Downtown

Today I just stayed home and wandered aimlessly in cyberspace, having haphazard online conversations with friends here and there, watching videos of performances from the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards, and looking through paparazzi pictures of Victoria Beckham’s latest bold, astonishingly short hairstyle (which she “launched” during New York’s Fashion Week, how posh), so there isn’t much to talk about, really. Yesterday, though, I woke up to the peculiar feeling that the day was at an end, like it was already sunset just as the sun was beginning to rise. The noise I heard around me sounded more like people were already ending their day instead of just starting it, finishing work, packing things up, heading home and preparing for supper. When I hadn’t even had my breakfast yet. It went on for about half an hour more, this disturbing disorientation, the entire time I was preparing to go to class. Weird, I know. But then things went back to a state of boring normalcy soon thereafter, anyway, with me attending a rather overwhelming class in neurology and then going to the mall after the lecture, eating pasta and fresh vegetable salad in a pizza parlor and singing my inexplicable frustrations in the videoke rooms at the arcades. So there isn’t much to talk about yesterday either.

So I’m going to talk about the day before yesterday, Sunday, instead. Despite the gloomy weather, there were many good reasons why it was better to go out and see the world rather than just stay in. There was a power outage in most parts of the city and we didn’t have electricity the entire morning (and I was told through most of the afternoon as well). I was either just eating whatever rotten stuff I could find in our old, disintegrating refrigerator or imagining how it would be like to go wandering outside. Needless to say I was a bit bored, especially after staying indoors the past few days because of my recurring illness. I was also feeling better and had not done anything remotely significant in the past three days or so, so I decided to go out and put my body on a test drive, just to see if it was ready for another rigorous week of living life as it is. I wanted to do something else. Save an innocent pedestrian from being abducted by alien life forms, perhaps? Who knew? I just had to do something entirely different from just vacantly counting down the days, so I wouldn’t have such a hard time telling the days apart from each other (they’d been all the same lately). So I volunteered and presented myself to take my brother’s newly laundered clothes to his school (where he’s housed for the rest of the semester), if only to have a good excuse to get out in the middle of an impending typhoon.

As usual I dressed myself up. That is simply how insecure, self-esteem deficient, attention-seeking people like me cope with the pressures of everyday life. I wore a pink graphic tee shirt and a pin striped vest along with a pair of black skinny jeans and my worn out high cut, eggplant violet Converse All Star Chuck Taylors with electric pink shoelaces. That is all I seem to wear these days. I also snuck in a pink and white shemagh inside my pink and black, skull imprinted tote bag, just in case it gets frigid. But of course it never does since I live in a tropical country in South East Asia. But I insist on wearing these colorful scarves for shallow, merely aesthetic purposes. Fashion is a way of expressing oneself without having to cause violent riots and rallies and widespread anarchy, you see.

On my way to my brother’s school I got on an old jeepney that was almost empty. It had two other passengers, two rather cantankerous, unattractive women in their mid adulthood (although they looked way older). These two women were harassing the poor driver to leave as they were in a hurry. As if women like them had any important appointments and meetings and commitments to catch. From what I could see, they looked pretty much poor and unemployed and seemed to have been on their way to a leisurely stroll in the park, no less, where most women like them went to for cheap manicures and gossiping on Sundays, their usual day off. One other passenger had already walked out and left as the driver momentarily parked the jeepney in a corner, waiting for other would be passengers. I understood the driver’s plight, as gasoline costs so much these days and it’s just so hard to get by and make both ends meet. Apparently, the two women did not. I felt the driver’s upset as he drove off, empty and very much hassled, and in a random act of pure kindness and charity that surprised even me handed my fare to him and did not bother asking for the change. I was telling myself to just let him keep it, if not in recompense for the two women’s insensitive harangue, then at least for being so understanding as to not have retaliated. It wasn’t much anyway. So there, I let him keep it, for whatever it was worth. However when I got off where I was supposed to, the driver called out to me (I was almost halfway across the street by then) and gave me back my change. I was pleasantly surprised. Apparently the universe was not used to and did not want my sincere generosity. Oh well. I whispered a quick prayer as I went off, asking God to bless the driver for being so unexpectedly pleasant.

I’ve always loved roaming downtown. And I’ve always treated Petula Clark’s song “Downtown” as a spiritual mantra of sorts, singing “when you’re alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go downtown” as I watch the city lights flicker like little stars on the pallid cement horizon, looking at the colorful store displays and the rivers of people who make their way through the crowded streets. We all deal and cope with our lives differently, and for me, this is one way I do. I roam and watch and look and think. It’s a good place to go to when you’ve got too many things on your mind that you just want to momentarily forget. The more you walk around, the more these thoughts seem to just trickle out of the very pores on your soles, and soon you feel your brain slowly being emptied of all these ill humors as they are quickly replaced by the amusing sights and sounds all around you. That day I went to all three malls in the city. One can tell I had so much in my mind I wanted to escape from. I went everywhere, as if everything would disappear tomorrow and it was my last chance to see them all.

I enjoyed watching people watching me. I walked around the downtown area, weaving along old (but never forgotten) buildings and stores, crowded streets lined with sidewalk vendors and bystanders and street preachers. From behind my (fabulous) sunglasses I could see them look at me as we crossed each others’ paths. I consciously posed each time. Sigh. The things I do to cheer myself up. Sometimes it’s all you need. A complete stranger appreciating your odd fashion sense, asking for autographs and pictures. But of course I never get that. So I just walk and walk, pleasing myself with curious stares and a few discreet giggles here and there. I love roaming downtown.

Life gives me a headache sometimes

I’m throwing away my debit card. Lately I’ve been using it like some vital internal organ, my pancreas and its precious little islets of Langerhans, perhaps, and depleting my hard-earned savings as quickly as the toxic industrial fumes are the atmosphere’s ozone layer. One of these days I’m just going to break it in half with one crisp snap and chop it like onions into even finer shreds with our trusty kitchen knife. I’m going to put it in a good blender and grind it into a smooth, creamy pulp. I’m going to ride a boat and throw it into the heart of the ocean where some big, gentle whale will swallow it and keep it safe in its blubbered belly before some cruel Japanese fishers catch her and cut her open. I’m going to dig a deep hole in the backyard and bury it there where it will rest in peace forever beside my old cat’s bones. I’m going to burn it until all that’s left is whatever’s supposed to get left behind when you burn something like it or pour some acid on it until it melts into absolute nothingness and some foul smelling smoke or crush it into fine bits with a big rock and sprinkle it on my food like gourmet seasoning or seal it in an envelope and airmail it to someone in Mount Kilimanjaro where it will be worshipped as some pagan earth spirit or something. I just have to get rid of it. Or should I?

Last week I was cleaning up my room again, and while I was lost in the oblivious moment of changing the linens and pillowcases some new, rather disturbing, realizations came to mind, tearing apart the cobwebs that have been left clinging stubbornly in the corners of my mind’s ceilings, clearing up the space and breathing much needed new life into the small, dark room in my head I call my brain. I changed the old, bland cream curtains mounted on my windows and put up new, silken green ones adorned with lace and pleats and delicate flower prints that made them look like they’d been taken from a life-sized dollhouse, wiped the thick dust off of every pane, every glass louver and jalousie they’ve peacefully settled on in the past weeks, swept the small fragment of space that is the floor, and moved some of my clothes into a new container I had bought the day before. The closets and cabinets were full, and there simply was no room left for another one. So my clothes are now folded, stacked up in piles and crammed inside plastic containers like they were healthy little sandwiches neatly tucked inside a lunchbox.

While moving my clothes to their new coffins I rediscovered some shirts I had not seen (let alone used) in the past few months. I had forgotten about them as every other week (or day, depending on my mood) I would go buy stuff and new clothes were quickly piled up on top of each other, relegating the older ones to the bottom where they would never again see the light of day. I had so many I honestly didn’t know what to do with them. And so it led me (I don’t know how) to wonder why we do the things we do and go through the things we go through over and over again. Why do we dust off the furniture when we know they’ll be covered in dust again a few days later anyway? Why do we work hard to earn money and then spend it all anyway? Why do we buy clothes and end up not wearing them anyway, and then buying some more? Why do we take a bath when we know we’ll end up dirty soon thereafter anyway? Why do we go to school and forget the things we’re taught anyway (or end up not learning anything at all)? Why do we eat when we know we’ll end up hungry again later anyway? Why do we sleep, wake up, and then end up sleepy again later anyway? Why do we take medication when we know we’ll still end up sick again later anyway? Why do we choose to live, to continue living, when everyday we die a little inside, and sooner or later we’ll die completely anyway? Why do we ask ourselves questions when we know we’ll never figure out the answers anyway?

Of course the only answer I ever give myself, and the only answer that seems necessary each time, is because. Just because. If I don’t satisfy myself with that answer I could very well just go mad. So I take that answer, if only to keep myself from asking anymore questions. That is how living life in this great big universe is. You can, of course, choose not to live it, to stop living it. But for as long as you are, that is how it will be like. Morning, noon, and night. And I’ve no plans to stop living just yet (although the temptation is always there and I could change my mind anytime), so I’ll just take things as they are, live life like it is. Even if living it is such a burden.

After recuperating the weekend before and feeling a bit better earlier this week, I’ve had a relapse of sorts and had to miss classes again the past two days because of my arthralgias. I can’t say it’s a big injustice and I don’t deserve it (so you should pity me and send in donations) because I went around walking and strolling and malling again, roaming the city without a care in the world even if my feet were telling me, protesting, that they were tired and needed some rest. I ignored their complaints and went on curiously and eagerly peeping into every boutique and shop that lined the mall’s interiors. At the end of the day I was limping like I had been viciously run over by a rampaging ten-wheeler truck.

I know this is probably some sort of connivance between my subconscious and my body, another attempt at sending me some subliminal message about something I haven’t exactly been paying much attention to. I don’t know. But of course I won’t dare go back to my rheumatologist yet again and ask for help. Otherwise he’d think I’m some stubborn, helplessly ignorant patient who isn’t taking any of his expert medical advice seriously. Or that he’s so far been altogether unsuccessful at treating my mysterious illness. I’m sure people like him don’t take apparent failure lightly.

Life is a bit stubborn, you see (much like me and most of us), and it will not stop until you learn the lessons you refuse to learn, giving you the same redundant, repetitive (and painful, if necessary) experiences over and over again like you were some hapless hamster running in circles inside the same old wheel of a treadmill in that small, cold metal cage of yours. Everything just seems to go on and on in an infinite, senseless cycle.

I guess life is about that. Just taking whatever it is you’re given and going on living and moving along like any other student lined up in the canteen on lunch hour, taking whatever strange, radioactive mess is dumped into your plate by the cranky cafeteria staff with terrible make-up and that ridiculous hat and yellow apron. Life is about persevering, going about doing whatever it is you have to do despite the monotony and adversity, continuing, moving from one day to the next. Until you no longer have to.

Everyday for me now, after all that cleaning and wiping and neatly stacking up things and unguarded thinking, is another chance. It is in itself both a beginning and an end, and therefore no two days can ever be the same. Everyday is a different one. What was there yesterday might not be there anymore, and what was not might suddenly be. It may sometimes feel like they’re all the same, but they are not. Now that, of course, is also in itself both a blessing and a curse, as although your worries and troubles might be gone, so could your successes and joys. Although the things you want to change could change, the things you don’t want to change could change too. And although the things you don’t want to change could stay the same, the things you want to change could very well stay the same as well. But that’s just how things are and should be, I guess, so there is no wisdom in opposing it.

You just have to hope and pray that things get better, because whether they do or not, they are what you will have to face and they are what you will have to live with tomorrow and the day after that. And the rest of the days to come.

I got a headache writing this and trying to make whatever sense I could out of all of it. But life’s like that. I guess.

Where the lost souls go

Lately I’ve been sick and the never-ending issues we have at home (we never seem to run out of them, if only they were convertible to cash) are getting to me. I don’t want to confront my problems and sort things out right now, not when I’m sick and tired and weak and sore all over. I don’t want to have anything to do with them. All I ever want and seem to do is either sleep to pass the time or do something else that would help me take my beautiful mind off of things. So I went on an enlightening spiritual pilgrimage of sorts. To the mall. Where all lost souls like me go to find themselves.

I don’t know about you but whenever I’m sick (or feel somewhat like it) I find it twice as hard to cope and deal with things I’ve become used to dealing with, things I can normally swallow whole with little effort, without so much as batting a well-curled eyelash. It usually takes the best of me just for me to deal with the things I deal with, and when I’m sick and just can’t be at my best, I find it so hard and draining to put up a good fight and do what I have to do. There really are times when you can’t help but just, well, helplessly look on as your defenses crumble to the ground, the walls you’ve learned to put up around you collapsing to nothing but dust and debris, and life just gets to you when you’re least ready for it. Whenever that happens I don’t face life, I choose to turn away and run from it, promising like the great General MacArthur that I shall return soon.

The past week my joints were aflame and I pretty much just stayed home on a solitary confinement of sorts and contemplated on things and wrote and wrote and wrote (except on Monday, since it was a national holiday and I decided I’d have a break too). I was drinking painkillers like they were harmless little vitamins and punching more holes through my stomach. And then if I wanted to hurt myself more than I already was just staying awake and keeping perfectly still, I would try walking around the house while holding on to whatever sturdy piece of furniture I could get my hands on, all the while gasping to catch a breath. Needless to say I missed my review classes too. But Friday was the day of reckoning. It was the day all the planets aligned and the stars conspired and all three malls in the city where I’m from were to start their three-day sales. I was not going to miss it for the world.

So Friday was the first day I’d step anywhere outside the house in like three days. From the suburbanish wilderness where I’m from it would take around half an hour to get downtown. No matter. The house isn’t half as entertaining as the mall, you know. And the mall, despite the noise and the big crowds, isn’t even half as chaotic and stressful as the house either. Nevermind that my wrist and some fingers were still a bit sore despite the analgesics I’d put myself on. I was going to buy things and forget things. I went north and entered the mall in that part of the city, heading first to the second floor and buying myself my favorite brew of banana, pineapple and mango shake, my delicate throat parched with all the traveling under the noontime heat. I looked around a bit then decided nothing interested me, so I decided to move on to the next mall, where I was sure I’d get something. I had been window-shopping. Then I remembered I was supposed to have lunch with college friends at some karinderya outside the university’s integrated school. Cheap steak and greasy spareribs always have people coming back for more. I boarded a jeepney and, not really getting off where I was supposed to, somehow lost my way and went on an unintentional joyride. In the same small city I’ve lived in for the past 22 years of my life.

After lunch my friends and I walked around, dropping by some stores and boutiques around the university, the same ones we’d linger around in back when we were still fresh-faced students. And then we all went together to the mall downtown, the one near the bay area. I wasn’t prepared for what I’d see. It seemed like everyone from the city (and then maybe some who lived just outside it) stopped whatever it was they were doing, dropped whatever it was they had their hands on and all went there in throngs. Tsk, tsk. Indeed times are tough. People pounce on every chance they get at getting things at a cheaper, discounted price. They only seem to come out to buy the stuff they like but don’t really need once they’re already marked down (and quite possibly past their shelf life). You can see it in their eyes, their seething want, their burning desire, and their despair to get the things they want but otherwise cannot afford to buy. I’ve never been a wise buyer. I don’t like the feeling of being deprived.

We went around, trying our best to stick close to each other as one would’ve easily been abducted or kidnapped in the midst of such a terribly thick crowd. I bought sunglasses and some more tee shirts, as if the ones I already had at home stacked in mountainous heaps were still not yet enough. We somehow made it through and found our way to a fast food restaurant, eating even more greasy food. When you’re with good friends, laughing and chatting and reminiscing the past, you tend to overlook even dangerous stuff like that. The day ended with me lugging around a big, cumbersome plastic container, one I bought to store all the new clothes I’d been buying in. I struggled finding a seat big enough for both me and the big, cumbersome container in the jeepneys that would take me home. Still, I got home. And the issues I wanted to forget were still there to greet me by the doorstep. They had not gone anywhere. But I still didn’t want to face them.

So I went to the mall again yesterday. I knew there’d be lots of people there (I was there the day before and saw it with my own two eyes), so I made sure I looked as best as I could. Not like anyone would notice (actually there were some who did, bless them), but I wanted to feel good about myself. So I wore a graphic tee shirt, a nice vest, a pair of green skinny jeans, my favorite yellow and green sneakers that I bought years ago, back when I was still in college, and a yellow and black scarf ominously tied like a noose around my neck. Lo and behold, all the people who were there the day before seemed to have returned that day, and this time they brought their neighbors and relatives with them. The mall was crammed full like a tin can of sardines in Spanish oil. I pushed my way around and soon had the usual bittersweet iced mocha in one of the mall’s coffee shops, a small pocket of peace in the wide ocean of chaotic crowds that flocked to the mall’s three-day August sale. They all hurriedly passed me by to watch some locally televised quizbee onstage at the mall’s events center and maybe look around and buy stuff as well. Somehow, the coffee shop was my refuge in the middle of all the madness. I sat there, looking around every now and then and then getting a headache each time, constantly stirring the chocolate syrup that had settled at the bottom of the cup with the black straw to keep myself somewhat busy and not so distracted by all the people marching along in platoons, people who wanted to forget things, people who were burdened just like me and wanted to cheer themselves up a bit watching other people pass them by. Soon I took out a big notebook from my bag and started to scribble stuff down, most of which is what you’re reading now. My cellphone had run out of memory with all the things I was writing down and storing there and my attempts at writing on tissue paper proved futile and rather unattractive.

I tried to stay for as long as I could in that café, afraid that the moment I step outside I’d be swept away to some faraway corner by all the people stampeding like herds of feral African wildebeests on migration. There was just too many of them. But my iced mocha could only last so long, even if I tried my best to sip it as slowly as I could.

Despite the physical harassment and sheer annoyance of going there at a weekend sale, I still adore the mall. Instead of worrying about all the things I constantly worry about, I was constantly fighting to save my dear life, struggling to keep myself from suffocating, or getting hopelessly lost, or falling to the (dirty, dirty) floor and getting stepped on and crushed to a rather grim and unsightly death by the hundreds of people walking around. At least I had my mind on something else, on other less life altering things, and I wasn’t just brooding and sulking and moping around, thinking about my life and its many depressing complications. It’s where all the lonely people go to chase away their loneliness. And maybe haggle a bit for a good bargain, too. I ended up buying fuchsia pink briefs and a brown and red cardigan every self-respecting senior citizen should have stored with the moth balls in his closet. The things boredom makes you buy.

With so many worries to free one’s mind from, the mall is indeed a good place to go to. Only that when you go home, the worries haven’t gone away and are still there waiting for you.

When the cat is away

I’m still wretchedly sick and I spent most of the day lying limp like some giant, analgesic dependent squash that reeks of camphorated liniments on my bed. There used to be a time I had a cat curled up at the foot of my bed on lousy days like this. And most other days, too. And nights. Not anymore. Exactly one year ago today my cat died. And of course, I haven’t seen her since. I’ve had peculiar dreams about her every now and then, but that’s about it. Still, every time I see her in my dreams I cherish every moment of it and try to remember as much of it as I possibly can, because I learned so much from her while she was still around, and would have wanted to learn more, if only she hadn’t died.

When she did I didn’t know how life would be, how I’d turn out to be, days, weeks, months, or a year later. I couldn’t imagine any of it. I couldn’t imagine how the never-ending dramathon that is my life would be without her. She had always been a main character. No. To me she was more than that. She was a part of the main character. She was a part of me (of course I’m the main character, it’s my life). It was like imagining how Rapunzel would have turned out if she suddenly suffered from alopecia and lost all of her legendary long hair. It was just unimaginable. For as long as I could remember, from back when I was still very, very young, she was there. And I’m sure she was also there back when I was still too young to even have memories of it now. She was always there wherever I was, moving around my feet, fearlessly exploring the big world around her like she owned it. But time has passed, and it flies fast, whether you’re having fun or not, whether you want it to or not. So much has changed, and yet so much has stayed the same. In the middle of it all, somewhere in the middle of the colorful, swirling circus of confusion that is my life, there’s this big empty void I’ve learned to move around in, a big gaping hole I cannot avoid but always pass by hurriedly just so life goes on without me painfully remembering her death and breaking down. A part of me died with her too. And I didn’t want to remember that.

But as I’ve said, some time has passed, and the pain of losing her isn’t half as bad as it used to be (or the pesky bout of arthritis I’m suffering from right now). I didn’t know it would come so fast, one year later, her first death anniversary. I had not realized it would be as if it was just yesterday. Time allowed me to hurt and feel and wallow in the pain until it didn’t hurt so much anymore, and then turned my head around, kept me from looking back, and taught me to look forward and move on. I’ve learned to just pick up the pieces that fell apart and try to put them back together, as if nothing happened and life is just as it should be. But there are times, times like today, when I can’t help but remember her and how life was back when she was still part of it. I miss the days when I had royalty depending on me for her dinner. I miss the days when I would chase after her wherever she would decide to go next, like a humble chamber maid to her queen. I miss the days when I shared my room with an animal that thought she was sharing her room with me. I miss the days when there was undisturbed peace in the kitchen even when all the lights have been turned out. Apparently, the neighborhood rats have learned of her passing and have took it upon themselves to raid our kitchen. Indeed, when the cat is away, the mice will play. And my, do they play loud, knocking bottles off tables and running around kettles and pots and pans.

When you share your life with an animal you see the world’s secrets unfold before your eyes, and you learn many lessons no other human can possibly teach you, because there are some things in this universe only animals know, things they know by nature and things they learn from nature. It’s a wonderful gift, having the chance to share your home and your life with an animal. You learn so many things, understand so many things even the greatest of teachers and sages cannot even hope to teach you. Simply because she was there and was herself she opened up my mind to many things, may things people who have not had an animal at home will unfortunately never come to realize.

Some people will wonder why other people who live with animals seem to be so attached to them. The friendship a person builds with an animal is something that’s entirely different from one that the same person has with another human being. With an animal a person can be truly himself, stripped naked of all the facades and manners and cultures of politeness and social graces we humans have learned to dress ourselves up with. With an animal you can be truly honest and set aside the many pretensions you assume when with other people. You don’t need to smile at a dog you meet down the street, or curtsy at the neighbor’s cat when she happens to pass by your backyard, or turn your head away from a dog you see pooping in the park, or pretend to your cat that everything’s fine even when you’re miserably sick. Even when animals see you at your very worst, they understand, they do not judge, they accept. They take you just as you are, and they have no ill thoughts stirring in their animal minds even when they see you as you truly are.

With animals there is no need for words, words that often mislead, confuse and deceive, words that are often misunderstood and misused, words that are empty and meaningless. Animals do not tell you. They show you. And in that experience you are there to see, hear and feel everything, learning as you see them do, as they show you, whatever it is they do. There is so much to learn from them. If you let them, they open up your mind and widen your horizons, and you begin to see things differently.

In that small animal’s body was a soul not different from mine, or anyone else’s for that matter. It still pains me that I wasn’t there to say goodbye and send her off on her journey to the other side. But I know my old cat is at peace wherever she is right now. Unlike me.

My bestfriend Morpheus

For the past two days I’ve been feeling a bit sick. After all the cheerful walking, hopping and skipping around the city I did during the weekend my irritable joints seemed to realize that they’d been overused once again and collectively agreed to remind me (in a very painful way) that they do not take to such unmindful abuse kindly. I don’t blame them, though, as I often tend to forget my body has certain physical limitations that are supposed to keep me from altogether killing myself out of sheer folly and adventurism. When I woke up really early today for my review classes I knew it was one of those days when I’d rather stay in bed and lie in until around noon instead of getting up and insisting on starting the day. My body was aching everywhere, as if I was mercilessly mauled and thrown against the mint green walls and bashed against the floor while I was peacefully asleep. Still, both my aged cellphone’s loud alarm clock and my equally loud father would not leave me alone to rest and just have at least a moment’s peace, so I forced myself to get up and get going anyway. I clumsily wobbled out of my room and got a glass of cold water.

I sat in the dining room for quite a while, blankly staring out the window while sipping my water and waiting for my dull senses to wake up and become reoriented with reality after hours of oblivious hibernation. I kept on glancing at the wall clock and the hands of time that moved and ticked and tocked in a precisely measured pacing, mentally calculating how much more time I had left before I’d be late for class. I’ve never been good at anything remotely related to mathematics but I soon figured I didn’t have too much time left. I needed to leave in a few minutes if I wanted to get there in time, given the way jeepney drivers seem to wait forever just to get a passenger these days. And given the way most of my body was throbbing like they were about to explode, I couldn’t have moved fast enough to make it to class without running late or looking like a total wreck and a big, sick mess, anyway, even if I did leave then. It all just felt so wrong. Painfully wrong. So I crawled back to bed, pulled up my thick blanket right up to my neck and went back to sleep.

There really are days like this, times when you’re so sick and tired and simply can never be at your best but you still have to deal with the trivial, tedious details of everyday life. There are days when you feel so sore all over but still have to endure the tortures of public transit and traffic just to get to work or school, days when you feel so weak and flimsy but still have to plumb the kitchen sink just to wash the dishes without having an ocean emerge in your own kitchen, days when you just want to stop living for a while but can’t. Sometimes I even wonder why we do the things we do, eating, walking, breathing, talking, feeling, watching, listening, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, going to school, working to put some money in the bank (or some department store’s cash registers), doing the household chores, spreading nasty rumors about the neighbors, dressing up to impress the strangers we meet while walking in the sidewalk, rallying to campaign against animal cruelty, when at the very end of it all, all it does is exhaust us and tire us and drain us and fatigue us.

Don’t you ever get tired of living? Of doing the many complicated things we humans do? Of carrying the weight of the entire world on your shoulders? Of trying to figure out the jigsaw puzzle that is your life? Don’t you sometimes wish you could just vanish into thin air? Don’t you sometimes wish time would just pause and the world would just stop turning, or that you could at least stop thinking about all the things you can’t help but think about or stop doing all the things you can’t help but do? I do. Most of the time. And when I do, I lock myself up in my room, cry, write poetic suicide notes, cry some more, slit my wrists and watch as the blood trickles out of me like filthy red rivers of sin. Of course not. I sleep. And when I sleep, I meet up with an old friend who never fails to please me and ease the pains of my existence, a friend who the wise old Greeks called Morpheus, the god of dreams. He’s always there to welcome me just outside the gates of slumber, in the bizarre yet beautiful realm of sleep, with my colorful memories, hopes, aspirations, ambitions, fantasies and whatever other sweet gift he has in store for me. He reminds me of all the things I was, all the things I’ve always wanted to be, all the things I thought I’d be, all the things I think I’ll be, all the things I hope and dream I’ll be, and all the things I’d never thought I’d be. He reminds me of everything that’s been a part of me, everything that’s been a part of my life. He takes me to places I’ve never been to, shows me things I’ve never seen, makes me think thoughts I’ve never thought. And he makes me forget all that is waiting for me when I wake up. All of it. What a friend.

I’ve always believed that when all else fails, sleep. When you’ve tried everything but nothing seems to work, all there is left for you to do is escape, run away, hide, sleep. You die for a few happy hours, and with that ephemeral death all your worries and troubles disappear and die with you. The world comes to a screeching halt, and everything, every petty thought and every fleeting idea that usually crowds your mind just fades away. When you’re asleep nothing can possibly disturb you or scare you or bother you. And if ever there is, say a horrible nightmare, you know that the moment you wake up it will be gone, that it can’t really be something to worry about. While you’re asleep you move in a different dimension, one that’s sometimes a bit strange and weird as well, a world that’s often more beautiful and honest and simple than the one you move in when you’re awake.

I woke up just around lunch time. I had another strange dream. I always have strange dreams, especially when I sleep during the day. I had already missed half a day and dragged myself (especially my right foot) just to attend the other half of my review classes. Limping. I wished I had not. It was terrible. Excruciating. Aside from the constant agony of my painful body parts pulsating to remind me they still had not forgotten my exploiting them, the lecture bored me in ways I cannot explain. It was just pure suffering that made my brain hurt just as bad as my joints did. It was something I should’ve just slept through. I’ll try that next time. If ever I decide to wake up and leave my bestfriend Morpheus to attend some tiresome lecture, that is.

Underneath a blue umbrella sky

Surprise! I woke up on the right side of the bed today. Even if I woke up to my dear mother’s unnecessary panic over the padlock she couldn’t, for the life of her, open again (because she keeps on using the wrong key). At least I didn’t wake up to the usually bothersome (and scandalous) quarrels of the next-door neighbors from hell, or the radio blaring old country music so early in the morning. For some reason only God knows, it was a beautiful Sunday morning. So I woke up early, watched nostalgic cartoons (the same ones I’d been watching over and over again since I was in grade school), had puto and cheap spaghetti some vendor was selling for breakfast, washed the dishes I’d neglected washing the night before, and hurriedly tried to spread the infectious happiness that was overwhelming me to both friends and strangers online. It was just a great way to start the day. The sun seemed to smile, its beams warm yet kind and gentle, and the air calm and pleasantly cool. There was so much happy energy going around even the wild, murderous beasts we call our dogs were at their best, least destructive behavior, quietly lying like placid, harmless pieces of wooden garden furniture in the backyard.

Later I did my laundry and hung them up to dry on the clothesline (so idyllic), watched some local TV shows I surprisingly found quite entertaining, and had some lunch. Still, there was a little, almost invisible smile on my face. But I knew it was there, of course, if you know what I mean. Soon I had to run some errands (my mother, a teacher all her life, had run out of liquid eraser and my brother needed his clothes dropped off at the maritime school where he’s imprisoned for the rest of the school year) and visit the mall again. I know. I’m not supposed to be spending the way I am. I felt my conscience pulling me back a bit again, too, but no, I just had to buy a vest after waiting months just to get twenty percent off of its original (and ridiculously expensive) price. My conscience, of course, couldn’t do anything about it and gave up, retreating in shame to the dark corners of my mind.

It was such a good day I just wanted to make the most out of it. Carpe diem, as they say. And seize the day I did. I was in so good a mood I explored my closet and walked around the city as if it were some sophisticated metropolis (it is not), running errands wearing a white graphic tee (that had the words “go for it” printed on it), blue plaid skinny jeans, my plum colored Converse All-Star sneakers, and a yellow and black scarf. I also had white wayfarers on and lugged a big printed canvass bag around. Had you seen me you would have just stared blankly, laughed in amusement or cried in utter horror. The hideousness of it all might even haunt the dreams of some innocent children forever. Still, I am so in love with myself right now I couldn’t care less. I wear normal clothes. Just before people recognize they are. Like any normal human being, though, all that walking around the mall and conscious posing for people who gave me strange looks consumed my energies and soon I was hungry and badly in need of a place to sit and rest my geriatric feet on. But I didn’t want to spend any more than I already did. My wallet was threatening me it would run away and never come back. So I just marched to the grocery and bought a bottle, half a liter, of fruit flavored white tea instead, and convinced myself it was all I needed to revive my now lethargic spirits. It was a good day. I believed myself.

Even if it was around three in the afternoon I walked out of the mall and decided I’d take a different (and cheaper) route home, one that required me to walk my way up to the downtown area instead of just lazily boarding one of the jeepneys parked outside the malls’ entrances. The mall I’ve been treating like a spiritual temple and refuge of sorts for the past few months is near the bay area, such that a pleasant breeze always lulls the parking lot into a calm, serene silence. The pier is right behind the empty lots outside the mall’s rear end, and the mall seems to be thriving and constantly flooded with tourists having the sea port nearby. With the cold wind blowing from the ocean, it wasn’t that hot to take a (really long) walk. And besides, I wanted to save every centavo that I could, anyway, so little sacrifices had to be made. It was an unusually beautiful day, really. I walked from the mall all the way up to the strangely empty street across the city plaza and then crossed to the nearby commercial center, looked around a bit, crossed another busy street lined with people selling fruits and pirated DVDs and cellphone accessories and magazines and poor little puppies and peanuts, and then rode a jeepney that would take me home. I could’ve bought some salted peanuts along the way (they come dirt cheap so I didn’t have a problem with that) but quickly remembered I had eaten tons in the past few weeks and that they’re especially prone to fungal growth that releases carcinogenic aflatoxins that might come back to haunt me in the future. So I just took another sip of my tea instead and walked on.

I just did a great job telling myself it was a great day and insisting it was all good that I cooked chicken adobo for dinner and was relieved to know I still cooked it as good as ever (either that or my family has an innate immunity to poison). It even started to rain, something that never fails to make me feel all giggly inside. Today was just a beautiful Sunday. It’s hard to say when I’ll have another Sunday (or another other day for that matter) like it. I believe that as we go through the long and winding and often misleading road that is life we will only come upon two kinds of days. Yes, two. Only two. The good, and, of course, the bad.

There are days that you wish would never end. I wish all my days were like this, light and easy and bright and warm and breezy and sunny. When I feel everything is as it should be, when everything feels right, when I am at the right place at the right time with the right people (even if I’m by myself) doing the right thing in the right frame of mind. When everything seems possible and all your dreams and even the highest and farthest of your ambitions are so clearly so close at hand. When you feel like skipping and hopping instead of just walking and singing a happy song aloud instead of just quietly humming and tapping your feet. When the haze of confusion disappears and everything is so suddenly clear, lucid moments that come seldom and far between, that bring an unusual sense of clarity and wisdom. When the world seems so perfect and colorful even an old fire hydrant becomes peculiarly interesting and you seem to live underneath a blue umbrella sky. When the spirit of inspiration strikes you and lifts the clouds of gloomy doubts from your head. When the universe and life present themselves so beautifully to your eyes as to become your muse and positive energy just surges through every fiber of your being like an electric current, filling you to the core. Happiness permeates every minute avenue of your body, every small vein and artery, and fills every part of you, every single appendage and body part.

I wish all days were like this. But as I’ve said, there are two kinds of days. And not all days are good. But I’m glad today was. Hope tomorrow is, too.

Rehab

The hardest part of being sick (and not seeing the doctor about it) is when you can’t really decide if you’re sick or not. There are times when you feel like you’re ill beyond all relief, and there are times when everything just seems to be fine and nothing could possibly be wrong, that you are just as you should be. I feel just that. I can’t decide if I’m just thinking too much these days or if I really need to get some help, a nice lobotomy or a good shrink maybe, and emancipate myself from my current addiction. Well I don’t think I’m sick, really. Just a little disturbed and deranged I guess. But as I’ve said, I’m not sure.

Yesterday, after attending review classes for my frightening yet inevitable foreign licensure exams, I went to the mall with my friends. Yes, the densely populated, heavily polluted mall. Again. I go there almost everyday now and believe me it’s starting to scare and distress and annoy me as well how I have become so psychologically dependent on the many escapist diversions the stores (and their cunning sales ladies) brandish at me. I’m starting to regularly visit the mall like it was my church, the clothes my gods, the stores my altars, and shopping my religion. Wretched, I know. All the directionless walking around and wishful staring and hasty fitting and reluctant buying somehow keep me from thinking too much about the deeper meaning of life and the purpose of me living it and other things I shouldn’t even be thinking about in the first place.

Besides, I just can’t help but try and look for a good way to calm and console my convulsing, spastic brain cells after all that redundant mental torture, reviewing for nursing exams. Every now and then I would check my nose and my ears for leaking cerebrospinal fluid as I could feel my poor cerebellum cramping. If ever any of that was physically possible. It’s just so tiring, desperately attempting to exhume all the lessons I’ve learned from nursing school that I’ve long buried somewhere deep in my mental cemetery. But I like it. Makes me feel younger. In some ways.

I must say, though, that loitering aimlessly in a dissociative fugue around the mall, lost in the crowds of unfamiliar people and tempting new clothes, is indeed a good way to empty your addled brain of all the discombobulating events and realities of everyday life. Instead of just leaving my wicked problems inside the shadows of my mind and giving them the chance to grow into some big, nasty monster that will ultimately just feed on and drain the life out of me, I find it better to just melt my brain altogether in the confusion of all the colorful clothes arrayed in the displays and the people around me walking back and forth in dizzying haphazard lines.

It’s good to be happy, to be stuck in a moment without the burdens of living and being, no matter how fleeting that moment might be, no matter how unfairly small that fraction of time might be before the troubles of existing begin to slowly crawl and creep back again to torment us. I think that is something we all share, our repugnance for the heavy weight that we carry on our shoulders everyday and our desire to once in a while forget that the weight is there and that we have no choice but to bear the weight while we are alive. After eating a heavy lunch that seemed to somehow satisfy not only my anatomical hunger but my starvation deep down inside as well, I went around the shops with my friends, walking as if my worries would sooner or later slowly slip away from my body, trickle and bleed out of my worn-out plum and electric pink high-cut Chuck Taylors and be left helplessly strewn across the floor like spilled milk. I played video games I had not played in a long time at the arcades and discovered I was still so good at them. I sang out my soul’s inexplicable, unspeakable sufferings, screaming and screeching like nails on a chalkboard at the videoke room. After all that, however, when the friends have gone home and I walk around the city and ride a jeepney home alone, the happy moments still start to fade away, and the world and the walls close in on me again. Why do we always find ourselves in situations and circumstances like that? We seem to cry six and a half days a week and then get to laugh half a day as a consolation. Why is contentment, and the peace of mind and happiness that come with it, so hard to find? I always feel like a hunter lost in a forest, looking for that elusive wild animal that seems to escape every single trap I set to capture it. And I don’t even enjoy hunting.

When I got home I realized something. My room’s starting to look more like a poorly organized boutique now. There are more shirts and skinny jeans and vests and jackets and scarves and bags in there than floor space to walk around in. Since late last year I’ve been shopping every single chance I get. It’s like I’m lethally allergic to money. It’s pathetic. My savings have dwindled dramatically like the population of endangered wild axolotls. See, you don’t even know what that is, don’t you? Well, it’s a cute, slimy little salamander, and the world’s quickly running out of them, just like I’m running out of money to spend on caprice and folly and merrymaking and amusement.

I ask myself why I buy all these clothes when I could very well buy sacks of well-milled rice with the money I spend on them instead. Well, unlike the clothes I buy, I can’t wear sacks of rice when I go out, for one. And there is some (twisted) form of happiness in it, shopping around and buying stuff. You feel a certain kind of power, of control over your life, when you get the things that you want to have. I feel like I have what it takes to create and become my own entity whenever I buy these clothes. I realize I am addicted not to the clothes, but to the idea of getting what I want and the fear of losing what I want to have before I even have it. It just so happens I want all those clothes. Among other things.

Staring at the receipts I get from my ATM card and the diminishing figures printed on them, I am now beginning to slowly wean myself from all this shopping. Maybe there is some form of rehab for this. Then again, maybe all I need is the time and conviction to get away from all the worldly and material things that surround me and cloud my thinking. I know that if I really wanted to I could go on sudden withdrawal, stop this nonsense and snap back to reality. But right now I can’t say I want to do that, because I feel good whenever I get to buy the clothes I like, and do the things I like doing, and be the person I want to be. That would make me a hedonist. Then again, aren’t we all? Don’t we all just want to be happy? To find happiness in whatever it is we’re doing? To find true happiness wherever it may be? Problem is, no one really knows where it is, or whether it can be found in this life or on this earth, or whether everybody can find it in the same place, or whether it can be found at all, or whether it even exists. We’ll all have to wait and see, although I’m sure we’ll all know one day soon.

Until such a time I find the path towards true happiness, if ever there such a thing, I will have to enjoy these shallow pleasures rather than not have any happiness at all. I guess if you can’t have the real thing then you’d just have to be content (or at least pretend to be) with an imitation of it or live with not having it at all, genuine or fake. As they say, if you don’t have it, fake it.

No, I don’t think I’m sick. Just a little disturbed and deranged I guess. But as I’ve said, I’m not sure. Where oh where is the brilliant Sigmund Freud when I need him? Perhaps an ispiritista can help me find him.

Robots have feelings too! And I have separation anxiety!

The moment I saw the theatrical trailer for Pixar’s WALL-E I couldn’t wait to see it. I was just so thrilled. I’ve always loved cute metal robots with human feelings. There was something about the rather rickety and rusty robot that was so emotionally appealing, something that strongly pulled and strummed at my heartstrings and told me I just had to watch it. So I did. I watched WALL-E the other day when it premiered in local cinemas, standing in line along with other pesky children my age. After waiting months to see it (the last movie I saw in theaters was the equally brilliant and moving Kung Fu Panda) I’m glad I wasn’t disappointed.

Perhaps because of excitement I woke up early that day (something I didn’t really intend but happened anyway) and met up with the good friends I left at the company I worked for until two weeks ago. We ate oriental (and quite expensive) brunch at an old but still decently popular Chinese restaurant and looked around the shops at the nearby bazaar. They still worked on grave yard shifts, the poor things, so they soon unanimously agreed to abandon me and leave me to watch the movie on my own. Fine. I’m getting used to doing many things alone these days anyway.

When I got to the mall (crowded, as usual) I still had some time left before the movie so I strolled around a bit, helplessly bought some graphic tee shirts (again), opened a new bank account to try and set aside and save some of what little that remained of my savings, and sent money to an online shop I ordered a shirt from the day before. I was beginning to feel miserable again. Soon I met up with my other friends (who only agreed to watch the movie because I’d been trying to convince them for so long) and we went to see the movie.

The movie is about WALL-E, an innocent, inquisitive, amusing, but hopelessly obsolete waste disposal robot that’s the only one of his kind left after centuries of working to clean up the mess humans left lying all around on earth. For most of his life he has been alone, cleaning up, collecting and neatly stacking up the garbage on an eerily silent planet. All alone. All he had was an adorable and (resilient) little cockroach for a loyal pet and a container van full of beautiful garbage to go home to at the end of his long day. As he goes about collecting trash everyday, he picks up things he finds interesting, bringing them home and wringing whatever little droplets of happiness he could get from them. Somehow, his longing for company, his desperation to escape the loneliness that envelopes his world like the mountains of trash, comes out once he is home, inspecting and staring at his collection, and watching old videos of happy people singing and holding hands and sharing the joys of togetherness with each other. For a long time, that is how things are for him. And then all of a sudden, one fine day, another being comes along, a sleek and sophisticated robot called EVE who searches for signs of life in the uninhabited earth WALL-E cleans everyday. His life begins to change.

Sometimes we forget what we have and how important they really are to us. We don’t realize it before they are taken from us, before we are stripped of all we’ve taken for granted. The movie reminded me how terrible a life it is to live without friends, without family, without love, without the many, many blessings we have but often forget to be thankful for. Every now and then it pains me that in life, in this very short life, there is so much separation. Living the kind of life we live nowadays, we simply can’t help but drift apart, unconsciously floating away from most things we hold dear. We’re often forced, ripped apart from everything we try hardest to keep, to cling onto. We often find ourselves separated from things we wish we could forever be with, finding comfort in the familiar togetherness of friends and family. I don’t show it often as I wasn’t raised that way, and I know it’s wrong to seek to become whole and complete through others. And yet I also can’t deny that seeing the threads of my ties and bonds with these people slowly unraveling is a bit of a heartache. I feel a dull pain deep in my heart. And I don’t think it’s just angina. We’re often told that in this life people will come and go. But that doesn’t ease the pain. Like characters in some elaborate story, they enter the scene, play their part, and exit whenever the storyteller pleases. And yet, in the end, the characters’ demise, no matter how expected, still manages to upset us in some way. I guess the challenge then is how to find, and keep, relationships that help us become altogether better people.

The movie was just fantastic. The animation was perfect, the characters were absolutely adorable, and the plot simple yet succulent with valuable realizations. It was both an ominous reminder of the importance of ecological preservation and an endearingly warm love story set in the bleak future. Grown-ups should go see animated cartoon movies more often. It’s a bit sad to say but really, I think we all sometimes feel that way, alone and abandoned in this big planet, quietly living our lives in our own little impenetrable bubbles, that we, at some point or another, inevitably begin to feel detached and distant and separated from everything and everyone around us.

We live our lives in stoic loneliness despite the millions of other people around us, as if we were living alone on a cold, deserted planet. We fill up our houses with things we don’t really need but feel good about having, finding some twisted form of friendship with clothes and gadgets and furniture and everything else that’s unfortunately too inanimate to reciprocate our gestures of friendship, hoping to replace the companionship of the people we’ve lost touch with with the material things we drown ourselves in. Then there really are times when the desire to connect with each other and the longing for companionship simply becomes too strong to fight off and ignore, times when we feel all alone and yearning for something, someone, to come along and change things. I guess that is what life is about, finding and realizing you have found whatever it is that completes you. We all need somebody, someone to fill the gaps in our existence and ultimately complete us. A big part of life is about figuring out who or what can complete us, and finding that missing piece to create our own masterpiece. Like most cartoon movies, it had a happy ending. But it left poignant lessons in its wake as well. I’m so glad I went to see that movie.

God bless the jobless!

Earlier this week I resigned from my (somewhat depressing) job as a call center agent. For some reason I still can’t seem to figure out, despite the sweet success I had already achieved, I couldn’t help but feel miserable and discontented and unhappy with all that I had done and all that I was doing. Without me really realizing it, I’d been working there for a year now (months longer than I thought and hoped I would) and I had come much, much further than anyone, including myself, believed I would. But, like most good things in this short, tragic life, it had to end. Especially since I was beginning to feel like there wasn’t any room left for me to grow in. And I was beginning to suffocate, cramped and confined in the sad small space that, for the longest time, was the entirety of my world. I was stagnating, not going anywhere, despite all the time that had passed and all the work I had done to get somewhere. I felt like I was a tiny seedling that had grown too large a plant for the small pot of earth I was buried in, and it was time for me to uproot myself from it so I could grow even more. Otherwise the pot would’ve cracked and split in half just trying to hold me in. It was time for me to go elsewhere and find better things to do with myself and my time, a place where the sun would shine warmly on me and breathe new life into my now monotonous existence.

The day after I resigned from my job I came in for my NCLEX review classes, in preparation for the daunting exams I’ll be taking later this year. It had started the day before, but I chose to miss the first day as I wanted to give myself some idle time to at least take in all these sudden changes and realign myself with the realities that I now moved in. I was so surprised at how quickly things changed, and I needed some time to regain the balance I lost in all that spinning around when I shook up my own humble existence.

When you think about it, there really are times when things just settle on their own, when you don’t really plan out everything but then it all seems to fall into place anyway. After abruptly quitting my job I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t have any plans at all. I just wanted to leave, to get away, and that was it. I didn’t know where I was going, or why, or how I was going to get there, but I went anyway. My emotional outbursts, as you can see, constantly put my dear life in grave danger. And yet, despite the directionless wandering about I was preparing myself for, the kind universe plucked me from the mental limbo of ambivalence I was floating in and put me on a path it had already paved for me, my very own yellow brick road. How remarkably thoughtful. I hadn’t even had the time yet to brood and rest and contemplate on things and maybe even regret my decision a bit and already I had something else to do sitting on my lap like a puppy wagging its tail and waiting to be embraced and toyed with. It was there, and I had no choice but to accept what I’d been given.

And so that is what I’ve been doing for the past three days or so, constantly rearranging my mental furniture to try and recover (with little success) lost pieces of the lessons I learned in nursing school years ago. They had been lying there, sleeping in undisturbed peace and stored in dust covered shoeboxes under some big bed in the dark shadows of my mind, while I was busy working for the past year. It is always a struggle looking for memories you aren’t even sure were there in the first place. As we go through answering the many drills and tests to refresh my memory, I feel like convulsing, falling on the floor and just dying. So much has slipped away from my mind, and it will take some time and a lot of work to regain some, if not all, of them. And I don’t even have that much time left. Oh well. I’ll keep trying anyway. It’s not like I have any other choice.

The other day I finished my review classes early, just before lunch, and my friends had their own plans in mind, so I ended up finishing the rest of my day alone. I went around downtown, withdrawing money from the bank, paying the phone and internet bills, window shopping, people watching, and helplessly buying myself a couple of new graphic tee shirts, all the while pulling up the green skinny jeans I was wearing to keep them from falling to the ground and humiliating myself. Apparently, I had lost some weight without me so much as skipping a meal or missing a single grain of rice, even. Stress does have some wonderful side-effects after all. In the end, after all that walking that almost certainly wrought permanent damage on the white and aqua and skull imprinted slip-on sneakers I had on, it was inevitable that I had to eat lunch, no matter how late. I went into a fast food restaurant, ordered a budget meal (I had spent a great deal of money on the clothes so I had to compromise) and sat on a small table for two in the corner.

Since I didn’t have anyone to talk to anyway, I would look around every now and then as I ate my lunch, staring at the people around me and the stories they carried around boldly painted on their faces. It was then that I noticed that right across my table was the restaurant’s kitchen, and every time the door opened and closed I saw a quick glimpse of what it was like on the other side of the counter. It was chaos. Every five minutes or so some poor employee would come rushing in and out with a bucket or a mop or some other cleaning tool, shuffling from one task to the next like little mice scampering and scurrying around to get something done before the precious opportunity disappears. They all seemed so harassed and agitated and panicked and fatigued. I know working and toiling like blessed beasts of burden will always be part of our lives (or most of it), but at that moment I was glad I didn’t have a job anymore. All that torture’s bound to kill you sooner or later.

I’m not entirely jobless, though. Reviewing for exams is like any other fulltime job. But it doesn’t pay. Which isn’t much different from the job that I just left anyway, so I don’t mind. I’m still getting used to learning things again and putting my geriatric brain cells to use after their untimely retirement, but I’m beginning to see all this is a blessing. I thought I’d end up regretting my decision to leave my job but no, I was spared from that terrible fate. There was something waiting for me, and I didn’t even see it coming. I’m glad I didn’t have too much time between leaving my job and starting my review classes. All that unused time gives you a chance to think about everything, and you end up conceiving and giving birth to your own inner demons, monsters that will inevitably awaken ugly insecurities and doubts and all the other things that can discourage your spirit. I’m so glad God blesses even the jobless.

Clean up the puddles of blood red banana ketchup on the dining room floor if it’s already 1 am and you still can’t sleep

It takes up so much time and energy you’ll be sleeping sweet and sound before you know it. Unless you just quit your job and you have rats raiding your pantry. How did I come to such a random realization, you ask? Why not just count imaginary sheep jumping over white picket fences like any self-respecting insomniac? Well the story goes this way. As I am beginning to write this, it is nine minutes before 1 in the morning and I’m still awake, tossing and turning on my bed, stuck between tomorrow and today. I’ve had a lot in my mind the past few days (and nights) and I have had some trouble sleeping. Perhaps because in the past few weeks I had been working at night and sleeping during the day, and just when my tortured old circadian rhythm was finally beginning to adapt to the sudden change, I surprised it yet again by quitting my job and trying to sleep at night again. I imagine my internal body clock must be so confused and irritated and exhausted right now it might as well just break down into pieces and stop ticking altogether any minute now.

Or maybe I just can’t sleep because of all the noise I keep on hearing. I had to get up just now to get a glass of cold water. Maybe it will help me sleep, I thought. My mother turned off the dispenser so I get to quench my thirst with a glass of wonderfully refreshing lukewarm water instead. I visit the toilet several times to try and dispel and exorcise whatever inner demons I might have curled up inside me that are tormenting and poisoning my system. I stare down at the toilet and I see nothing. Still, I feel bad. But at least now I know for certain it is not my stomach or some precious part of my alimentary canal that is upset.

Then I hear something break and smash. From what little evidence I could see I reckon the turn of events went something like this. Another one of those large, pesky domestic rodents I had been campaigning to protect from my father’s pesticidal tendencies had betrayed me again and tried stealing food from the table. Instead, it ended up bumping into a bottle of banana ketchup and sent it falling into the dining room floor. The culprit disappeared. The mess was like a horrid murder scene. I had to clean up the blood red puddles of banana ketchup, carefully feeling the sticky dressing with my bare fingers for shards of broken glass that might have been buried and might get left behind for an innocent foot to accidentally step upon one of these days. My fingertips are still a bit red with all the ketchup I got them into. I remind myself to buy a new cabinet or something, as my container of clothes is now full to the brim and all the clothes I leave around just lying in my room are in great danger of being viciously attacked and preyed upon by these ungrateful, pillaging rats. If only my old cat were still alive, I thought, these thieves wouldn’t be as brave in intruding our house as they are. Then again my old cat wouldn’t have stood a chance against that gigantic monster anyway. It was almost the same size as her and would have easily killed her if it wanted to. It was so large just seeing it crawling there scared me with morbid thoughts of dying from the bubonic plague.

I go back into my room, still wary of that giant rat. I caught it crawling back up the table but couldn’t bring myself to so much as shoo it away. Anyway, it scampered off into the darkness again, and I’ve no choice but to go back to bed with the hopes of finally getting some sleep. If ever I do get to sleep I hope I don’t get nightmares. It is well past three. As usual, without apparent reason, the dogs are restless outside (like me), breaking out in scandalous barking marathons every other twenty minutes or so. Speaking of dogs, if I were one I’d be dangerous and chances are I would’ve already ended up in a stinky, cramped dog pound somewhere. The problem with me is I seldom bark or growl. I just bite when I’m already pushed too far up against the wall. And after I bite I run off and hide, never to be seen or heard from again. That was exactly what happened when I received my insultingly small paycheck from the office last Thursday. I exploded, and with that, whatever little enthusiasm I had left for the job went flying out the window. It was like discovering a fly happily swimming in my bowl of soup just as I was half through with it and completely losing my appetite to finish the rest of the meal. Hopefully the little scene I made got my message across. And they will be more careful next time.

Already I am beginning to feel bad about having to resign from my job. I had been working there for eleven months now, and over time I’ve come to love what I was doing. But I had to do what I had to do, and there’s simply no turning back now. The trouble when you’ve already established a certain routine is that you don’t think, much less worry, about the near future. Tomorrow does not bother you. You know exactly what time to get up the next day, what to wear, where to go, what to do, who you’ll see, what time you’ll be through with the things you need to do, what time you get home, and so on. There is very little room for pondering on uncertainty and hesitation. And yet, when that routine comes to an end, say, when you graduate from school or, in my case, when you quit a job, you are faced with so many questions you had little time to even think about back when you still had your schedules and itineraries all planned out. Right now I have all these doubts swirling in my head. But I know there is no reason to fear tomorrow. At least I’ll have the time to drop by the grocery store and buy another bottle of banana ketchup. And maybe some rat poison too. Maybe not.

Disappearing act: the art of letting go, walking away, not looking back, and moving on

I’m hopelessly passive aggressive. I have this habit of letting annoying things pass, just taking a deep, deep breath and ignoring all these little irritations, until such a time all the pent up emotions just completely overwhelm me like some evil spirit and erupt, sometimes even at the slightest provocation, and I snap in a very telenovela way, exploding like a furious, over-dramatic volcano that just woke up from centuries of cold dormancy. Imagine the very timid Dr. Bruce Banner losing his temper, tearing his clothes off, and transforming into a very mad, very green Incredible Hulk. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t lose my temper that easily. I’m very patient and non-confrontational, sometimes even to the point of selfless sacrifice and martyrdom. Pardon the histrionics. It takes a long, long time before something gets to me and irks me so bad I end up throwing and smashing things.

But if and when that happens, there is simply no turning back. Some bridges are burned, some bonds and ties (and I sometimes imagine body parts too) are cut off, and some feelings (mostly mine) are hurt. Apologies are not made. Not by me, at least. I see no reason in apologizing for something you intentionally do. I do not know how to explain it. Anger is a strong wind that blows out the lamp of the mind, a short period of utter lunacy where one simply loses control. I think British poet Francis Quarles describes it very well, my passive aggressiveness. He says to “beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.” That is exactly how I feel.

You see, after a bad (and quite possibly my last) day at work last week, I just had to get away. I have not reported to work in two days, and probably will not ever again. I have avoided contact with anything remotely related to my work. I just had to disappear. In the past three weeks or so I had been working on graveyard shifts, something that is already a challenge in itself. The company had decided that the dayshift we had been on for the past year was not working, and the best way to keep operations reasonably affordable was to have everyone working all together on one shift. And yet that did not bother me as much as I thought it would. I did not allow it to. I was even willing to explore the positive side of working at night, no matter how difficult it is to find that side with the sleepiness messing around with my senses. I stayed at the office after the shift that day, sleeping on a seldom cleaned couch. It was payday and I, together with the three other senior agents I worked with, was waiting for the salaries to be released. I didn’t mind having to miss a few precious hours of sleeping in the comforts of my own damp bed just to have my salary as soon as I could. There were clothes waiting to be bought.

And then they woke me up, telling me the paychecks had arrived. Finally, I thought to myself, and I happily walked into the HR office even before waking up completely. I was surprised at how small my salary was. Maybe it was just because I had just woken up, but I lost my temper. After receiving a paycheck so small I just felt so feverishly frustrated. I was so insulted and appalled. To me, the company made it clear I was no longer of value to them, giving me that check. It was half of what I was expecting to get that day, and I was just so offended receiving a salary that had been reduced to close to nothing by surprising deductions I didn’t even care to know about anymore. I may have been top agent several times, but I still have my two feet firmly planted on the ground. I wasn’t asking for too much, I just wanted what I worked for and what I deserved. Nothing more, nothing less. And yet they did not give that to me. Being the promising theatrical actor that I am, I slammed my fists on the table, I slammed the door, I cried, I laughed, I walked out, I walked back in to get my check, and I walked out again. I just lost it.

This is exactly what happened with my first job at an inbound call center years ago. I stretched my patience and tried to tolerate everything, every little mistake and evidence of neglect, for as long as I could. But there really comes a time when you know have had enough. I know it will probably be another decision that I will come to regret. But right now, no matter how I try, I can’t bring myself to decide otherwise. It may sound petty, but it was just one of the many things the company had done to show me how little I was appreciated, how much they had taken me for granted. And it was the last. It was the last straw. I may have allowed things like that to happen before, but I have had enough. And when I’ve had enough of something, I let it go, walk away, don’t look back, and move on. Every moment spent looking back into the past is a wasted opportunity to step forward and move on into the future. So I’m not looking back. The future is waiting for me.

I felt like a battered wife divorcing herself out of an abusive marriage. It hurts, but it had to end. It was my emancipation from cruelty. It doesn’t even matter if my estranged husband already finds himself another wife by now. I’m sure the company has found a qualified substitute. They might not admit it, but we all know I am irreplaceable. They will never find another me. Someone like me, maybe, but never another me. They might even get someone better. But not another me. If only they had not neglected me and pushed me too far. Sadly there really are times in life where you have to get abandoned by an employee for you to realize how valuable that person was. We realize to change for the better just when things get worse. We realize to correct our mistakes just when those mistakes have already done irreversible damage. And we finally decide to prove ourselves worthy just when the person to whom we want to prove our worth has already decided that we are not worth it at all, walks away, doesn’t look back, and moves on.

Oh well. I’m sure the company has learned its lesson now that I’ve given them a much-needed wake-up call. And I’m sure all the other employees will reap the benefits of what I have just sown. As for me, I’ll be moving on. Happily.

Fashion victim

It’s a Monday night and as I am writing this, it is presently a few minutes just before half past nine in the evening. It’s another one of those drizzly July nights, and hours before my midnight shift begins I am already sitting alone inside a gasoline station’s convenience store. I don’t mind. Unlike the Carpenters, rainy days and Mondays seldom get me down. They have a nice little café here, this gas station, although I’m happily drinking chilled apple flavored green tea instead of the warm coffee they serve while sitting on one of their empty tables. I like coffee, too, don’t get me wrong. Especially now that it’s all cold and drenched outside. The strong aroma that fills the air-conditioned store every now and then reminds me it is a pleasure to the senses that’s difficult to resist. It’s just that commercialized bottled tea is so much cheaper than the coffee brewing fragrantly in the café’s kitchenette. I can’t say it’s much more delicious, but yes, it’s cheaper.

Sometimes even I surprise myself. I’m not usually this prudent. I’d rather buy myself that tempting cup of coffee and go home with an empty wallet than start feeling sorry for myself. But lately I’ve become more conscious of my expenses. Especially those that aren’t very necessary. You see, my savings are in big trouble right now. I can imagine my bank account must feel like a poor pig in a slaughterhouse right now, wary of the imminent death that looms ominously in the hands of the butcher nearby. The frequent bank deposits I eagerly made earlier this year to feed my account have stopped. I didn’t really have a goal in mind back then. I was just saving for the rainy days, I guess. But now it seems those rainy days have come. The global economic crisis is felt by everyone around the world, yes, but that’s not what I’m talking about, really. I haven’t bothered to burden myself with dismal issues like that in a while. I simply cannot be burdened any more than I already am.

Old habits, as action star Bruce Willis would fondly say, die hard. Lately I’ve had to withdraw some money from my savings account just to finance my compulsive shopping episodes every other week or so, the same savings account I quietly vowed not to touch months ago. I’ve had a hard time controlling my urges to buy, own and wear the latest styles. Perhaps because I haven’t even really tried controlling them in the first place. It has even reached a point where I have had to disturb my shopping minions in the bigger cities with my quest for possessing the universe’s most eccentric wardrobe when the stores in my beloved province run out of the clothes I want. Still, if there were some form of rehab for this kind of addiction, I’d have willingly volunteered and submitted myself to have the sinful vice purged from my system, to have some sobriety, and to save myself some money. I’m not rich. That’s the problem. I’ve been living beyond my means. I’ve been buying clothes. Too many clothes. And now all my spending has come back to haunt me. Fashion does come at a high price, and I am paying it right now. With my hard-earned savings.

It’s not like I’m desperately out of control. I could stop if I really wanted to. I think. The problem is I don’t want to stop. And I still have the money to spend. In fact I am starting to feel I have come to terms with and have accepted my addiction, giving up completely on trying to resist and curb it. It may sound pathetic, but for me it’s just another way of expressing myself, of finding myself, of creating myself. Instead of spending my money on other destructive diversions, I’d rather spend them on clothes, clothes that help me define who I am and how I want the world to see me, how I feel about things and where I want to place myself in the society. It is in these material things that I now find my own share of happiness in this small earth that we live in, material things that give new meaning to my short, so far insignificant life. All my life I’ve known I wasn’t pretty. People would stare at me and wish they could pry out their own two eyes. Ugly people cannot afford to wear ugly clothes. Otherwise, they’d be the ugliest things this world has ever seen. And that’s really ugly. I’m sure no one wants to be that ugly. I’m sure I don’t. That’s why I resort to covering myself up with all these clothes that I buy, with the hopes of disguising my appalling imperfections and finally belong like the rest. I know I have everything that it takes to stand out, and that fitting in with the homogenous crowd isn’t something to aspire to, but instead something to get away from. But there really are times when standing out isn’t what you want, and you just wish you could also fit in.

See, this ridiculous fascination with clothes isn’t just something I neurotically developed out of sheer vanity and blasphemous worldliness and debauchery. It has a deeper meaning to it, a psychological aspect that most people fail to realize. All forms of addiction spring from some childhood deprivation and feeling of scarcity. Those who didn’t have shoes when they were young buy themselves hundreds of pairs once they’re old enough and rich enough to. Those who didn’t get to read comic books when they were young buy themselves all the issues they missed when they’re old enough and rich enough to. Those who didn’t live in a decent house when they were young build themselves flamboyant mansions when they’re old enough and rich enough to. In my case, I did have clothes when I was younger, in fairness. It’s just that as a child I’ve always felt like I didn’t have my own identity. Now that I’m old enough to stand up for all that I believe in, I buy myself all these clothes to create an identity for myself, perhaps a way of filling the emptiness inside and seeking to complete myself in all these material things that I surround myself with.

Not to worry though. I am not a victim. This addiction isn’t something that’s going to strip me of all my money. Or at least without me wanting it. I know money doesn’t grow on trees. You can’t just bury a coin in a pot of garden soil, water it, leave it under the sun and happily wait for it to grow and bloom and bear fruit to more coins. Too bad. That’s why I’m trying not to spend too much money now. So that I’d have some to spare to buy me some more clothes.

Night life

In the past, after briefly trying out how it was like to work in an inbound call center (out of boredom, confusion and curiosity), I’ve sworn on my own sweet, pathetic life that I’d never work on night shifts ever again. Never again. I gave it a good try back then, but I guess it just wasn’t for me. I was good at it, it was fun while it lasted, I learned a lot, too, but it almost killed me. After only a few months, I was fatigued, emotionally unstable, and burnt out. So no, never again, I told myself with finality, resolute conviction and self-righteous, obstinate pride, would I allow myself to go through such needless anguish, corporal punishment and torture just so I’d have some money to call my own salary. It’s just a terrible, terrible way of living, scavenging for money and trying to earn a decent living while slowly dying in the excruciating, exhausting process as well. That was it. I didn’t want to die young or live the rest of my life in a depressing mental institution. So I decided to put my corporate night life on permanent retirement from then on.

Well I guess as long as you're alive you can never really say never, because now I find myself eating (and choking on) my own fierce words.

Since last week, the daytime work schedule I’ve been comfortably on for the past year has been changed, and I’m suddenly back to working nights again. Of course if I really wanted to I could have just made a big, explosive, award-winning dramatic scene, resigned and stopped working altogether. Working in an outbound call center is a different, more profound kind of suffering compared to working for one that takes inbound calls. Instead of fighting off sleepiness at dawn, sitting on a swivel chair in a cold air-conditioned office, chit-chatting with seatmates while waiting for calls to be routed to your computer and then resolving irate clients’ issues while smiling quietly at their hurtful insults, you are tasked to make calls and promote a certain product or, say, a company and its services. It is always a struggle, a constant battle to meet expectations and consistently produce output like sad and sick old hens in an egg factory that reeks of noxious ammonia. It’s very tiring. Not to mention now that I’m working nights, where my frail body is forced to realign itself with new, nocturnal concepts of time and space, and my clock has to turn the other way around, unlearning all that it has now mastered over the years. Despite the redundant statements I continuously make about how difficult the job is, especially now, for some reason, I’ve found the courage to just stick around, wait and see how things turn out.

When I started working in a call center years ago I discovered there was so much about the job that I wasn't prepared for just yet, and some things I didn't even expect I’d find myself face to face with. No amount of preparation would have prepared me for what I was going to go through. And I didn’t make any, anyway. I still feel the same way. However, since life has taken me down this path again, despite my efforts to the contrary, I see no wisdom in putting up resistance. And I’m tired of making such a big deal about it, either. Instead of complaining about how horrible working at night is, I’m instead trying my best to see the good in the night life, my newly revived night life. I’m learning to appreciate things the way they are now. And I find there are some good things in this after all. A lot of good things, actually, that I somehow missed the first time around. I guess the gift of hindsight becomes better and better over time.

I find it wonderful how, instead of leaving home as the rest of the world begins a day, you see how the world ends a day as you wake up to begin yours. It is an entirely new experience when you begin to live your life upside down. You begin to see things differently, like turning a detailed portrait on a different angle and seeing another perspective of the beautiful picture. Despite the initial strain of adjusting to the drastic change in the hours when I’m awake, I find that working nights gives me a fresh way of looking at things, a view that I possibly could not even get while I’m up in the day. For all I know it could all just be something brought about by my altered mental chemistry. I don’t know. Still, I find it quite a revelation.

In the morning, just as I go home even before the rainclouds wake up to wring themselves dry and flood the earth with their cold tears, the warm dawn begins to peak from the horizon, bringing with it a bright promise of new beginnings. It’s always great to be reminded that yesterday belongs in the past and with it all the things that happened then are now but memories. Everyday is always a chance to forget and start anew. As I go on the solemn journey home inside an old, rusty and rickety jeepney, I see the clarity of the things around us when they’re not yet blurred and obscured by the hurried traffic of everyday life. I am graced with the serenity of a mind not yet confronted by worry and mundane puzzlements and the lightness of a spirit not yet burdened with the rigorous demands of modern day survival. I feel the freedom from the misleading chaos and confusion we live with everyday, from the unimportant preoccupations that throw themselves at us as the day goes wearily on.

As I look outside, feeling the breeze kindly caress my face, I notice how the path that leads me home seems pleasantly strange, like a foreign insect of sorts that strays into our backyard one summer afternoon, even when I’ve passed the same roads for years. I see how differently things look in the dim light of daybreak, how peaceful this world could be if we all stayed indoors and slept all day. I realize then how there is so much to be happy about, how very little we truly appreciate all the good around us. The gentle early morning sunshine seems to give me a good dose of happiness that lasts quite a while. Even the midday traffic and the noontime heat seem unable to drain or irritate me.

The night life isn’t so bad after all. Especially the morning after.

Uncanny heroes

Last week I was talking to a newfound friend and at one rather dreary point of the conversation (perhaps because I had surprisingly run out of interesting things to say, which isn’t very often, trust me) I asked him if he was into comic books as well. I had not yet read the latest issues released this month (or last month!) so I thought of asking him, just in case he knew what had happened to my favorite team of outlaw mutants, the Uncanny X-Men. He did not. Apparently, like many people I know who used to like them too back in the day, he thought the story of these comic book heroes had become increasingly complicated over the years, and he had lost whatever little interest he had in them then and the complex imaginary universe they now moved in. I might have even freaked him out a bit asking such a silly question. And so the subject died a sad, quiet, natural death and the topic was quickly changed, like an old pen unceremoniously replaced with a new one the moment it runs out of ink and becomes useless.

Later, when all other more important matters had been thought of and worried about, and my mind had loosened up enough to entertain the usual throng of trivial musings that regularly come to visit, the little incident had me thinking about why I continue to read and obsessively collect comic books (among other things) to this day. It’s a very geeky hobby, really. I don’t know. There has always been something uncanny about the X-Men that greatly appealed to me, even as a neurotic little child. Ever since the animated cartoon series premiered on weekend primetime TV back in the 90’s, I have tried my best to follow their adventures, fighting to protect a world that hates and fears them. But whereas all my classmates and childhood friends (who, at that time, became my playmates as we each pretended to be one of the superheroes) had now all but forgotten about them, I still pretty much live in the comic book world we all used to play in. Reading the comic books is, like sleeping with the blanket over my head, one of the early childhood habits I have had little success growing out of, an addiction I am yet to fully overcome.

When I was younger, it was nothing more than just an entertaining pastime, like all the others children often find themselves so preoccupied with. The images were vivid, bright and colorful, a source of both admiration and inspiration for my young artistic inclinations. It was in comic books that I saw things I could never see in real life, strange, almost mythical creatures and monsters, villains corrupted by the darkness of greed and hunger for supremacy, and of course, extraordinary people in carnivalesque costumes using their unique abilities and powers to save the world from all evil. Every child enjoys that kind of visual stimulation. I was amazed at all the wonderful things I saw on the pages of the comic books. There were all these interesting characters, people who were different from the rest yet somehow the same as everyone else. There was this bald paraplegic who could read minds, a man who could fire blasts from his eyes, a man with angel wings, a woman who could move objects around with her mind, a man who was all blue and furry but was very smart, a man with claws whose wounds healed quicker than anyone else’s, a woman who could control the weather, a girl who could walk through walls, and so many others. They each possessed a power that set them far apart from the rest of humanity, abilities they either regarded as gifts or curses, talents they either used for good or for evil.

But there was always something different about the X -Men. They weren’t just normal superheroes who saved the world every single day and were worshipped and adored by the people they protected, paraded down the city streets on flowery floats and showered with colorful confetti with people screaming and clapping as they went by. Despite constantly fighting to defend the world from evil, they remained outcasts, outlaws who were feared and loathed because they were different, heroes who remained unsung and unrecognized because some of them looked more like villains. They hid behind underground headquarters, codenames and masks to keep their identities and lives secret, safe from the knowledge of those who were disgusted by their genetic “disease” and those who found it hard to accept that they were of good use to society despite their deviations.

As time passed the comic books began to appeal not only to my childish imagination and hungry mind, but started becoming more and more intellectually meaningful to me as well. I started realizing they not only entertained me and helped me pass idle time, but also left me many lessons about life and how we should live it. Each one of us, in our own odd way, is an outcast, a misfit who constantly struggles to belong. I’m sure at one point in our lives or another we have all known what it felt like to be treated unfairly simply because we were different. Just because you are fat, or poor, or ugly, or uneducated, or black, or blind, or gay, or hunchbacked, the way the world treats you changes. It pains me that the first reaction of most people (who themselves are far from perfect) is to shun and reject something they don’t understand rather than seeking, at least trying, to understand it. They are quick to judge and condemn those who are foreign, those who are unusual, those who are different, those who are unlike them. Many of us often forget that there is something about each one of us, little idiosyncrasies, which certainly set us apart from the rest and makes us different in one way or another. The comic books that I read constantly remind me of the value of unquestioning respect, love, kindness, understanding, and acceptance.

We often choose to separate ourselves from each other for a variety of rather ridiculous reasons, reasons which to me, shouldn’t even be there to be considered in the first place. Religion, sex, race, physical appearance, and all other discriminatory labels we have successfully managed to create for ourselves have all become excuses for forgetting fairness and equality and throwing these values out the door. We all seem to struggle to fit in that we forget we have all that it takes it stand out. Rather than molding ourselves to become our own unique creation, we instead mold ourselves into becoming what everyone else already is. And then those who are unfortunately unable to fit in, despite their hope to the contrary, are left outside the circle, abandoned, scorned, feared, hated, ridiculed, humiliated, and sometimes even stoned to death, fed to the lions and burned at the stakes. Well, it’s been a while since I last heard anyone being stoned to death, fed to the lions or burned at the stakes, but yes, it does happen every now and then.

I don’t think God, in His wisdom and unconditional love, would even judge us the way we do ourselves. It seems to me we are the ones who condemn each other as sinners and criminals, forgetting that at the very end of it all only God can truly tell us who has been good and who has been bad, who deserves His love and who does not. I even think that to Him we all deserve His love. Even those of us who choose to believe otherwise. I pray, for all our sakes, that I’m correct.

These comic books remind me that there is wealth in diversity, that there is nothing wrong with being different. They remind me that in this life, in this world, there should not be a place for hate and prejudice, only compassion and empathy. When you come to think about it, we all have what it takes to be our own heroes. Uncanny, but heroes nonetheless. So go on, read a comic book or two. You might learn a few good lessons, too. And maybe the world will be a better place to live in

The lessons Professor Frank taught me

No I’ve never had a teacher named Frank before. I don’t even remember ever personally knowing anyone who goes by the name Frank. Not even someone who uses it as an alias, nickname, or pseudonym. I mean Frank or Fengshen or whatever other meteorological nomenclature it’s designated, the latest tropical storm that entered and left, in all its devastating glory, Philippine shores. Yes, the tropical storm that violently swept through the country during the weekend left me, aside from all the floating debris and human implements and cold corpses, many lessons in its wake. Nature has always been, despite (and maybe because of) its ruthlessness, one of the best teachers of humanity.

While the storm unleashed Nature’s fury upon all of us poor, helpless mortals, I found it had also unearthed many lessons buried deep in the fathomless pits of my mind, lessons I’m sure I’ve been taught before, lessons I’m sure I’ve learned in the past but had somehow unlearned and already long forgotten. Still, finding those lessons again despite the fact that a storm was ripping and tearing the city to shreds was a pleasant gift of knowledge and wisdom from an otherwise vicious force of nature. It was as if the storm dragged me by the hand, made me sit still inside a small classroom in my mind, pulled out some chalk and charts and flash cards, and began lecturing me while scribbling down some very important lessons on the blackboard. I diligently took down notes on my mental pad somewhere, and highlighted them just to be sure.

One would think that witnessing yet another terrifying exhibition of the earth’s power and wrath would scare the hell out of me, remind me not to mess with the sacred balance of nature, and maybe warn everybody else to stop cutting down old trees and do the same. Ironically, lessons on respecting life and nature and throwing one’s garbage where one ought to, never, not even once, crossed my mind throughout the rather fierce tempest. Seeing the storm lash out at everything did not surprise me. To me, we’ve always had it coming, and it was only a matter of time before our irresponsible exploitation of the already dying environment would trigger it to brutally retaliate and give us a tragic taste of our own harsh medicine. We are now merely reaping the putrid fruits of our abusive labor, suffering the consequences of decades upon decades of unrelenting environmental devastation in exchange of seemingly unnecessary industrial advancement. The calamity was merely waiting to happen, a catastrophe waiting to explode. Once again, we’ve no one else to blame but ourselves.

Anyway, the disastrous weather failed to remind me of all that. There was no need to. Instead, it made me think of other things. Last week I worked on a graveyard shift. I was on my way to work one night, and the storm had barely made itself known yet. There was hardly any sign of rain. Shortly after I had boarded an empty jeepney to leave home, however, rain began to pour in a way that it had not in recent months. It was like someone had suddenly remembered we had not had our share of rain in the past few months, and poured the entire bucket of cold rainwater over our heads right there and then. Suddenly, while musingly looking out at the rain through the jeepney’s now plastic-covered window, a little epiphany was born in my mind. The universe always seems able to find its balance. Lately I’ve had problems dealing with loneliness and depression and confusion, the kind of sad dilemmas that typify mid-life crises, tying old people down like heavy manacles and anvils. And to think I’m barely out of adolescence. I’ve had difficulty figuring out my direction in life, the path I want to take in moving on to the future, and I’ve been feeling lost in all the uncertainty as it has been increasingly difficult to keep in touch with people I’ve always had around me until very recently. I found it hard being alone.

That rainy night, however, I was not bothered by it at all. Even while I rode the jeepney alone, loneliness couldn’t creep its way into me, the melodic falling of the rain entertaining me and keeping all petty thoughts out of mind. I was alone with myself, but I wasn’t lonely at all. I was happy by myself, just staring out at ephemeral ripples on the drenched streets and keeping myself wonderfully warm against the chill of the breeze. Indeed, the universe has ways of keeping its balance. While, upon getting home after being stranded in the office for half a day as the storm raged on, I found out that water supply disappeared as power lines, among other things, were toppled down by the furious winds and electricity blacked out, the typhoon brought with it more than enough ice-cold rainwater to meet our needs, filling our tubs and pails and tabos and pitchers to the brim. While the TV, radio, and computer were rendered inert and useless by the widespread blackout, I had new comic books to read and new thoughts to ponder on to keep myself entertained.

Despite the external turmoil, I found inner peace. As the wind bellowed ominously outside, thrashing and beating its strong, hard fists against all that stood defiantly in its way, and the rain fell heavily like angry war era bombs and missiles on the ground, I was quiet on my bed, almost serene. The ensuing disaster did not scare me. It lulled me to sleep, whispering comforting nonsense into my ears. All the ironically pleasant noise the environment around me created drowned whatever troubling mental chaos that was swirling around me, allowing me to think the way I would always like to, clearly and peacefully.

In those rare moments of lucid tranquility, I realized that it sometimes takes as much as a storm to change one’s state of mind. Sometimes all you really need is an entirely new perspective, another point of view, to see the beauty in an otherwise ugly life. Before you can find and appreciate the calm in the eye of the storm, you must first lose it in all the surrounding chaos.

Sometimes you have to lose something before you realize you already had it. I haven’t washed any of the dirty clothes sitting patiently on my hamper the past few days, putting off doing the laundry one tomorrow after another. What monumental difference would one day make in washing off the dirt and dust of everyday life from my clothes anyway? I found better things to do than hauling all that dirty apparel into the washing machine, filling it up with water, pouring in foamy detergent soap, turning the dial and sitting on a stool beside the humming and churning electrical appliance while washing some more shirts by hand inside a plastic basin. I had to it on a weekend, when my time was my own and when life was running at a pace that I alone commanded. Then came the weekend. And the storm. Just like that, I lost a bright, sunny day or two that would have been perfect for doing the laundry. Obviously now I couldn’t wash my clothes, wring them and leave them hanging to dry up on the clothes line under all that wind and rain.

The opportunity had stopped knocking on my door, turned around upset and left stomping its feet heavily on the ground. Good thing some opportunities, like doing the laundry and other household chores, don’t just knock once. They do so persistently every once in a while. But what if it were the last chance I would have ever had to wash my clothes and dry them under the sun? What if the storm had never stopped and the sun didn’t come out ever again? I would have most certainly been stuck with damp, dirty clothes forever.

Never let an opportunity pass you by. Never hesitate to grab it by the neck (or whatever body part you prefer grabbing) the first instant it presents itself. Every moment spent thinking twice about whether or not to take the opportunity is a moment lost forever, a moment that could have possibly cost you the opportunity itself. You never know, the same opportunity might not come your way again, and it would have completely disappeared from your life permanently. In one seemingly harmless moment of hesitation, you could have lost something that was really meant for you in the first place, and sadly, you will never have the chance of finding it again.

Amazing how it took an entire tropical storm annihilating civilization as we presently know it just to make me realize all these things. I guess the storm taught me well. I’ll try and keep those lessons in mind as long as I can. Just in case some substitute typhoon comes and gives a pop quiz.