My Old Resignation Letter

I can't believe it's been a year. Beyond admonitions to "be prepared for life at a contact center if you choose it," I don't really know what sharing this is going to be worth to my gentle readers (and the people I wish were reading me). Still, for lack of anything to post quickly on a Christmas Eve, this will have to do.

For those of you who believe in it, please have a wonderful Christmas. Many of the walking working will only have two days to rest before they slug it out with demons in the work place. This is an opportunity to reconnect, to catch up on sleep: please take it.

To my friends: I am praying for you. It feels like the most useless thing to do, but you know if I had a magic wand I'd wave away all the things that grieve you. As I don't really have one (elm, phoenix feather, 11 and a half inches) I have surrendered what hounds us all to a higher power. Of late I've been angry with that Power. But if one believes what the priests and the ministers say, we are, ultimately, allies. Just because I was ticked off with Him lately doesn't mean I'll be ticked off with Him for the rest of my life.

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2 January 2007

It is with great difficulty that I write this today. I think of turning my back on the friends I’ve made, my own progress in my quest for financial and personal growth, I almost want to turn from my decided course. But I applied for the job for more than the usual monetary reasons—I had personal money goals and I was reeling from personal loss. **** has helped me to recover from all of these, most especially the last item. I’ve made friends, I’ve recovered for myself the self-esteem I lost and I’d like to think I’ve helped make our customers’ lives a little easier.

I’ve considered leaving for about a month. I’ve told myself during that month that I had much to look forward to here. That all I needed to do was hang on long enough. My reasons for leaving, however, outweighed the incentives to stay.

This job for me was originally a chance to get paid for therapy. I would not have taken it were it not for the circumstances I’d found myself in: bereft of [wife], in need of business capital. But if therapy was the only real reason I had this job, I didn't’t deserve to keep it beyond the point of minimal recovery.

I had considered making a home here, keeping the job after I crossed that threshold. I liked that I was paid good money. I was ridiculously happy with my team and half in love with members of another. But I had run into other points that I simply could not dismiss.

For one, the scorecard is harder to satisfy, and its requirements will only increase as more and more cross-departmental functions are surrendered to the voices on the phone. Even as we train to meet increasing customer demands with the requisite equanimity, competence and empathy, I retain the feeling that it is only a matter of time before my scorecard failures outweigh the successes. "Super-skilled " can also be read as "Supers killed." (I haven’t spoken of this at length to anyone because I didn't want to affect morale. When speaking with the members of the later [batches], I was nothing but encouraging. Besides, they were trained well.)

Too, I feel that the hours have taken their toll on my well-being. I’ve been falling ill of late, and more frequently—this in spite of my moving to a place closer to the office, in spite of the megavitamin/Extra Joss cocktails I’ve been regularly taking. I know: everyone is responsible for how he manages his time and his health. I have an obligation to manage it so I am well enough to service our clients. It is with this in mind that I have considered leaving for a job closer to home. No, not another contact center. I just want to edit home movies and teach again at a pace that won’t leave me in catatonic slumber 18 hours every first day off.

I don’t want to leave. This has been one of the best places I’ve worked in. However, I feel I must before my performance declines. I am turning in my ID card, the headset and lock assigned to me. I am shredding my handouts and notes. I am saying goodbye, effective immediately. I am also praying for this institution’s understanding.

9 Mornings

They should have made this a lenten movie

I remember watching a Christmas movie in '02 starring Piolo Pascual and Donita Rose. It was a Dante's climb to salvation wrapped up in a story where love does what it's supposed to-- interest, create conflict, liberate, exalt and ... well, "make happy ever after" a viable possibility. All this happens in the space of nine days. Each beneficent stage of Piolo's transformation from a baggage-laden corporate a$$ to a genuine, loving, and ultimately whole person is marked by a mass anticipating Christmas (our local simbang gabi).

One of the high points of the movie for me was when Piolo bumps into his ex-bed mate in the same church: now she is apparently on her own climb to redemption. Donita Rose must weave some powerful form of magic if it rubs of on Piolo's floozy.

I'm notoriously slanted against big local productions-- and mind you, Star Cinema was big then, and it still is now-- but I genuinely liked this movie. In hindsight, I'm glad my friend Eline marched me into the cinema that day.

(They really shoulda made it a Lenten movie: Piolo Pascual, his name itself comes from Paschal, which pretty much refers to Easter and the Passover. Another piece of grand irony-- Pascual and Donita Rose aren't Catholic.)

When you're a writer and a youngish theatrical ham, you can't help but make correlations, form analogies, draw parallelisms. I'm no broken Piolo Pascual, and it's far too late to run into broken pure-hearted school teachers who just happen to look like Donita Rose on a dawn mass. Far too late to even try to complete the whole set of nine. But every Dante has to crawl out of the pit sooner or later, hurt but on the road to being whole.

a*moral

Say what you want about people who model their lives somewhat on the movies, but humankind defines the meanings in its lives through the stories it tells itself and the protagonists it sets up. Mayhap modeling your life to the script of Doom is a bad idea, but I'm sure, at one time or another, we all wanted to be Superman for all the right reasons.

Say what you want about relationships being "hard work" or about how "whole" you already have to be to engage in the act of genuinely loving-- my stand has always been that

• we are all broken toys, perfect in concept but a hell of a work in progress
  
• we love because we must, even if we love so brokenly:even in our broken-ness we instinctively seek to emulate our Creator;
• love heals broken people-- I've seen this happen (and I've seen the process aborted); and sometimes, if you're lucky or blessed, love's enough.
  

Snippets

Photobaket

A bug is keeping me from posting photos this morning. I figure it may have sommat to do with the Christmas rush. I'm trying hard not to form another cosmic conspiracy theory off this little inconvenience. I guess I'll just have to wait to try uploading again.

'Nuff said.

They're playing my song

Nothing helps beat your broken heart than a good immersion in the music of Queen, ABBA, Gloria Gaynor or your uncle's chest of 1980's vintage music. You know I'm right-- just because you think I'm nuts, it doesn't mean I'm wrong. Ha!

Anyway they're playing my song-- they've been at it since 8pm of last night. Apparently Christmas is still the season for people on a budget to put up a wicker fence 'round a portion of the street so they can dance in it. They're doing that here, now, a block or maybe three away from where I'm sitting.

There would be a device that spewed light into the dance area and into the sky. The lights would turn and shift and tumble in time to the beat of the music. Young people in rubber slippers and clothes that sometimes didn't match or fit well would be gyrating to the music too.

For the space of a couple of weeks there would be no news of assaults, stabbings, robbery. Because everyone was too busy dancing to Queen or ABBA, Gloria Gaynor, the Pointer Sisters, the younger Madonna, and yes, the rest of the hidden junk in your uncle's 80's collection.

My 80's music collection too, it seems.

I'm making such a big deal out of this because I didn't get to see or hear this at all last year. I was (take your pick)

• engaged with an enraged American inquiring about the whereabouts of his money;
• vainly trying to sleep and insulate my back from the artificially generated cold in a contact center's sleeping area, while lurid sense-impressions of people trying to make out assailed my mind;
• near-comatose somewhere else, sleeping nearly half the day away

It's refreshing to see and hear something like this-- the experience reminds you that the world continues turning in the face of all things absurd and unfair.

"Khaaaaaaaaaaaan!"

We got Shat-nerrrrrrrr! 'Nuff said.

Fringer's Work Report

Project Yearbook--

I feel like I'm chasing a ghost. Can't meet my clients properly and today was supposed to be a sort of final meeting before Christmas took us all away. The necessary evils of the Christmas rush. Still, I'm writing this while the 5 megabyte attachments (pages, pages and more pages) are loading up in preparation for sending. That's new ads, updated biography pages, et cetera.

When I get back to HQ later tonight I'll still be making pages...

Recital AVP--

William Shatner will be gracing the next Clavier recital-- or at least he'll sound like he's there hamming it up on our AVP if I can only get his voice down pat. Other aspects of production are moving faster now, since I'm done with part one of Project Wedding.

Project Wedding--

That was done last Sat. Phase two to commence after the Recital on the 22nd. You're all invited by the way. I'll post the location of the venue when I can later tonight, assuming I stay awake when I get home. Light's Camera Christmas!

Ploject Paintingu--

Basically done. The real trouble is checking the painting itself for gaps, still-wet spots and finally getting it to the people who commissioned it. Tomorrow. Have to get it there by tomorrow.

My Status

Fraying and Praying. I am not taking the car while the risk of micro-sleeping at the wheel is large. Lemme just get past this blasted week...

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Let’s Talk About Ants

(From my old multiply account)

They were high on my list of annoying vermin, right up there with mice and rats. In my old apartment back in the day, you couldn’t leave food on any flat surface for five minutes without a swarm of red ants descending on- and systematically dismantling- your snacks for transport to the nearest colony.

It drove me nuts.

You couldn’t bug bomb the place because the apartment was so small. Sooner or later enough droplets of leaded poison would find their way into the fridge, or your cabinets, or settle on your plates and utensils, upping the risk of pesticide-induced grief for the people living in it. Besides, bug spray was freakishly expensive for a couple on a budget fighting a protracted war with ants.

You also couldn’t seal every tiny entry point the little critters trafficked in and out of, because they’d always find new entry points into your home.

Barring calling the good people at Mapecon (Manila Pest Control) and shelling out a small fortune, the only viable alternative for me was to find a human-safe alternative to bug spray. My alternative was Perla.

Yes, the soap.

I’d have chunks of it floating in my atomizer—one shake and you were ready to combat the Red Menace.

The best I could do was of course, fight the commie ants to a standstill. At least I got better results in that war than the US did in Vietraq. The soap solution was so foully basic that ants died in uncounted numbers and it took them hours to reestablish the chemical trails that led to their food supply. By that time, the food was gone—secure in our bellies, safely in the fridge or on its way to Manila Bay via the sewer.

Fun Ant Facts: Society

As in the act of loving, you can’t wage war on someone and not pick up some of that someone’s traits. Having set aside a good portion of my time fighting ants, I’ve learned a thing or two about them that have made me replace irritation and hatred with bouts of wonder and, of all things, humor.

Ants are the perfect communists. Their whole lives, however brief, are devoted to a single role assigned to them by a controlled throwing of genetic dice. There are no dissident-artist-conscientious-objector ants: each ant “knows” its function and will perform it to the best of her ability.

Sure, no ant will walk through fire by default. But given a big enough incentive—say, a truckload of exposed milk chocolate— ants will go over danger, under it, around it and sometimes through it to get to that sweet reward, almost regardless of how many of their number die in the attempt.

They’re like the mainland Chinese— there’s always more where they come from (my apologies for the racial slur, but the comparison is apt).

Amazingly, most every ant—worker, soldier, HiveQueen— is female. The only male ants on the roster are drones: expendable Toms, Dexes and Harrys whose sole purpose is to provide the Queen the necessary genetic material from which to form the multitude of eggs she regularly lays. Do they provide her with entertainment as well? Perhaps— the drones are after all, the only ants with wings. I’m almost sure there’s an ant Queen somewhere chuckling at the thought of the poor drones flying around and banging their heads like impassioned moths on a fluorescent coil, or drowning in a basin of water laid under a similar light source.

Fun Ant Facts: Language

Despite what my readers will think, I don’t have the monopoly of being able to speak to ants. You can speak to ants too: bug-bombing them is as good as saying “I hate you all! Don’t bother me again!” Not that they really care what you feel about them. Except maybe the Queen, who gets a kick out of the idea of you fighting a losing battle against her numberless troops.

Of course my conversations with most ants are like really thick chocolate being slowly pushed through a sieve. Meaning is …felt, tasted and smelled, rather than deciphered from sound and writing.

You can tell how far food is by smell—either by the scent if the food itself or by the scent of the chemicals the other ants in front of you deposit to mark the supply trail.

“Hello, Friend.”
--“Hello, Friend.”
“How far to the sugar pile?”
--“Close. Just keep to the trail.”

The language is rather crude by human standards— you can’t debate the nature of Platonic Love versus Eros in it— but the combination of smell, taste and touch gets the basics across.

“I need you.”
“Need help?”
“Yes.”
“I’m here. Always.”

Blinkered

If you've been trying to reach me on my cel over the last couple of days, then you undoubtedly will have gotten frustrated trying to do so. My cel battery has been dying over those past few days. It died completely yesterday. I don't have my charger, and my directory of important numbers has always been in my phone. It's easy to find others who can assist-- theoretically.

My apologies to you all.

Exhausted

Made another mistake in a long line of these. Still shocked, still processing the night's events. Bottom line: I was lucky, probably we all were. I can't make this right directly but I will when the time for it comes.

Setback!

I can attribute some of the work-related weirdness that's been happening to me to the godawful Christmas rush. I've been trying to keep away from it, trying to work in sealed bunkers where I won't have to move out until absolutely necessary. Getting out of these bunkers depletes resources that I'll need to continue all my work. But I still have to go out, to rush to meet people though, and lately things have been getting lost, shuffled around, because it's harder and harder to travel the streets. I'm losing gas and sleep and I'm often stuck in between places where you can't make output or send it. My phone battery is on the blink. And yes, I'm not eager to make or return phone calls.

So here I am preparing to rush out again. I am hoping I won't be as unprotective unproductive.

rock

There is a piece of polished masonry I've been carrying since late August. It was part of an office building that had likely been demolished a month before that time in the Ortigas Center area-- the facade, perhaps, or the floor. I'd seen pieces of this dark, marbly substance. I remember telling myself what a shame it was to waste these pieces. They would have made a good trophy base, name plate, sign or paperweight. I picked a good-sized bit of dark building-facade rock (wikipedia calls it a conglomerate) and took it home with me.

This was sometime after August. I don't remember the exact date. (I admit I have that problem with death anniversaries and birthdays too.) I do remember that there were strange colors in the clouds at five in the p.m., traffic was decent and that later on in the evening the moon was a sickly, lurid red.

The point is I kept it because I wanted to remember: my little conglomerate held its own against the wind (a good paperweight), and I liked looking at it, gently touching it with the tips of my fingers. Its dark hue, its pockmarks, the small embedded imperfections, its points and varied textures--sharp, rough, smooth-- these things comforted.

It's just sad that, as events force me to accumulate new junk, this rock (and my memories) finds itself unused, corwded out, hiding in more and more obscure locations. I reached for it, in a dark bag full of wires and cheap electronics, and it nearly cut me.

It's sad because I don't want to simply throw it away.

Nobody really reads this crap. Why does my hit counter register increasing hits? It can't be all me. Sheez.

Why I can't live and work in Eastwood City

It's a nice place to visit but it has its own snags.

You can't really walk out of the condo unit wearing rubber slippers (flip-flops to my American readers) or an ugly shirt. Everything is ridiculously expensive, from food to internet time.

But this is a great place to hide out when you want to work without external interruptions. There's ample power, ample water --and a heater to boot! After the guards get used to your face they tend to leave you alone. When you need eye candy you can take a stroll and look into any of the posh and semi-posh temples of commerce.

I tend to keep to myself and the condo though. I'm in no mingling mood. Even if I'm often faced with the threat of cafard.

Fringe Workflow Reports—

Dexes and Exes

When I started Fringe Living it was meant to be a blog about living and working on the fringe, that is to say, life and work outside the comforting miasma of a desk job and life with the parents. Lord knows it was long overdue (the blog and life and work sans mom, dad and desk job).

It was supposed to be devoid of the heavy political, philosophical and personal baggage that permeated The Big Bodega. Then I lost my—okayokayokay, I’ll get off that topic since I’ve talked it over to death.

Fact is I’ve talked of nothing else but my troubles with my whole peer group and my exes.

Today I’ll be doing something different. Talking about something I should have been discussing in this venue. It’s something called work.

Project Yearbook.

I’ve been doing nothing but the Saint Columban’s Diamond Jubilee souvenir program over the last two months. I can’t market my others services while I’m doing this thing. That’s because there’s only one of me and I can’t promote myself, do videos and the yearbook at the same time. The yearbook’s long overdue and God knows I really won’t be getting money for it.

In between bouts of non-stop work and non-stop stupor in places where I can’t easily be reached for comment (or for nagging) it’s almost a gift to be able to marathon episodes of Smallville and Supernatural.

Anyway here’s my progress report—

I’m still indexing adverts that I’m working on. Should be done by tonight.

1. I have to re-import some jpegs (I’m using Freehand) because they’re coming out pixilated on the printouts. Should take an hour, should also be done by tonight.
2. I gotta get started formatting the ads. I’ll do this last. Hopefully I’ll be done with what I have by Tuesday.

Litmus

Every second an opportunity to turn it around.

It sounds easy. It is easy. In principle. All it takes is a little courage. A little understanding.

My courage and understanding failed me last night (actually two nights ago). I could have changed tacks. Stayed on the line, been my charming self. I did love this woman—I do love this woman. I knew it was her the moment she picked up the phone and spoke.

All I could remember when I heard her voice last night was just how bad the situation between us was: this woman hated me so badly she wanted to forget me. I didn’t, until that second, realize just how angry and afraid I was. Angry at our choices, terribly afraid of the day—this day— that we would speak again.

I wanted the conversation over and done with quickly before I said anything stupid. By default, she wouldn’t believe me anyway. And what new thing was I supposed to say, to add to this stilted conversation? She’s already heard everything—

“I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry we turned out badly. Life just isn’t the same without you in some way shape or form. I miss you, your mannerisms, your jokes.”

That night there was something I wanted to add: I am so afraid of displeasing you any more than I already have, that I have exhausted your capacity to even listen to me. I wish I could get past this. Despite what you feel about the actions I took and the choices I made, everything I did, since you decided we were over, I did because I value you.

The moment passed—

In the real world she asked for the caller’s name. My name. The name that finally came out in a rueful breath. There was no way to give it without her finding out that this voice belonged to the man she hated, the man who "used her," the man who "frightened her." Never mind that this voice belonged to the man she once loved.

In the end I can only pray for similar moments, for the strength to cut through the bullshit and reach that dear friend I once had.

Every second an opportunity to turn it around. Every day a litmus test to see if this is true.

Beating a Dead Horse

I don't want to be continually apologizing. And knowing what I know now, it may be best to leave well enough alone. I'd hoped that there would be time, prayed for a different ending, gone so far as to try provoke a response because anything was better than this existence without you.

I honestly don't know how I could have messed us up. I did love you; I still do. The bottom line as best as I could determine was that you felt I was taking you for granted, was too hung up on the past. One day you simply decided you wouldn't live with that anymore. From your standpoint, there was no feasible future with me. Everything else stems from that simple fact. Everything snowballed into that big mess that saw me driving you farther away.

I'm sorry. For everything. I can't fix this; I so desperately want to. It's not my call anymore.

Please believe me, I do mean you well. There're so many things I'd wanted to show you. Like in the old days. I wish we could talk.

Someone's found me on Skype

...and I'm not sure if she's even a "she."

It's flattering being asked if I want to "play." Lord knows it's been a long while since someone's called me "Baby." Sadly, as much as the loins may stir at the prospect of a virtual tryst, work still needs doing.

And that this girl is always on-line seconds after I sign in, makes me wonder if she isn't an online software version of a femmebot. One designed to ping the accounts of select Skype users periodically to see if they're online and then send them messages encouraging them to follow a link to her home porn site.

Intriguing, this possibility of being propositioned by a marketing gimmick.

Jogging in Place

I don't like myself today. Every other word I'm saying is either "f_ck" or "bullsh!t." And every other gesture I've been making with my hands is to flip somebody the bird. Not that I would normally point that at anyone but I've been doing that so much someone is bound to see it.

I haven't been truly happy since August. There were moments-- in the middle of editing and contributing to a really fun video or talking about camp icons. Or that time when I became a mime for my friend Maureen. Or that one time when I helped the mideast resto with their electricals and maybe saved 'em from a fire. But since then, nothing. Abso-f_cken-lutely jack-bull-sh!t.

Which is ironic, since in that respect, I'm in the exact same place I was two years ago.

I can handle it better, thank God. And my current workload keeps me preoccupied enough so that thinking about where I am doesn't take up all of my headspace. I still have some major decisions to make that I've been postponing, pending the end of my current work project. Check back with me next month and I'll let you know how those are going.

I am praying that when you see me next I will be smiling, and not because I'm ruminating about the aptness of the image below--

I've logged a thousand miles following the highway, and all this time everyone else was moving while I was actually jogging in place.

Oh god I'm flipping someone the bird again...

Weeks--maybe a month ago-- I dreamt of you. There were scars on your legs, your shins and I kissed them. In the dream I didn't know how they got there. I wanted so much to make the wounds and the scarring go away.

Again, off multiply. June 05 2007

I am getting really tired of serial romances. The kind that begin like a sunrise-- warm, slow and sweet, lending life to last night's washed out colors. I'm even done waiting for the cooler, more muted liaisons, the ones that are built on love and logic. I am, simply put, tired of waiting for sense to make its way into my friends' thick skulls. The self is not God's Gift to Women, but it's the best and only self I've got. I am tired of laying it with my customary roses, marjoram and fruit on a silver platter only to have it unceremoniously sent back to me for consumption with all the parts torn up and put back together wrong. The f_ckups I've had to deal with are nowhere near the legendary levels of last year, but it's very discouraging just the same to be told in so many ways to go hang. I am especially tired of waiting long periods of time for fear, loathing and contempt to fade away when they should not have even been there in the first place. I refuse, however, to give in to indifference (everyone else does) because neither of us has to. (Why am I the only one who sees it?) I will not play the pissing contest of "Who Loses More?" There is nothing stupider than two once close people pointedly ignoring each other and telling their friends what an utter moron the other person is. The situation is unfair and I'm supposed to sit here and take it because everyone else does? Bull cookies. Something has to be done because it can't keep being this way. None of us can afford it. Yes, I'm a gods-damned moron for thinking that there must be a better way to live and go about caring than this. Because if there is none, then we're all screwed, courtesy of our own fickle and benighted natures.

(this is a cross post from my multiply account)

Evil Dex and His Big Bodega

There was a time when I could post stuff about everything that's happened to me. That was before the advent of communities of interconnected interactive blogs. Before I was formally part of a group of people who blogged interactively. I had functional (if relative) anonymity. People who'd stumble on my blogs wouldn't have the luxury of prejudging the content based on how well they knew me. Select instances from my life seen through my eyes would serve to inform and divert and (sigh) entertain to an extent dictated by personal, social and geographical distance and by simple common sense.

Then I started to have an audience: moral supporters, curious and bored readers, at least one critic who put my writing and ideas to the test. The dialogues between blogger and audience was still thankfully somewhat Hegelian, and they were dropped once we left our terminals. The topics we argued about online were important --comics, art, philosophy, love and politics-- but they didn't spill over into our personal lives and social interactions. At least that was how it felt back then.

I was very opinionated, very pompous, very angry, very happy, a little sad, somewhat paranoid, very much in love, and very reflective.

I could almost freely blog about what it felt like, being the houseband living with my then-girlfriend, my issues with mom and pop and God and authority figures. I had a very lengthy blog entry (two parts!) about writing, English and, of all things, my hair as a political statement. I could blog about how much I disliked lawyers and advertisers even if I'm as pedantic as a lawyer and was a college-trained ad man. I could look over my posts and learn and relearn things about myself and the way I think and write and live.

Nagusame's Dex, Shrinemaiden

Somewhere along the line my reflexive activity started to affect other people outside my life online. I think this happened sometime after I lost my wife (the girlfriend). She was my center, or a large part of what kept me together as a person. I lost track of why I was blogging. I stopped talking about politics and comics and America and Hegel and Nietszche and St. Augustine.

And everyone around me knew it, could feel it, was affected by it. Some were inconvenienced and debilitated by it.

I was shouting it on every online mountaintop: I love you. I was arguing, on my blogs, the nature and merits of a life lived for two. Off line I was campaigning earnestly, assiduously for such an alliance.

Reality TV

My online life and my off line life had become one and the same.

What used to be entertainment and diversion that could be shut off as soon as I left the terminal had become ...reality television. I was talking about the dynamics of a romantic affair online and, off line, I was living the equivalent of a romantic affair ending horribly.

And everyone in my social circles (active online and regularly meeting off line) could not help but see it, even if they couldn't bear to watch.

But I couldn't stop-- these were events, variables. These had to be recorded, analyzed, compared with the experiences of friends and colleagues. Future scenarios extrapolated from insufficient data so I could find the one with the happy ending and bring it into existence.

And I felt it then, everyone tired of me talking a topic to death. Everyone tired of me number-crunching scenarios and throwing them away. Everyone with a prepackaged pop psychology solution to something I needed to work out for myself.

How do you stop an Imploding Man?

Perhaps I could have lived these lives separately had I not been part of several groups of people who knew me online and off line. It certainly would have spared my friends the grief of seeing someone destroy himself. It certainly would have spared me the grief of being sorely vexed by people with the best of intentions, by people who loved me. But that's neither here nor there now.

The point is that this is partly why I destroyed my old blog, my old friendster account. Why I stopped going to the club meetings, to the martial arts classes, why I stopped seeing friends. Why I hid. Why I talked about my disintegration and other personal matters in other blogs and venues. And why until August, I didn't post anything about my latest interpersonal stuff.

Bottom Line

Perhaps the lesson is that familiarity breeds contempt, even in the most well-intentioned people. I know for sure though, that I'll be reviewing these musings and referring to them to guide my future interactions with the World Wide Web and the world beyond it.

Too much has happened for me to put it all down in a way you'll be able to read properly. Which is good, because that means I've been productive. What's maddening is that this is also true: there's a lot of nothing going on in my life. Large chunks of my time are spent just waiting.

Waiting on the customers.
Waiting for them to fully pay up.
Waiting until I can safely leave to buy supplies (and by then most stores are closing).
Waiting until I can get on line.
Waiting until the public toilet is available.
Waiting until income actually clears debt.
Waiting for plans to come to fruition.
Waiting for God to act.
Waiting for people to soften, and
Waiting for Godot.

Not that I don't fill these waiting times with other activities. But the filling does not change the feeling that I am again, likely, time's fool. That something is up and I have no idea what it's about or when it's all going to happen.

Well. Back to work.

This is how I know I'm not being read. My hit counter's gone up by one and I sure as hell know I was my site's last visitor.

Tin. Hey. Look. You're important to me.

Believe it or don't that I love you; decide that it does or does not matter; you're important to me. I can't stand that we're not talking.

I've wronged you, yes. I'm sorry, definitely. But please, at least talk to me.

You're one of my few best friends, trysts, mixed signals and fouled expectations notwithstanding. I need you not because I need to play someone or otherwise screw him up.

I need you for you.

People can't spend that kind of time together and not be marked by it in some way. I don't care that what happened to us was a freak accident; IT DOESN'T MATTER. It hasn't mattered since the night I called you Baby and I threatened to pluck out ***s nosehairs if he got absent and made you go to work early.

I don't care that we were a freak accident. I feel stupid for fighting it all that time.
That you cared for me was the best accident to ever happen to me in a long time.

Please talk to me

I love you

Prayer

Father I come to you again with sullied hands, storming heaven with my incessant requests. I am fully aware of my unworthiness. But each time I've prayed for someone else you've answered with speed and grace and subtlety. I want you to answer me this time.

I do not want the comfort offered by a parent who can't prevent pain. "Shhhh, shhh, I know" is not comfort if I have been at the receiving end of it twice in a row. What comfort is it to know that you know, but will not act? I don't have your vision. I can't see what's ahead. I only know that you move in the world because when I pray for friends, something good happens.

I beg you to let that something good happen to me.

I sense your handiwork in the events that swirl around me but I cannot see their end. And for now, I cannot see my heart's desire on my horizon. Let me not love or pray or struggle with my backsliding in vain.

I ask this in your name.

Amen

Dearest Tin,

I love you. I did. I always will. Goodbye.

Dear Jerrah,

I'm writing to let you know I burned out on a girl again. I'm also beginning to wonder just what the latest of these rejections means for me. I scare women, we've established that. Lord knows I scared you. But the things that scare you are seemingly the essential parts of me-- an earnestness that translates into creepiness, little gestures of affection that are often read the wrong way in the world of sexual politics.

People are obsessed with finding their Other, saying aloud that he or she doesn't have to be perfect yet thinking exactly the reverse. Then when faced with imperfection, they buckle, they break. They can't or won't seem to remember just what it is that made you special in their eyes, just what it is that they saw in you. And you're the one cursed with all the remembering and all the regret.

You want to try the experiment of simply being friends but they see your feelings, your intent and these things threaten them. You want simply to be with them, see them, and everything you say and everything you do is always heard and seen in the wrong light. The things you used to be able to talk about when you were "just friends" are the same things you can't talk about now, even when they're talked about with other friends. You become an imposition on their time, which has suddenly become more important to them than it was previously. And they say hurtful things and you say hurtful things and it just spirals into worse...

It's so easy to change people's views for the worse (hurt them), so hard to change people's views for the better. We tell ourselves love isn't about changing the other person but that's what we expect when we engage in loving.

I don't know, Jer. If a person's character is destiny, and if it's nigh impossible to change it, then it's quite safe to conclude that some people are simply never meant to marry, or love another on intimate, personal and sexual levels. I'd be better off hiring prostitutes to bleed off my libido since no one wants to share herself with me in that meaningful way.

My heart knows this isn't true in spite of the evidence in front of me (you know how well the logic of "evidence" damns). Maybe I'll have some proper answers one day. Or maybe I'll be writing you again about this exact same impasse a year from now.

In the meantime, I hope you are well.

Dex

Cat Got Your Tongue

Tonight I'm going to the nearest adoration chapel, to pray for friends who have cause to grieve.

Pacs' girlfriend Joyce miscarried and is dealing with the loss of her child. Pacs has been pushed away, is unable to help. Not all is well between Anna and the American who stole her away from me in '05. Him, I don't much care about, but Anna deserves the happiness I could not provide her.

Meantime I don't know if I can still bring myself to pray for my own needs. You see, several months ago there was not a day when I wasn't at a chapel, praying that God would at least soften Mylene's hardline stance against having me around. The year before that, the name in my prayer requests was Socorro. I am... less than satisfied with what happened.

I'm thus not too keen about praying re: my situation with Tin, never mind the fact that I love her. I haven't been the best of boyfriends and most anything I say would be a cop out excuse regardless of how... But I love her. I want to do right by her. That's the important thing. I can only hope her heart can see me rightly one day soon, before this missing her kills me.

I do love her.

My Best friend is Getting Married... Again

As befitting a Baptist who is part of a non-denominational Christian church, my friend Dexter Buenaluz, known to a few on deviantArt as hyperdex, is getting married in the same church.

In my universe, one wedding is usually enough. In an ideal world the "real" wedding is the church wedding. Take the cue from some of my oldest friends and call me a delusional sentimentalist.
I think that this is one instance when the church and the state can drop the separation. It would save us a lot in fees and logistics and stress if a marriage solemnized in a church ceremony was also recognized by the state.

One ceremony, one set of fees. One ring to rule them all... and in this marriage bind them.

Nevertheless, I think it's sweet that he'll marry his wife again.

Well.

Time to implement Oplan Zero Visibility.

A Return to Living La Vida Fringe

I've quit my ultra-stressful high-paying job to live on the fringe of society again. Not to say that the life I'm coming back to was always stress-free. Like many people who were suddenly saddled with the cares of adulthood, I was also presented with irritating catch-22s.

Have lots of time but make measly money. Or make a crap-load of money but kiss your time goodbye (hello, you're married to your work now!).

I am determined to beat this. If there is one life-changing thing I can do, let it be that.