Epilogue

People do not end. Neither do relationships. Time changes us all.

"I had a chance for a happy ending once... Love is all a matter of timing. It's no good meeting the right person too soon or too late. If I'd live in another time or place... my story might have had a different ending."

-- Chow Mo-wan

There are no ends but rather changes

This space has been quite comforting for me but, perhaps, it's time to move on. I've always had a terrible habit of deleting online journals after I'm done with them. Discarding all trace of whatever thoughts and brain farts I've had as trash. For a new resolution, though, I will be keeping this one for posterity's sake. Hopefully some chemically fucked up and sexually confused boy might find comfort in these posts someday.

I'm not done with the Illustrados yet. This space has only given me the courage and opportunity to start writing all those characters that have long resided in my head. There is so much more to be told about them. So many other characters that has yet to be introduced. The truth about Adrian's death has to be revealed. He didn't kill himself. No man (or woman) killed him either. It happened by a very unfortunate chance, a hamartia brought about by a sudden change of heart. Maybe someday, I will start a blog solely dedicated to them, when I've managed to piece out their emotions and sorted their sordid lives. Perhaps, also mine.

For the meantime, I'll be keeping another space with much lighter baggages elsewhere.

A digression

The two of them, barefoot, facing each other, sat on their legs. They were having an orgasmic serving of Salmon Cheese Roll at a quaint Japanese restaurant along Arnaiz Avenue. The sensational dish seemed to shoot out wads of creamy melted blue cheese into their tongues with each grind of their jaws, and it was just for appetizers. They were both speechless for a while, relishing on the flavor of the delectable dairy that enveloped the seafood sushi being savored by their taste buds. Each bite was sending out thousands of different sensations from the synapses on their tongues to the neurons on their brains. Each current seemed to weaken their defenses. They looked at each other sternly as they tried to hold themselves together, trying to read the other's mind while surveying the countenance of the person in front.

"So how... is... Cassie?" The boy tried to ask in between chews.

"She's fine. She'll be staying in Bulacan for the meantime. Uncle and Agnes will be taking care of her." The girl proudly replied, gratified at the upper-hand given by the vacancy in her trap.

"Did she say what she was upset about?" The boy asked with a squirm right after he swallowed the masticated  roll down his throat.

Carmen paused with a poker face, staring down at the lined-up rice rolls left sitting on the table, struck, suddenly, by the question about her bastard sister's sadness.

"I mean, did Lia's death have anything to do with it?" The boy continued as he shuffled his chopsticks with apprehension between his fingers as he mentioned the dead girl's name.

She continued to stare at the table. Lost in her own thoughts. Thinking about...

"It's strange how two sisters can be so much strangers to each other."

Iñigo paused as he tried to recall why he invited her out to this dinner again. Days ago, he got a call from her asking for help about an emergency with her sister, Cassandra. She was found unconscious, lying on the ground floor of her building a few moments later after she was reported scaring fellow residents downstairs with her delirious murmurings. He was in a law firm nearby. He arrived just as the building guards were manhandling the poor chemically drowned girl to a van. He insisted that he take them both to the nearby hospital instead. The next day, he called the girl right in front of him now to ask for an update about his ex-girlfriend's condition, which proceeded to the invitation. His curiosity felt that he had to know what really happened.

"Why should it bother her? If there's anyone to blame about Lia's suicide, it's you. I never liked her but what you did to her was really nasty." The girl came back to her senses.

Iñigo smiled, slightly embarrassed by her comeback. He felt sweat suddenly forming out of his skin. So he tried to form his own defenses but with no actual success. He realized that his faults were simply too obvious to be denied.  "Lia had her own problems but, yes, I admit our break up might have tipped the boat more for her. I just thought that the similarities of the incident to Adrian's might have brought back memories."

"Adrian didn't kill himself. The Yakuza got rid of him. He and Cassie really pissed those Japanese off. Buti na lang uncle was able to fly her off to Paris before they got to her."

"Where did you get that information?"

"My uncle."

"Oh." The boy came out with a defeated kind of surprise after realizing how little he knew about the cousin he thought of as a brother. "What did they do?"

"They were too busy taking all those chemicals they were supposed to deal that they forgot they have to pay off their dealers. Ewan ko ba why those two were dealing drugs for extra cash."

"They wanted to be independent." He recalled a thought he had ages ago. He has always been fascinated by the unbreakable messed up relationship between his cousin and his ex-girlfriend. He knew his cousin was a homosexual, which became the paramount belief he held on to that there was never anything between them that could hinder his relationship with her, and yet, still, he had troubles connecting with her. It didn't seem to matter that much to him back then. She was a divine figure to him in the twilight of his pubescence. Her beauty, her wit, her aloofness and her devotion for his cousin had him hooked on her.

Carmen, noticing his moment of nostalgia, joked. "She has a cute doctor. Not exactly my type but definitely one of hers I'm sure." She laughed gently like the lady she's always aspired to be.

Iñigo smirked. "Well I'm sure the cute doctor is going to do a good job keeping her from trying to kill herself again."

"Actually, he's back here in Manila."

"Ah..." He trailed on, trying to figure out what proper reaction to give her to conceal his uneasiness. "And what about your boyfriend? Why isn't he her tonight with us?"

Carmen froze for a heartbeat. Her heart skipped the next.

"Oh! He's probably out somewhere with one of his other girlfriends. He won't mind."

"You're okay with that?"

"Yeah... well.. what am I supposed to do? Cry?"

"Take this advice as an old friend. You deserve better."

Carmen smiled at the boy sitting in front of her, the boy she once harbored an innocent infatuation for back when they were younger.

A letter

May 24th, 1999

Dearest C.C.

I wrote this letter before we left for Paris as, most of my letters are for you, an answer to your request. This being the only letter apart from the one we buried in that island in Pangasinan that you coerced me to write. I handed this to Kohji-san when I gave him the payment for our debt. I asked him as a favor, to hand this to you, at a time convenient for him whenever he receives news of my passing, which is hopefully not in the near future. If ever, he goes first before me, I have asked him also to entrust this letter and the task I have asked to one of his most trusted men. I wrote this also, in any case that I might forget to mention to you that I have HIV, and among other things that I will be sharing to you in this letter. I'm writing this under pressure of time because we have to leave in a few hours. So if I get lost in my words, I ask for your patience.

First, we are explicably where we are: chaste and burned. Sometimes, I feel like I have caused you the biggest share of your sorrows. If I didn't think it would be too impractical to completely remove myself from you, I would have. All those chemicals and a life seething with cruelty is too bad for such a gentle soul like you. We're just unavoidably dependent on the other.

Do you remember that time in Marabella? The day after the party, when I was sitting at the beach on a gloomy afternoon while Felix was asleep, you sat beside me and you told me that you think perhaps every one loves most the person one cannot truly be with in a married couple sense. That that is what life is truly about. Because what else shall one do when that person finally attains that?

We're comfortably lonely, complacent in this somewhat loveless state we have. For us, now, that is just a distant childhood dream we've grown out of. I take my responsibility in soliciting this predicament to you, which I, on some part, regret. I confess though, I never saw us going down this road. Once, I also dreamt the same dreams you had for the two of us. I just woke up earlier.

I didn't love Felix -- for a time perhaps but that was mostly infatuation. He amused me more than any guy I have been with even up to now, I have to say, but I never felt anything for him remotely close to any part of my feelings for you. He is a friend at the most. You, on the other hand, are a totally different matter. Perhaps, even now at the time of writing this letter, I am still confused of what my true feelings are for you. I'm not even close as to figuring out how we will be in the future.

If time grants me, I would never need to say this, but if ever there is a case that I am hindered to prove because I feel I am treading on a wobbly thread myself, I trust that you will believe my words that I will take care of you and that child in your womb. I paid the debt to Kohji-san already as I have mentioned. He told me that man who attacked you is Yusuke's brother and his intention was to take advantage of you and in no way was he one of Kohji-san's. We have no more reason to fear Kohji-san. Although I told your uncle that it would still be best if we left the country because if word gets out about your condition, and I doubt we will be able to conceal it in the coming months, I fear propriety will put too much pressure on you and you may make terrible decisions. I believe that anonymity will bring much comfort to you in your current condition and help you reflect better on what to do. I also didn't tell my cousin. I don't think Iñigo is smart enough to take responsibility for this. I decided to let you make that decision for yourself on how to deal with him.

I have considered marrying you as a consolation but given my condition now, I doubt I will ever be able to give you a child that is both ours. I don't think a disabled child would truly make you or me happy. Hopefully that child will be the consolation. I know the both of us well enough (and yes, apparently, I am considered disabled). We're too much of logical idealists, which is the worst kind of sentimentalists, I think.

Millions of years will pass and billions of solutions for a trillion more problems will be made and I will still feel this same confusion for my feelings for you. "We do what we do because of who we are. If we did otherwise, then we wouldn't be ourselves." Perhaps you will be the only person I will truly love in this lifetime.

"In a trillion years, stars will no longer shine. We'll get it right or come back again still hopelessly hopeful. What lies I learned lessened my ability to be present. My love will never change though we've ruined everything. The stars still conspire for us."

With all my heart,

Adrian

Kindness

One realizes how deeply and profoundly disillusioned one is when one is starting to judge kindness bestowed upon. Perhaps, one simply has too much time on hand despite having too much deadlines to meet and drafts to submit. Nevertheless, there is truth that can't be denied to the idea that each act of kindness is motivated differently.

Some people are kind to other people because they like the person. It could be because they have some physical attribute that tickles their visual stimuli right enough, or they have a certain character quirk that rubs their hearts warm. Maybe, they were told by their parents to be kind and these people are simply too respectful enough to follow what their parents told them as kids without question. Some people are merely forced to be kind because they are afraid to be judged by the people around them.

Then, there is that kindness that comes from experience. Call it guilt, regret or penance or whatever you may have inside your bag of wise-ass retorts. But, this kindness comes from a deeper region of human emotions. It goes beyond fear, prejudice and hate, and perhaps, the only one that can truly understand them.

A verse my mother fondly recalls to us over and over comes to mind. "Mighty is he who can conquer a city but he who can conquer himself is mightiest of them all."

Last night, I was talking to this guy whose over the top gestures of kindness towards me I initially dismissed as simply being motivated by superficial reasons. As he told me more about himself and the past mistakes and mishaps he has done back in his hay days, I started to understand where all his kindness was coming from. Maybe it still had a touch of neediness but it helped to understand that the most part of it was coming somewhere genuine.

My best friend told me, after sharing this particular inquiring thought with him, that I am perhaps the most shallow person in the world for judging kindness. Maybe I am. After all, I have been called an asshole, greedy and evil in the past.

A continuation

"The tricky thing about happiness is when you're a child who's not so bright, like me, you're stuck with your parent's idea of happiness until you hit a wall. And believe me, hitting that wall isn't such a pleasant experience."

"A nice family in a nice home with a nice job?" The doctor replied as he followed her sit, leaning against a nicely sized mango tree that embraced the breeze around the two of them.

The girl was a lovechild, a desperate attempt at a son by a son of a haciendero with the French belle best friend of his homosexual brother. Her mother, having no legal claim at the estate of her father, fought for her place in the haciendero's son's family. The haciendero's son's legal lover fought for her's and his two older daughter's. She died, first, in grief and resentment. Then, finally, in a consequential accident. Her mother left her father after and went back to her country. She never remarried, but, rather, distracted herself, isolating herself in her work, earning her own estates. Her father did so as well. So much for happiness.

"That is the conventional happiness. Although it comes in so many forms these days." She retorted with a snide laugh.

"A convenient happiness is more like it." He laughed with her.

"Despite our best efforts to deny our limitations and weaknesses, it always manages to manifest in our inevitable need for stability. We don't change as fast as technology. We ease everything in. We mourn." She continued.

"I remember a few months before Adrian died, we were about seventeen or eighteen then, he introduced me to this guy he was dating."

She still remembers his face so clearly as that bright afternoon. His cheekbones, his jawline, every crease, every dimple, every pore was still embedded on her memory. She remembers that summer. She remembers the marble sidewalks and the white stone walls, how the light illuminated everything in that bleached town. It seemed like a summer haze. The heat, the brightness of the place, the strong perplexing emotions caused by their hormones and their adolescent idealism. The sun was as bright and promising then.

"We were in Marabella. The three of us went out. The guy turned out to be such a darling that we're still good friends now. We went out for drinks, to get high and to dance later in the evening. We were there, the three of us, in the middle of a crowd of mostly half naked men. We all just took another round of purple MG's. We were all peaking. The music was like magic and the moment was just perfect. The three of us were just dancing under a luminescent new moon. It didn't matter that I wasn't his girlfriend anymore. He's my most favorite person in the world. He was the only person who's seen me from childhood up to that point."

"I thought we were going to get married. It didn't matter if he slept with guys." The girl smiled again, faintly but something more radiant like a ray of sunshine from an old world on a cloudy day.

The doctor inhaled the last of the remaining ambience looming from the sunset. Then, he smiled too, with her, as if he was there in that particular moment that was.

"But he wasn't ready to live the rest of his life in the closet?" He asked. 

"He never came out. He didn't have plans. He just didn't want to be happy living a lie."

"It wouldn't be right to live your happiness at his expense either. He's a noble man."

"Of course, I'm telling you this in full confidence that you will honor confidentiality stipulated by our medical relationship."

The doctor laughed.

"Don't worry, mademoiselle. I may not be as noble as your friend but I deeply honor my profession."

Then, for the first time, she laughed an innocent laugh. Not outlined by contempt or scorn but by pure genuine amusement, perhaps, by his self-depreciation or his mildly comforting character that seems to be exactly what she needed.

"I realized that that was happiness. Even if you took out the chemicals out of our system, it would still be. The chemicals just aided our inhibitions out of our system. So I can see the bigger picture. All that mattered was what I felt."

Sleeplessly procrastinating and frantically passive

I feel so tired. I have two projects to submit on Tuesday. One's a draft for my thesis paper and the other's a draft for an interactive game. So far I have done absolutely nothing. Not a single word typed or a single pixel drawn. I lack sleep. It's moments like this that I want to give up already. I don't know what to do. The computer crashed a few days ago. The hard drive was fixed but all my files are gone, every single byte wiped out. It's really such a defeating emotion.

At least I have a new guilty pleasure but I'm afraid it's taking its toll on my time. I'm too lazy to get my ass out of this chair and actually do something about my project woes.  I'm just too glued, reading this blog. It's like Irvine Welsh meets Lord of the Flies. Very raw and strong characters and emotions bouncing of violently everywhere. It started as a sex fantasy that grew into this epic story about real estate corporations caught between two star crossed lovers from a quaint town in Iloilo. I'm still half-way through the story. It's campy and it's dark but somehow, still, the writer manages to inject valid and feasible human emotions and instincts, which never fails to reel me in deeper into his world. One of the networks here should really take a page from this piece of fiction for their soap operas.

I feel like I'm back there again in my condo in 2434, when I'd be too depressed to get out of bed. No matter how hungry I am or how bad I need to go to the toilet, I'd just lie there in my bed, not sleeping, not really physically immobile but just too unmoved, emotionally unmotivated to move even a single muscle, my brain compensating for the lack of any physical activity. I would stare at my blank white ceiling and move my gaze around the white walls for hours, sometimes lasting almost a whole day. It used to feel like an asylum because it was a huge white space but I painted one wall vermilion just to add a little depth and spirit to the whole place.

Now I'm here. Sitting in front of the computer. Completely unmoved from my seat ever since this morning. Save for my the mechanical wrist motions to maneuver the mouse, and fingers clicking on buttons and keys, and my two visits to the kitchen because the maid kept bugging me to eat, I'd have zero muscle movement.

An excerpt

There they were. Two figures leaping over that big gapping hole that drops into a shallow rocky lake. The grasses swayed their heads watching them fly through the air and they were crushed, finally, by both their pairs of shoes as they landed.

"Looks like you're an expert at this -- saving guys." The tall chap with the hat chirped.

"I have saved a couple of boys in the past." 

Cassie chuckled with a sly note.

"I didn't realize you were so limber." The chap replied.

"A woman's entitled to her own secrets, don't you think, Dr. Lao?"

"I supposed so." He lowered his gaze to his feet with a slight embarrassment as he started walking away from her.

It was such a lovely afternoon for a stroll in the fields. The breeze kissed their skins ever so gently as it waltzed with the dancing tall straws of grass, as they stood guard between these two strangers.

"So why did you do it?" The concerned physician queried.

She turned to him. Her hair glided so effervescently along with the breeze as it slithered around her. He looked at her move listlessly. The sight of her against that sun. That figure against such brilliance, much like a nymph frolicking along the grass. Her lips pouted so effortlessly towards him as the sound of the last syllable trailed in the air. "What? Swallow those pills?"

"Why did you try to kill yourself?"

"I didn't intend to kill myself. I just wanted to get high."

"Why?"

"Because I was unbearably sad and utterly inconsolable. Those pills have never failed me in the past."

There was a long pause. It may have lasted the whole sunset. It felt like it.

"Why were you sad?" He began to ask again.

She smiled for a heartbeat. Then, she threw a stare at the sun as it said farewell to that particular day. That day is gone now. Every little detail of it is nothing but a piece of memory, forever shifting and undulating in their memories, left with no certainty.

"I don't know."

"You know, the hospital wasn't the first place I saw you." He scrambled to pick something out of his brain to keep hers from thinking about the fateful past few days.

"Yes, I remember that party a year ago. You were there too."

"No, that wasn't it either."

"Really now?"

"I first saw you about seven years ago. I just arrived in Manila, at the airport." He said bitting his lips with regret.

Cassie smiled. His trepidation amused her. "Go on."

"You were there. I wasn't sure if you just arrived also. You looked lost. I wanted to ask you for directions. But then, I guessed you were lost too. So I figured it would be pointless to ask."

"I was confused. There's a difference." She joked.

"You looked sad. But you're smiling now. So is that a real smile now?"

"Soon."

Polarity

There is this long running thing in my family. My departed lolo, from my father, had it. My dad has it. Unfortunately, I got it too.

My mom calls it a curse. She never explained its origins or why we have it but she would often play her mind games on me, dropping cryptic lines like "I may not see what you're doing but God can and God never lets a sin go unpunished." Sometimes, I think I have it due to all the mind games that she has been running on me ever since I was a child. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is what pushed my dad over the edge as well when he left her. He told me he never loved her in "that" way but I've always thought there had to be something else that pushed him away because he lasted more than two decades with her. They even had three children. I never bought my mom's crazy religious crap about curses and punishments anyway. She even had this zany line about how if a man sins against God, He will punish his family ten folds down to the third generation. God knows where she gets all her pitiful prejudiced beliefs.

I remember she told me that my lolo died, about six years ago now, because of grief from that curse. Then, in another occasion,  that she'd rather have a dead son or husband than someone who sins against God and that my father will probably die of that curse as well. I guess she's also telling me that so will I. Sometimes I don't even think it's really God she's talking about but rather someone who's just her god. Some godhead she created for her emotional convenience. Although sometimes her virtues works for her but, after all, most of her values are anchored deeply to pure unadulterated Christian beliefs. But like any form of Christianity nowadays, it's nothing but a byproduct that derivates from the ancient religion and compounds it with their own contemporary agendas.

While we were on our way to my lolo's remain's resting place earlier, which was an unbearable three hour drive, I wondered about his funeral. I could vaguely remember it now. All I could remember was it was a sunny day. Everyone wore white. Apart from those I can't remember any detail anymore. What was everyone talking about? Who cried? Who wasn't there? Did I cry?

Then I thought about what I was doing when I got news that he was already gone. I was sure I was in a bus. To where or which stop exactly, I couldn't remember anymore. I know I was about to go to a date or a hook-up or something my mom would deem immoral.

I was never close to my lolo. We rarely talked. He was like my father. They were men of few words. Or maybe we, three, are all alike also in that way. We have a hard time connecting to people. Even our own family. I've always wondered if my dad has a best friend, someone he can talk to freely and someone who can make me feel comfortable to be himself. He was such a well-conducted formidable man. So was my lolo. They must've had someone they can let themselves loose with. I was never introduced to anyone who seemed like it though.

Ever since I was a kid, I've always dreamt of meeting someone I'd grow up with, like those things I see in the movies I grew up watching, someone who will be my best friend. I had a friend in grade school. We'd be in school together almost always. We'd visit each other's house on weekends. When I was transferred out of that school, we lost touch and we grew apart. After that I never really connected with another person. I became this shy, timid loser geek who everybody liked because he did their homework and had an enormous amount of humor to let everyone slide when they picked on him. Sometime between high school and college I gave up on ever finding a best friend. That was when I started my life of debauchery. I started using MDMA with an unbelievable amount and frequency because it made me the happiest I have never been.

It's a wild world

It's the series that makes Gossip Girl look like Sweet Valley with contrived connivances. It's British. It has some of the most breathtaking, lavishly languid photography I have every seen since Wong Kar-wai teamed up with Christopher Doyle. It has a tastefully rockin' and eclectic soundtrack each episode and lots of cleverly written scenes. It has such tragically beautiful characters like a delusional anorexic slut, a desperate trampy girlfriend and a confused teenage Pakistani. It's honest, unapologetically funny and spot on. No series has ever captured contemporary chemically driven teenage angst like this series has. It's like a hazy trip down memory lane.

It's the series almost everyone I know has mentioned at least once since last year but only a few have seen. And because I was finally compelled by a bootlegged copy I fatefully ran into a few days ago, and yesterday was a such a painfully boring hot day, I lit a joint and spent the whole afternoon and evening with the first season.

I gotta say, anything that can reinvent an old song and put new deeper images to each syllable is a winner in my book. So for now I'll let Cat Stevens linger in my auditory memory and pinch me over and over.

It's not easy being green

Tonight, as I sat at the back of a carpool, on my way home from watching an extremely hilarious movie about stoners on the run from their dealers, which beared such classic lines like "Can't you see my armpit? It doesn't have hair. I'm totally aerodynamic when I fight. So you should be scared.", I was staring at the damp asphalt floor of EDSA.

It reflected the dominant colors of yellow and red from all the Mickey Dees & Jollibees and Shell gas station strategically located along the road. In color theory, warmer colors dominate less warm colors but when there is complimentary cool color, it will stand out in the foreground, dominating both warm colors. And in one particularly fascinating moment, there was a convergence, rarely seen in cityscapes, of a mild yellow light from a motorbike beside a sedan car that had a luminous aqua halogen lamp. Both light met, drenched with fresh rain water, lying on the busy road of EDSA. It was a particular shade of green. Perhaps emerald. It was beautiful.

Death is always synonymous to justice for the emotionally injured party

There was once a boy, whose last name was Paraiso, who went to my school a few years ago. He was a swimmer for the varsity team. He was, as my professor this term fondly remembers him, a very considerably proper young man. He dressed very dapperly and had a very meek countenance. He attended my professor's Tuesday and Thursday classes, usually a few minutes late but still always present. Though he would often head straight, in a very low inoffensive manner, for the back row. One Tuesday meeting, after my professor's lecture, he voluntarily offered to help her gather up her things, as she didn't ask anyone because she didn't interact with her students then in a manner as casual as she does so with her students now. The next Thursday, surprised by the boy's sudden absence, my professor was prompted to comment to the rest of the class present then about the boy's absence. To which the class reportedly answered that the boy earlier mentioned was stabbed to death. Now, according to my professor, there were three versions of reports offhandedly being spread around the school. One was that the perpetrators of the stabbing were people who have had a long running bad blood with our very honorable protagonist. The next one was that the boy was dubiously suspected of participating on gang wars and the incident was like those kinds of incident that inevitably happen to these sorts of boys. The last one, which my professor strongly attests to believing the most, was that the boy had a couple of rounds of beers, just enough to get one very well buttered up for easy conversation, with his friends. That these said friends were arguing about something most college boys argue about, and that the boy was left with no one on his said of the argument. Now the boy, noticing this predicament and being the proper young man my professor so eloquently illustrates him to us to be, politely excuses himself to head home, which is a high-rise a few steps away from the bar, which is a block away from our school. While he was slowly going his way down the stairs of the bar, the said drinking buddies suddenly starts attacking him with their knives and leaves him to bleed his guts out on the deep black painted steps. The boy was rushed to the nearest government hospital but wasn't able to arrive in time. Mr. Paraiso is now in Paradise.

Interestingly, my professor commented that the last version sounds so statistically familiar. That in most news items in my country, about drinking and stabbing incidents, occur with friends doing it to their friends.

Now, this story was shared to us by my professor after someone, in class today, retorted a joke about how students in my school use knives instead of fists to a commendation my professor gave to students in my school about us being very behaved, and how in her whole career, she has never heard of an incident of brawls and fist-fights happening on school grounds, and on the same day the story about a certain double murderer was given Presidential clemency after only more than a decade of serving his life sentence, which everyone probably suspect was because of his family's connection with the government, was broadcasted. Now I've always been pro-life and pro-second chances, which is why I've always wondered why victim's families often wish their loved one's assailants death when rotting in prison for the better part of their lives is worse. What I wonder now though is how it must feel for the victim's parents, who have migrated out of the country, perhaps to help them move on, would feel after hearing this news.

The trifecta

Then there are those moments where I just want to give up. I wonder what I'm doing these things for because it used to be because it was fun. I know there will always be tough times and it's all part of the reason why the fun things are fun. How do I know, though, when to call it quits? When nothing more is left? I guess it's really true. We're here on this earth to make a mess out of our lives. To go up above our expectations and to suffer until we are scrapping the bottom of the pit. Oh the exhaustion and the high. Sometimes, when I put them side-by-side in my head, it exhilarates me. Though other times, I'm scared shitless when I imagine the vastness of how far I've gotten that I start treading with trepidation. I just look back in amazement and let out a deep breath and watch myself stare back into the void. Sometimes, I hate being this limited in such a limitless universe but, most of the time, I remind myself that we're not wired for limitless like gas or water. Not just yet.

Another thing that bothers me

And then there are those times when I feel a dire uncontrollable wanting to have the power to turn back time. During those times, I think so hard that, for a fleeting moment, I convince myself that I can. I go back to different parts of the past and make all those changes. Then I'm left wondering the repercussions of things I would change and making those different permutations of effects by those decisions. It's chronic malignancy on my personality that will probably still be with there decades later. I get a form of comfort and catharsis in these moments but sometimes I feel like I'm getting less than for the time I have bargained. Sometimes it just gets so bad that I tell the universe to grant me this one wish, even if I just go back to somewhere not far back, like earlier this year. I beg so hard that I start breathing uneasily.

You know what bothers me

Sometimes, in my deepest moments of arrogance, I like to pretend that I am, in the sheer audacity of my narrow-mindedness, one beyond my years. But then stuff like having HIV and knowing actual people who have turned tricks for drugs, and still being in college under a three year program at the age of 23 reminds me how categorically stupid and incredibly naïve I still am. What really bothers me, though, is that despite all these things, I still crave for a life of aimless drug abuse and sexual promiscuity. The mere thought of it sends hundreds upon hundreds of volts across my whole system. After fighting myself, tooth and nail, for this organized productive and moderately successful collegiate life that I am close to finishing, the life I used to have then is all I feel that can really make me happy still.

I am hesitation

I am that soft comforting voice in your head that tells you, you don't need to do a save when you're writing a one page paper. Because why else would you need a save for, when you're going to print it a few minutes later anyway? So you agree and continue typing and then seconds later, there's a brief power interruption and your computer restarts. Then you remember something every single professor you've had in every single computer involved subjects reminds the class: always save your file because you never know when there's going to be a power interruption.

I am that person in front of the mirror when you stare at it with a long-sleeve you just put on, wondering if you should wear it with the outfit. Then I'll tell you it's better if you took it off because less is more. Later in the day, I'll tell you, you should've worn it after all because you look too shabbily plain.

I tell you that that guy is probably only saying it because it gets him off more when he says "I love you" and he'll probably be screwing someone else a few days later or worse, you're the one he's screwing a few days later he said the same thing to another guy.

I am that electricity in your finger that stops you from typing "I miss you" to a message you're going to send to that guy. The same words he sends you two messages later.

I am that nagging voice in your head that comforts you by saying you haven't gotten jaded. You've just learned to patiently wait and accept whatever thing comes your way with temperance.

Halcyon Days

There was a time then when I hung out with this bunch of people. We would all meet up, go out in events, hobnob and most especially get high on ecstasy and ketamine, and at times, by accident, cocaine. It would go on for days never ending, like the end was the next hour. It was such a thrilling experience for me. That was the time when I experienced it all. I didn't think, I just let the moment flood through me and take it all in in between fluid compounding breathes. It felt so overwhelming, this comfort, this infinite and interminable happiness I felt in the presence of such fine strangers and it felt like they shared that feeling with me, like we were all moving in this speedy uniform revolution, that trailed fire, and in perfect unison. That was the most fascinating part of it all. Apart from all the minor and seemingly innocuous things I learned about them in the short time I knew them, there were never really any intimate details that was filed in my head, the kind that only two or a few more people grow to share in fondness built through time, but it felt like they were more familiar and closer to me than my own family. I loved them for that. 

My brain works so weird sometimes. I don't pause to think about what's happening but rather record all the awe inspiring details and nuances of that moment and store it for later assessment. Sometimes, those details are scattered in the vastness of my memory, bits and pieces of it scattered, hovering like dust particles do in space. I'm not an expert in organizing thoughts after all. Eventually, in an exact and perfect timing, those details will find each other and build this bigger picture until finally there is no more piece left to fill it up.

Last night, in the last hours of my birthday, I bumped into one of them after not seeing him in such a long time. It felt strange now that their absence in my routine is the one providing me comfort. I started avoiding them for all the things I fear they think of me, things I realized when my brain, in its always tauntingly timing of pausing, stopped to think about what these people really think of me and what they mean to me.

I've heard stories about what happened to the rest after I left through the usual grapevine, faraway from their sights. It seems everyone else has moved on to live and do their own things. Some have stopped dropping ecstasy and snorting ketamine. Most of them still do see each other. I still do see some of them once in a while. It just feels strange now that we're reduced to usual pleasantries and casual conversations and to that cold feeling of realizing that that person is, after all these years of getting high in the darkness and communing on shared hits, in the harshness of the fluorescent lights, a total stranger you are currently sharing an awkward moment with and nothing else to talk about. I've thought about it a thousand times, trying to reason out those things that seem like failures to connect, wondering about what exactly were the facts and where we could've gone wrong. 

Last night as we were leaving another birthday party, when I greeted that guy, gave him a quick beso on the cheeks and politely explained that we were already leaving, I realized that no matter what happened then, all the details that compose the real truth, all the facts will never be revealed to any of us. We will all be left with our version or maybe a consolidated one but never the absolute real version. The matter of the fact is, none of us will ever figure out what really went wrong, and that it was simply and irreversibly the end of those days and that picture has no more piece left to build it on.

Myself back then should give myself now a talk

I remember someone asking me if I still manage to surprise myself.

Yesterday, a friend wanted me to see a picture of a guy he was dating in this dating site, which asked me to login. I have already forgotten I used to have an account with them two years ago but the site thoughtfully reminded me. So what I just did was to reactivate that account. I left it activated and tonight I got an email telling me that someone from that site sent me a message. I was wondering how exactly someone took interest in my profile when I haven't really filled it up. I thought that deactivating it would scrap the profile I used to have. Turns out, it was still preserved from when I deactivated it.

When I read the profile a few seconds ago, I was totally shocked at how much I had more grasp of who I am then, how spot on my profile write up was. Because if I would've written on now, I would've probably done something very brief and cryptic. That's how I am to myself nowadays, a mystery, which doesn't actually surprise me. What surprised me was the me back then that had a very clear understanding of myself. If this is the direction I am heading then I should be bothered. Or I guess it's only natural that the more the I grow older, the more vague every detail seems, that line between black and white fades into a broad gradient of gray.

Oh and yeah what better time for this than my birthday, right? Thank you God. Thank you playful Fate. Thank you taunting universe. I get the joke. Now can we all have a moment to laugh? So we can all finally move on.

I like it though. A little self-doubt sometimes can be good.

Letting off some steam

The most dumbest, annoying, ironic fact about how I got HIV is that I got it after straightening up my ways. Yes, I may not have still used protection but at least I chose partners. Not like back then, before I had a boyfriend, when I just let every guy in, when I was more prone to contracting it. When I stopped abusing drugs and when I finally went back to school and started being responsible, that's when I get HIV. Great.

Maybe I really just don't want to

One of the most fascinating things about life that never fails to amuse me with disbelief is that often times I obsesses on songs I've only heard remotely and a few vague times in the very far past. Take for example my current obsession with The Strokes' "What Ever Happened". I remember obtaining a copy of Room on Fire years back then but never really actually paying any genuinely interested attention to it aside from trying to fake it because they were the hot band then and Julian was the guy all my waif gay friends then jacked off to. But today... well... yesterday, I couldn't get the first few lines of that song out of my regular cerebral processing all day. I'm amazed at how vividly I remember the quality and texture of Julian's voice crooning the lines "I wanna be forgetten... I don't wanna be reminded".

Maybe this has something to do with this

Oh Julian... you just get better with more figures on your age and length on your hair.

Eggerisms

I always have that same feeling when I'm about to finish a book. It falls on the same part of the spectrum as with breaking up with someone really great but you know that your relationship has reached its determinable end, or when a really awesome escapist trip is about to end, or like when something dear simply has to end like an amazing dinner birthday party for a friend. And always, always towards the end, I break the intended progression of the story by the author. Whenever I get that feeling I jump right into the last scene of the book then start reading disjointedly different scenes that leads up to that end in random order. 

I started reading You Shall Know Our Velocity out of interest piqued by a couple of quotes from the book a friend posted on her journal. Through the course of its neurotic and often painful narrative, I've had some opinions about the characters, some I liked more, some less than most of them. Towards the end, and after reading that there's another version of the book with an additional 50 page or so digressive narrative by the other main character (the story was narrated by one of the two friends),  I've somehow started seeing everyone, even the smaller nuances, on the same light. 

"You can't ever guess at life, at pain. All pain is real, and all pain is personal. It's the most personal thing we have. It eats each of us differently."

-- Dave Eggers

We have built a difficultly intricate sad society to navigate our emotions through

Why is it so hard to compartmentalize my feelings? No matter how much I try to distract myself, things always manage to manifest itself in more sublime cryptic ways that only I can understand and that seem more troubling in the long run. Is it the same for everyone else and we're all have just gotten so good at hiding our emotions? Because I seem to be the only one having this problem.

Banters and schemes

Oh the games we play

To keep ourselves

Entertained

We taunt danger

We tease shame

Just to not feel

Mundane

Just a thought

I was reading this book

I realized something about myself because of this painfully paranoid, amusingly obnoxious and deeply pained narrator who likes to travel very fast against the natural revolution of the earth.

It seems like the more I know -- or the more I assume I know more -- the more I'm daunted. The more I'm daunted, the more I become overprotective of myself and the more I appear arrogant and an asshole. 

It's such a predicament. Some resolves are easier thought of and said than done.

Poignancy

It's such a funny thing how we sometimes deny our pain and wind up being more scarred by something we can't identify. Like how we take drugs to reject pain of loss but end up getting more lost than we were before.

I'm an asshole

I had a very interesting professor this term for PHILOMA. When I first saw him during first day of class, I had this impression that he was this smart adventurer. He dressed like it; casually fitted button down short  sleeves and slacks, and the kind of rugged leather shoes mountain climbers wear. He was from another region hence his regional accent, which I can understand. It can't be helped. I was never one to measure a person by the person's accent but rather what the person says. 

But as the term went on, I developed a distaste for his lectures which he often conducted by reading from a textbook most of the time. I hated his method. I didn't understand why he did that when he seemed like such a smart guy when he introduced the course. There were times that I gave snide remarks and snorts of stifled laughter when he would say something. But he never reprimanded me. He just smiled every time. 

During midterms, it was expected that I would flunk his subject. I didn't study because I felt discouraged to do so. I flunked his exam and so did majority of the class because none of us paid him attention he deserved. We all probably thought he was an idiot for different reasons. I was just the one most apparent about it. I would've flunked his subject along the rest of my classmates but he didn't flunk us or just me for that matter.  I don't know if it's because he was scared of us or he just wanted us to like him but I'm pretty sure it's something else. Because of all times my young, naîve juvenile classmates were all overpowering his voice with their small talks, he never did once flare up or lost his temper. He was always calm and very diplomatic.

After the midterms, things got a little better between the two of us. I felt bad that he even gave me a 2.5 for my midterm grade despite my lack of enthusiasm. When we reached the topic of Buddhism and other eastern philosophies, his lectures started to change. We started having small debates about this exotic and seemingly foreign beliefs that fascinated me. I took a special interest in Buddhism. 

What I particularly liked about Buddhism was its idea of an afterlife. It was never the kind of place where in everything is perfect as how the modern Christian belief of heaven has now evolved. Nirvana was something else. The idea of Nirvana is being finally moving in perfect synchronicity with the universe after being reincarnated so many times and acquiring all these different points of views with each life you have lived. It's about understanding enough to relieve the pain in the world. It's like having courage to dive in after a brief moment of fear.

Buddhism  as I've come to understand is a kind of belief that doesn't lay judgement on people. It doesn't deem one man's action as a sin but rather explains it as something that causes harmful reactions. I think the idea of sin is a trap for judgement and judgement always brings about anger no matter how we try to deny it.

It striked me that perhaps this is why this man, my professor, remains so calm. When he handed me back my term paper and told us all that we are all, again, supposed to flunk for our final grades but he's adjusting the grading system for at least most of us to pass. I know that's the kind of practice that tolerates laziness and mediocrity but for the better part of his subject, I think I've learned so much. I have never met a person who's ever caused me to feel so much shame without even lifting a finger or uttering a single word with that intent. 

Life minus dreams

I was looking at all the short films I did this term and I felt a little sad. All the ones I did were compromises because of lack of suitable actors or resource. I'm not saying I'm not happy with them. They all turned out nice. Even better than I expected of them. It's just they're not what I want. It's like settling for something just because it's the only thing there. But I know life is like that. We make do with what we have and hope that we get what we want in the end. If we always got what we wanted, then there would be nothing left for us to want. That would be such a tragedy. I guess that's also why we don't know the things we really want most of the time.

That so called mistake

We all move towards death on our own volition, our own time and own routes; just like we have our own pains, losses and weaknesses. There is no mistake because that only leads to judgement and judgement to anger and resentment. There is simply action and reaction.

The ones that came before us have already wasted so much on selfish pride, anger and prejudice caused by cowardice. I'm going to start the change I want in myself. No longer will I waste energy in this universe spent on judging and being angry about things I cannot change.

Hello

I haven't cried yet. Not just yet. I'm scared that if I start to let just even a single tear, I might never stop crying. I've got so much more project to finish. So many deadlines to meet. But I feel so tired. I just want to go to a place away from everyone and cry my eyeballs out. It's futile to regret, I know. I just want to let out all the things I've held in. I feel like so many things led up to this and this isn't the only thing I want to cry about. For all those times I cried, not even knowing what I was crying about, when I just lived day to day like a lone nomad knocking on who's ever pants would drop down for me. For how I could've ruined someone special's life when it was just starting. For all the decisions I made mechanically. I can't blame anyone. It's my fatal flaw. It's not the end, I know. But it's definitely a big change.