eyebrows should not move. in the course of a conversation, one is required to reply, not with legitimate words but with
sounds. there's
u-huh if you want to say
yes,
tsk in lieu of
dont ever say that again you motherfucker scum, and
argh instead of
i'm out of here.
argh.
the word is not deppressed, it's affected.
depression is a huge word. we use it too loosely, sometimes we forget the weight it bears. depression is reserved in moments of death or bankruptcy. it is not depression yet if you tear your ass off a chair in the middle of a gimik, run to the parking lot just outside the bar and enter your tear glands into a competition against the nimbus clouds looming above. even if the 'rain' factor was present, and the drama was cinematographically impeccable, it was still not depression. getting a pebble off one's shoe is not cause for depression. hahaha (bitterness is a topic deserving of a separate post.)
and since i already find myself in front of the computer, i would like to clear that i deny any affiliation with the previous post. it wasn't me. it was mr. tanduay lapad speaking. but i'm back now.
so there.
i am not deppressed. certainly. i am affected. this is not depression, but...affection(?!) hahaha
parang sweepstakes, ang hirap manalo...(pasintabi sa eraserhaeads)
i am real.
i feel my heart being torn apart. i feel the urge to say bad things about a certain person, but do not find bad things to say about him.
tonight, i made a gamble. i was just having some drinks with peachy and missy. i've always told missy how much i wanted to go through a
chase. again. i missed going after someone, or having someone go after me. (in this case, i went after someone.) i guess this is childish of me, because most people would aspire for something that would in fact transpire after a chase--most people would aspire for the moment when that chase would finally be over, because they'd finally end up being with someone. i aspired for the chase itself.
i won't be ashamed to name this guy. mike. (a generic name, anyway. a generic name, which for so long meant an undescribable feeling in my stomach.) this is the guy i decided to chase. in a day when i've just found out how inadequate i measure with regards to alot of things which involved my newfound life in up, where a lot of people i do not know hate me, (i never knew being an atenean could constitute so much of me...and that this could be taken against me; and that it has become a popular belief among people unknown to me that i could not write to save my life) i decided to finally bring fourth the climax to this chase. "are you free for lunch on Tuesday," i sent him a text message.
"i'm not the type of guy you bring to lunches. i don't even eat lunch. :) :) :)"
a text message which meant so many things at the same time, but ultimately, it concluded a chase. i do believe that at this point, i have the right to be bitter; a bitterness which must not violate mike in any way. i liked him(and in fact still do) for a valid reason. i must try to respect his decision. and i must hold on to that part of myself whom at least thought i did deserve him...that part of myself who ventured out and got
rejected.
i am just sad.
a chase just ended. a part of me is telling me that i have after all acheived what a chase normally gives off: freedom. i know myself more, and that i have learned heaps. as the cliche goes: what does not kill you makes you stronger.
but this sadness, and fear that i may grow old alone prevails. i cannot be blamed for being scared. maybe for being fat, but not for being scared. and sad.
and i cannot blame myself for fearing the next time i get to see mike face-to-face.
okay, if you are going to read this post, you are required to be forgiving.
i NEVER share my poetry because they all suck (however, there is a standing invitation to not believe this). in fact, when people ask me if i dabble into poetry (especially those who write, moreso the ones who are good at it), i always lie. i would outrightly say "no."
never. i could not write poetry to save my life. heck, i could not write poetry to send my soul to eternal repose.
and this is true. but i do have attempts, a different thing altogether. and since i could not get myself to write something for that science fiction and fantasy workshop class (my stoy's due on tuesday!!! argh!) tonight, i thought i'd try something new. something even more unbelievable than high fantasy and speculative than cult science fiction. i shall post one of my poems.
(actually, we may have ourselves a motif here. poets get to read in poetry readings. thus, poetry readings. if they do not feel like reading their own work, someone else may read it for them. fictionists get to attend these readings. and listen. and smoke. and listen. and now, poets get to post poems in blogs. it's just too scandalous to post 5-page stories as blog entries.)
i just wrote this, and perhaps this is not its final form.
Some Habits Are Developed
Owing to the sudden fame of compartmentalization, he writes
in different colors.
Hewlett-Packard Black
is for the academic oeuvre. He would type
his full name
(in bold, more often than not),
course title and accompanying catalogue number.
The date occupies upper right hand.
Words like asymptote and primordial would puncture the page
as if spelling-bee answers.
Always double spaced.
Blue Panda ink would populate his personal organizer--
inconsistent loops (semblances of Hindu-Arabic letters)
in
bullet
points.
Rows of keywords, names and dates: an orgy
happening inside a battered leather binder.
(The missed deadlines and appointments would be highlighted in yellow Faber Castell; important people would appear in all caps.)
Deep deep deep grey
(blackest that is not black)
is the Staedtler 6B. It is perfect
for the yellow Post-it. Smudges
of graphite would eloquently communicate
batman returns 9pm ch 7 Sat
See how it is silver at precise angles?
SARAH would appear in liquid paper,
still white in some spots,
all over the back of his trapper keeper.
All over.
The palest shade of paper is reserved for love letters.
15 August 2004
so far, two people have told me that
the village is a film worth watching (and i do believe them) while everybody's been talking about
eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. my good friend levi even told me that he will give me five hundred bucks if i end up not liking the latter. i have not seen any of the two films yet. instead, i got the chance to see
lilies-les feluettes at the up film institute.
vallier and simon do a scene from a stage play
during simon's engagement dinner
lilies is a 1996 canadian film directed by john greyson. it was adapted from a stage play written by michel marc bouchard, who also takes credit for the screen adaptation. it is a period piece about a bishop who visits a quebecios prison to hear confession from simon, an old friend. the bishop is then trapped inside the confessional box and forced to watch "the confession" being reenacted by the simon's fellow inmates. the story within this confession takes us back around 20 years, where a much younger simon is involved in a triangle (due to ambiguity, i cannot use the L-word) with the son of a fallen aristocrat, vallier, and a vacationing baroness. as a twist, later on, it shall be revealed (okay this is the ultimate spoiler, so if you do intend to watch this film, skip this part) that the young bishop was also into simon, and was in fact the one responsible for the death of vallier--the crime simon was paying for.
the thing that really made me squirm on my seat--the thing that made me cross my legs, uncross them and cross them again so many times--(is not the fact that the actors were so delicious, though partly, it is, i must confess) is how the movie reached out and grabbed me by the collar, and insisted that love is a good thing in spite of tragic endings.
lilies will be shown again at the
up film institute next week. free admission. i'm just not sure exactly which day.
ranting ranting ranting. this blogger has been ranting about getting a job to keep him from eating himself up. and because part-time is still a myth in the manila employment scene, he just has to work around circumstances, yes? hopefully this will not involve felony.
flexitime: the future of employment, i tell you. (though i have no idea how to spell it.)
so today, he decided to give those online application thingies a try. why not? Preference will be given to candidates who APPLY ONLINE, the button said after all. the fuck. so he clicked away and stumbled upon an application question: describe briefly your standards of success. (Required - Please answer in full as the answer is used to evaluate your application). again, the fuck. and after typing an answer, he thought: wait, this could totally be a blog entry! so here goes:
For me, success is very relative.
We have come to an age where individuality is valued; therefore, any measurement of success that lies in a collective sense must be put in the secondary. Although financial and social stability may still be important factors, its significance should lie in the person assessing him/herself.
Now more than ever, success is built on dreams--aspirations built for one's self as he/she goes along. Realistically speaking, I do acknowledge the reality that compromises may have to be made along the way. However, I see these not as pitfalls but as opportunities to affirm what it really is that one would want to happen or achieve. Success is achieved if personal growth is chosen over worldly offers.
Family, friends and even enemies: these are some other things that I always consider whenever I think about success. For one important standard of true success is that it should bring the person involved closer to the ones he/she value.
Bigger than this, success is also something that's shared to mankind. There is always the burden of improving the world we have been born into. We are all capable of this and true success would be having been able to do so in the greatest way one's circumstance and position would allow.
In the end, success should not be about a certain destination. It is not about getting somewhere but about being proud of being what one has become. The greatest standard of success is to be knowing what one wants, never forgetting it, and to be pursuing it no matter where the tides may bring him/her.
Success is not running out of things to pursue.
Personally, I will consider myself successful NOT if I have been able to transform myself into a great person in this field that I chose, BUT if I have become the best version of myself through this field that I chose. ***
yeah, it's kinda bull. but at least it's not felony. and i believe in those too, incidentally.
i have been down with the flu this couple of days. the only drive i have for getting better is that friday night is fast approaching...and i don't have class on saturday. i almost forgot how uncomfortable it was to have the flu, how every limb felt like it has been tenderized with a cheap pestle and how it felt to have edsa's traffic condition shoved up my nasal cavity. egh.
one would actually think that since i was tied down to the house, i would accomplish heaps. nope. i'm feeling as lost, forlorned and as worthless as ever.
i have to find myself a good part-time job really soon. i'm becoming too heavy a burden even to myself.
* * *
i had to agree with councilor astals when she said that in the first place
two child policy is grammatically incorrect. this past couple of days, i have been hearing a lot of chutzpah about the reproductive health bill representative lagman passed. once again one of our notorious national traits stepped into the limelight.
we just love to blab about things we do not completely understand. (i myself have been guilty of this.)
