Thank you

Even if what happened this morning was nothing more than a lying dream. Thank you.

The Gift of Tongues

On days like this I wish I could drown myself in beer. It's another weekend and there is still far too much to do, three places too many in which to be. And like a dedicated soldier of the old Soviet Union, I'll throw myself at the tasks anyway.

I don't relish the idea of knocking back a few super drys with my old friends. Beer tends to loosen tongues. More often than not, loose tongues let slip sentiments buried in the name of keeping the peer group from splintering. Addled friends then use their unsheathed, sharpened tongues to skewer each other. 

It would be great though, if those loose tongues would stay soft and just lightly touch. The arms would follow, then the torsos. The night would pass and all those buried sentiments would rise up safely, usefully, out of our souls and into the great hereafter... where all the hangups, the recriminations, the fouled expectations go after we've come to terms with them.    

But we all know that's not gonna happen. 

I waste my gift on people who don't appreciate it. I think that's my superpower-- the ability to find and pledge myself to lost causes with pretty words.  

Anyway, tomorrow (meaning later today), I will use the old silver tongue again. To explain the intricacies of teaching TOEFL. To ultimately give another batch of dreaming Koreans another shot at a life unfettered by the limits of their native language. 

It's the job, I know, and I'm not really complaining much. It's just that there are far better uses for my gift, far better places for my lips, my breath, my tongue to be, now that I've put another work week behind me.

I hhhhhhhaaate weekends.   

Travel Light

A man shouldn't have too many possessions. If he's going to be attached to his things--as men invariably are-- then they'd better be few. Enough, ideally, to fill a tote bag.

When I get back to Cainta I'm throwing out my old clothes-- I've actually begun that already, turning the old rags into, well, rags. But I'm a long way from finishing. I'm doing that with my Quezon City stuff too. When I'm done, everything I can conceivably wear--shoes, suits, ties, shirts, socks-- should fit in a container that I can carry and stuff in a bus at a moment's notice.

There is of course the problem of the rest of my stuff. I am a hopeless pack rat. Everything else I own will not fit in a gunny sack, will not be ...portable.

I'm not going anywhere, not yet anyway. I just want that option to be open to me quickly in case I have a need to exercise it. I honestly don't quite know why I'm obsessing about "traveling light"-- wait, I think I do: another irritatingly human urge.

It probably explains my attachment to the Hotel Sogo.

Part of me does not feel moored to anything, and considering that this condition is likely to persist, I'm subconsciously, metaphorically preparing for life on the road.

Well It's Finally Happened

I remember telling my Nagusame this once: "When a man leaves, he creates a vacuum and something else almost always rushes in to fill it."    

I've come to care about my colleagues at the workplace. Not that that was ever a bad thing. I only felt that it would be a betrayal of sorts to care for them this much so soon when I had other colleagues who I wanted to be there for. But circumstances have almost conspired to keep me away and all my attempts at reconnecting have been comparable to swimming in molasses against a powerful current. I miss them so.

But a man's place in any social group is defined exactly by how useful he can be.

Stray thoughts, but they walk with me every day.

October, November, December

‘Ber Months

My sister celebrates her birthday today. My father will celebrate his about 10 days later. I know exactly what to get them.

Meanwhile, my former student Jenny is now in Japan, furthering her studies. Contact has been intermittent, but welcome. I’m grateful for Skype—Jen’s is a voice that is welcome as a desert oasis.

My friend Grace is back from her dalliances in Germany and Chile. Her arrival will no doubt be cause for another set of reunions among my friends. I’d love to see them again.

Comic con is coming, and with any luck, I’ll have something to peddle, finally.

The Clavier Music School will soon host its December recital. I’m looking forward to hearing what Minette’s students will be playing. The December recitals don’t have as much pomp as the summer recitals, but this one will be special.

Brr Months

It’s getting cold. I’ve always disliked the cold. Before 2005 it always brought back memories of waking up feeling debilitated and being unable to move. Because someone in his or her most considerate had turned on the electric fan and pointed it at my back. It also brought back good memories: my father would often sleep on his side to shield me from the cold when I was six or seven.

Post-2005, the memories pretty much got worse. December of ‘05: shivering in bed because everything in me missed my Nagusame. February of ’07: shivering at a gas station coffee table as I assembled a special box for a rose I was to give my Shrinemaiden on the following day: the 14^th. September through December of ’07: nights spent sleepless and shivering while my back burned, hating Christmas, shivering because I was envious of the happiness my friends were finding , constantly wondering just what the hell I did wrong, why nothing I did would ever be right in the eyes of the woman I loved and wanted to be with.

It’s getting cold again. People are walking the streets with an arm around another person’s waist. I’m sick of the sight. I’m not eager to have more of these memories.

I am sicker of having to repeat myself. Every year I harp on the same themes the way some women nag the universe in the mistaken notion that it will move for them. Only, in their case, it often isn't a mistaken notion. The universe does move for naggers of the female persuasion. I just wonder if my being male is what prevents the universe from moving in the direction I wish.

Still...

The brr months bring with them some opportunities for things like self-improvement, self-indulgence and some gratuitous charity-- which has the added blessing of going both ways: giver to receiver to giver. They are also the heralds of the new year, and all the potential it portends. Good stuff for Ewic, Minette, Dex B and Anne, and if I'm lucky, good stuff for Dex El and his complicated friends too.

Ticker

Nothing wrong with my leg; just my heart, apparently.

Last night: unexpected bout with chest pain-- likely stress-related, psychosomatic but definitely debilitating. Not the first time this has happened. Considering that it happened to me again this morning, it won't be the last. I have a better idea of what my mom and my friend go through on a regular basis now. 

I'm more angry than scared, though I know that isn't helping me either.

Open Line; Chuseok

Father, today I had a new phone for all of thirty five minutes. In the space of two, it--and most everything significant it stood for-- was whisked away: another example, seemingly, of how circumstances dangle what you want in front of you and then snatch it away when you're at your weakest. I don't know what possible good can come of this. All I know is what everyone else will infer from the day's events. 

Yes, their opinions count insofar as I care about them.

When I look back on what happened, the loss isn't what disappoints me. It is in part the way that loss sneaks up on you like a demon who kills a husband before he can lie with his wife. 

Still the day wasn't a total loss. I am at east thankful for that much. I am hopeful that my assessment of humanity will be wrong. This is Chuseok after all-- Koreans take this time to reconnect with family, gaze at the moon and make a wish.     

I won't mind losing the phone so much--there's still a chance that I can get it back; I won't even mind losing the sim. In the end, they're just money. I can earn that back and more in fifteen days. I miss my friend-- that loss I'll probably be upset about 'til the day I die.

If there is anything I wish for most fervently, it'll be a reconcilliation. It doesn't have to be tearful-- just permanent.

Father, you know what I mean. This is me praying. I would appreciate it very much if I weren't gypped.  In any case, thank you for listening; thank you, most importantly, for what I still have. 

tintin

Dexter's thesis:

Without you there is no meaning, except that which I have to build for myself, one faulty messy crumbly stupid brick at a time.

But there's nothing new to say

Another night where I get to exhibit my not-so-new superpower: the ability to stave off any real sleep when I need it most. Reasons have been recurring, rehashed to death. Anyone with a pair of good eyes and half a brain will pretty much know why.

Brain's on fire with ideas I'll be hard-pressed to implement, because I'm essentially living out of a suitcase. Still, one can try.

Like another friend, I am finding scant purpose in writing here. But I can't really stop. If I don't write, I'll pop a blood vessel. And then who will annoy the living snot out you with unwanted declarations of affection, tedious essays or useless poetry?

I kid.

I'm really trying to negate the notion that I don't finish what I start. And so here I am, trying to

1. write two stories
2. write a letter
3. fix a couple of videos and video concepts
   
4. edit yet another Korean-made essay
5. plan my day so i get the most stuff really done
   

It's a weekend. It's a Sunday. I really should be asleep in the normal hours.

Swallowed Up By the Office

Got the chance to finally appreciate weekends.

When the high point of your month is spending a night in a clean room (where you don't have to deal with other people's needs), then actually going out with the work mates becomes something special.

I guess I have been really, finally swallowed up by my office.

No, there was no eye candy at the comedy bar-- unless you count the gay guy with the uncanny resemblance to someone I courted when I was working for a bank. But there was open mike videoke. And a Visayan girl with a powerful voice, named Rose.

Casper, the Friendly Host

I kid you not, that's his stage name. He was plump, flaming gay and a laugh a minute. His partner (who looked like my bank-ex) wasn't a regular performer there, but he was good too. They poked fun at the audience-- yes, my hair and my clothes too-- but they weren't so shy about poking fun at themselves while they were at it. They had a good time too, even in spite of (a few) moments when drunk male audience members singing and gyrating onstage got a bit grabby. (They were pretty much lost in the duo's illusion of womanity. I guess booze really does work a powerful glamor on those who partake of it.)

As we were the newbies at the comedy bar, they got us to tell them our names and what we do. And, yes, they got us to sing.

And this is what I came away with:

Teacha Angel and Teacha Andie are the office's fun-and-adventure front-liners. They're always the first to reach for the mike and sing the fun songs. [Gloria Gaynor. Avril Lavigne.] They make a good duo because they're a study in surface contrasts. Angel is dark and thin; Andie is a full-figured mestiza. But they're both crazy.

Teacha Dex is the prissy dandy sleeper. He'll be seated, arms resting on his cane, head nodding gravely and slowly to someone else's singing. He's got a stiff back and an attitude that says "Don't touch me; I am not fun." Then he'll drink a light beer. Then he'll sing some ode to an ex and, certes, people will have goosebumps. After that, he lets down his hair and has fun like other normal people.

Teacha Carol is the office innocent because she is the youngest among us, and she is carefully watched over by 'neesan Teacha April-Rolette. But she's got guile. She'll sing only when everyone's onstage dancing to an OPM disco song, and even then she'll be lip-synching.

Teacha April-Rolette is the den mom, so she gets away with sitting out the performances and recording us embarrassing ourselves with her phone-cam!

Salt in the Office Bathroom

Two bottles of shampoo and three sachets of hair conditioner. And counting. Try as I might I still cannot wash you out of my hair.

I've let so many things drop form my life because I got swallowed up by some preoccupation or other. That's bad. I feel like my whole life's pretty much been spent metaphorically picking up after myself.

Getting swallowed up in a project or cause may be a good or a bad thing. I could easily lose myself in a project. You'd never be able to speak to me properly for weeks. I've been lucky I haven't lost myself in Scientology or the Aum Shinri Kyo.

I'm Thooper, Thanks for Asth-king

I don't really sleep. Not anymore.

I'm irrationally, albeit mildly, ticked off at Wentworth Miller.

I've a backlog of stories and stalled projects --Mammon 10, Happy Pasay Feet (working title) among others.

I've a small backlog of post-class work too.

I'm somewhat touchy and irritable because people think that just because I don't sleep I'm fair game for errands and work that shouldn't be assigned to me.

Still I'm not angry. I've been so busy that my standard witch's brew of emotions is being drained away as I workworkworkworkworkworkworkwork. No, it's not good. Just because it looks normal to everyone else doesn't mean it's good. But at least I'm lucid, and at least I'm functioning.

Hey, that's what it's all about, right?

I am Tony Snark... and a crapload of other people too

I should stop editing, even if only for a week, as I note with growing horror that I am becoming terse and acerbic in my comments and annotations. Yes, some students do deserve the barbs. But most of them shouldn't have to be waterboarded by my inner English Gestapo.

My Inner Grammar Nazi's zeal, I've noticed, waxes proportionate to the levels of frustration felt by the rest of me-- the Knight, the Fool, the Scholar, the Toolbox Poet, the Mad Evolutionary Bio-Psycho-Sociologist, the jilted Thanatologist, the Guy in the Yellow Shirt-- all the varied facets of myself that other people have already seen.

Gentle Surprises

At the end of the workday I'm often exhausted. You have a limited concept of hell until you have tried your earnest best to search for meaning in the quagmire of a beginning English student's essays. If you're anything like me or my lovely apo, you'll be wide awake and tying yourself in mental knots making sure your students can understand the nuances of the language long after you should have been asleep or tying up the loose ends of your personal life.

You reach a point where you're sick of having more classes, as each one can potentially turn into 30 minute therapy sessions with students who cannot help but bring their troubles with them to class. I was looking forward to the lull in my calendar of activities for each weekday.

Lo and behold, management slaps a new class on my schedule. What surprises is that I must really have been doing something right-- this student was formerly enrolled in our "coupon class" program, for students whose schedules are as frayed as Britney's domestic life. She normally bounces from one teacher to another in the course of her training until she finishes a month's worth of classes. That she decided--even if tentatively-- to stay with me on a fixed schedule is ...flattering.

I'm not looking forward to the inconvenience of hand-holding another novice as she makes the pilgrimage from Engrish to English. But she already speaks well; has the markings of a sharp mind. It would be a shame if a damned band score slaps her in the face with the word "inadequate."

To be told by your exes, your bosses, to be told by a stupid test that you're just not good enough-- It's happened to me a lot over the last three years and I am far more tired of that.

Let this never have to happen to the people who matter.

Updates

Tell Us a Story

Those of us who still want to write about dismembered feet in Pasay City are still welcome to do so. Make note, this whole rigmarole is for fun-- a damned good way to prove to ourselves that were still human enough to tell stories. Though I might sweeten the deal by giving a prize beyond a promise to purchase your book and pimp it to anyone who'll listen.

My own story is still percolating in some stages so you don't have to worry about deadlines. But be assured it's being outlined and written. Looking forward to hearing about how your stories are coming along.

I am Engrish Teacha!

Writing classes are coming along nicely-- my student's improving. And that's always god news. My vet student had a great weekend, which boosted his capacity to make decent conversation. Would that the "great weekend" happen every day.

I'm still behind in my post class work. Fixing that now.

E.D. Phone Home

My job has swallowed me up. The logistics of being a damned good Engrish teacha, being a "good" kuya and ...son, as well as pushing my sisyphean boulder up the stupid hill are eating up my time. I haven't been to Cainta in a month. My "girlfriend" Maya and my PC Mylene have been needing my attention for some time now and I don't know when I can get to them.

I could drop the boulder. I'm often close to doing that these days. Just let it roll down the f_cken hill and let it flatten me one last time. I don't want to look at my desktop; I don't want to look at the pictures in my album and the ones in my phone. Every time I find myself patiently wrapping something in my trademark brown paper I ask myself "What's the point?"

But I can't quite bring myself to end this. I've lost too much; I don't sleep anymore; I hobble around like someone's grandpa when the doctors say that by all rights I should be high-kicking like a cheerleader on crack. I can't enjoy local music and I miss my friends, even the ones who think my other name is Joe Satan. And did I tell you I utterly hate weekends now?

At least I've been lucky I've gotten my older friends back.

Patient X

...is doing well. Thank God. If there was anything else I've helped do right, let her road be one that leads to Bethlehem, and not to Calvary. Anak ng patola naman, inako ko na 'yan. Pag 'yang therapy ni X, naudlot pa, ibig sabihin tama si Nora: wala na ngang himala. Mantsu-tsugi na ako ng taoh! Pramis.

Mwissing

Wis n'yo lang alam na nababading na ang lolo n'yo dahil nangungulila na me sa grand mudra ni Tish.

I'm reactivating Project Transcendence 2.0. I can't live like this. Got to set those contingency plans in motion. Tell you more about it soon.

Saturday

On the drive home that Saturday, the cabbie said he thought we were a couple. Close, I responded, but no cigar. We could have been, considering our shared history and how closely related our fields of expertise were: I wasn't always a teacher for the English-impaired. There's a reason after all why I put journeyman on my career profiles-- it's the only respectable word substitute for freelancer, bum and dilletante.

But she had been very vocal about what kind of man would share her bed and her life and I didn't fit the bill. Even if the past year had finally done its magic and put the months of that aborted courtship in the proper perspective, nothing would change between us until that checklist of what she wanted in a man did. Or if I suddenly stopped being me.

Then again that little revelation would not have stopped him from giving me advice cloaked in the metaphor of a mango tree.

Strange, strange day.

In all the months that I languished, missing her, her words of scorn burned in my memory, what I wanted so badly was to just be able to share jokes and an occasional cab ride with her. To hold a door open for her. And yesterday, on our mutual quest for a box of pasalubong, I got my wish.

Coelho is right when he said the universe conspires to give you what you want. The catch is the universe seemingly has a problem with the concept of when. That was a wasted year that could have been spent sharing food and DVDs, comparing projects.

Still, beggars and burned romantics can't be choosers. And I am ...happy.

Divesting Myself of Gabby

The problem with lazy weekend afternoons, when you are nursing what may be the ghost of a bum leg, is that the channel-changer on the teevee is almost always pointed at nothing good on the tube.

I'm as much concerned with the lives of Sharon Cuneta and Gabby Concepcion as anyone on these Islands. Gabby Concepcion especially, considering that his journey to a semblance of peace and a renewed career in the Philippines was marked by instances of very public and very sordid interpersonal screwups. In this, I feel a certain cringe-worthy kinship with the man.

But one gets sick of it, the constant peering into the minutiae of a celebrity's life. Especially when you're a man who wishes he could spend a Sunday like everyone else-- at a mall, watching a movie with someone he cares about.

Lucky for me, I have work left over from Friday. It's necessary drudgery that I'm eager to finish and loath to begin, but at least I get to divest myself of Gabby Concepcion and everyone else in local showbiz.

Infirm

There is absolutely nothing wrong with my leg. Yet I still walk with a limp; I wince when extra pressure is placed on the bum leg. My cane is still a comforting tool that taptaptaps and raprapraps on the pavement underneath me. And idiot artist that I am, I'm actually seeing an aptness to the image of this erstwhile minor rock god hobbling to work.

The Mighty Thor, after all, was hiding in the body of one Donald Blake, lame physician.

At a moment's notice I could probably stand on my bum leg, collapse my cane, use it as a rather clumsy blunt weapon. In recent days, I've kind of been spoiling internally for a confrontation that would require me to do just that, to force my leg to do what it's supposed to. But I know better than to truly ask for it. I was already robbed at knife-point once.

I am missing something, something important. I have been for the longest time. That I am hobbling with a cane is just another manifestation of that loss. There are some disadvantages to feeling things in stereo.

The Giant Cockroach

Every time he walks into that place it makes itself felt. It's there in the room and everyone strives mightily not to call everyone else's attention to the fact that it exists, even if it's there staring us all in the face, waving its antennae in quick arrhythmic circles, gesticulating with its spiny legs, moving its greasy mandibles up and down and inward toward the mouth.

Aww, look, it's even wearing a pink I (heart) Bora t-shirt. Now that's my kind of ungeheueren Ungeziefer!

It's all too easy to blame uh, Gregor, for carrying this monstrosity. After all, it's only there when he's there: two separate events happen immediately, one after the other, and automatically a correlation is assumed. Causation is established. And, ah, Gregor, gets a world of bad press.

What people forget is that it always takes two. That giant cockroach is reborn when two people stay in close proximity. That vermin, meine guten Freunde, has parents.

No, most of you don't get it and I don't expect you to. But the point has always been that the giant cockroach-- let's call him Aidan-- isn't. And you'd see that if you bothered to really look him in the face.