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.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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