notitlrcan;trly thuinknofonerightnpow

my brain's on fire. i'm slated to do work that i haven't properly finished because i can't get this body to do what needs doing. feeling shamed. i got a grandkid who juggles more classes than i ever didand all i can think about is

at least i'm drnkkkkkkkkk
drinking water

at least i've touched the work

looking forward to going
see a friend

maybe stay in the water



hoping
see you againmissyounot choerentwill porbly regrget edit later clickpubnlish

Itinerant Mendicant

I had a wonderfully written post that the wondrous magic of cookies and internet security basically removed from existence.

The gist of it was that I had to refuse a young lady's request for the last of my money. She wanted to use it to get wherever she needed to go: home, presumably. Shutters slammed down on whatever it was that showed her humanity and allowed her to acknowledge mine. I remember feeling hurt by this, as I did want to help.

Of course there were valid arguments against it. I'd had enough money to only get me partially home. I'd still have to walk the rest of the way. And considering everything I'm juggling these days, I was going to need every calorie I was bound to lose by walking.

I wrote -- before the website hiccuped and removed everything-- that I felt the odious feeling of being... tested.

I wrote before that I didn't like character tests, because you walked into them blindly, not knowing the rules that someone (a woman, an authority figure, God) has often arbitrarily [and cruelly] set. These tests are usually stacked against you: they are engineered so that you'd have to defy your own nature to beat them. Ultimately you almost invariably fail.

Of course, I also thought about how God must likely be feeling: being presented with our needs day in and day out with each request being a pass-fail test of His character.

I'm surprised he hasn't tired of the lot of us.

I Miss the Carpet

The thing I miss the most about the old place of work (okay, one of the things) isn't just any single person or a group of people.

I miss the carpet. Really.

Because no matter how dirty and raggedy the thing becomes, I like lying down on it whenever (to quote so many Korean English students) "I get stress." We have a carpet at home and I like lying on it better than lying on a bed. I'm a tactile person, you see, and rubbing fingers or toes against a textured surface always settles me.

Carpets are great when you whisper secrets into them since they damp sound. They also absorb tears, so they're great for crying into as well. They can take your BS because they're always carrying your weight, with very little in the way of complaints.

I miss the carpet because of the way she always had my back.She was a warm refuge when the deluge of Korean or local voices clamoring for attention became too much to take. My carpet was my anchor.

Don't get me wrong, folks. I'm liking my new work environment, but there's nothing like a carpet to rest my back or practice waltzing on. I'm a disco guy, but this is one area where something else beats out all the vinyl in the world.

Sedate EDSA

And I'm glad about this. I got to work with very little hassle or unneeded fanfare. I was also able to swing by the EDSA Shrine and pay my respects. I often used to do this but for purposes outside of nation building. The shrine was one of the many sacred places where I spilled more than the requisite tears.

None of that today, though. Even if thoughts other than nation building still managed to preoccupy me.

I really thought traffic would be so horrible and the trains would be congested-- visions of people hanging from the rafters and such. When none of that happened it was almost a letdown. Had I known I would not have to fight the crowds, I'd have brought more stuff!

It's still so cold that the chill seeps into the fingers, toes and between the shoulder blades. Meantime the skies seem to be clearing. I'm asking "What do these portend?"

Oh Dear

The ship's run aground and it's sinking
And this in the midst of your constant thinking
You're losing crew and you don't quite see it
Oh wait, the captain's oblivious,
so that makes two of you

They're jumping ship, or you're driving 'em away
And the goons and mooks you're taking in are just
Manning the bilge pumps and eating paste.

It isn't easy when we have to swab the deck
or lean the ship windward and hoist our only sheet
and at the end of the day, we still kiss your naked feet.
I didn't mind-- your feet are lovely. besides,

for the longest time, I haven't gotten to kiss any

But the ship's run aground and it's sinking
(look there's a giant squid)
You're losing crew and you don't see why
Or maybe you finally do.
The captain's oblivious,
the solution is obvious!
and it takes just one of you

Better tell the captain--
he'll know what to do--
wait--
what's left of the crew's

got problems asking that of you?

Oh dear.

Oplan Zero Backlog

Oplan is a uniquely Filipino term. The cops and the military always have to call their little exercises "Operation Plans" or "Implementation Plans," hence the little sobriquets: Oplan Sagittarius and Implan Whatever.

Anyway, the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company came up with their own OPLAN way back in the late eighties (I think). The monopoly had grown so bloated and inefficient that there was a long list of angry phoneless people waiting for some decent attention and relief. Oplan Zero Backlog was therefore launched by PLDT. The goal was to make sure everyone who had filled up the requisite forms and paid for them were actually getting the service they were due, i.e. an actual working phone.

I adopted my own OPLAN Zero Backlog several times in my collegiate and post-collegiate life. I had projects that were backlogged at those times, and I was determined to get them done. I'd even post a sign outside my door at the QC residence (back when I had a room) that borrowed heavily from the imagery of the OPLAN ZERO BACKLOG ads.

I'm feeling the need to start another O.Z.B., as I have at least two major projects that have demanded my attention since late last year, and my new job will require the same attention I gave my old one...

[digression begins]

...which was a lot.

Incidentally, this is what happens when your most effective knight returns from exile and you tell him in so many words that his sword's not needed, when oh sweet holy God, it is. You effectively hand him to another liege lord who'll likely pay him better. Consider that your knight would have worked for you for peanuts and the simple pleasure of your collective company.

Sorry, word vomit.

[digression ends]

As I was saying, I have other projects in the pipeline. I'll need to make room for them if I'm to have any decent amount of sleep within this year.

"Hi!"

Sometimes I think of these as life's little jokes. Someone's found me on Skype again and she-- assuming that it is a she-- is looking for some attention of the kind I'm not needing to give. I'm wondering, what, do I fit some sort of stereotype?

Nothing telling on my profile... heck there's nothing on my profile. So maybe it's just another one of the flukes that make so common an appearance in my life. To be fair, the sender's profile picture's got a really nice....

The Stairwell Is My Friend

Because I'm living a sedentary lifestyle and I'm a-hankering for physical activity. The stairwell's good if you want to build wind, to strengthen your leg muscles and put a major strain on your back.

I miss feeling my heart beat so hard I'd thought it would physically burst. Well, I don't miss it all the time but the rush of blood is a pleasant experience. When it roars in your ears like a wave you feel you're alive. Distressed, usually, (one normally gets this when being chased by predators) but alive.

After wind, we'll work on power and reflexes.Considering how far I have to go I'll have to get creative with how I work with the stairwell.

I have time.

Paying the Piper

If it isn't poetic, it's not scientific. For every action, an equal and opposite reaction. Like a poem or a movie. Like life. Pick your metaphors: everyone pays the piper, or reaps what he sows. Sometimes you defer payment or fiddle with the crops so their production cycle changes but you... ah hell, you get the picture.

I've been afraid of the repo man for so long because he always takes what's dear to you. My whole life's been defined by trying to out-think the devil when he offers me a deal. Stave off the repo man. I've actually done it a few times-- I'm a lot more like Sisyphus than I thought, and damned if I'm not proud of that. But I'm seeing several repo men soon. To settle up.

It feels good.

And it feels... free

Let Me Tell You a Secret

I'll tell you a secret.

Everyone's a designer.

It's just that many of us aren't good at it; aren't paid big money for it; or they don't consider what they're doing "design."

You plan a camping trip, that's design. Perhaps the art board isn't static because the art board is time. Perhaps the camping trip gets shot to hell for one of a million things we blame on Murphy. Nevertheless, you did the planning, you fiddled with the elements (angry kids, the broken RV, the road, etc.) and the camping trip still goes pffft.

Just means that for that one instance you were a lousy designer.

Happily opportunities to get it right are legion, and at least we can't really get fired for being a bad designer for a day regardless of how your bosses may feel. They can cut off your money because you did a lousy design job once too many, but you'll still be a designer.

Whose image are we made after in the first place?

They're Playing Our Song

As I type the Mass in support of Rodolfo Lozada on the La Salle Greenhills campus is breaking up peacefully. The difference is that they're... they're playing Bayan Ko.

I guess this won't explain the chills running down my spine to my younger readers as I listen to it. That song's gotta be what-- twenty, thirty years old? Point is they were playing that song when the people had simply had enough of Marcos's repressive government. That bit of theme music helped rally millions of people around Cory Aquino. They were playing that song when the tanks were stopped by people lugging flowers and rosaries at Camps Crame and Aguinaldo.

Sure, Gramps, you're telling me, they're playing a song nobody really sings anymore. What's that gonna do?

In '86, dearest, it did plenty. The fact that they're playing it now means that we're that much closer to the tipping point.

Everyone please stay safe. Times of great bullsh!t are also times of great opportunity. I pray that whatever happens we don't squander ours.

The More or Less Manifesto

ZERO

In honor of love month I'll be posting stuff as I count down to the 14th. It's hokey, it's corny, but you can look at it this way: it's better than nothing when you're somewhat creatively constipated. And if in case you are the mushy type, then maybe this might be what you need.

---

After All It's Done To You, Why?

The long procession of women whose names have now become horribly interchangeable; the long nights wasted writing poetry or making art when making money would have brought more respect, more favors. The ugly sensation of having to adjust over and over again to a new set of arms, new smells, new colors, over a period of months, your nerve endings perpetually raw and screaming for contact. To be told you are in some fundamental way inadequate and inconvenient. To walk nights in not-space while the world swirled happily around you.

After all this, why indeed? Why do I still believe in it?

Why do I simply refuse to take comfort in the arms of the usual misanthropy and cynicism that is expected of nerds who should not have been given a shot at inconveniencing the rest of us (i.e. existence)?

I've tried to answer this in my long and boring ruminations.

Actually as I write my hands are shaking. I'm in no mood for long boring ruminations so I'll give you the short form.

Beyond the sexual dimension and the expectations that go with it, there is no functional difference between the love between mates and the love between friends. Most human interaction fosters love. Eros works his insidious magic whenever any two human beings come together, to share a task, to share a space, to share a life. He doesn't always succeed but regardless of the tools he uses -- a common goal, a shared schedule, the fact that you're siblings, sex-- he works constantly to bring people together.

I am more sure of this than I am of God. Eros is in fact my one direct non-Biblical (therefore acceptable) proof (I'm sorry I proceed from a position of doubt) that God exists and gives a ding dong diddley about his idiot creations.

All your questions of worth and why cease to matter when love takes root. Love empowers, love ennobles, even when it wounds. As many times as I've seen love fail because of someone's inner weakness, ill fortune, or bonehead decisions, I have also seen it flourish and sustain because people chose to make it work.

This is the reason I still believe in it so badly despite the bullshit it's put me through.

This is who I am, and I know of no other way to be.



Happy Valentine's everyone.

Don't Be

1

In honor of love month I'll be posting stuff as I count down to the 14th. It's hokey, it's corny, but you can look at it this way: it's better than nothing when you're somewhat creatively constipated. And if in case you are the mushy type, then maybe this might be what you need.

Or not.

---

I'll dispense with the metaphors as much as I can, just for today.

Don't Be My Friend

Because I can only count my normal friends with my fingers. If you want a simple, happy life uncomplicated by the burden of complex people then you seriously don't want to join my co-fraternity of misfits who include--

1. someone who has to put on an evil face over her pretty one, to make all the unpopular decisions, to take the brunt of everyone else's displeasure to shield her corporate bosses. She lives with the loss of friends who may never truly understand her. As much as she may want to be free to give her heart to someone, she is as married to her company as much as anyone else can be married to a partner.

2. someone who always has to take the moral high ground. You'd think he was the damned Pope the way he pontificates from his perch. But there's more to him than his near-unbending Chinese rigidity. I've seen his compassion. Part of his rigor comes from his desire to make the world a better place.

3. someone who takes principle so seriously that she'll puts too much stock in her word. It can't be broken, even under circumstances that scream "this is crazy." Even if her heart, the very core of her, screams against it. (No, dearest, this is not you).

4. someone who routinely stabs men (metaphorically) in the chest, the likely latest one being me. It's a scorpion's nature to sting, but it's testament to how much she can care about another person that she took so long to do it. I've seen that caring side of her, and I've always believed in it. Even when I called her an idiot, and even when everyone else was calling me an idiot for loving her.

5. someone who partially equates self esteem with the bedchamber. I can't pretend to be able to fully help her with this dysfunction-- I don't have the training and I certainly cannot be the surrogate she needs. But I've seen her at her strongest-- self possessed, capable, loving, earning more in a day than I could in a month's honest work.

6. a father who's had to plumb the depths of sleaze to feed and clothe his kids. An artist/inventor who's had to apply his genius to morally problematic causes. Love takes people on strange pathays and his has been stranger than most.

Conventional wisdom dictates that I chuck them all, because they can supposedly drag me down, despite the things within them that I find worth loving, redeeming staying around for. I've said this before: we are all such broken toys.

You're asking why I'm airing this and every other bit of dirty linen hanging on clotheslines in my head, knowing as I do that it can and probably will sabotage any chance of our being friends (or of any Human Resources Department looking at me favorably, hahaa!). You see, I know humans like the back of my hand. I'm hoping that in your case I'm reading you wrong.

Dark Places

2

In honor of love month I'll be posting stuff as I count down to the 14th. It's hokey, it's corny, but you can look at it this way: it's better than nothing when you're somewhat creatively constipated. And if in case you are the mushy type, then maybe this might be what you need.

The stuff will be mostly mine. If the piece isn't mine I'll say so. If you're going to copy and paste this at least please tell people I made it.

---

The places that I walk are often the same places everyone else inhabits. It's just that I seem to slip into a kind of parallel dimension where I can see everyone as they go about their business-- couples holding hands and contemplating each other, friends and officemates cheerfully making the first of their eager legs home. I could stand haloed in moonlight, or bathed in the artificial yellow of the city and they would never notice, never see me. That is, until I broke the spell, announced myself-- and then the party would be over for someone.

In the old days that would have been a welcome thing. Some of my talents lie somewhat in stealth, and there was a period in my life where I did make shadowing people and casing places a quasi-hobby. No, I had no assassin-wannabe aspirations but it was cool to play at being Batman, or eponymously, The Shadow.

None of that today, though.

Whenever I find myself slipping into that twilight subspace It's often against my will. I want to be seen, to be noticed, to interact. But I know humans like I know the back of my hand and the survival instinct takes over. The gates open, and I'm in, guts turned inside out and knees quivering in the bargain.

I become an unwilling member of the storied denizens of the night. I cruise with vampires and ghostly women dressed in white. Amorphous incorporeal things harrass me.

I follow people who swim in their spaces like so many happy fish. In my not-space I am hyper-aware of every nuance, every gesture. The little details more than anything really. Sense perception is diminished so that every other sense compensates for the loss of fidelity. From my not-space I observe in slow motion the fall of a woman's hair as she tosses her head from side to side, walking with her peculiar somewhat bow-legged gait. I observe a friendly kiss goodbye between her and a friend. A man and a woman: I notice the body language that atempts to hide the closeness that is already there, patent, for everyone with eyes, to gawk at.

From my not-space I know. And the knowledge brings bitter consolation.

+†+

I don't own this space. I only found it. The way was open to me when my heart first broke long ago.

+†+

I often find myself sharing it with vagrants, beggars, prostitutes and children selling flowers in the dead of the night. I know this because they can see me, as lost and sometimes as lonely as the rest of them. They reach out to me with arms covered in grime or sores, a pleading (or sometimes predatory) look in their eyes.

Comfort me. Need me. Feed me. Love me.

They take me back to realspace when they do this, as I suddenly have the power to banish them to not-space with their humanity savaged by just so much. It's hard, to acknowledge them as human beings and tell them I can't help them.

In the end we vanish into our not-space, becoming observers of a world that would rather forget us.

Somebody get me this book. Please.

I found it on Amazon.

On the author's website:

"DON'T LET THE PRESIDENT HAVE THE LAST LAUGH! Danielle Crittenden's hilarious collection of imaginary online correspondence between the POTUS and his "buddy list" is now available in a dead tree edition by Simon Spotlight Entertainment. You'll find THE PRESIDENT'S SECRET IMs at Amazon and bookstores across the country."


Online, George "Dubya" is kickass43. He spends a lot of time on his computer talking everything from US foreign policy to his situation at home with the world's bigshots. Including ben16 (Pope Benedict XVI) and sxybritguy10 (Tony Blair). Hilarious fun.

Bill Clinton, true to form, is ladeezman42.

Postscript to a F....

We've dismantled the Diliman shop. Part of the gradual tying of loose ends that has characterized my activities in the last quarter of last year. I saw the results of Project Yearbook and amazingly they came out well. Someone at the press managed to convince my clients that it was a boneheaded idea to change formats from letter-sized to legal-sized pages when the original layout (painstakingly done in blood and sweat by yours truly) had presupposed an 8.5x11 inches page size. The laid out pages looked good in spite of the start-stop horrors my client had me inflict on the poor project. I'm almost tempted to regret not adding my name to it.

Almost.

Now, as the last of these infernal strings are tied up nice and neat, I can look forward to the activities that will mark my ... moving on (words so easy to dish out when you address the apparent source of your inconvenience) ...to other more profitable ventures.

Ecce Homo

5

In honor of love month I'll be posting stuff as I count down to the 14th. It's hokey, it's corny, but you can look at it this way: it's better than nothing when you're somewhat creatively constipated. And if in case you are the mushy type, then maybe this might be what you need.

If you're going to copy and paste this at least please tell people I wrote it.

---

Ecce Homo

If you proceed from a position of faith, then "knowing your own worth" is a good enough basis of a healthy self esteem. The problem arises when you attempt to be totally objective about what you are worth. You must proceed from a position of distrust. You cannot trust your own assessment of worth until--

a) there is a standard to measure it against; and
b) you meet, or better yet, surpass those standards.

Sometimes I don't know what's worse.

The first makes you delusional; complacent, if serene, until you meet someone or something better, faster, stronger than you. Especially something that threatens to make you obsolete.

The second will never let you sleep.You are constantly and ruthlessly examining yourself for flaws and consistently finding them. There must be no question about your place in the Universe, your utility to your society and fellow man. Else, why do you even exist?

Quo Vadis, Veritas?

In a world where everyone can theoretically do what you do, think what you think, earn what you earn or more-- in a world where you are, in short, replaceable as employee, father, husband, lover, son-- in a world like that you have no real place.

God himself does not provide comfort within his abstract love of humanity, at least initially-- if he loves everyone equally then there is absolutely no difference between you and the depraved rapist who should be given the chair. You can't even trust the healing afforded by an abiding faith in the Christ-- how can you really truly tell if it's not another delusion? Another lie, another social palliative applied like band-aid to distract you from attempting to truly answer the questions of "What is my worth? Why am I here?"

The relentless search for the truth of your worth demands that you do not accept palliatives.

Those who take this second path path will most likely come to the same initial conclusions I have. That there is no meaning; that you exist to die; that your worth is a transient thing, dependent solely on chance and whether or not you picked the right skills and credentials and connections and bible study groups in your formative years.

Ecce Eros, Veritas; Ecce Homo

Absurdly enough, it's simple, naked love that answers the ontological and teleological questions of worth and meaning, by rendering those questions meaningless. Not the abstract love of a distant Watchmaker who "loves everyone equally." It's the love a Creator expresses personally through human agents-- friends, parents, someone you can share a well-lit bench with. Ridiculous as it sounds, the human psyche is apparently built that way.

I've thus come to accept that some palliatives are necessary if you still want to be a part of the human race. Acting out of faith is after all better, less stressful, than acting out of doubt.

I know what I'm worth. But I'll sleep better if key people can bring themselves to remember it.

True to Form

I got shanghaied into playing a bit part in a webcast. The same way I regularly got shangahied into playing creepy old geezers, or creepy young dudes in plays and video productions.

At least I'm acting again...

Requiem for Porky

I'll say I never saw it coming. Though considering how my government's been jumping at every sound, I should have. I really feel sorry for him. I saw the news footage and ex House Speaker and former GMA Ally Jose de Venecia looks like-- dare I say it? --crap.

But I guess what goes around comes around. Jose de Venecia was the consummate political wheeler and dealer. The baron of brokers and the king of compromise. And I will admit that I hated this guy for his continuing efforts to reanimate the rotting corpse of charter change long after ex-President Fidel Ramos had given it up for, well, dead. There were other reasons that involved keeping Arroyo super-glued to the presidential chair long after she should have been impeached.

Now that he's been fired on account of his son's feud with the First Gentleman, he's opened up the metaphorical bathroom to let the stink out, calling for a "moral revolution." Conrado de Quiros is right when he says that de Venecia is the last person you'd expect such calls from; that if de Venecia did something right, it's that he just proved how little the current administration values loyalty and the people it claims to serve.

Rina Jimenez David writes that we may see in the fall of the wheeler-n'-dealer, the possible rise of a statesman. My knee-jerk reaction is to be skeptical-- I know humans enough that if you give them the opportunity to do something stupid, enough of them will. You can yell your head off about how they're running the planet or their relationships into the ground, and all they'll see is a locust-lunching wild man man clad in camel hair (you) with nothing to offer them but sound and drama.

But the Universe is full of surprises and just when you think something's graven in stone, something shifts... So maybe there's redemption for Porky yet.

The clouds massing outside the Fandom Cafe where I'm writing this now, the "defrocking" of Porky himself and the resurrection of the ZTE issue -- these I take as proof that whatever it is that's keeping this magic-realist country interesting is at it again.

I'm smelling a change in the air. I'm praying all of us can meet it with courage, equanimity, resilience, resourcefulness, and-- as this is Kafkaed after all--

humor.

De.motion

Well I'm back to being a commuter and it feels... different. I'm going to miss the mobility afforded by a motor vehicle. It made a lot of things easier and more complicated at the same time. Of course I know this situation is only temporary. As soon as new money comes in and I'm clear of a few more finacial obligations I'm getting my license renewed. There will be more money to use for making the lives of the people I care about a little easier. Aaaaaand I'm gonna get my blue RAV 4 yet.

I am Salmon

And I used to be such a tuna guy. Wait, I still am.

There's something more appealing to me about the color, texture, consistency of maguro (tuna) sashimi than the salmon variety. The best tuna and salmon sashimi melt in your mouth, releasing unique flavors ably complemented by the right amount of wasabi and soy sauce. The difference is that--

a) Salmon doesn't have tuna's somewhat iron-bloody aftertaste (the taste of salmon sashimi can be described as somewhat sweet, creamy); and
b) Salmon melts in the mouth better

Given a choice, I'd always go for tuna, even if only for reasons of price and availability. Tuna can pretty much be found swimming our oceans without making a salmon's trips to fresh water streams for purposes of spawning. And cheap tuna can be just that-- cheap. Salmon is more prized, therefore harder to find or get to, and therefore more expensive.

But you're asking Why am I Salmon? Reasons exist beyond a pun on the movie I am Sam (good movie starring Sean Penn, do check it out. Incidentally the pun was also a conscious choice).

As I'm a creature of metaphor, nuance, meme and pop culture references, you can be sure that this post is not simply about fish.

A salmon's life is apparently more complex than his tuna counterpart: he's born in a fresh water river or stream, migrates to a big ocean and then feels an irresistible desire to return to the stream of his birth.

I am Sam. And I am Salmon.

date of expiry

My license expires in five days. I'll need cash to defray the costs of renewing the thing. While I scramble for coinage I am also thankful, since it's served me very very well.

Again, Jen

People outgrow you.

There will always come a time when students-- if they are diligent, if they learn from you at all-- will not need you to hold their hands and walk them through life's (or in her case English's) rough patches. When you encounter anyone as bright as her, as apt to pick up what you know... well, a part of you doesn't want it to end. Even if you know it must and that you have to let her go when she can learn nothing else from you.

What's nice is that long long after you've done with mentoring someone who resonates with you, he'll still fondly refer to you as "Teacher" or "Sir." Even if, by now, you're nothing of the kind to this person. Happily you can both progress as "friends" if the teacher-student bond is still strong long after it's become obsolete.

* * *

I had wanted to say more here, but I'll keep this short and easy to read. There are always other posts.

What did you just say?

フィリピンの大統領は「我々はEDSA IIを忘れます」と言いました。アロヨ大統領はMENTAL( 異常 )ですか！？　もしEDSA IIにならなかった、アロヨさんはフィリピンの大統領にならなかった。

I have some relative freedom to diss the government every time I think it makes a monumentally stupid decision. This is only made possible mostly by two things:

1. a constitution that guarantees my right to speak freely
2. my relative political anonymity.

When my government says we should forget the very thing that put it into power--EDSA II-- then it can go hang.

To say she's betrayed her principles and our nation's dreams is already moot.

I'm not mad enough to tell everyone else to mount another relatively bloodless uprising, no. The lesson of EDSA is primarily that we should not allow things to get so bad that we have to mount another EDSA.

Bottom line: We can't afford to forget.

It blossoms in all sorts of places...

This morning (well, yesterday morning now) on the jeepney ride home I saw a couple leaning ever so gently-snugly against each other, two hands linked, free arms resting softly on a knee or waist. I didn't want to rock their cocoon -- love's myopia renders everyone and everything else invisible-- so I moved. So that they'd have more personal space.

My seatmate was, like myself, falling asleep but valiantly keeping her head from connecting with my shoulder. Had I not been too tired to speak, I would have told her to go ahead, take a load off. Let the rest of her body deal with her health issues.

I silently wished them happiness.

Project Yearbook Post Mortems

My life --indeed any human being's life-- can be described as a series of (sometimes bonehead) decisions and remorseful post-mortems after the fact. As another phase of this life comes to a close I'm feeling the need to make the requisite summations and evaluations.

Project Yearbook is almost practically done. So.

So. What have I learned?

Not much. They say one is doomed to repeat sitting through the lesson if it isn't learned properly. My lessons involve things like valuing the worth of your work by properly pricing it.

Everybody wants to get "a little something extra" for his money and it's only natural that people will haggle. Even if you're already bending over backward to give them something good. To expect others not to haggle right off the bat because you don't, is futile. You have to make that clear.

I can't price myself worth jack because I'm always thinking about the other guy. Because I'm in love with this person, or because the client is "family." It's not that favors shouldn't be done for the people you care about or out of simple human decency (a shock to some of you, I know). But if this is the rule and not the exception then I shouldn't be in business-- I should be a priest or a UN volunteer. In East Timor.

Nobody else gives a rat's @ss that you're risking your life and your investment when you take your equipment on the road or spend late nights on a project whose profit can be measured in peanuts. Nobody wants to understand the technical difficulties you're mired in-- it's too daunting and it's exhausting simply trying to explain why you need to shift file formats, or why you need the damned dummy last year and whythehellarewemakingthedummyjustnow?

Nobody gives half a damn. So you should.

This will be among the hardest lessons for me to learn. I can only say I've learned it after I can tell certain people "No" and not feel so bad that I wasn't able to help.

Chop.Shop

With the imminent completion of project yearbook I will soon find myself ...free. Simply. Free. There will still be a few loose ends to tie up, a few places to revisit but... freedom never tasted so good. I haven't felt her skin so near that the warmth of it and the smell of her are making me cross-eyed. I can almost taste her lips.

I'm leaving the Diliman shop, people, at the end of the month. I waited until project yearbook was finished to do this. I've waited so long.

Flush the "Right Thing"

Why does doing "the right thing" have the most appeal and the worst consequences?

I left my old place of work in protest against how my friend was fired. In a place where there's little in the way of clear-cut policy, a lot of stuff gets excused or shoved under the table and easily forgotten-- like the man's contributions, in part. Or the fact that some of the bases for the charges against him were the same stopgap measures he took on his quest to help the company out-- measures that the policy makers approved of at that time. But if it wasn't written down, then it didn't happen.

When you fire the one and only winner of the [Mr Helpful] award, there's something very very very wrong. Even if he was being muley in the end.

Higher admin did give me an explanation-- not that I asked for one, and not as if it was legally obligated to do so to me, but it was a gesture I greatly appreciated. It didn't change my decision, but it made leaving harder. I waited a full month between my decision to leave and my actual leavetaking-- there were loose ends to tie up and covenants I had to uphold.

It'll come as a surprise to some of you but I do have some honor.

There were other reasons for leaving the job of course. I was living with my friend and I did not want to drive a spike between him and his wife, who I love dearly. (She quit the job the same day he was fired.) I was also hitching my wagon to someone else's shooting star-- someone's dream that was going in the same direction mine was. I could have held my ground and stayed but I wasn't prepped for the difficulties that decision would have entailed... or so I thought.

Direct consequences--
It's been difficult to finance the insurance policy I took out some days before my friend was fired. This took longer to happen, but I also lost a girlfriend-- probably the sweetest most loving one since I was engaged to my ex-wife.

In my Universe, Personal trumps everything. This is probably why I still have friends and probably why I'll likely never ever be rich.

It's Your Sunshine, Sir. Spread It Where You Will

Some of my friends are uncomfortable with the idea of intercession, so please bear with me here. I'm holding up my end of a bargain I made long ago. This is part of it.

I still have a roof over my head; I still have some friends; something good came out of all those hours seemingly wasted looking for God in sacred places.

Two people I'd like to thank, and this has been due them for some time now. Thank you Jude, friend of Jesus. And most of all thank you, Jesus.

It's usually after I get grateful and profuse that I get news that makes me want to take all that back and yell "I've been gypped!" But for whatever's it's worth later in the week, I truly am thankful.

Fringer's Work Report (Jan 03 2008)

Status: Strung Out

I guess this would fall under my "bad day" posts. Though it's really more of a "long day" post, when you think of it. What's bad is that as I type, this day's not really over yet.

Got a project I would sooooo much like to dump but my perverse sense of honor is keeping me from dropping it like so much unwanted airport luggage. There will be no profit in this. Meanwhile my other projects are moving at a glacial pace.

I need to cram stuff into a disc (actually two discs) and I'm waiting for a friend to hand me disc #2 so I can fill it and take it to my client.

* * *

By the way, a friend's artwork looks a damn sight better now that it's framed. Not that it didn't look good on its own, mind you. I just hope I have the strength to take it to the client who commissioned it tomorrow, where it's supposed to go.

Meantime I have to wait a few days for my own work to get properly framed and ready for delivery. I'm hoping I can get the framers to do this a little quicker.

I want to sleep. I want to bother some friends. I want to eateateat.

In other news my deviantArt site has, as of 10:00 p.m. tonight, been hit 4000 times. Not that it's really a big deal, but I like celebrating the little things.

Alright. Back to work.

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.

------------------------------

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