industrialfireFly

The Tenth Attempt Number Ten

2007-09-17T15:02:00.000+08:00

Let me try - let me try again, as i have been doing so over and over and over. For in this expedition to discover me, i have harvested nothing other than false hopes and traded everything else for regret. This is me typing, no, this is me ranting. To myself, to you, to no one, to everyone of us tired of hearing the thud that reverberates from a body slapping unto the ground.

Amen.

2006-04-10T13:55:00.000+08:00

http://www.howbaduy.blogspot.com

new places, different times, same fucked up kid.

2005-10-07T02:19:00.000+08:00

okay, first of all, make sure you are seated comfortably and securely. make sure you aren't in danger of falling off somewhere; if you are holding a lethal object, put it down. i don't want you to hurt yourself just because of my announcement. okay game?

these days, i don't LOOK fabulous.

well, not in that way, silly. that's like a hard stunt to pull off. harhar; kidding. here's what i mean though: i was walking in the mall a while ago and *bam!* i suddenly realize that i cannot read the menu--the big one nailed behind the cash register. well, i recognized words like "milk" and "ice" because i knew how the words look like, design and dimension-wise. just like what i told my idiot friend: if the word printed above the door is long, that's where you enter; if it's short, that's where you're supposed to go out.

but seriously, the individual letters, i had a hard time to distinguish. everything was so...suffused. so not sharp. i swear the markings on the board did not have edges. it's like looking through the window when the rain's falling so hard and the view is being distorted by water that's sliding down the sheet of glass.

i don't think i've suddenly become illiterate or dyslexic. and if there's anything i am very terrified of, it is going blind. i will rather lose a leg or an arm but i will not go blind. sheesh, i'd rather give up smoking. (yeah listen to me go on with this, with lights turned except for a cutesy night light and my notebook's monitor.)

truth be told, i actually own a pair of glasses. i have been prescribed one when i was still a kid. it's funny, really, since i am not an insistent reader or what have you. how i could have destroyed my chances of ever being a pilot at that young an age is beyond my capability to connect events. but i know this much: i don't wear my glasses because they are:

1) so goddam inconvenient
2) very unflattering
3) the accessory makes me look smart, profound and all proper--things that i am not.

but right now, all i could think about is going to the opthalmologist to have my eyes refracted the soonest time possible. i probably have outgrown the pair that i have now; i get headaches when using them, those seldom instances that could probably be registered as a phenomenon.

unreliable eyesight is such a drag. once, i ran spectacularly right smack into springfield's display window, actually intending to go inside the shop to check out clothes. and i was so shocked i wasn't able to remove myself immediately; i stayed plastered against it, feeling the glass vibrate behind my cheek and i tried hard to phase out peachy's hysterical laughter, as if calling all other people in the damn mall to come look at the obese boy stuck to the glass like an idiot. i suddenly felt sympathy with the mannequins. instead of the one looking, i felt that i became the display behind the glass. the looks on the faces of the folks inside the store: priceless. that is one way of drawing attention. best part is that it was not orchestrated. that is my most recent MOST embarrassing experience. (well, wait, not really, but it's in the top ten). but then again, this probably accounts for my stupidity rather than the damage on my eyes. or how the good people at springfield are immensely talented with keeping their glass spotless and clear. well, they lost this customer as i scurried out of sight like the idiot i have come to play. bleh.

prissiness is a good thing. it keeps you from being contaminated in countless ways. i sure wish i knew how to be prim because i think i am the world's biggest klutz in disguise. or a slob claiming to be fabulous. there are days when i don't shave and i walk around the house in a robe. a wonderful robe, i must add. lately, i've noticed that i am more excited about these robes over clothes that i can actually wear in public. (mickey, thanks again for that fabulous balinese robe. i love it so much--c'est chaud dahlin. muy caliente. and to whoever else you are reading this and in the future, you come into a situation wherein you cannot decide what to give me, well then just give me a nice robe.) going back. but then again, that's a matter of taste, clothes that could be worn in public. i've been into skirmishes over that. they take one look at me and a debate worthy of the philippine senate hall goes off.

but hey: if you want evidence that god does not exist, you are invited to take a look at my bedroom and discover how anarchy would look like when translated into mundane matters, what with all stuff thrown on my couch as if sitting on it was not the consideration for its purchase.

but don't get me wrong, in spite of this cesspool i inhabit which i call bedroom (my mom says that i am actually destroying-yes exact word-the house because i insist that one room in it to be this way), i do believe in a higher being. i have figured out young enough that i am not the most tremendous thing. yes, i may have developed the belief that i am important, but certainly, i will not claim to be responsible for such bigger things like the existence of chocolate, tobacco leaves or sugar.

so higher being, please fix my eyes. and when you're done doing that, fix me up with someone. amen.

2005-10-06T04:39:00.000+08:00

the internet is evil.

i have so much to finish and yet i find myself in friendster checking out the profile of the one person i should stop being interested in. god, the regret of adding to his "profile views!" argh right now i'm actually banging my head on the wall. okay, the internet is a neutral thing; i am a stupid boy.

i have just finished reading hey nostradamus! by douglas coupland and i must say that i like it so much. the book has been with me for more than a year now but since i had all his books bought for me, i was determined to read them all in sequence. i finished it in what, two days and now i'm starting with eleanor rigby. although i'm the kind of person who would rather have an interval in between reading novels, so i'm guessing that i'd stop reading this and put it off for maybe a week or two. or when (or if) i go to baguio next month with hans and co. i guess i digest these stories. i think that's why i prefer fiction, or prose, over poetry. i like to be lost in scenes, in moments, in...well - no other way to put it - stories.

not to say that my life is boring. god knows how much i love myself and no torture can ever make me admit that i'd rather be someone else. none.

* * *

speaking of being myself, the semester's about to end and i haven't posted anything about my classes yet. well, technically, my poetry class is done with; i just submitted my poems and my paper last tuesday. i'm not a poet yet but i never really expected (nor will i ever expect to) to be one. the workshop class was fun though. sir jneil was (is) a fantastic prof and i had (have) wonderful classmates.

i just had dinner with sir jneil, kath and noel the other day and it was so much fun. well, the first plan was to have coffee, but since some funky thing was going on at the bahay ng alumni, we decided against choc kiss and went to chateau verde instead. i had lasagna that mysteriously filled up my tummy as if it expanded into a blimp inside my stomach. it still scares me, what kind of cheese was in there, up to this day.

we were just laughing the whole time, but in spite of being with these interesting people, we did not miss checking out the cute guy who sat in the next table. i've learned so many things, like about nawals, how to get rid of crabs and all sorts of drugs. hahaha kidding. well not really. one other thing i learned is something about myself: how is that i am totally capable of talking about sex as if i am not a virgin? even i am wondering where i get all these...material. cos when i say conversing about sex, i really mean conversing. as in sharing opinion and well, um, experiences. (that may not be of sex, but are sexy nonetheless) god i talk crazy for a sixteen year old.

okay i'm starting to be a psycho so i think this means i should start working again. god, i've been doing photoshop all day, my eyes are starting to melt. having this kit ready by later is like so next to impossible. i think i'm going to post the poem i submitted for poetry; the one i most like:

LESSONS IN ASTRONOMY

1

As if an earnest professor
whose excited words just eddy
in the earlobes of his
one and only student (freshman, i think you think),

you lecture me about

looking up
to see for myself the wonders
of the zodiac:

those flickering dots with which to play
an ancient game
of connecting them
into a belt, creatures, heroes,
lovers.

A busy sidewalk café is
where we always hold class. You drink
your macchiato with long,
slow sips in between sessions that
never went passed the silly name-game
and the explanation of the syllabus.

2

Tonight,
the practical test.

I haven’t any idea of
the grading scheme but I try my best;
suck up anyway. Hidden behind
foliage and squeaky park benches,
I tremble
while lying on an improvised mat
of our clothes.

I was never told
by you that I have to be shaken and
thrown into a multitude of angles
just to watch this “spectacular,”
and stagnant, lightshow.

3

What I failed to say:
I have done some advanced reading.
I shiver under your vast, black umbrella
pricked with countless holes
and I run this in my head:

the stars are not the stars
but light coming all the way from
unimaginable distances,
some from sources that
have already went out
before the imprints poked dots on the sky.

So I light a cigarette and look up,
as you’ve always instructed.
I see not a belt, creatures, heroes,
nor lovers
but a graveyard for promised illumination.

2005-09-06T00:14:00.000+08:00

I've seen blogs with song lyrics posted on them. while i do admit that i usually - wait, what usually - i always dodge reading the lyrics and proceed to read the other parts of the entry, i find myself posting the lyrics of a song which i has come to mean something to me. The most lucid memory I have with the song is when I was drinking with segment producers while i was still a researcher at the buzz. (Calling fellow employees in a tv network "officemates" does not sound like it makes sense, well besically because I cannot call a network 'office')

before i give you the lyrics, i want to dwell on this first. my former job did not really required much from me, but incidentally this included twenty-four hours of my day and all seven days of my week. (i swear i broke my knee there, all for the love of chismis.) needless to say, i disappeared from the face of the planet as i entered the world of showbiz.

It was really a dychotomy:

1) there were those who tell me that I fit right smack into that job. These are people who know me from school and I guess they've always known me as quirky and chika and all that and they kind of associated those attributes to the particular show that I used to work for. And it was kind of fun, seeing the reactions on the faces of people when I tell them what I had been doing during those days. I guess they were expecting me to know a lot of juicy stuff concerning people, well, whom i really did not give a fig about. (Binugbugbog ni famous singer/actor/tv host ang asawa nya etc etc)

2) and there were those who just knew from the beginning that it wouldn't work for me. unfortunately for me, I did not fall under number two, but this is a different thing altogether.

So back then, we had post-production/pre-production meetings every monday. after which, these segment producers and I would watch a movie and sometimes down a couple of bottles of beer after. whenever we did the latter, we almost always did so at this 24-hour joint in front of ABSCBN main gate along Sgt. Esguera. The place looks like a big, dreary hut with more often that not no other customers in it.

We were drinking and talking about the history of the show and how they hoped that I would stay and how thye thought that I had a biright future at the network and all that when this song started to play on the radio. I realized then that I had heard the song before but at that moment, something about it soothed me. I was tired then and i was not so hot about my occupation. Being in the company of newly met fascinating people and enjoying it was merely the reason I had for going back to work each day.

I scrambled towards the sound system and demanded the waiter to play the track again. I searched their CD's and scanned every track trying to look for the song. I dug into their big case logic for the sleeve just to find out what the song's title was and who recorded it.

Months later, I would be out of ABSCBN and won't see these segment producers again. I only stayed there for five months and no, there was no future for me there.

I guess, especially now, the song reminds me that (as Mundi and I were talking about a while ago) things don't fall apart. They just change.

Build
Housemartins
Now That's What I Call Quite Good...

Clambering men in big bad boots
Dug up my den, dug up my roots.
Treated us like plasticine town
They build us up and knocked us down.

From Meccano to Legoland,
Here they come with a brick in their hand,
Men with heads filled up with sand,
It's build.

Chorus:
It's build a house where we can stay,
Add a new bit everyday.
It's build a road for us to cross,
Build us lots and lots and lots and lots.

Whistling men in yellow vans
They came and drew us diagrams.
Showed us how it all worked out
And wrote it down in case of doubt.

Slow, slow, quick, quick, quick,
It's wall to wall and brick to brick,
They work so fast it makes you sick,
It's build.

Chorus.

Down with sticks and up with bricks,
In with boots and up with roots,
It's in with suits and new recruits,
It's build...

***

THINGS DO NOT FALL APART; THEY CHANGE.
Still, I can't help but think that the saddest story i will ever get to write is an autobiography.

2005-08-24T18:14:00.000+08:00

in online conversations, it seems that every topic other than sex is small talk. "still in school? what do you do? favourite movie? yadayadayada" and it annoys me when people do not understand "what do you do" but mistake it with "what are you doing now" and they give answers which they thing are witty like "chatting with you." so, that's what you, do, you chat with me. how miserable that life must be. just an observation.

2005-08-05T20:53:00.000+08:00

on 2 stars (metro and me)

monday:

i know that i have just recently made public my strong abhorrence towards the metrostar. i've once taken a ride on it during rush hour and instantly whipped up an insight regarding vanity and at the same time discovered the true meaning of the word cramped.

But then, i get dropped of at quezon avenue station this morning only to find looooooooooooong meandering lines, taking up every permissible space. i spent more time lining up for that friggin trip ticket than taking that trip. trying to get on that train should be considered for extra challenge. it's a real test on one's agility, stamina and patience. all the while, i wanted to kick myself but no space allowed for this happen. it would have been less complicated had i only waken up earlier.

once i got to ayala station, the first thing i did was to purchase stored value. much ado to be an hour late for work.

wednesday:

so there i was again, morning at metrostar, mouring for myself. to my horror, condition actually worsened and the aircondition in the friggin train was not turned on. in missy's words (unfortunately taken from her own experience) "noon ko lang nalaman na puede pala yun"--i never knew that it was possible for the goddam train to run without aircon. and so the windows were opened i was praying ever so hard for it not to start raining. and then, i made that fatal mistake of heaving my chin up and took a peak of edsa. upon seeing that traffic was manageable and that it might actually take me faster if i brought my friggin car, i swear i felt a warm tear roll down my cheeks.

i took the cab home.

thursday:

in spite of my 9am work the following day, i go out with missy and nika. and this is only an excuse so that i could post this pic, cos i'm such a star.

happy birthday missy! it's funny that it was because of her birthday that we went out and i find no picture of me with her taken on that night. but hey, don't nika and i look like half-sisters? harhar

friday:
okay, things got kinda spunky at the club and we all ended up going home past 4. i wake up at 9, but still took the cab to makati. i arrived at the office at 10:30. shame on me.

next week, i will take the goddam car. i really hate the goddam train. i am spoiled i will not be ashamed of it.

2005-07-27T02:00:00.000+08:00

realization, i have just realized, is a word i use quite loosely. i may walk up a hall, catch a glimpse of my reflection on the shiny steel surface of the elevator doors and go on to claim that i realize something about myself. like something as silly as how how my eyes are not symmetrical. i have over the years, in similar fashion, realized that i don't like sinigang, that i abhor eating at abscbn cafeteria (or at least i did when i was still with the company), that i don't like the bitter taste of beer, that i am obsessed with triffle-hi of gayuma and yadayadayada. i have realized that i don't construct sentences the way i used to (whether i have improved or have turned for the worse is a thing I cannot realize just yet.)

but truly, realization, as i have realized just now, should come with a distinct pain. liken it to being shot with a pellet gun right on your nape, that sting not fading anytime soon after the pellet hits you. and it won't kill you. it just leaves a totally unnecessary feeling of discomfort that causes unrest, grumpiness for the rest of the day. you feel your nape, and never get to neglect the fact that you have a nape. and you miss that feeling of not feeling your nape. of being able to just go on without that full knowledge of having one because it's just there. simply because it was just there.

when you realize something, whether about yourself or about how things go, you part with that part of yourself that's hopeful, the part of your psyche which cannot fully reconcile what you want to do and what you will be able to accomplish. before realizing something, you are magnanimous, invincible and totally able. to part with that ignorance of a certain something is a painful matter that is not always outdone by the new knowledge which takes its place.

and so now i know why i constantly confuse myself. like that lonely horse pulling a calesa up a filthy binondo street, i find it easier to trudge along with blinders on both edges of vantage, steadily ascending without knowing what's on the periphery, being under the impression that that sometime, somewhere will be arrived at, wherever it is, without fully understanding how getting there feels like.

(okay, i should stop being vague. i have a tendency to be vague, and i don't know why.)

but it's kind of too late to gripe over this now for i have just realized that to be something, something real in this world, someone who matters, one has to do things that one does not like to do. it may be as petty as writing an article on something one is actually the least bit interested in. or claiming to be something that one, in the end, does not want to live up to after all.

2005-07-12T04:43:00.000+08:00

>asl?
>fine:
(subtitle: a very labo post)

uneventful is how i would describe a day wherein:

i do some funky stuff with some guy over the telephone just before i pull that sleeping mask over my eyes, and the new day heralded not by some rooster but by my snoring
i wake up to such scorching heat, i turn the aircon on and then i sleep again
i wake up at 3pm, rush a 300-word write-up for the contributor's page and turn the TV on just to see two guys fight over Sexbomb Rochelle in Daisy Siete
i arrive at enterprise plaza, an hour late for a staff meeting, and still leave the damn building with parking fee jacked up to a hundred
i insist, and just may have succeeded in doing so, to do the styling in the fashion spread
i am given a new article to work on: skin care section, which i know nothing about since i only smolder my face with whatever's in my bathroom
i hear two versions of "last kiss" on the radio as i pass through that supercongested cubao tunnel and all the dirt and smoke and squalor of manila is sticking to my face because the windows are down since my aircon is still broken. it had been for a month now.
i meet up with a former officemate and rant the whole night. in two locations.
i rush a report for class the following day

what i really miss is that feeling that nothing matters because they really don't. i also miss the time when my reading list did not matter; that i would not be judged for reading too little or for reading not-too-literary stuff life rushdie or borges. i miss reading those quark henares stories. (wonder if he still writes...and where to find these pieces) i miss being so sensless and being amusing to make up for it. i miss being something.

2005-07-08T03:37:00.000+08:00

SUCCULENCE
after neglecting this page for such a long time, the one time i felt like i was finally going to post something again, the taskbar takes its sweet time. nothing really hurts more than a blank screen to go with a giddy mind. the thing that's not really talked about too often is the importance of internet connection. unfortunately this is nothing i can delve into myself as i don't know a fig about it. as you have noticed, this new template activated the comments option in this blog and everyone is invited to leave me a message concerning internet stuff which you think i ought to know about.

but then what i really want to talk about is the most delectable sin ever: vanity. i can't believe i am only talking about it now, particularly after reading what igz had to say about it in his blog (his blog is linked to mine, if you want to read for yourself).

the other night, i hit cafe saguijo with lotte and her childhood friend wesley - cool guy - and two of his friends. when we arrived, they said that they (wes and his pals) were just going to the toilet so lotte and i stayed outside to have some smokes. after like thirty minutes, we noticed that they haven't come back yet. it was still early and there definitely was no line for them to negotiate. our search for the threesome led us to the parking lot and we were merrily bouncing on some tires that were just lying there when one of wes's friends found us.

at cafe saguijo, we never really bothered to go up the stairs and as this guy led us, i had no idea what was waiting for me. as i took steps, i kept on imagining it as like a place where people smoked weed and do funky stuff. imagining and hoping: kinda same thing, don't you think. it turned out to be a room that was converted into a botique that sold cool and mostly vintage stuff. "lola's baul" the guy we were with said. (god how i wish i remember his name, my blogging life would be so much easier. i know: let's call him ernie.) okay, so ernie said that we were in some lola's baul and wesley was trying some tight retro shirt on, wesley with untamed, curly hair and a scrawny frame. and that was in fact the purpose of our summon: we had to see that. i said he should get it, and went on fiddling with the stuff in the room. treasure--lotte found this really cool small red, rectangular pin (reminds me of name plates service specialists wear) with the word succulence written on it in white. (i acknowledge that the last sentence is the worst ever.)

we were on our way to another bar, talking about the act of mixing friends that belonged to different circles and i was still thinking about the pin. i never figured out why i didn't buy it since it could not have caused much. then i thought of why someone who's not vain would buy it. buy it and wear it. i obviously wasn't thinking about myself, as i had actually already tried it on and had every intention of keeping it on, if only i had the mind to whip up the intention to buy it too. (never even bothered to ask for the price. stupid stupid. so if you go to saguijo before i do, be a darling and leave the damn pin where you will find it because i swear i am coming back for it.)

"vanity is the most delicious sin," i suddenly said. i didn't really care if my statement was going fit in what ever it was we were discussing at that time. (ninetees rock music, i think) "it's a win-win situation. at least you get to be beautiful come your judgement day. with vanity, you don't lose. you might go to hell for it but you'd end up being one hot-looking devil." i think they agreed, but i was too busy agreeing with myself to pay enough attention.

a couple of days prior to that, i had a meeting at enterprise. (every monday actually. so friends who work at makati, feel free to book me mondays after work.) i got into trouble the last time i parked in front a friend's establishment and i just couldn't stomach the fact that i was going to pay way too much for parking. so i decideded to park my car, whos name is montgomery btw, at shangrila mall where parking is fabulously at a flat rate. i took the train to makati and since it wasn't rush hour, it was okay. i arranged to meet cathy after work so that we could ride the train together.

okay, rush hour at the metrostar is like being at a uaap basketball match between ateneo and la salle except that from araneta, they ahd moved the venue to the ayala heights clubhouse. i had to agree with cathy when she said that there was not going to be a small chance in hell that we were going to be able to catch a ride in the qc-bound train. so she had the idea of taking that "roundtrip" ride. meaning, we were to take the train that was heading towards taft and there, we would simply wait for the train to start heading to the other end which was i think somewhere in balintawak. "isn't this kinda illegal," i asked. "many people do it," she said, but you don't really have to mull over it to realize that that hadn't really answered the question. with a promise of course that we'd eventually get seats, i let myself take that bogus course of action. the promise would elude fulfillment. for me, at least.

so i ended up standing during the trip, no, voyage to taft and then back to shangri-la station. this, after walking up and down ayala avenue and practically spending my entire lifetime lining up for a friggin trip ticket. i was clearly not in the most accomodating mood. to top it off, i kept hating that person who "stole" my seat, who were practically everyone who were seated. (except for cathy, of course. she is my friend. she did not steal a seat from me, i gave one to her.) i had to smite them. i did not have to be successfull at doing so but i had to. i had to i had to i had to. so i concentrated on how they looked. it was after all their most apparent flaw. i will not elaborate on this. i am laready coming off as superficial as it is. but i swear, "vanity yields results. it's okay, don't be scared to go fix yourselves" i kept on saying to no one in particular and to everyone at the same time(except for cathy, of course). i realize, dear reader that this might turn you off about me, but hey you must forgive me for i was sooooo tired then and do admit that i had a point. i said more cruel stuff which i am not going to write anymore. and i do admit now that exhaustion blinded me so much that i failed to see the beauty in people. (okay that was too much. i am sure not everyone in that goddam car was repulsive, there.) the next time i had bussines at enterprise, i parked under the building and had to literally pay a totally impractical amount all in the name of vanity.

so these are two concrete stories about how i have been thinking about vanity lately. i thought that in the few posts that i put concerning my job, i was perennially vague. perhaps one, day, i will post stories about it. very pregnant topic, i tell you. spicy and juicy and worthy of the show i used to work for. but i digress. anyway, vanity. what i actually forgot about while i was standing inside that train is this: my stand has always been that everyone is actually vain. as in everyone. and it is such a gross misconception that the ones who are aware of their own vanity - those who are admittedly and outwardly vain - are the more sinful ones. everyone is vain, except that not everyone is successful at being so. if that to them is the best version of themselves, then so be it. like not having a fashion statement is in itself a fashion statement. actively not caring is caring. it takes more time to look like you did not assemble your outfut, i'm sure, just as it takes helluva longer time to achieve that natural look in terms of cosmetics.

but then, i am now thinking if vanity really is my favorite sin. cos i think it could either be glutony or deliberate megalomania.

2005-06-17T01:02:00.000+08:00

OVERDUE OVERTURE

geez. since I have already forgotten, remind me who i am. when you see me like walking in a mall or something, do not hesitate to slap me on my back and tell me: "hey! you're *my name*! you were such an ass."

in the first place, working for this network has deboned me of my essence. we all know how dandy fish fillet is or tenderloin steak is (as opposed to porterhouse) but filleted charlie?

the backbone of my existence is glamoure.

and how does work deglamourize moi? let's start with the obvious. for one thing, working for television production sucks your schedule into a vacuum of tar. there's simply no time to do anything else besides work. and one could not afford to slack because unfinished work would translate to dead air. (oops, network jargon here. dead air is when you see black even if the TV is on.) no matter how gago anyone could be, no one wants to be cause to dead air.

another is that the term measely was invented to describe such quantity four times my salary. this is not a hyperbole but a realization. do i need to elaborate on this?

and not only do i lose time for activities, and not only do i lose the means to afford myself but I also lose time for non-activity. sleeping has become a privelege and non-sleep translates to eyebags, dark circles around my eyes and pimples. i am simply being robbed of my natural beauty.

now, i hadn't really realized that i've been working for five months, that i haven't been the gallivanting animal i was originally bred and engineered to be, 'till my friend cokelover brought it up. egh. so now, i am very happy to anounce that this sunday will be my last episode. showbusiness is simply not for me. it is so beneath me.

2005-04-22T22:01:00.000+08:00

I AM ALIVE.

I have so much stories to tell and I am afraid that I am no longer myself. I am no longer the person one would almost certainly see out in bars or in parties or orgies or whatever. I have been sucked into the world of television production--and never had i ever imagined myself gettng entangled in this web of stress and deceit and controversy. working for this weekly showbiz talkshow is ruining me and i do not even know why i am still here.

They call my position "researcher. But I say, I am a "magician." "Get me this, give me that. Find this search for the friggin supreme court ruling and i need it now (and it is a saturday night)" There is no recourse for me but to say "yes."

sometimes, we whip up skirmishes between starlets. part of the job. And I look at the paycheck. Tell me it's worth it. I need to be convinced.

i feel so profound.

2005-03-15T01:38:00.000+08:00

I put off telling you guys about my work because I am afraid that it will just be another reklamo session. It is a custom practice to exaggerate the hardships one might meet in a first job and I am trying to be classy by setting myself apart from this practice, for as long as I can--working in broadcast is not a bed of roses. If ever it is, it is a bed of really thorny roses and one is pressed down against it by anvils.

Instead, I have decided to do this: a few days ago, Cattan was asking me to post a story here. Well, this is the first part of the story I am currently working on. I have actually finished it but I think it is too long to be posted. Besides, I am currently reworking it. So for any comments and constructive criticism (which I will so much appreciate) you may reach me through supercharlie69@yahoo.com or you may leave your message at the tagboard.

Picture this: me sitting across from her. Now, imagine me: a paper cup suspended just below my lips. My other hand should be restless. It was itching to stroke back hair that just grew back. Lola always said that I was just another pathetic kid trying to be a punk. Couldn't even call me a punk; always stated through an angle of a failed attempt. It wasn't my idea, you know, mowing my head about a year before. It was Hunter's. I called your mother Hunter. Well, she'd dumped me anyway so screw me for allowing that to happen. "Oh Oslo, you're just too...too antiseptic--but it's not you, it's us." Exact words.

And then someone said that still staying friends with Hunter was going to be easy. Your uncle Zurich. He was drunk or high or whatever then but his words sank in like they were the Gospel of Matthew. Or something Bono had just said in a recent press conference. Found him by the door, Zurich. I just came in from work--I was working graveyard shift; he was self-employed, he'd always said. He was self employed but was in lola's pay roll, but I think that was a secret. I drove in and he was balancing himself by leaning on the doorknob. I had to twist the key for him. You'd think I'd know better, that I'd stop listening to Zurich. The two of us may have had shared a womb for nine months but that doesn't mean he knows as much as I do. He grew up here among these people.

All of them, not like mama: forty-five year old Catholic schoolgirl-wonder who had chosen to run away from them, from here, to run away with the man of her dreams. Once, I called her Ma, and that started an entire discussion. Bottomline was to always call her mama, accent on the second syllable. (But you don't have to call me papa. Call me whatever you like. What's hip there? Erpat? Whatever.) But mama also had her one-sentence moments. When I told her about Hunter, and I sure babbled a lot of stuff, the only thing she cared to say was "you're seeing a girl named Hunter?" I could almost hear her heart palpitate from across kilometers upon kilometers of highway. And she was on the speaker phone.

"Mama, you named your children Oslo and Zurich," I said.

"Oslo and Zurich happen to be nice cities, hijo. The two of you were made there, you know. I don't know exactly where, but your father and I spent some time in Denmark and then in Switzerland some nine months before you were born." And I was so sure she was nodding while over-sharing this, glint in her eyes and everything. Of course the capital of Denmark is actually Copenhagen; Oslo is in Norway. Priceless was the relief over my parents committing this mistake--being Oslo was far out, yes, but it was definitely better than being called Copenhagen. What, Hagen? Hag? Coppie? Kids could be cruel. Imagine, if mama and papa had chosen to have their honeymoon in Africa, I would have been Madagascar instead of Oslo. If they had enough money to take a sidetrip to France, I would have been Paris. If they hadn't any money at all, I might have been Vigan or Manila, depending on the extent of their poverty.

I said to myself, you better stop here. I decided not to tell her about the small detail concerning my hair. Probably the best decision I had ever made. Finding out the etymology of myself was already too much.

The small detail concerning my hair? Hunter had a point to illustrate one night so she produced a hair clipper and slid the black contraption against my head. Old folks might call that delirium. I said nothing as she did that. I just sat there and listened to the vrrrr of the clipper and to her undirected ramblings: "And then they took you. They took you! Ampoocha, you...you are so stupid. You're one stupid girl, Hunter! How can you allow this to...to... Fuck.." She made no sense, no sense at all, yet I still remember every word. I felt the clipper press harder and harder against my scalp then after a while I started to wonder if she still remembered that I was there. And I forced myself to believe that the feelings might stay because of that.

The next day, she dumped me.

That changed nothing, really--being dumped. I'm still on-call. I was a boyfriend on-call then but after the break-up, I became just plainly, eternally, on-call. So I showed up for "coffee." That's what Hunter called it: coffee. She would send a text message saying "coffee." One-word text message. It actually meant "Hey I need you right now my life is all fucked up so you better come here at the coffee shop in my condominium building to buy me coffee while I use you as a freakin shock absorber." (I could almost hear her say it all in one breath.)So imagine me doing exactly just that.

Helpless-looking girl across the table--look at her, luminous under these lights, saying: "Shush. I'm pregnant." So to avoid the humiliation of being interrupted in mid-talk I raise the cup to my lips but I don't take a sip, bearing that sting of boiling liquid against sensitive skin. Froth sticking to my lip. I wait five beats. I anticipate. I put on that understanding and excited face.

She is pregnant. What's new? She's always been, anyway. The two of us might be making some action and she would get pregnant right there and then. She would stop licking me wherever she was licking me and would go on to ruminate as I slumped placidly on the backseat of the van, or wherever it is we may be doing it. And I wait. I anticipate. Same old-same old.

Pregnancy is such a common occurrence. Back in school, I've encountered more shocking announcements of various forms of pregnancies. The one that still clearly resonates is the one with the head magistrate for the School of Humanities. I still remember how a shrill shriek issued from the lavatory one day. I turned my head and found her waving three strips of paper. "Positive, Positive, positive!" Old people might have called her delirious. Seven months after, the entire batch watched her march up the stage with her belly sticking out through the slit of the toga. I swore I saw Father Dunne squint his eyes as he handed her the diploma. Apart from her and this former blockmate who had his girlfriend pregnant back in sophomore year, there had been other stories and rumors about classmates, batchmates or schoolmates, neighbors and countrymen, and fellow earthlings my age going the family way.

(Among these stories, his was the funniest, former blockmate's. He did it once, and once was all it took...)

But then, those are different stuff altogether. Hunter was pregnant, yes. She always thought she was. We could just be sitting side by side on a park bench, and she would say that she was pregnant with whatever. Or we could be having coffee at the coffee shop just below her apartment, just like now, and she would announce that she is pregnant while I'm giving heartfelt, well-thought-of advice. "Shush. I'm pregnant." And so, just like old times, I put myself on hold. I raise that paper cup of overpriced macchiato to my parted lips in anticipation of the violent birth: "I don't know what love is."

Yes.

2005-02-18T03:07:00.000+08:00

biscocho, orange cinnamon tea and the excitement in domestic life

my legs are killing me. i've just gotten home from the up-diliman fair and the first thing i did out of blind impulse was to go straight to the shower. the line-up of the performers was good, actually. they had kitchi nadal, spongecola, sugarfree, imago and a lot more.

i snuck my sister out of the house; told my parents that i was just going to see my college friend who happened to be my sister's high school friend. i let her handle the wheel and i swear it took us hours to cover my usual five-minute drive. sometimes, it helps to live vicariously through others, those others who still have rules to break. i remember how it was like--having the power to shock the hell out of my parents for doing stuff that should not be done.

everytime i leave the house, i'd tell my parents that i'm just going to a coffee shop with some friends. well, being myself, sometimes this is true, sometimes it's a lie. i don't think it still matters to them, where i really am going. the concern now is if i'll be coming back home still with the things i left the house with. the car, for instance. this, of course, is beside the point. i always tell them that i'm just going to a coffee house, specifically in one of those along katipunan ave. but my mother knows me well enough to know that i'm not a coffee drinker for she made sure that none of her fold would be. she has this aversion to caffeine and once she told me when she saw me making coffee for myself that she knew that i was only after the creamer anyway and she would really prefer that i just ate coffeemate from the spoon.

me: i'll be back by twelve (noon tomorrow. harhar) just going to katipunan. some coffee shop to meet friends.

mommy: you always go out for coffee. too much caffeine's bad for your nerves.

me: no, ma i only have tea (english breakfast harhar)

mommy: okay. but if you're just having tea, i have lots of tea here at home.

me: bleh i don't want your ginseng-shit

mommy: no, i have all sorts of tea.

me: bye.

mommy: oh why do you keep on leaving at night...

me: do you love me enough to give me money?

mommy: that's the problem with you. you can't seem to stay here...always out...and i don't want you out there. you do the things i don't want you to do and you ask money from me to pay for these things.

me: fine. goodbye.

mommy: wait. get my bag. how much do you need?

actually, ladies and gentlemen, tea also has caffeine. english breakfast has more caffeine in it than your usual coffee. and we always have coke and whatever softdrinks during sunday lunch--but of course i never let my mother realize this cos i adore coca-cola and a sudden ban of it will just kill me, rob me of my reason to wake up during sundays.

maybe my mom just has this secret crusade to topple the coffee manufacturing industry.

whatever. so today, i decided to rummage through her teabags. just for the sake of doing something new, i wanted to have tea in my room, light my aroma therapy candles and play world music and hire an erotic masseur, although lack of funds required of me to abandon this last want. so what i did instead was i stole one of my mom's bags of biscocho. she's been hiding these bags from me. everyone in the house knows how i am with food stuff: what i see, i open; what i open, i finish. they never leave food lying in the house cos they won't see it again. they keep it in their lockers, their safes, their toilets. they keep them in places where i won't see them. anyway, these bags of biscocho were from bacolod, she said, and i found them hidden behind the gummie bears. i normally would have gotten the bagt of gummy bears instead but since i couldn't have erotic pleasure, i was to take pleasure in finishing off something someone's been hiding from me, something someone's been saving for herself.

bam! pleasure.

it's been quite difficult to find pleasure lately since i find myself doing the same things everyday. that's why lately, i have been trying to create a new pattern in my everyday life. Besides the usual sleep-eat rhythm i had for so long tried hard to maintain, i have just tryied to squeeze more activities to my usual itenirary. for one, i've been trying to cook, incorporate some physical activities to awaken my senses (i've been swimming, actually. but i couldn't do more than six laps! haha) and i've been trying to put more discipline to my writing.

truth be told, i'm kinda thankful i have not been asked to report for my job yet.

2005-02-17T02:54:00.000+08:00

i find myself most vulnerable during the wee hours of the morning. during this time, everyone i can think of calling, texting or yahoomessengering with would already be alseep, having sex, drunk or drugged. being awake, sober, partnerless and in a state lucid interval, i find myself alone to swallow all these things that i choose to chew. insignificant stuff mostly. things that do not matter to anyone else but to myself unless there is someone out there who cares that much for me.

during the day, everyone's at work.

i find myself in another low period in my life. for one thing, i am literally on hold. the worst part is that i do not feel empowered to actually act on this. i am also too weak and tired. i cannot get myself to be the me who's been through everything that kept me whole all these years.

no, i am not commiting suicide. and yes, i want to bounce back into the blogging scene. maybe one of these days, i will post something worth reading.

2005-01-30T14:34:00.000+08:00

OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE

charlie castelo is still alive, though just barely.

truth be revealed (this sounds more dramatic than the usual 'truth be told'), a lot has happened since the last time he posted. he's written quite a few pieces for his masteral classes and is actually tempted to just upload an essay from his non-fiction class to shortcut this entry-making routine (if one could call a sporadic habit a routine.). yesterday, he was just smoking outside palma hall when suspicious looking boys extended hands to him for handshake. he pulled his earphone out and raised an eyebrow. "what?" later on, he would find out that these were frat neofights who made the stupid mistake of thinking he was a fratboy.

charlie the fratboy.

he is now a semi-career boy to boot and has started training in b-scanb, a family corporation. he is trying to memorize which forms would land him a reservation for an obvan, or which ones to accomplish for props and costumes. a million forms to remember, one rotten brain to store the information. if luck does not pull him through, he is as good as relieved. he has not signed the contract yet, to the utter dismay of the hr head.

he has missed a class because of this and hopes that he does not have to miss more.

his weekends are all punctured with parties and gimmicks and is now wondering if he would still be able to support this lifestyle in spite of time and compensation constraints.

he still gets drunk and says things he later on regrets saying.

through this all, he is not the same charlie.

taking on more of a life sentence than a job, don't expect to be seeing much of him in the hip places he is usually spotted in. as of now, we give you this publicity photo. "vision," his latest movie project, is currently on location in the third rim of hell. though it may seem that he is still a few steps away from that fiery center, he can see the raging flames and can smell burning flesh from where he is standing.

--industrialfireFly official publicity staff.

2004-12-15T02:30:00.000+08:00

Falling in love used to be a simple matter. It isn't anymore. People are being born too smart or too dumb or too wicked for it, or perhaps people have stopped being born and only shallow, brittle spurious cowards are walking the streets.

--Kerima Polotan, The Hand of The Enemy

* * *

a haze of optimism still enshrouds me at this point. i am twenty-two years old (or sixteen for the past six years), eternally single, virtually unpublished (outside school, that is, although an article under my name's due this february), and jobless therefore penniless.

in my haste, the last post turned out to be pathetic and utterly unfair as far as the writers' night is concerned. a night in the presence of writers and talk about just one? harharhar

one movie that certainly makes it to my top five list is wonder boys. perhaps it was the yardstick upon which i placed my expectations of how a writer's night would be. it is a sickness--hollywood constantly allows me to forget that i am in the philippines. in the said movie, there also was a writers' night. it was held in the chancellor's house where distinguish-looking gentlemen and ladies sported elegant black suits and little black dresses. in every hand, a wineglass was cradled. people were happy and beautiful. although everyone was talking about literature or the state of literature or publishing, there was a festive glow that only the warmth of camaraderie can tolerate. it was about art but inasmuch as it was about having a good time.

or perhaps magaling lang silang magplastikan.

the sin is mine. all mine. this is the classic case of an expectation of grandeur turning around to bite the ass of the one expecting. the up writers' night was also held in the chancellor's house. the list of similarities stop here. bohemia is still something i'm struggling to get into terms with. in all fairness, there were friends whom i haven't seen for a long time and writers i admire. basking in the glow of their presence made it worth going. and the prevailing conversation opener of choice went like: "boring, huh." of course the answer should be something like this: "and we're all bored together, it kinda is fun..." in retrospect, i can't really say it was fun but i can say that since i am myself, i had fun. in all fairness.

and the alcohol was cheap. it was not free but it was cheap.

let me skip the harrowing details of not being able to walk straight, not being able to exhibit grace and class in a place filled with strangers, however being able to show displaced wit. but because alcohol was cheap, i rode the roads leading home like a retarded airplane, ultimately ending up with a busted muffler (which i would only find out days after--"so that's what the noise is all about..." my dad shrugs his shoulders in complete abandon and hopelessness).

i still, at this point, cannot articulate in a very sincere fashion why i chose to postpone professional fulfillment in exchange for a masteral program in a field known to be monetarily barren. but i must admit that the movie encouraged me and gave me that confidence to put off earning in exchange for writing, and learning how to go about it. and hopefully, i will get to meet james leer as i do so.

* * *

let me clear that i am no victim, nor culprit. i will not hide behind the mesmerizing colors of the academe, nor will i shortchange my decisions through images of my lingering sloth and the comforts i enjoy.

* * *

last sunday's slumber party had been in the brewing for at least a month and everyone was informed as early as The Exodus. Nostradamus had predicted that it shall happen so it was but a surprise that not all of us made it. harharhar no, i am not bitter, just surprised.

anyway, so a bewildered lisa greeted me in the elevator, clueless of how to bring herself to the room--in discovery, you need the keycard to be able to press the desired floor. everyone else in the elevator disappeared under our gasps and excited babble. patty, muffin, lar and alessa were having dinner when we arrived. and then kaia and erix burst into the room fresh from podium, doing the one thing i did not bother to do (largely because i am penniless), that is hunting for artifacts for the exchange gift from eightees heaven.

that was supposed to be the theme of the night: eightees babies. see, for our psych class, we made this very incriminating video. we encrusted ourselves with eightees apparel as we swayed to "shout." it was fun and as i have said, incriminating. come to think of it, that was what made it fun: we have this secret video we share among ourselves. er and with our psych teacher and classmates. consequently, no one has a freakin idea where the hell it is. the original plan was to shoot the sequel. but the gods must have needed a break from this quirk of ours as circumstances conspired to have us not shoot it. i am certain that someday, it will be shot, in dolby surround no less. watch out for the premier, you guys.

i was about to have desert when randy arrived. (no offense meant, but there's an eightees name) we dashed to 7-11 to buy booze and had an arguement in front of the casheir as to whom will shoulder the butal in the bill. he left me on the counter but in the end, i won after a very public and debasing battle. yes, i am the queen of cheapness.

the coffe table stood low among us as we scattered ourselves in the sitting area. on it were glasses of rumcola, ginsprite and tequila, (is it tekeela or tekila?). hovering above was the mixture of nostalgia and plain senseless laughter. the best question popped during the early parts of the night was whether i played with myself. the best answer was the one that addressed it.

a non-smoker would think that these questions and these answers and booze and laughter were enough to send anyone to a smashing trip. well, there was also erix's fabulous pate, or what randy kept on calling delicious reno liver spread hahaha. so the sixth floor club was established. (move over, 700club.) since we were not on a smoking floor, erix, kaia and i had to take trips down to the sixth floor just to be able to re-enact that scene from my bestfriend's wedding. (arrest me. i'm a bad person. i'm a criminal. hahaha) one memorable yosibreak was when everybody started to talk about love and relationships. why should they not--they were all in love and in relationships anyway, save for kaia, erix and i, and lisa (but she is not a smoker). being witty and funny and cringing in the background and wondering what the big fuss was all about started to be boring (okay, that sentence was kinda bitter.) so erix and i (kaia was taking a powernap) decided to exorcise ourselves by treating our lungs with some nicotine.

since sixth floor was just a floor below, she had the splendid idea of just hitting the staircase. glass of rumcola in one hand, no pants under the robe and feet in those free flimsy fabric slippers that came free with the room, i followed her into that stairwell from hell. it was easy, letting ourselves in; there was this chrome industrial lever that allows easy access.

this lever was nowhere to be found from inside the stairwell.

i'm sure i've watched this before, being trapped in the emergency stairwell. if erix was a studmuffin, or for that matter, if i were a hunk, this was supposed to be romantic. if discovery suites was in the middle of a forrest or an abandoned ghost town, then we would have been recreating the climax of some horror b-movie. but it just felt stupid.

some people survived earthquakes, others plane crashes. me, i survived being trapped in a stairwell. as i rushed down with erix, thinking that there is no other exit besides the one in the far end (and even that, is a gamble)...ok i am really struggling against overreading the experience and turning into an imagery of love and discontentment in this world.

all the same, i was bracing myself for emerging into the lobby in just a robe and slippers, or having to spend the night with erix trapped in the stairwell and coming out of it in the morning as a new-age couple when fortunately the door in the fifth floor was busted. we literally clawed it open and saw chiara standing in front of the elevator. i jumped on her, still shaking with laughter and relief. perhaps the best ending for this is story is that. i did not have to burst into the lobby in a very domesticated appearance.

i am least lovable when i pretend to be comfortable.

2004-12-08T01:04:00.000+08:00

nobody said it was easy...

so why the hell did i think that it would? my latest major hang-up in life is bj. he has a name but i choose to call him bj because i need to feel that he is beneath me. anything that we could not have, especially if we want it so badly, has got to be beneath us. i just attended up writers' night. it's my first time to attend it. i came there with such grand expectations of what it would be; after all, i am studying to become a writer.

it's funny how such an event could turn into something about someone, and all it takes is for you to set eyes on someone (or get to exchange a couple of words with him, for that matter). rum does not help either.

everything melts.

back to square one: you're plainly undeserving--period. and the truth is, i still want him. he may not want me for everything that i am and for everything that i am not, but i do want hin for everytheing that he is and for everything that he isn't.

you know what, i'm probably gonna delete this entry tomorrow.

2004-12-03T07:03:00.000+08:00

la cama de agua

after the third storm, i began to think that perhaps the philippines is being wiped off the face of the planet. if this indeed is what's happening, then why was i not informed in advance?! cos i should've gotten that damn credit card and shopped heinously as the country sank. when those submarines explore the underwater ruins of the philippines, they will find my body flanked with shopping bags and a credit card.

in the meantime, aerial television shots show murky water where there used to be land. i still can't decide which depresses me more, the fact that there used to be land there or that the water is murky.

we should stop cutting fucking trees.

***

the other day, i was still in my sleepwear a couple of hours after noon. my sleep wear usually consists of a long polo shirt and underwear--hey who's gonna see me anyway? and then this question was soon answered: i was just lounging around when to my utter mortification men suddenly decided to grace me with their presence. i never felt so naked in my life. well anyway, i slipped into boxers (something really short so they'd think that perhaps they just didn't see my shorts the first time they saw me, and that i was in fact wearing shorts the whole time) and, in my best greta garbo impression, asked them what they needed.

they were delivering a bed. i quickly called my dad because i didn't want to sign stuff without checking if the goddam bed was really ours. well, the bed turned out to be for me and since it's wider than what i previously owned, i had to get rid of my headboard as well. now, i don't have a headboard, just a cold cement wall hanging over my head. cold cement walls don't rock and squeak. deng.

i have forgotten how a nice orthopedic mattress felt like against my back. although, the one i have just disposed off for the new one was also an orthopedic bed, it's become sagged in the middle and lumpy in some parts. it has become incontestable that it is a spring mattress primarily because in certain parts, you really feel the springs. as the men carried my old bed to the attic, i couldn't help taking a glimpse of the tag that said "lifetime guarantee." apparently, they were pertaining to a fish's life.

(my dad sent me a text message saying that the bed is his advanced christmas gift for me and that he hopes that i use it at night. you see, i own a sleeping mask and i use it well.)

now as i lie on my new bed watching the television show how people get displaced and killed, i can't help but feel sorry for those in less comfortable situations than i am in. i have in fact refrained from posting my usual rants because among the filipino people, i am in the least position to rant at this point.

oh my god i'm growing a heart. and i really think we should stop cutting those goddam trees for chrissakes.

2004-11-20T04:24:00.000+08:00

hiatus from blogging does not mean hiatus from life.

well unfortunately, it doesnt indicate a hectic one as well. if anything, it shows laziness to type. i never saw myself implying that: me too lazy to actually write stuff ABOUT MYSELF. moving on, nowadays we classify food as "real" food or fastfood. this, dear reader, is the fastpost as opposed to real post. comecome.

how do you measure a life? in decades? years? no. thanks to mtv, short attention span would allow me to sum up my life in a week. scrutinize a week, u get a rhythm. a bad rhythm spells doom and despair.

and then, as we would further have it, i begin a new cycle that is second semester. every student would surely talk about his classes. as to brag about it and show the world: hey, this is me inching my way to greatness. just wait and i'll make my mark, i'll make a difference in the universe. let us oblige.

i have signed up for six units: fiction workshop 1 under dr. butch dalisay (fridays 5-8p), and creative nonfiction workshop 2 under ms. marra pl. lannot (sat 1-4p). la-dida. because i swore 2 things: 1. i will find a job so better dodge the weekdays. no.2 i will be a good boy-slash-serious grad student. minimize socials, pump up academia.

both promises are yet to be fulfilled.

i had my first class last friday. i actually arrived at the diliman campus on time, took my sweet time and had a couple of smokes outside the rizal building. then i went on to look for my class. i have grown accustomed to camping outside the classrooms. in up, thrity minutes late is actually on time. however, after noticing that there are no other people waiting for that oh-so-in-demand class to start, and after pounding on the door of specified classroom (not to mention performing rituals on my registartion form to make sure if it was indeed showing me the correct classroom) i shoved my way to the english department. of course only to find out that ive been waiting in front of the wrong office. in the wrong building, for that matter. my prize for being late for the first day of dr. dalisay's class is precious: walking through the door and finding familiar faces on the other side. The faces were familiar because they taught in ateneo. to make one understand the gravity of this detail, how's this: this semester, i will be having my work critiqued by my former teachers and of course let's not dodge the impending awkward-o-rama of having me critique their work as well. splendid.

after this, i hit (ta-daaa) rack's el pueblo. it's no use bashing this hole as i will find myself in it again (for the 3rd time in my life) the following week--as in moments before i type this down. instead of going heavy on alcohol, i trooped to the nearby 7-11 and finished 2 monster tumblers of slurpee. in all honesty (and stupidity) i thought that i was doing the better thing to do. having classes the following day, that night was not the time to get drunk. i completely forgot about the fact that mirinda slurpee contained caffeine, but i actually had time to think about the wrongness of that decision as i watched the sun rise outside my bedroom.

zombie was the motif during the creative nonfiction class. the homework (and it was the first meeting!) is just so...too painfull to even type down.

that night i attended a party with a 90's theme. i wore a big striped chaps tee, khaki walking shorts and sandals with socks. harhar i was trying to look for my windbreakers and failed to find them.

the days that will follow are packed with the following activities:

having had done all this for this week, i once again hit a friday. my friday (as in yesterday) would begin at around three. i wake up and watch a couple of telecrap. i get ready for school and scram.

the second session for the fiction workshop had us talking about three short stories. i had read them, enjoyed them, and had nothing to say about them. marvel at my intelligence, people. during the only time i recited, i wasn't able to articulate my point.

after class, i go to racks el pueblo again. basically with the same people. pleasant surprise: mojofly was on. so i proceded to melt under ricci gurango's (the stunning bassist) gaze. i assume that he was gazing at me. looking, staring, seeing, viewing and every other word that means this. he has eyes solamente pare me. after their final set, i walked out of the resto-bar pregnant with his child. i swear.

(by the way, their new vocalist is soooo pretty. possibly prettier than the last one, even. well, its a matter of taste, and for me, she might be. they had a smashing repertois which included sweet child of mine and king (or queen) of pain. yes, apparently, the nineties is still following me. but it really was a smashing sonic experience and i was reminded of how much i missed live alternative gigs. by good bands.)

i will not fail to mention that my friend's cell phone was stolen, but this adventure is worthy of a separate post. tomorrow, i have two party invitations. i still havent figured out how i will arrange my schedule to fit both, or which one to go to if i get too lazy to attend both. OR WHAT TO WEAR. (i actually turn down parties! my life has got to be good. i should start feeling this.)

but that will have to wait because i just got home and have just finished typing my homework for later. i've already crammed my reading asignment as well and according to the manual, what i'm writing right now is the familiar essay.

there. the week: basically two weekends juxtaposed. feel the rhythm. it's an iamb, i surmise. i have no other recourse but to make the most out of this. to enjoy my freshly assumed status: fully-fledged scum of the universe, minor godess of pain and beauty.

2004-11-09T03:19:00.000+08:00

reminiscing The Great Futile College Enterprise. this stuff is imported from friendster and it was such great fun and very telling that i decided to post it here too.

1.School and course?
ateneo de manila, ab communication

2. What year are you in?
after college? half a year.

3. Favorite professor/s?
Mark Escaler! Dr. Violet Valdez, Mr. Calasanz, Ms. Boots Anson-Roa, and Danton Remoto (well, it's so much easier to admit that i actually like them since i no longer have to cram any of their requirements. also, i don't have to care anymore if other people might think they're lousy teachers. i'm a ditz and i guess i just have to live with that.)

4. Favorite subject/s?
classes, actually. Fiction Workshop, Philippine Literature in English, Communication Theory, Photography, Acting for the Camera, Performance and Presentation

5. subjects you dislike?
Math 11 and Math 12. oh, and Math 12. (i had to take the goddam thing twice.)
im sure there are more but these are the ones that really stand out.

6. First you got to know?
Blockmates. Crissy and Maita (within close proximity during the Orsem) Randy and Mac. Ava in Freshman English class--7 in the freakin morning! i had to talk to my seatmate lest id end up drooling on my notebook with my pen sticking in my ear.

7. Crush in the same room?
Argh im really tempted to say "no one" but i will admit that there was one in my Freshman English class. As i have said, it was so early in the freakin morning and i had to fabricate a reason to get myself to wake up so freakin early. Now, i realize that it was huge lapse on my judgement. HUGE.
wait! is this considered: film theory and criticism class and we viewed Donnie Darko. Donnie Darko. is he considered?

8. Most embarassing experience?
When my test tube exploded. Wait, was that in high school?
Well, in that case: when i smashed my car into a truck on my way back from a break. I was with friends. fifth gear, but i was able to step on the breaks on time. a truly edge-of-my-seat experience.
but it not end there.
i released the fuckin clutch but failed to put the gear on neutral prior to it. the truck did not acquire any damage. spotless. My car was a different story. I believe that to this day, fragments of what used to belong to my unofficial first car is still scattered in front of gate 3.

9. Have you ever failed in a quiz? what subject?
Gawd! fail is such a dignified way of putting it. Getting zero in Mr. Calasanz's class, at one point, started to become the norm.
If u insist in knowing which specific classes i had failing quizzes in, then leave me ur email address and i'll send you my transcript--all the classes i have ever taken in college are listed there.

10. Favorite place in school?
SEC B foyer (bench), caf up (before it became Hans' Gourmet and it was still airconditioned), pubroom (before it got airconditioned and got partitioned into these rabbitholes with locks), my catwalk (aka EDSA walk) and the smoking pocket gardens during senior year. I had also developed an appreciation for the Guidance Center. There were times when i pretended to be coocoo and invent problems just so i can lounge in Ms. Mia's office. But don't get me wrong, i'm completely normal.
Oh yeah, behind the sacred heart statue before the Church of Gesu was erected. (pun intended)

11. What do you often buy in school?
test answers. sometimes, friends and company. and. tocino from my teacher.
hehe seriously: fruitshakes, specifically mango-banana. chicken strips and tuna casserole pasta. bluebook test booklets and cd-r from orp.

12. Friends?
Some Fellow Comm Majors, Benchmates & former HS classmates, Heightsers, Orgmates and other blahblahwhatevermates. Some individuals as well. I think even the manang who sells the fruitshakes is my friend cos she started prying into my lovelife while i waited for my drink. she gave me free refills though. ;p

13. Favorite book?
As in required? Cubao-Kalaw Kalaw-Cubao (by Tony perez, required for my Fil13 class) Gangster of Love (by Jessica Hagedorn for my Phil Lit in English Class)

14. Most unforgettable quote from one of your profs?
"Carl, button your shirt!" --Mr. Calasanz

15. Organizations you were in?
Heights, etc.

16. Highest Grade You Got?
A!!! I'm not that stupid. Mostly my major subjects. Besides, there are many many ways to get this... (see numbers11&19)

17. favorite semester
none in particular. when i realized that it was making fun of me, i just said whattathehey and proceded to make fun of college too. Rules are there for the thrill of it.
(the lottery and the random number registration system never made sense. getting the worst teachers possible was no joke. looking back on everything is just plainly relieving and ego-bloating.)

18. Gen Ave.
does this mean general avenue or general average? if it is the former, then no, i havent been down there. if it is the latter, and u expect me to compute, then ur dreaming.

19. Ever cheated?
On my lover?
oh yeah. always.
In like school and all?
Of course. I should devote a separate entry just to answer this question.

20. Describe college life in 1 word
cacophonous

and my parents had paid good money just to see me in this toga...

2004-11-02T03:56:00.000+08:00

what is halloween without costumes? this is nika, me and missy. originally, we wanted to go to the party plainly in formal attire and those cool, cheap masks missy and i found in some photolab along katipunan. but as the night neared, our ideas got a little carried away. we wanted to all go as characters that had something to do with magic, so here we are: nika as the 80's young fairy godmother (with the closed white shoes and all), me as puck, the mischievous faerie from midsummer night's dream (no, the sweat is not part of the look) and missy as the typical storybook witch. shame, her knee-high black stripe socks can't be seen in the pic.

it was fun planning and assembling the costume and all. trying it on every so often. it's also always been fun getting smashed. what's not fun is being smashed while in a puck costume. next halloween, i promise to lay off the funky stuff. i will dodge wearing pleather and wings as well.

i thank cokelover for rendering the pictures.

2004-10-26T05:10:00.000+08:00

yeah, yeah i know it's one of those survey-ish things but what the hey, it's fun.
i ripped this off briant's site. (my friend all the way there in florida--hey you come visit again soon!!!) thanks to him, i now know the names of my other personalities.

YOUR PORN STAR NAME: (NAME OF FIRST PET + STREET YOU LIVE ON)

Lancer Amorsolo

YOUR MOVIE STAR NAME: (NAME OF YOUR FAVORITE SNACK FOOD + GRANDFATHERS FIRST NAME)
Lays Leon

YOUR FASHION DESIGNER NAME: (FIRST WORD YOU SEE ON YOUR LEFT + FAVORITE RESTAURANT)
Hello Shangri-La

EXOTIC FOREIGNER ALIAS: (FAVORITE SPICE + FOREIGN VACATION SPOT)
Garlic Hamptons

SOCIALITE ALIAS: (SILLIEST CHILDHOOD NICKNAME + TOWN WHERE YOU FIRST PARTIED)
Canuto Makati

"FLY GIRL" ALIAS (a la J. Lo): (FIRST INITIAL + FIRST TWO OR THREE LETTERS OF YOUR LAST NAME)
C Cle

ICON ALIAS: (SOMETHING SWEET WITHIN SIGHT + ANY LIQUID IN KITCH)
Kitkat Savour

DETECTIVE ALIAS: (FAVORITE BABY ANIMAL + WHERE YOU WENT TO HIGH SCHOOL)
Cub Ateneo

BARFLY ALIAS: (LAST SNACK FOOD YOU ATE + YOUR FAVORITE ALCOHOLIC DRINK)
Picnic Bailey

SOAP OPERA ALIAS: (MIDDLE NAME + STREET WHERE YOU FIRST LIVED)
Castelo Castor

ROCK STAR ALIAS: (FAVORITE CANDY + LAST NAME OF FAVORITE MUSICIAN)
Crunch Loeb

2004-10-23T04:03:00.000+08:00

blood is thicker than water.

clearly, blood here refers to kin. but i still have trouble relating water to the other varieties of liaisons. water recedes; it seeks its own level and it has surface-tension. it evaporates. It has a defined boiling and freezing point. in cases of extreme squalor, it may cause death through ugly ugly ways. say, cholera. too much water in your system will retain salt in your body, which will cause you to appear bloated. Who would want to look like a sore thumb sticking out in a sea of vibrant looking humans? i may not fully understand everything that i say in this part (if only i foresaw my future career as a blogger, i would have paid more attention to my science classes!), but it is sufficient that these properties do not sound good when thrown into the context of a relationship.

***

blood and water.

water: there is a party later and i can’t decide which set to wear. although this predicament is a lot better than simply not having anything to wear, i need to distract myself before i fall into a state of style-catatonia.

enter blood: perhaps now is a good time to think about my family. everybody knows (or so i love to presume) that in my immediate family-a basic unit of this freaky society-i am the only non-dentist. I was the only one who would finish his schooling (as i already have) with out earning a d and an r before his name. nor would i be earning anything to decorate my name with (like an a, a t, a t and a y) except maybe when plugged in bylines. i cannot call myself anything as in the case of accountants and economists do. unless of course i embrace starving artist. But until then, i am simply charlie. the charlie.

blood. kin. clan.

bigger picture. in my maternal side, the same principle holds true. (with the men, at least) most of my uncles are lawyers, (One even topped the bar; his nephew, meaning me, almost did not graduate high school.) one an accountant (although non-practicing), and one an economist (graduated from the economics-honors program; again-say it with me-his nephew almost did not graduate high school.)

being the erudite bunch that they are, they totally supported my decision to take up further studies, except the fact that what I chose to study further was not law.

and now i shall appear to digress.

for somebody who sprang out of a woman who has this uber-close relationship with her siblings, i do not know my cousins well. after an arduous search, i was able to track down shadow’s site. this is what she had said:

i visited my cousins blog…and it seems very interesting…my cousins don’t know much about me…and i don’t know much about them either...they have no idea what i’ve become within the span of one summer and half a month. we haven’t contacted each other or whatsoever.

i present no counter-affidavit. she said it all.

i have only recently discovered the joys of being related to carmina and we’re starting to get considerably close. she and i know some of each other’s deep dark secrets; however, i still cannot say that we were aware of each other as we were growing up. there was no dearth of familial functions and clan shebangs. each and every holy week is spent in nueva ecija. as in all of us. in that ancient bahay-na-bato, which ironically enough, was mostly wooden in the second floor: the floor which mattered. only the dust outnumber the conwebs.

as i have said, having had this constant thing, i still couldn't say that we grew up together. this could be because this growing up for me seemed to have involved certain gender issues. knowing that you are blossoming into a flower was enough burden; nailing yourself on a scenario wherein kin is involved was just unthinkable.

the castelos are the stereotypical old-fashioned, rigid hispanic type. i am expected to act nonchalantly with having a grandmother who spent most of her youth in front of a piano inside a convent school who was married to a man responsible for the death of certain people. (oops, i’m not sure if my cousins know of this. if you are my cousin and you know that you are my cousin and you’ve just read that, then pretend it’s not there. or. pretend that we’re not cousins. whichever works for you.) testosterone is not considered a male hormone but a gene passed on to the castelo males. on the other hand, art should trickle down through the women. i care not to expound which gene i have inherited.

i too much feared the prospects of a surprise revelation concerning an adoption. or a dramatic scene where a boy is being disowned. (whichever would prove to be more convenient for them, although the latter was the more likely choice.) so i simply took a leave of absence. But now that they have discovered the perks of having a sure-fire spinster nephew, i bounce myself back into the scene. still with no titles before or after my name.

***

another story which involves blood:

when i was six, i caught that yucky-sounding ailment (dengue: a truly effective onomatopoeia for death) and i needed blood transfusion. although aids was not yet a hot topic at that time, my parents did not trust the bloodbank so they promptly assembled everyone they knew who had the same bloodtype as i did. (and now you know the story behind my multiple personalities: bloods of various sources copulate within my veins.) damn me should i ever forget: i literally have my father’s, his sister’s and her two children’s blood flowing within my veins. while the doctors toyed on my circulatory system, the rest of my clan religiously recited the rosary. perhaps, they even got those folks who do the extending-of-the-palm-to-the-sick-person-thingie, but i choose not to remember.

meanwhile, at home, my two little sisters mentioned to their respective yayas about seeing me talking to an angel. the yayas broke into hysterical tears, which was actually a good thing. the three of us were only a year apart from each other so our parents decided that we needed a nanny each. when we fought, our nannies would also fight. even when my sisters and i were enjoying a ceasefire, the nannies would find their own justifications for going for each other’s throats.

“i say the flower vase should go on top of the tv!.”

“you’re ruining my style!”

anything that gave our yayas something to agree on was a great contribution to humanity. and my mother, upon hearing the cute story, immediately went into her “lord, if it’s really time, then i offer my son to you” moment. her marriage to my father was almost destroyed because of this abrahamic spell.

i almost died. obviously, i didn’t. i leave it up to you to judge whether this is a good thing or not. before you cast your ballot, i want you to reflect on how screwed up i turned out to be.

2004-10-21T03:50:00.000+08:00

"the villainy you teach me, i shall execute, but i shall better the instruction."*

ricci: kamusta na si BeeJay?

rainn: who cares?

ricci: hmm...sino niloko mo?!

rainn: well, that's a tragedy unworthy of audience. next.

ricci: bakit naman?

rainn: huh? obvious. besides (bitter) i'm sure mahilig sa sex si beejay. ayoko makipagsex. ever.

ricci: yeah, u cant even convince yourself. stop trying to convince me too.

rainn: fuck you.

ricci: eh si absynthe?

rainn: oh my god you're grossing me out. stop it. (takes a swig of beer)

ricci: hindi nga. matalino naman sya.

rainn: inaassume mo kagad na papatulan ako. ano ba. besides, good luck na lang noh. a day would never pass without a skirmish pag kasama mo yun.

ricci: so?

rainn: so ayoko din. wag na natin isipin kung ayaw din nya kasi ayaw ko. it won't work.

ricci: wouldn't you want to have something not work with absynthe kesa not having anything at all?

rainn: well, mamimili ka na rin lang, yung matino na noh. gusto ko yung parang close friends lang.

ricci: parang tayo? (stop it!!!)

rainn: um hindi. i've just realized na binibigyan ko lang ng problema sarili ko noon. i think i was just bored and i wanted to make life more exciting so i rammed the fucking wall. (takes another swig.)

ricci: hmmm... okay. if you say so.

rainn: no, really. tingnan mo, wala na ngayon.

ricci: eh kung ligawan kita?

and the highschool girl kept on grinding beside the table.

rainn: ewan ko.

***

i have never been to racks el pueblo before. if you haven't been there yet, then just imagine an incubator pumped up with evil hiphop music, and you have imagined racks el pueblo. i felt like a martian in my clothes (i just saw a play, and thus had dressed up appropriately for the said engagement) while strutting in the steakhouse-cum-hiphopden. i wanted to tear my shirt open. actually, now that i think about it, why didn't i since everyone i knew who saw me there seemed to have wanted me to. they would introduce me to their friends as the person who never cared much about buttons.

i still don't, actually.

to all the kangaroos out there: if you are missing a kid, the there's a ninety-nine point nine percent chance that it is in racks el pueblo dancing to beyonce knowles.

***

as i have said, i just saw a play. last friday, g, silver, cokelover, cathy and sofia and i watched the merchant of venice in greenbelt. it was beautifully rendered by repertory philippines and was directed by zenaida amador. it made me happy that they did not do a modern interpretation, minimalist or whatso. you know, the funky stuff people like doing to shakespeare nowadays. repertory stuck to the classical rendition with the costumes and all. it was such fun.

we only had silver tickets (which meant we could not sit on the center seats, as opposed to gold tickets) but thanks to the fact that cathy abhores her current occupation, she dashed to greenbelt hours too early for the show. i found her standing in front of the line and when the cordon was lifted, we glamorously strutted as fast as we can to grab the nearest seats with decent vantage. because of some complicated details, cathy and i became the advance party--the explorers, those who will claim the colony--and we had to sit four seats apart whilst saying "taken" over and over again.

the programme said (in ms. amador's message) that they have taken out some parts that may indicate anti-semiticism. she said that this time around, shylock would receive such bad a fate not because he was a jew but simply because he was a bad man.

right.

of course shylock's justification for revenge got me excited. in reality, it is largely this particular part that got me so excited to go see the play. when i was in freshman year high, it was this that i chose to deliver in class. i didn't bother to recite bassanio or antonio or even lorenzo. i was shylock, the ultimate villain, and to me, the real merchant of venice.

"to bait fish withal. if it shall feed nothing else, it shall feed my revenge..."

i will never forget how i had pounded the blackboard with my closed fist after these lines and suddenly proceeded to intensely burp out the rest of the solliloquy.

"he hath disgraced me..."

a classmate commented that i looked like a real man. wait...is this good or bad? in the context of an all-boys school, i guess he was trying to give me a compliment. another said he swallowed his gum out of shock when i pounded the board. hah! eight years have passed and i still remember vividly. (eight years?! argh!)

cokelover and i agreed that we had rendered better interpretations of shylock when we were in freshman high than this particular staging. we both kinda expected the soliloquy to be a bit reflexive. i thought he would face the audience and would have that monospotlight. but no.

then again, the play was so surprisingly funny. when i was reading it for high school english, i don't remember laughing. at all. i can't believe i only appreciate the cleverness now that i have seen the thing staged.

***

yesterday, as in tuesday, i watched skycaptain and the world of tomorrow with carmina, my cousin. we had such great fun. we totally paid attention to what was happening on the silverscreen. however, don't ask us if the movie was good; don't ask us something we could not answer.

perhaps when people enjoy too much, they mystically progress to that stage of existence when they could converse with the least words as possible and understand each other perfectly well. if i were to sum up the conversation my cousin and i had inside the theatre, it would eloquently be such:

charlie: delicious.

carmina: yummy.

no, we were not talking bout the beard papa cream puffs we were eating. my cousin and i also profusely agreed that perhaps we would have understood the story if only skycaptain smiled less.

dear god: if you give me jude law, i promise i will stop making fun of other people. like the ones who are not beautiful. okay fine. and the ugly ones too. and the ones who can't carry themselves well. and the ones who can't use their brains well too. so that the world will be a lot better. i know it's already a miracle that i was not brought out of the theatre in a stretcher, but i push my luck further. consider this as an ultimatum. amen.

***

the secret to my secret alter-ego lies hidden behind the reason why i change the lay-out of my web-journal so scandalously often. it is probably connected to the fact that it takes me soooooo long to decide where to go and what to order.

*taken from Shylock's justification for revenge. Merchant of Venice. William Shakespeare.

2004-10-15T01:46:00.000+08:00

good mourning

jacques derrida, celebrated french philosopher and internationally misunderstood author (in the cool sense of the word misunderstood) died while we were having wine and cheese in his honor, halfway across the globe.

the humble community of mourners (the class' official fun name as stated in the course syllabus of CL 230-european literature, first semester, academic year 2004-2005, university of the philippines), has mourned alongside derrida by doing close readings on the funeral orations he had given to his friends compiled in the work of mourning as well his lucid thoughts on death, the gift of death. we did not know the man personally, and i am very sure that he did not know us at all.

i chuck this snippet of information to my box labeled "ironic" which i hide under my bed.

***

miracles happen.

thank god it does. in a span of less than twelve hours, i was able to compile sixteen pages worth of thought. (also: thank god for courier new pt. 11) with trembling hands, i slid the stapled bunch of papers into the plastic folder hanging on dr. schriever's office door. sixteen pages of deep-seated reflection on death and mourning, at first, was an unlikely feat for somebody who had just received his baccalaureate degree six months ago. starting my post-graduate life by understanding death was simply foreboding. and at the tender age of **, i could not believe that i was able to examine the topic with such dettached faux intelligence.

to quote myself:

In truth, we will never fully understand what death is for as long as we live. Certainly, understanding its unadulterated nature will require an experience of it, in which event, we would be stripped of the chance to communicate, let alone evaluate, what we have discovered unless we haunt the living. Since this haunting is least likely to voluntarily come from the one who has already crossed (unless the occult is dabbled into), the ones who survive bring it upon themselves. For us who have not died, the most we can do is to make meaning of death as we live through experiences of loss. We somehow rationalize death through this. Death is a concept hard to grasp for as long as one does not come face-to-face with it. This is, in a rough summation, mourning.

dying is different from death. wanting to die is different from understanding death and mourning. i still want to die young but i still don't understand death. i mourn for myself.

***

if i was able to tame the beast that is the course requirement for CL 230, my battle with my science fiction and fantasy writing workshop class is still ongoing. my first semester in grad school is marvelously decorated by my very first incomplete. i am giving myself the semestral break to claim the grade i deserve. or plainly, a grade, for that matter.

around three hours before the deadline (which i have set by begging for an extension), i sent my professor a text message asking for a grade of inc. by this time, reality had just slapped the daylights out of me as it whispered: you aint gonna make it bro.

it pained me (and it still does) that i was not able to finish what i had started. in ateneo, i never allowed myself to withdraw from a class or to get dropped from one. ever. sure, i dropped to my knees, worked up my charm and smiled my way to completions. once, i even promised a life of celibacy to my theology teacher. i got a final grade of c+, which to me was a lot better that an fa. (failure due to absences. and i still have not broken that promise, unintentionally.) i failed math12 and had to retake it but it did not impede me from finishing on time. and then i decided to obtain a minor. i was able to finish everything in four years. the inc is a new thing to me and i hope to god that i do not get too comfortable with it.

i shut the computer down and proceeded to get my much-needed sleep as the sun happily hovered above the gi-sheets. good morning, charlie. sweet dreams. and good mourning. the rhythm of my life...

2004-10-10T01:30:00.000+08:00

i have finally come to a junction in this game i'm playing: let's try to take up masters in the state university and see if things get as fucked up as predicted. my first semester is about to end. instead of accomplishing my requirements (15 pages of crit and 30 pages of stories due on tuesday and on wednesday respectively), i choose to stagnate and to ruminate.

i choose to count my scores.

this morning was the last session in european literature. this is a 9am-12 sat class, so naturally i always get up at...9 to be able to arrive at dr. schriever's office before 10. and just as in excellent work of fiction, the chosen framework of the course for this semester serves as the perfect foreshadowing in the story of my life. politics of mourning. the reading list partially consists of gift of death, work of mourning, the stranger, a very easy death, illiad, antigone, this way to the gas ladies and gentlemen and other novels dealing with the subject of death.

i must admit that talking about death and mouring session after session after session was kinda fun and interesting. fun in a cryptic way. (when i say cryptic, i mean borderline rio diaz-cryptic.) but the knot that tied the noose around my neck was the attempt at understanding jacques derida's ouvre. that really hit me and i was staggering with my literary skills (the little that i have) by the end of the third session. dabbling into post-structuralism left ME deconstructed.

and dr. schriever. dr. schriever is a dear dear proffessor. she would correct us whenever we mispronounce french words (half the discussion in total was a crash course in french diction). she would send the class text messages if she was going to be late (as in everyone. then again we were only like a dozen) or if she wouldn't make it to class.

but as i have said, today was the final meeting. in addition to the brewed coffee we would have in her office every morning, there was...wine and cheese. she brought two bottles of spanish chauvignon and a classmate (whom i surmised to be allergic to alcohol) brought a bottle of california red. everyone but me, lisa and dr. schriever stopped after their first glass.

after my tenth glass, derida was starting to be clear, and driving home seemed to be something that would require effort. the cheese was superb, we all could not stop munching on it.

(to be continued. i think i should be going back to my papers.)

2004-10-05T03:04:00.000+08:00

yours in the name of Style

i was warned vehemently. germaine even said that she had friends who bothered themselves with going to the parlor before having their id picture taken. in some tribes, they believe that whenever pictures are taken of them, a part of them is robbed--that their spirits are captured. i believe this as well. when a picture is taken of you, you during that moment is forever captured. it is a way of cheating on the fleeting nature of life. you will never be the same person that was captured on that particular frame.

back in ateneo, i always changed my id picture. usually when i change my haircut. (yes, i still feel as though i'm haired.) all i had to do was declare my id lost and pay the cashier. Once, i even brought my favourite picture. the good manong in the id room scanned it and changed the background to white. voila! an id with a really nice picture of me on it. (yeah, in that particular picture, i still had a lot of hair.) so this was where i was coming from that faithful friday morning.

having said all this, i neglected the warnings of my friends--those of them who know the state university way of life. i rolled out of bed, crawled all the way to the car and clawed the remnants of my hair to similate some order. there was no flashing light or whatso.

it was just a sad faint click that captured my soul and preserved one of my countless nows. i am the happy ghost, literally and figuratively. the best part is that i have to use this picture for the rest of my stay in up. kill me.

* * *

last tuesday, i attended the mtv style awards. i postponed writing about it because:

i got drunk during the after event party. (my mantra for that night: since i am not an important figure in this event, i'm here for the free booze.)
i got a nefarious hangover when i woke up the following day. somehow, midway through the party, i was tricked into gulping down pure vodka. i was a willing victim.
i was trying to give myself time to get over sarah myer's terrycloth bathrobe which she wore as a coat for the party. no, this wasn't a pyjama party. the party was held under the stars, on a rooftop. with mobile and all. i just realized now that i would not get over this unless i exorcise myself by hitting the mall with just a towel around my waiste.

hence.

i would be the first one to tell anyone that i am a dits when it comes to the ultimate superficial human representation--that is, fashion. not that i painstakingly study catalogues of the latest collections or anything near that. i see clothing as an art everybody practices. after all, the best way to showcase your own version of your best self is through what you wear. (yeah, i too think that the last sentence is vague.)

the style awards was held in the nbc tent in fort bonifacio. although i missed the red carpet and the cocktails, as well as the first few major awards (because i was too busy laughing in the moviehouse--kris aquino should win best comic actress in a horror film), i was at least in time for orange and lemons's performance. they were absolutely smashing.

but the real treat that evening was seing lotte again after a looooooong time. lotte is 1/3 of my thesis group, and god knows how thesis could make life-long friends out of those you get to gripe with while painstakingly completing it. we didn't get a very high grade, actually, but the consolation is that at least we learned. we opted to do a heavily academic piece, a digression from the usual creativity ab communication is known for. and the moment i wrapped my fingers around the spine of our bound work, i swear to god that i gained respect for myself three times more than all the instances that i got a's combined.

it was that nefarious.

anyhow, so i got to see lotte again. in fact, she was the one who invited me to come. lotte's life would be a glaring contrast to mine. hers is one of progress and direction. she had me sit with her in the press cordon area where i had a spectacular view of richard gutierrez's nape. i thank the lord that i was convent-bred because i would have been able to reach out and caress it if i wanted to.

but the thing that bothers me up to this very minute is this:

which literally outshone which: the mini mirrorballs (lots of it) suspended above our heads occasionally beamed with green laserlights, or tessa prieto-valdes?

2004-10-04T03:12:00.000+08:00

the fat complex

i am fat. i know i am fat. i am okay with that. is there an unwritten rule that says that fat people should feel bad about being fat? if there is, i am really resenting the fact that each and every friend that i have failed to tell me about it.

i just had a nice conversation with bamboozle. bamboozle misled me to think that he was sensible. he was able to carry an enjoyable conversation, alright. i actually had fun. but everything melted when he refused to believe that i was comfortable with myself.

bamboozle: sorry, i was thinking with my other head. the one down there.

me: it's ok. all men think with that head. i understand.

bamboozle: hah! you're one of the 6,000,000 who thinks that i'm a man.

me: why? are you a woman? (i was getting ready to leave.)

bamboozle: trapped in a man's body.

me: oh sorry. i don't go with that school of thought. i'm a man. i'm a man who happens to go for other men.

bamboozle: ooh sorry ateneo boytoy (he's not from ateneo and he loves to tease me simply because i am). im not that sophisticated. earth to venus. that's where you vain people are from.

me: i don't impose that on other people. that's how i see myself you dumdum. well, i am vain, alright. and im okay with that cos that keeps me looking gorgeous.

bamboozle: how much do you weigh again?

me: 190 lbs, give or take.

bamboozle: fat.

me: yes. i am fat.

bamboozle: i'm sorry, really. am i making you talk about something you don't want to talk about?

me: no, it's okay. i'm comfortable with myself. if i could only frame myself and hang it on a gallery wall, i would have already done so a long time ago. oops, i may have already, wait lemme check. (to those who know me, i'm sure you know that i was serious about this.)

bamboozle: it's just that i can't reconcile how you could be fat and vain at the same time.

me: it's easy. i've encountered zero difficulties so far.

bamboozle: i have a friend who's also from ateneo. he's just like your height and built. he used to be 240 lbs but he's now down to 160 lbs! he's so hot, but he's my friend.

me: 240?! (did i not just say that im 190? is 190 and 240 lbs considered to be similar nowadays? 240 lbs. is like barney!)

bamboozle: oh sorry if i gave the unneeded info just to make you feel bad about yourself. i really am.

me: why should that make me feel bad?

bamboozle: i'm really sorry.

me: i also know people who lost weight y'know. can we stop dwelling on my weight issue? i have friends to bother me with that.

bamboozle: i'm really sorry.

me: i'm sorry too. (i'm sorry for you. die.)

while i am aware that i have an eating disorder of some sort, it doesn't mean that i have issues with how i look. i believe that i have made enough friends--real ones, close ones--for me to be actually be bothered with such a confidence issue.

just the other night, my friends dragged me to a chinese restaurant (it was 2am) and we wolfed up everything we craved for. while we did so, i complained about having put on weight. it was fun. but i digress.

what really irks me is that bamboozle (he doesn't deserve his real name so i took the liberty of giving him one that perfectly suits him) is not an isolated case. i know that fat people are categorized as fat because they are expected to lose the "excess" baggage. (i am all for that. the few time i lose some weight--i seem to do so every summer, for reasons obscure to me-- i find it easier to move.) fat people are categorized as fat because they could look better.

a lot of fat people out there are ashamed for being fat. have you ever considered the possibility that perhaps they are ashamed because you expect them to be?

2004-09-20T04:49:00.000+08:00

for the love of god

for the love of god, i do not know what i am doing online. i made a pact with the high priestess of creative intelligence not to go online until i get my stories done. one of which is my fantasy story, for my fantasy writing class. the one thing fantastic (as in magical, ie highly improbable) about that class is me in it. and since i am, fantasy must be real.

for the love of god, im sick and tired of complaining about my life. i know it has got to be a good life. if i wasn't the one living it, id be envious of it. i'm sick and tired of thinking that i could be better.

i could be better.

*throw in the confetti please* now that i know that, i can move on. god, i admire myself already. i have the guts to love myself for what i am. as for today, i will stuff food down my throat and sleep the entire week. i will emerge the ugly ogre who loves himself to death. next week, i promise to be pretty. botox, lypo and rhynoplasty and all.

and oh. DAMN YOU BJ!!! DAMN YOU TO HELL. that did not sound right. DAMN YOU TO HEAVEN!!! (you would have enjoyed hell.)

now pass me those nefarious chocolates. i can still feel a rib.

2004-09-06T02:21:00.000+08:00

*pomp and circumstance*

taaan-taananantaaanan...tan-taaananaaanan....

The University of Blogging

Presents to
industrial firefly

An Honorary
Bachelor of
Color Bars

Majoring in
Bad Poetry

Signed
Dr. GoQuiz.com

Blogging Degree
From Go-Quiz.com

(these things are random, yes?) if this is the universe discouraging me from delving into poetry, then i would have appreciated it if it at least tried to be subtle.

but being the studious boy that i am, i obtained a second degree.

The University of Blogging

Presents to
charlie castelo

An Honorary
Bachelor of
Gossip

Majoring in
Survey Science

Signed
Dr. GoQuiz.com

Blogging Degree
From Go-Quiz.com

goody. now that i have graduated, it is now time to find myself a job. do alert me right away if you know of openings for bad poets and rumor mongers. thanks.

2004-09-03T02:35:00.000+08:00

i'm back.

now that another horrid cycle where the industrial firefly found himself sulking over matters of the heart has passed, it is once again time to reflect on worthy issues such as why does poverty exist and what should i wear for tomorrow's party. but really, was the sorry digression necessary? i almost thought that we magnanimous entities were exempted from such moments of utter indignation and self-inflicted debauchery; hearts are for weaklings. i was born with a pacemaker pumping concentrated cranberry juice into my arteries. anyway...

i just had the pleasure of sitting through that uber-sensible show they call debate--you know, that primal scream-reality show they pass off as, well, a debate. (actually, i was lying down on my stomach, with the stranger spread under my chin-this is a book, okay, not a person-its page remained unturned except during commercial breaks.) during my days as a high school student, i was made to believe that debates actually had rules and a certain discipline was maintained. i believe a. high used the british parliament? i forget. well, apparently, the vital mix of adulthood and controversial matters gives off the excuse to veer away from concepts such as order and logic.

i'm so relieved to be still sixteen. here's another instance which proves that my decision to be sixteen for the past five years is the right one.

the topic at hand: is sm management (which incidentally operated lion share of cinemas in the country) right in regulating itself from showing r-rated movies?

perhaps the weirdest argument was the unfounded allegation that this is again the elite trying to take control of what we should watch. oh, i'm really upset. they are depriving us of porn! ugh the audacity!

my reply would have been this simple (not that i imagined myself to be seated in the middle of that beautiful shitstorm generated by juliana palermo, rep. cayetano, soxy topacio, a priest, a moralist and THE manoling morato): sm is a private establishment. the management has the right to choose what to be shown there. their only mistake was that they made this new criterion public, but they could still have refused to show these bold movies at any rate. if you want to watch some girl spread her legs in an oversized projector screen, go to another moviehouse.

if we can't accept that, we may as well question drugstores who refuse to sell cocaine.

2004-08-26T04:41:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-08-23T01:36:00.000+08:00

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

2004-08-21T03:07:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-08-15T04:48:00.000+08:00

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

2004-08-13T00:35:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-08-11T16:42:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-08-06T01:32:00.000+08:00

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.)

2004-07-30T02:26:00.000+08:00

on my way home this morning, i got harassed by an *i-don't-even-know-what-the-fuck-he-is*.

what i really i wanted to share was my wonderful shopping experience but this fucked up thing happened. i was on my way home from some filming (my friend's doing this mtv for this band and he asked me if i could appear) and as i turned left to congressional this whatever-he-is just zoomed in on his motorbike. but there was a sensible distance. there was no way in hell i could've even passed through the trail of smoke his muffler left behind. but then i was shocked when he stopped his engine right there in the middle of the intersection and told me to park by the side of that dark road. i was stupid enough to do so. he claimed that i almost ran into him (which of course was so not true) and he flashed me that dilapidated DILG id.

so he works for DILG, i don't know what he was then but i should've called him a monster just for the heck of it.

for obscure, unspecified and inconsistent reasons, he kept on threatening me that he'll bring me to camp caringal (tough luck, i'm the one with the car, he's only in a motorcycle). in the first place "almost" does not constitute an offense and maybe my fault is that i left him unharmed. he got my mobile number, my landline, my address, my dad's work (he's a colonel, i said--which was true, he's an army doctor and he really is a colonel--but that revelation did not seem to have the desired effect on mr. DILG), my dad's mobile (which i did not give), my course, my id number and geesh even the name of my academic adviser. (sorry sir j. neil!) then he asked me to stick my tongue out.

mystery goon: ilabas mo dila mo.

(i stick my tongue out.)

mystery goon: bakit maputi? nakagamit ka ba?

me: umm...what do you mean?

mystery goon: drugs. namumutla yung dila mo.

me: no! (i open the light and stick my tongue out again.)

the fuck. me, drugs? does he think that i'd be this stunningly good-looking if i were high? no honestly, it's a good thing i truly was clean at that time. not even a drop of alcohol. and the most ironic thing is that he reeked of cheap beer. i don't know. i had the urge to come forward as a brave jerk, but the thing is i didn't know if he had a gun. my dad said i shouldn't have stopped. besides the ones i've already said, he asked me many many more questions.

very weird.

i was actually surprised he left the part where he was going to ask me if i had a pet. i was ready to say that i didn't have one and if he just sends me his resume maybe he could apply. but i answer the useless questions in my typical hurried, irritated manner because i did not see the point. he'd come back with "galit ka" and i'd say "of course not" in the sweetest way i could muster. sweetest way. i wanted to puke, and i wanted to puke on him specifically. all the while, i was hoping for carlos agassi to pop out from the darkness and tell me "na-victim ka."

but carlos agassi did not appear. i sound brave and unaffected but it was really scary. i'm still scared right now--he has my contacts and where i live. i'm scared that he might blackmail me or stalk me, ask for money or whatever. i hope he really gets run over by a ten-wheeler transporting gravel and "panambak." nothing glamorous like a car. it should be a ten-wheeler transporting dirt. i do hope karma takes care of him, and make sure he goes straight to hell where he belongs.

because his was a really bizarre pick-up line.

2004-07-26T02:00:00.000+08:00

the politics of friendship (a lament in multiple parts)

a mental condition waiting to happen

one thing about blogging is that it totally eradicates the six masks as articulated by (name of philosopher i cannot recall as of the moment). everyone would be able to read what's written and same as in friendster, one's image would be all muddled up in the process.

yes, it is true that just like most (if not all) people, charlie switches to different modes of operation depending on the company he's with, no matter how subtle these differences may be. roughly, the major factions constituting charlie's delusional empire would be: the luckies, happy bench (sub-group: levi co.), craft peeps (sub-groups: heights and ph143), course friends and the bestfriend (who is in a league of his own. hahaha).

his swooning fans did not make the cut.

it is a miracle how he has managed to be free from multiple-personalities disorder up to this day although his lapses in grammar and his fickle-mindedness could be indications. wait, now that he's thinking about it, maybe he'd be better off with such a disorder. the most tricky part, however, is balancing these groups. time is the factor here, not comfort, preference or anything else. in fact, he's learned the art of being non-committal, ditching the first to make yaya policy since he had observed that the more organized groups usually plan ahead of the others placing certain groups of equal importance to the disadvantage.

last night, charlie caught a glimpse of the life he had left behind in ateneo.

last saturday, charlie attended a happy bench party. perhaps one thing he regrets about his senior year would be having had missed hanging out with them as much as in the previous years in exchange for the publications room. in fact, he never got to go to any of the out-of-town excurtions--he missed tugegarao, quezon and at least 2 other trips and had to content himself with anecdotes and stories--because he had to do stuff for heights. to some level, his friends resented this. this is a point taken against him up to this very day. but he had no choice. of course he doesn't regret choosing heights most of the time because this was work he had committed himself to. and the people in heights were cool too. what he actually resents is the fact that he was made to choose. ( i should stop explaining for him now, yes?)

it is not seldom at all that happy bench had parties like these, and their sheer volume would guarantee instant good turn-out time after time after time. to the outsider, happy bench would appear superficial. they would break into small groups giving the impression that they were not tight and solid. (pretty much like a poem heights would chuck out during a delibs session.) yet they were all social butterflies and if one would be observant enough, one would notice that they would do round-robins. before the booze would run out (which rarely happens anyway), they all would have already snooped into each others' latest installments of deep dark secrets. it's a phenomenon, actually. and charlie wishes that that they could stay like this forever.

but achieving forever is a tall order, considering how much lechon, kare-kare and other "edible death" (as levi would call these sinful food) he wolfed up. the merlot, cheap dolce vino, gold schlagger, beer and alcoholic whatnots did not help either--he was hoping to pass out before he got to eat too much, which happened not, apparently.

it's funny how certain issues should arise years after they should have mattered.

in a sea of good people (whom charlie all loves) such as this, there's a certain sub-group he was naturally most akin to. for intents and purposes, we shall call them g., silver and levi. charlie has been good friends with g. and levi since high school, while g. and silver have been together for like four years or even more. as a group, they've been through a lot although the last time they (the lovers excluded) had been in a real fight amongst themselves would be back in high school.

of course sometimes it happens that charlie gets pissed with any of them. that is but normal, is it not? but they would just somehow snap back to the way things usually were before anything major or apparent and irreversible happened. at least in charlie's case, he had not harbored any pent up feelings or ill opinion regarding these dear people. likewise, he's pretty much sure that neither had they.

they pretend to be a matured bunch, you see. in reality, as diverse as they are, perhaps the only noticeable thing they had in common is that they were all fashionably spoiled in accord to their respective means. ((g. and silver: yes, we are all spoiled. no arguments.)) and this, he thought, bound them together: unadulterated them. they needed not pretend that they were friends for any reason. they bothered not find out anything else they had in common except for the ones that just blatantly manifest. they were simply, unavoidably, naturally tight.

so they all went to the happy bench party together, stylishly in levi's "carnival red" jag which he named "alanis" (hahahaha). before they even arrived at the scene, there'd been a cold war brewing between the lovers. stupid charlie did not take this seriously. no cautions were implemented; no special considerations and efforts at damage control was ensued from charlie's part.

charlie (to g.): pahawak ng yosi.

g.: lagi mo nalang ako ginagawang alalay.

charlie: sure don't mention it. (not verbatim, but pretty much the same thought.)

(g. falls silent.)

charlie: i'll be important someday. get used to it.

levi: so your really affirming it. ginagawa mo syang alalay.

(charlie doesn't say anything. g. tries to appease silver.)

g.: may i borrow the keys, levi? i have to get something from the car.

charlie: oh and get the book i brought for jong while you're at it.

(g. smirks. he leaves with silver. a million years pass and they don't come back.)

soon, levi and charlie found themselves following the two. levi was instantly let inside the car. (it's his anyway. i don't think g. had much of a choice.) charlie, however, was left out for a good minute under the drizzle. (he was wearing a water-sensitive top.)

charlie: open the door.

silver: ayaw ka papasukin ni g.

charlie: let me in godamit!

the air was thick inside the parked jag. they left the party in lieu of a meeting reminiscent of high school days. back then, they would cheesily call it a bull session, and it had last been done before they marched to pomp and circumstance some four years ago (not the latest time they had).

silver: galit talaga sa'yo si g.

charlie: as in? (laughs)

silver: seryoso.

charlie: o, baket naman?

g.: (conversation lapsed) feeling ko mababa tingin mo sakin.

charlie: (is dumbfounded. he laughs again.) ano?! ano ka ba?

g.: nung una masaya na ko na hindi nyo pinapansin yung pagkakaiba ng social standing natin...

charlie: whatever! ano ka ba! why would you pay attention to such petty details?! do you not notice the disparity between levi and i?! (charlie taps on the jag's nice leather seat to illustrate his point. the three do not seem to get this.) and besides, i'm the one who's jobless!

g.: akala mo ba hindi ko napapansin na sa school iba yung trato mo pag magkakasama tayo sa labas?

charlie: well, ako di ko napapansin. hello! i'm really just like this. diba, levi, when i meet up with you in school i'm also always late, or on-the-go?!

levi: leave me out of this.

charlie: (to g.) well that's not true.

silver: g. confided me that matagal na. you were classmates under dr. totanes but na-sad sya na you didn't even talk to him. (later on charlie would find out that g. also expressed this disdain to levi, who advised him to talk to charlie about this. but. g. chose to keep his mouth shut.)

charlie: hello we were like a million rows apart.

silver: if it were levi or louis or anyone else, they would've talked to him kahit once.

charlie: i'm always late and you're always usually the first one to leave. you'd have me stand up in the middle of the class just to say hi? okay fine. sorry. (still laughing.) oh stop this, you know me, i never am serious! that's why i love being with you guys, i could afford never to be. i could just stop caring and i could stop being cautious with what i say. tact is reserved for politics. what we have does not involve politics. (again, not verbatim. this version sounds so less cheesy.)

afterthought

and a big reason why i am posting this in behalf of charlie is because he is hoping that g. would get to read this somehow. charlie was forgiven that night, both for the things he did that night and for those he had done before. but perhaps the only way charlie could say sorry to g. in the most appropriate manner is through a venue as public as where he has offended him in the first place. the blog is not ateneo, but traces of ateneo lie wherever charlie spills his thoughts.

to g. (you know who you are): there is no politics between charlie and you. you are simply two individuals experiencing the world together, though sick or eutopic it might sound.

of course this does not mean that there is politics in any of the other platonic relations charlie keeps, or more so declares. he would not have called it friendship if so. this sets these liaisons apart from any other ones he may term otherwise.

(disclaimer: this hasn't been proofread properly)

2004-07-23T02:15:00.000+08:00

the angel of the cross comes home

the world is make-believe.

everything we know of, we think we don't know of, we see, taste, or feel all do not exist.  and here would lie the part of an invented concrete experience to animate this abstraction.

but nothing personal shall follow.

the filipino captive in iraq has been freed. this third world nation is rejoicing. teenagers who finally muster the guts to break their curfews rejoice pretty much for the same reasons. i am happy one life was saved. i am sad that the rest of the world was not spared. i am happy we were able to make a political statement. i am sad that we shall soon face political complications, possibly incarnating in economic manifestations.   we are one as a nation. now, let us watch as the terrorists take advantage of this weakness.

nobody won. nobody ever wins. this is proof enough.

the world is make-believe.

2004-07-06T00:26:00.000+08:00

i discourage you to read this. this is a self-serving therapy session disguised as a blog entry.

"...i don't think you know me. i don't think even i know me. if you ask me who i am, i'd probably say 'when?' we die every moment. we always change." --dr. jb schriever

my saturday morning found me busy trailing away from the rather heavy lecture. i cannot even begin to describe how weird it was to be discussing how one man mourned (or still mourn) for his friends who have passed away before he does. (apparently, he is still alive) according to him, every friendship is built upon the presupposition that one will go before the other. and mourning is actually a reflexive thing. it's letting the world into one's relationship with someone, and that someone has left this world and will now only be in this world through that of his self in the one mourning.

well, who ever said that friendship is a simple thing.

but i digress. last saturday was a rather painful day. its nothing dramatic or anything. its just that i felt that i just wanted to reorganize my life a little. i have been sensitive lately and every little thing around me seems to be able to catalyze emotional reactions from me. i will not be ashamed that the ultimate trigger that finally caused me to fall from my rather lofty sense of self is the movie spiderman. (in a previous post, i have already confessed how film has strange effect on me.) i am not ashamed because the film inspired me. anything would have inspired me, and people get inspirations from the simplest (and cheesiest things) but perhaps the thing that should be ashamed about is not being inspired at all.

i didn't know where to start, and i didn't know where i wanted to go. i just felt that i was doing everything wrong at that point and that doing everything in another way could only possibly be a better way. MY LIFE IS A MOVIE. and one thing i realized is that it has no substantial solo scenes. i have associated the meaning of enjoyment with interaction. i have always paused for a while and thought that i wish (and in fact know) that things should be better. afterwards, i always choose to drown that moment with booze. i have always realized that my life is a blah. and continue to live it like so.

maybe we all get this sometimes. as human beings in this generation, most of us are bound to suffer from the curse of discontentment. and it is actually this discontentment that keeps us walking around in circles. but its actually time to walk towards somewhere.

i lied, i am not sixteen, i am twenty-two. and i have to get somewhere before i die.

everything i have said above is vague. in fact, i have acknowledged in the first line that this is nothing but a bunch of self-serving run-on sentences that seem to serve as nothing but as mental masturbation. and i apologize for having you read all that, if ever you still are reading up to this point. i chose to conceal too many details that any prospect of this entry to pass any formalist reading is as far as mars is to the galaxy nebula. but i continue to yap:

some hours before i typed this, i got to talk to javs.

javs: you know it's too late. i know you too well.

charlie: the human spirit does not thrive on success but on trying.

perhaps its too late and i am forever stuck to live this way: a twenty-two year old who does not know what it is that he truly wants in life. i will probably forever scrimp on my parents' dwindling estate and die not having anything to speak for. i don't take it against him that he thinks that its too late for me to change the way i live my life, cos if it was me whom i was talking to, and if i also knew myself the way he knew me, i'd probably say the same. but what came out of my mouth in response shocked me. i don't know where the hell i got that, or how the fuck i figured that out. i guess i am hoping.

if i die every moment i am hoping that i keep on reincarnating into a better version.

2004-06-28T01:43:00.000+08:00

peter pan travels through time too

2004-06-25T02:39:00.000+08:00

peter pan travels through time too

like what i have said, when everything seems to be going steady, you will create problems for yourself.

you choose your own bat, and love is usually the weapon of choice. you whack yourself on the head...an impact so great not even a keg of red horse would have smashed you as much. you say the wrong things (and you find yourself to be the only one talking), you over-share, you extend interaction to an alarmingly pathetic degree and you wallow by yourself afterwards, cursing your own existence to the high heavens.

but an alternative weapon would be nostalgia. nostalgia plus trouble-shooting. you stand back, squint at yourself and scrutinize things you know you will never be able to change anymore anyway. but you put your life on a pause all the same. you put off your jacques derrida reading time and lie on your back, stare at the ceiling and let your mind drift to creases of a so-called past. "i used to be...," "how could have i been so...," "what the fuck happened...?!"

this, i think, is a form of time travel. i remember madeleine l'engle's a wrinkle in time and the concept of tesseract. the tesseract is actually another interpretation of hyperspace--you fold space and walk right through it. and that's what you basically do with time when you wallow on daydreams in the middle of an academic war. you fold time and walk right through it. time is movement through space, as sci10 had sufficiently nagged me into believing, and when you forego of all the things you could have accomplished in a certain span of time, it's as good as walking right through time itself, with only that empty fold to look back to.

and in the exact instance you wake up, when you stare blankly at your readings with its pages unturned, you realize that you have done an about-face to take a peak backwards in your life. you stare at that wrinkle in time, that small crack of non-productivity which you will hide behind the word "reflection"... and that's when you'll know:

"oh my god, i'm not growing."

2004-06-23T00:31:00.000+08:00

behold, testament of the friendship between levi and i.

he comes home from new york, some oceans and continents away, yet still manages to find and bring home to me an artifact that's so hopelessly me. as a tribute, i had hung this star (original from broadway, he says. which i don't really doubt because he forgot to take the price tag off. hahaha) on my bedroom door a la diva's dressing room.

mommy: where'd you get the thing hanging outside your door?

me: levi gave it to me as pasalubong from new york. nice noh!?

mommy: eh why does it say "queen?"

me: mommy! it's a term! have you heard anyone say "drama king!?"

sometimes i pity my mom for being so naive. but i envy her because of that too. on the other hand, i really love myself for being as witty as hell and for always coming up with the silliest of excuses enough to make me doubt my own wit.

***

when you're twenty-two and you have not experienced being in a relationship yet, you wouldn't help but question yourself. (of course i'm talking about a friend here--i am clearly sixteen years old, as i have been for six years now.) and when you have not been in a relationship yet by the time you'd graduated college, there is nothing left for you to do but write about it in your blog, as if asking those who might get to read it to set you up, godamnit!

i have always said that i am not interested in the l word. which is true, actually. but here, i succumb to the danger of writing as if i do for lack of a better topic to write about. i have observed that the vicious cycle has always been like that. pining for someone has never been so much about truly needing something. it never felt more of a primordial need than a need constructed either by hollywood, hallmark, gift gate or blue magik. and when you have no problems at all, you create one for yourself: you fall in love. then again, that's not me. i'm talking about my twenty-two year old friend who thinks he's falling for another jerk. heaven help him please.

2004-06-12T10:55:00.000+08:00

a new season has begun

indeed it pays to know history a little more. had i just memorized the dates shoved up my arse when i was still in grade school, then i would probably know that today is independence day and i wouldn't have woken bloody early to troop to an empty campus.

today was supposed to be my first day of class with miss schriever (the name amuses me so much i had to make an excuse to post it.). european literature. but today, technically speaking, should have been my second day in grad school. last tuesday, i attended science fiction and fantasy fiction writing workshop with no substantial background in the mode/genre. sticking to the customs of first sessions, mr. flores asked all of us to introduce ourselves and give our background in science fiction and fantasy. whilst my classmates marveled at c.s. lewis, ray bradbury and madeleine l'engle, as testament to my life as a semi-ditz, this is what i had to say:

me: i'm charlie. i don't really have a strong background in this mode or genre, and i must admit that most influences that i have in sci-fi and fantasy come from pop-cultural sources. ((in other words, hollywood. but of course i had to find a more erudite way to say this.)) ummm...i've read harry potter...

mr. flores: the latest one?

me: oh, all five books! ((con mucho enthusiasm, the words were so perky and solid, they felt like a badge of honor which i wore with my chest thrusted forward. but i realized that this was not half as impressive as an imbecile balancing an egg on his open palm, so much to my mortification, my mouth kept on yapping...)) but my friends have been, for a long time, egging me to read neil gaiman. and oh, i have the tolkien books but i haven't read them yet. one of these days, i will.

fabulous. my last statement really completed it. i felt icy, dart-glances launch towards my direction. not only have i presented how elementary my reading list is, but i have also successfully drawn attention to what i am missing out. to what i deprive myself of. for obvious reasons, i resolved to remain silent during the next three hours.

aside from my being an academic klutz, the state university has also given me a fresh view on how i really fare in this world.

i am
alone
.

there. i have never been so poetic in my life, and although the image presented is not as subtle as good poetry customarily comes with, i feel that the line cuts and wording just about captures the foolishness this insight arises from. don't get me wrong, please. i am so overwhelmingly happy for having been allowed this chance to work on my writing skills. i may not want to be a writer, but i find myself writing anyway. so i just want to make it right.

but my reasons, no matter how defensive, stupid or (dare i say) valiant they may be, do not buffer the circumstance at hand: this is the first time i have ever been new in school (prep school excluded). i am a bonafide freshman in this place. lost. lonely. clueless. for hours, i stand in front of the bulletin boards, letting my gaze crawl slowly across the clutter of papers. "wanted male boarder." "nice korean here wanting to make friend." yes, i pretend to be reading the announcements because i have nothing else to do while waiting for my class. (apparently, according to a foreign classmate, UP teachers are notorious for being late. we were waiting for thirty minutes then, and in my building, benches have apparently been outdated. who needs a bench if you have a floor?! and he goes on to saying that *some teacher* is the worst. apparently, thirty minutes is not worst.)

but this morning saw a different scene. i needed not to pretend to be reading the announcements because of a variety of reasons:
1) there was no one there. an activity was not necessary to shield myself from appearing to be alone.
2) i need not be there. today is a bloody holiday and i can't forgive myself for not knowing this.
3) my brain was just fried.

so now, im here in holiday inn, robbing internet time.

wishing this country happy independence day, and at the same time wishing myself for the day i become independent from all these "new boy in school" hang-ups.

2004-06-12T10:32:00.000+08:00

* * *

okay i just took the quiz for kicks and the result was too smashing for me not to post it.

Am I cool or uncool? [CLICK]

You are Super-Cool!

Woah! Step back - the future's so bright for you it's blinding me! You are the coolest of the cool. Everyone looks up to you as the benchmark for being coooool. The fonze was your grandfather. Any cooler and you'd freeze! WOO it's chilly in here.

Cool quizzes at Go-Quiz.com

then again, the very fact that i took it is a proof otherwise... hahahaha

2004-06-09T12:36:00.000+08:00

now showing: charlie, the movie

whenever i see a movie (particularly one that i end up liking), one: i am sure to watch it over and over, and two: the pangs of deep regret always set in. it's a weird kind of regert. stupid, actually. i look back upon the story of my life and always tell myself "fire the goddam scriptwriter!"

humiliating as it is, especially considering that i have sufficient background in media studies to actually realize that i keep on falling into media tools, i should admit that i always end up wishing that i was IN the movie. not as an actor, but as a character. and it does not end with wishing. true enough, i spend hours and hours staring into space, living fantastic scenes, in which i am a primemover, in my silly little mind. sometimes, i think i'm going bonkers, yet i always indulge my eccentricity in spite.

life is a movie. my life is one long movie not specific to any genre. but they say that movies are, in reality, trailers with hours of fillers. so i guess my life is not exempted from this.

the purpose of this journal, i guess, is for me to be able to plot down the trailers in my movie. and if my life is a teen movie, i just had that classic "new in school" scene yesterday, which could be captured by a lot of words save for fantastic. (which i will write about after i attend the first meeting of my other class.)

in this lifetime, i have been a vampire, a wizard, a warrior, a prince, a rockstar and a movie idol, among those oh-so-close-to-real life fantasies. (such as living in "clueless." hahahaha) but through it all, i have remained to be empress of my silly little universe, who sits here in the north eastern chamber of the castelo castle typing all these imperial ramblings.

i feel like shit

2004-05-29T02:32:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-05-23T23:52:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-05-22T23:03:00.000+08:00

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

2004-05-14T04:07:00.000+08:00

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

2004-05-13T18:26:00.000+08:00

nyahahahaha

yes, this is one one of those quizzes.

Which Random Image are you?
Name:
Age:
Favorite Color
You are:

This QuickKwiz by Reaper - Taken 34190 Times.

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

2004-05-13T01:14:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-05-05T01:49:00.000+08:00

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.

2004-05-02T01:42:00.000+08:00

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.

to a golden crisp

2004-04-23T01:27:00.000+08:00

sun-roasted charlie

last monday i dashed to the beach. i fell asleep under the noon sun for a good two hours. now im red as hell. it is more often the case that we find out what we should not be doing after doing them... and the consequences will always be of first hand-calibre.

some weeks before i left the publications room, before i gave my key to my succesor, i posted a list on my staff's corkboard. a summary of all the mistakes i have done during my stay in college, a summary of things i am bound to repeat in a bigger scale:

THINGS IVE LEARNED IN COLLEGE

I've learned that you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is stalk them and hope they panic and give in.

I've learned that no matter how much I care, some people are just assholes.

I've learned that it takes years to build up trust, and it only takes suspicion, not proof, to destroy it.

I've learned that you can get by on charm for about fifteen minutes. After that, you'd better have a big weenie or huge boobs.

I've learned that you shouldn't compare yourself to others - they are more screwed up than you think.

I've learned that you can keep puking long after you think you're finished.

I've learned that we are responsible for what we do, unless we are celebrities.

I've learned that regardless of how hot and steamy a relationship is at first, the passion fades, and there had better be a lot of money to take its place.

I've learned that we don't have to ditch bad friends, because their dysfunction makes us feel better about ourselves.

I've learned that the people you care most about in life are taken from you too soon and all the less important ones just never go away.

I've learned to say "Fuck'em if they can't take a joke" in 6 languages.

I’ve learned that Theology, the study of God, is hell on earth.

I’ve learned that you could always screw your orals as long as you have the personality to captivate your teacher, and the clothes to compensate for you being a D student.

I’ve learned that it’s actually easy to please everybody, and impossible to please yourself.

TOUGH LUCK. What’s more is that I just copied and pasted this shit (except for the last three, which are original statements, and to my horror are drawn from personal experiences.) I HOPE U MAKE MORE OF YOUR COLLEGE YEARS THAN I HAVE.

and as john mayer said "welcome to the real world, she said to me, condescendingly...take your seat, take your life, plot it out in black and white."

i would have replied: "i have been in the real world, huny. it sucks here as much as it does there. u think its harder there because the problems are bigger; then again you've just grown too big to notice how small i am here and how my small problems knock me off my feet."

the tale of the s-2pid love

2004-04-11T18:29:00.000+08:00

the tale of the s-2pid love

what better way to spend the most boring weekend of the year but in the most boring place on earth: the hot wilderness of poblacion, san isidro, nueva ecija. i tell you, the heat translates to vision. you know, when your vision gets distorted and all?

it was black saturday. christ was dead. for lack of things to do (throwing sordid stares at the old portraits was getting lame, and my weird cousins sleep at night and wake up during the day--can you imagine???), i indulged and accepted the son of our katiwala's invitation to get drunk somewhere. that's when my night turned into a lino brocka movie.

(at this point, i deviate from my usual english banter sapagkat sadyang mas babagay ang filipino sa adventure na to.)

At iyon na nga. bigla ko na lamang nakita ang aking sariling binabatgas ang gilid ng highway. maalikabok, mainit ang hangin at madilim. malayo-layo din ang lugar. siguro para akong naglakad mula gale hanggang shang. "lampas lang ng konti sa pangalawang Caltex, sa tapat ng Flying-V," sabi nga ni k. (ang anak ng katiwala. kasama din namin yung anak ng isa pa naming katiwala na tatawgin ko namang j)

gusto kong isipin nyo to: isang mala-bahay kubo pero lupa ang sahig. sa may bintana may mga kumukutikutitap na pulang krismas lights na korteng bulaklak. bukod doon at sa higanteng videoke machine, wla nang ibang pinanggagalingan ng ilaw. Nabanggit na rin lang ang videoke machine, syempre ano pa nga bang tugtog ang sinasabayan ng isang probinsyanang pokpok kundi "paint my love." at gaya nga ng sabi ng pulang dingding sa entrada: welcome: s-2pid love resto and videoke.

naupo na kami ni k, nilatagan ng maliit na tansong balde yung mesa. tiningnan ko: may lamang hielo. sumunod ang mga pale pilsen. sing init ng laway. kaya pala laging nagbibigay ng hielo. huling dumating ang mga baso.

si j, dumeretso sa likod ng kaha at nanligaw. mamaya, malalaman kong sinagot na sya. karay-karay ang isang karton na galing sa ream ng yosi, may nakasulat na "i love you. ingat." galing kay anna joy. gusto kong sabihin kay j na propesyon ni anna joy ang magpaligaw. pero kilig na kilig ang mokong, kaya nakisakay nalang ako.

itutuloy...
(syet ang hirap managalog!!!)

el pasyon de charlie castelo

2004-04-08T00:31:00.000+08:00

el pasyon de charlie castelo

we are once again in the middle of the most boring week of the year and i do not know if i should be thankful for being gifted with neighbors who could easily claim for the embodiement of irony.

a brief background about them: they used to own a stripjoint along quezon avenue. their shack houses a good assortment of characters: three campy transvestites who come home so early in the morning (the sound of cab doors swinging shut and of mixed drunken voices of men and gays always succeed in waking me up), the village teen skank, the village junior teen skank-slash psychpath, and a pair of disturbed (and disturbing) children (one of which is an eleven year old boy who drives a minivan around the village). how do i know all these? well, if our househelp supply us all these info, i am just really afraid what vital information about us they supply our neighbores with.

at this point, you must be wondering where the irony lies. well, it has been their tradition, to my horror and utter regret, to hold a pasyon in their garage every holy week. my room is just right along the street we share with them and two out of three of my windows are strategically placed along this wall.

perfect.

for three straight days or so, i got drowned in the bittersweet harmonization of possibly grandmothers with loose dentures, scouring to give me a taste of how christ suffered by not just singing the story, but by actually internalizing it. yes, one could almost feel the lashes through their voices, and all these amplified a million times by what must have been the sound system they used to have in their strip joint.

i choose to dwell on this. the pasyon is a very interesting custom, yes. but what i'm really wondering about is why they choose to involve the microphone, the loudspeakers, or the megaphone? is this the insatiable thirst for mission work? to spread the good news farther, approximately up to until where the soundwaves could bring it? i don't think so.

a writer kept on saying that everybody wants to get into showbusiness. it is therefore my theory that everyone who could not (all millions of them) create a show for themselves. the pasyon is one such show. given this, and since i am such a catholic enthusiast, next year, i will be offering my production design/ events organizing services to my neighbors. pasyon 2005 will be the grandmother of all events, just watch out for the press release and the cd launching.

2004-03-31T20:20:00.000+08:00

my life starts here, where everything I've been doing the past year ends:

free books, free food, free beer...

FREE CHARLIE.

see you there.

this one is dedicated to all those who matter

2004-03-28T21:53:00.000+08:00

an overdue speech

I was originally writing a creative, insightful, deeper-meaning-of-life kind of shit introduction for this post until I decided that this post has no deeper meaning anyway. For once, I would like to let go of metaphors and write the way any normal ditz would write.

For that is how I chose to be. During my stay in college, I chose to prioritize what to wear tomorrow over finding out if there's anything due. True, I look back and semikindasorta regret not even trying. I see my friends with honors and lie to myself that I could've had honors too if i just wanted to. As much as I don't think I'm innately dumb, I chose to be dumb. And when wonderful things happen to me accidentally, I feel even dumber than how I chose to be. You see, even as a dumb person, I've had my shining moments.

Anyway, so the point is that my batchmates decided to throw a couple of titles at me before we completely left loyola schools. CommBatch King, CommBatch Queen and Batch Queen to name three. Up to now, I still don't know how to take these...is it normal for me to be flattered? Were they mocking me? How do I react when people greet me? Is this for real? Am I real? Who am I, am I the person I think I am, or am I the person they think I am? Why me?

I go back to CommRoast, to which I really owe a lot of talking. When I was named the commking and queen I was not able to give a speech. While I was driving out of the parking lot, I felt like an ingrate not even thanking them or not even giving the expected mushy "i will miss this place" speech. I just stood there and said "well, I hope that we'd all have work by next year" and "di pa naman tayo mamatay diba, we're just graduating." When the spotlight turns to me, I always end up saying the wrong things. I swear. (A week later during blueroast, i will grab the microphone from the emcee and shout to the entire batch "maraming salamat at hanggang sa huling pagkakataon binabastos nyo pa rin ako.")

But as I drove down Katipunan Avenue, I realized that I am proud of the comm majors. (I exclude myself for reasons I would have to discuss another time.) They are so imperfect that it feels real just by being with them. And they own up to these imperfections. Most of all, they don't measure their greatness by how hard their workload is, but by how fun they make hell be. And I should not be flattered that I was made commRoyalty. I should be flattered because they consider me as one of them.

I'm sorry if this post turned out to be sappy, but it did because it is dedicated to those who matter. To those who made me feel that I matter. I am their king and queen after all.

(I would have been so contented with these titles--batch queen is just gravy.)

a lengthy, desperate and foolishly honest cover letter stapled to a one-page resume

2004-03-26T02:41:00.000+08:00

a lengthy, desperate and foolishly honest cover letter stapled to a one-page resume

I am a fresh graduate of AB Communication, and I am not afraid to admit that I have marched down the stage with enthusiasm and optimism for what I could do for the entertainment industry. Now that it is time for me to seek what it is I am called to do, I hope to find it in your company.

But as much as I have for a long time been looking forward to graduating, I actually have dreaded it just as much. Not only have friends from earlier batches shown me how hard job-hunting is by solving it through exporting their skills to the first world, but also in spite of my weakness in figures and numbers, statistics have shown me how highly probable it is that I will be sending cover letters like these forever without so much as a phone call asking for an interview in return. I hope you give me a call—I have graduated; however I have only graduated. I have no medals nor Latin titles to accompany my diploma. Although I believe that I do possess the brains to have done as well, I have nothing to show for it. The ratings on bad luck and inescapable circumstances which led to average marks do not appear on the transcript.

Before I sent you my resume, I was just about to solve this fear by getting an MA. People tell me that a college degree is not as competitive anymore. It will help me in entry level, but prospects of any form of promotion will be hazy without it, they say. But I figured that postponing the inevitable is futile. I could earn myself an MA and still have trouble convincing you to accept me into the company. Or I could get accepted but then I would have to face the egotistic struggle prevalent to most who have worked all their lives to earn academic reassurances. I am talking about having to deal with the feeling of over qualification. This resonates in the minds of those who were given a hard time in school and therefore feels highly of themselves when they overcome the struggle. Optimism is a good trait to maintain, however expectations of coming immediately into world-changing positions is a lethal drawback to this. It is a well-earned feeling; however, it does not help much in settling in the world of job-related stress. So now I am taking my chances by passing my resumé.

Insofar as what I could offer your company, I believe that my strength lies in creatives. I have always dreamt of working on-cam and have taken up classes in performance. I have also always been inclined to creative writing. In fact, I have earned a fellowship to a local workshop and have successfully pursued a minor in English Literature. I am also very much involved with the official university folio as writer, faux editor and manager. My involvement in the folio also exposed me to managing events which I have slowly learned and grown to love. I can only cross my fingers that you are willing to accept someone who cannot work accounting sheets, much more somebody without three years of experience.

I have chosen to study what it is that I love to do and now I have to pay the price by not expecting a stout starting salary, if ever I will be accepted. I do not posses the skills required for a kick-ass cut-throat arena reserved for corporate executives. I am an incidental artist preparing to be a starving one. And even starving artists need jobs.

Thank you very much for taking time in reading my letter. I am looking forward to your favorable response. (Please give me a job because I don’t want to leave this country just to be able to find one.)

i huff and i puff...

2004-03-19T04:37:00.000+08:00

i huff and i puff...

I smoke a pack a day. A humble statistic, compared to those who have decided that they will strive to be industrial chimneys. (Especially compared to those who are succeeding in this.) I’m not one of these people. I simply do not strive to be anything. I don’t strive at all. “Strive” is a verb invented for people who have nothing else to do in life. But still, I smoke a pack a day.

Should I be bothered? Maybe I should, but not by the fact that I destroy my lungs. We are all headed for physical destruction anyway. It’s a matter of choosing our bats. Some people prefer to take up BS Physics, others completely ignore the break pedal while cruising down the street, there are some who starve themselves to death; others wrap themselves up with the wrong apparel. Me? I stuff my alveoli.

I should be bothered because I have to smoke after meals, before meals, before sleeping, when I wake up, before working out (yes, I tried going to the gym), after playing a sport, before playing a sport, after a test, before classes and pretty much before and after any other verb I can think of. Just goes to show I’m not good in multitasking.

where am i going???

2004-03-15T17:25:00.000+08:00

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.

altitude

2004-03-13T02:51:00.000+08:00

altitude

Perhaps, escaping is the best thing ever invented by man. That's why I'm here: miles away from Manila, from home (which I will soon need to somehow find a way to inhabit without being a financial burden to my parents), from ADMU (and the PubRoom, heaven forbid--all the work i left!!!) and from everything else that's filled my planner for the past year. Right now i'm technically unemployed, but I have agreed with my multiple selves that I will have to worry about that after marching up the stage to pomp and circumstance. Time does stop when cavorting on steep terrain, with good friends no less.

c'mon bite me

2004-03-05T03:24:00.000+08:00

c'mon bite me

To tell the truth, i don't even get the point of putting this up. Aware of the danger of summing my life up, and coming out as just another spoiled boy ranting publicly, I just went on and decided that since my emotional baggage has been becoming quite too heavy to kick around (yes, if i were to create a figure of speech pertaining to how i manage my emotional baggage, 'carrying' would be an utter lie, and i don't feel like lying), i may as well give emotional vampires something to feed on. Which would perfectly turn me into an emotional vampire too. But aren't we all? Remind me to write a paper on that.