Happy Holidays!

It's the middle of the Yuletide week, Christmas has come and passed already and New Year is just several days away. These holidays, being free from my work, has given me free time (though with less money since my last pay for this year had been delayed until the 2nd of the coming year) which means a lot of time to do whatever I want to do -- but again, reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac and History and Culture by the late St. Nick is something I have to exert an effort to do so (like literally tying myself to the post of the house so I can stay inside and just sit and read those two books).

Literally, it has been a fast-paced holiday slash vacation for me. I barely could hold of the events and happenings unfolding as each day passes by. Yes, a lot of boozing. It was only on the eve of Christmas that I can recall that I really had a rest -- I slept early that night only to wake up the following day, Christmas, with coffee and cigarette morning ritual that lasted until I had my second stick before a neighbor set up a beach umbrella and several chairs in front of his store and, grinning, challenged me already for a morning Christmas boozing.

The 26th was the birthday of my father, and, as expected, another bout with boozing.

Yet, it is already the 27th and the exhilarating atmosphere of Christmas still lingers in the air much stronger.

Happy Holidays to all! Hehe

Possibility of Being Published

Several days ago I received an email from the editor of the Read magazine. The editor was requesting if I could provide them a two to three-sentence write-up about myself. She said there is a possibility that my piece (Sentimental Yakking, a post on this blog which I polished and submitted to them a month ago) could be used by Read magazine for its Reader's Write section. I could not hide my glee and premature celebration that they, most likely, will published my essay/personal-emotional-outpouring. I even asked the favor if they could, if ever they used my piece, compensate me by giving me Ignacio Padilla's Shadow Without a Name or Italo Calvino's Difficult Loves. Though a second email was sent to me to inform me that the book that will be given to me, in case they use my piece, depends on the promised book prize mentioned in the previous issue of the Read magazine. Nevertheless, that is a non-issue. Being published by them, for that alone, is enough compensation that they could give me. Wow! I said to myself. The magazine of my favorite bookstore, Powerbooks, where I have done a lot of free reading, got a work of mine and implied their interest on publishing it. Now, that is a good news, no doubt about it.

Assumption

When I was a kid, I had an idea that when a person advances in age so is his acquisition of wisdom that by the time that he reaches, say, 40’s or 50’s above, his view about the world and everything in it could be at par with the eyes of a mystic or a sage.

This process of journey to mysticism can start when he is in his twenties, and by the time that he gets to be thirty, everything about this world – and the marvelous worlds within it – has already beginning to take shape in his mind.

This is the reason why, for some reasons, I treat everybody around me with mutual trust that they are moving towards this end. And, frustratingly, all I come across are people who got stuck somewhere along the way.

What I mean is it is like listening to music. Most generations usually are tied down to the music of their hey-days. They no longer continue their then juvenile adventurousness towards discovering new sounds, new music. And by the time when their children grow up and have their own ‘generational’ music, the ‘stuck’ old man could only grumpily berate the youngs as people with no real appreciation for music. So the gap and misunderstanding. If only the old man continued his growth in music, then this gap is bridged.

People only mature in terms of age. Not in terms of wisdom.

Usually, I can spot people who have stopped growing. These people usually are those people who have already built a fortified assumption of the world; they don’t and would not care to listen to new ideas. When you say something new or beyond their understanding, they grimace to rebut you that what you have just said is stupid.

Their map of reality works for them, and they no longer care to revise it. They stick to what they already know, or appear to know. The only danger these people pose is when they are in power – and usually those in power or those enjoying a relative success are the ones who exhibit this kind of trait.

Probably, one short-cut for acquiring wisdom, far beyond what a doctorate in humanities can give, is deprivation, distress, depression and the likes. There is nothing that can give the soul or the spirit a test to bring forth a better perception of the world than these havocs thrown on him.

Yet, sometimes, especially when these tests are still being endured, the person under duress cannot dispense the wisdom that is already growing within him.

Being for a while in this world, I only have met a number of people who are conscious of the growing up that they continually have to undergo to be a better person – yes, until they inhale their last breath.

Pertaining on my assumption that old age equates on the acquisition of mystical wisdom, there is nobody so far whom I have met who fulfills this assumption. Though, there are some people whom I read on books.

But crossing path with them in flesh and blood? None.

Not My Magazine

When the responsibility of handling The Edge (then still named Success Today) was thrown at me, I considered the task as a personal mission to create and conceptualize my kind of vision of what should be a magazine, themed politically, looks like.

I must admit that I created a lot of enmity in the hearts of my peers as I stubbornly ventured to accomplish this personal mission. Not once did I make 'enemies' among them -- though this enmity as my superiors would soon say to me was a product of a misunderstood man like me.

I heard this several times: "Ern, the magazine is not yours."

It meant I should not slave myself or fight everybody and go against them hard just to create a 'visionary magazine' that I thought of.

Now, after several months of working on it, I learned to let go and get some people have a say on how the magazine would look like. It even came to a point when I no longer care. I just let them do the job on the magazine, totally distancing myself or if possible severing my relationship with the magazine.

I don't know whether my interest has already waned, or I just got tired of my don Quixote's mission to produce a magazine according to my vision.

Anyway, I'm just a green horned 'editor.' There are still a lot of things that I have to learn in producing a good magazine.

Now, I barely hear anybody calling the magazine as mine. Which is something good. All I have to do now is focus on my articles and write-ups, and not getting my job complicated with post-production and everything else when in the first place I don't know anything about. I stepped back a little and let myself learn from the people around me. I'm not a god in the first place to know everything.

Tomorrow, the fresh hot copies of The Edge will be out. And usually, my boss give the credit to the editor if the final product of the magazine is very good.

Will I take the credit for it?

I doubt it. It is appropriate to pass the credit to those people who really worked on the post-production of the magazine. And, certainly, my participation in that aspect is at the minimum.

If there is something that I would be happy or proud about the magazine is the write-ups that I did for it, the good damage controlled that I applied so the magazine would look and exude as a political magazine, plus the line-up of articles that I conceptualized for it. The looks, the design, the details beyond the text of the articles are for my peers to take credit for.

Ah, it has been a long road on The Edge's production. And, I hope, all the mistakes and lessons to be learned has been noted and hopefully will not be repeated in the succeeding issues.

Romantizing about my own magazine, at last, is finally over. The Edge is simply not my magazine. I am only working for the magazine.

Skipped Work

Skipped going to work today. Been up since five in the morning but I felt groggy and my limbs seemed to have been deprived of rest for several months that I felt so beat up and lay again on my bed to steal some time before going to work. Though, when I had been laying prostrate for sometime and getting an unexplainable need for a rest, I decided to hell with work but gonna sleep myself until noon. My sleep was only sporadically cut by the call of LilFeather and asking me why did I skip going to work.

"Tired," I mumbled on the mobile. "I need to get a rest."

So it was already past one in the afternoon when I got off the bed. Had my ritual of coffee and dose of nicotine, smoking several Winstons without letup under the tree under the heat of a noonday sun. It felt fine, felt nice not to worry anything, just letting my head clear up, though I could not help my mind stray on the pending works I had to do in the office. There were a lot of things I still I had to write, articles, essays, and my column.

But what I was really looking forward for was a time to finally take time to read On Road by Jack Kerouac which I bought a couple of months ago but work hindered me to do. Plus I also had a book by the late St. Nick History and Culture.

Now, it is already early evening and I haven't done anything.

I spent my whole waking hours, loitering and talking shit with the young people in our street. Drat! There was no good convo that went on, just talking about nothing, doing nothing.... the young people in our street just whiling time goofing around, not the kind of an intelligent goofing around, but the kind which people do when they had nothing to do or say or talk about something important. They were just plain letting the hours fly by, staring at the passersby. Good God! They even tried to drown an ant out of nothing to do.

Things just got interesting when the Deo arrived, though still talking about shit, a subject more shit but interesting though.

Together, we roamed the subdivision looking for some actions. The damned Deo wanted to do nothing but walk, and the jerk kept us both walking under the drizzle, not wanting to take a cover.

The man only left me when I went to this net cafe to check my blog and email. He could not understand anything that had to do with computers.

Drat! I still have to write at least an essay for our mags before this day is over.

The Edge on the Printers Already

Finally, The Edge is already on the printers. And the long wait to get a fresh copy of almost a couple of months of work is already killing me. By the week's end, we'll have the copies here na. though dont get the idea that the magazine is already got rid of errors and typos. there are still. and worse, we discovered them just when there was already a blue-print. hinabol na lang ung mahahabol. So for those who may soon get a hand of a copy of the mag, spot the typo, (hint: a big one - literally).

Midnoon Journal

I haven’t tried this for a long time but I’m gonna do it now just for the sake of yakking. I have half an hour to do this before my time expires renting this pc in a net café near us. Begin. Before going here, I had a terrible urge to read, to write, to pick a pen and start writing, or probably go to my sister’s house to use her PC and pound on the keyboards, just plain gonna yak something, something that would come to my mind, a kind of release for my urges. I want to fly, soar; there’s tension in my limbs, eagerness to do something. Yes, probably just something. So I went to here to write (that was my first goal) but checking my mails and visiting my blogsite and checking the traffic plus the uncontrolled straying on other blogs among my links ate my time. I was thinking of starting over, or rather, continuing to write that planned short fiction for Vin Simbulan’s planned Dragon Anthology, but I don’t know where I had put the draft of the story that I wrote. Probably, got thrown away with all the garbage of papers that for months had been cluttering my room. Maybe after I’m through with renting this PC, if I have nothing better to write, journal or a new fiction, I’m gonna make myself like a madman rummaging in the piles of papers in my room to look for that unfinished draft of a story. Anyway, got real thing going on with my job (though the fucking magazine still could not hit the printers because of the whims and fickle mindedness of our boss who kept on changing things about the magazine.) Drat! Really want to pound on the keyboard and say something special, hoping that as I go along there would be some enlightenment, a good phrase, a good piece of wisdom hitting my head and be put on the virtual paper. Just wanna yak. Oh, before I forget, reading Jack Kerouac I stumbled on something special. Here it is: No courting talk – (just) straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious. Damn! Good piece of mystic wisdom... TIME REMAINING: 8 minutes (though before I start the first sentence when I wrote BEGIN I first roamed the downloaded MP3s in this PC to get the right sound, a fast one, loud, that would stir my soul real hard to write and just yak.. Anyway, back about work. Pretty appeased when my managing editor gave in to my request to replace the content of my column for the magazine. The previous subject and content-wise is really a piece of shit. God! I was planning then before the magazine to hit the magazine racks in National Bookstores to apologize for the senseless, pretentious, green-horned bull that I was for writing such a political reading of the country. For weeks prior to the change, I had been writhing in disgust about my column, and damned trying to hold myself from talking hard on my managing editor (who had been working real hard about all the magazines under her) to give in to my request. Though much that I avoided having a hard talk about her to change the content, the frustration about the magazine and how things had been happening on the process of improving it hit me real hard that I flared up. Drat! I went out of the office and along the corridor, with all my might, all my frustrations, all my souls, all anger, threw the dummy of the magazine on the carpeted floor. Damned! It was a good release. Really good. Then after that a terrible, angry yakking inside the office. Though in the end, I got what I wanted. Finish.

A Couple

I was on my way home from work. As the escalator inside the MRT station brought me down on the waiting platform, I spotted, among the jaded corporate peons eager to get a ride and escape the heat that was so pervasive in the air, a young couple embracing each other. The young couple was oblivious to the people around them.
The young lady, in spectacles, looked classy in her black tee and pants, and you don’t have to stare too long at her to notice that she was pretty. The young man on the other hand had his long hair tied.
I could have forgotten about them after the train arrived and I waded through the throng of passengers to get a seat. But they happened, by chance, to stray on their way before me. The couple stood before me who by then had a seat already. They continued displaying their sweet embracing. They were in love.
I could not help took furtive glances at the young lady. She was pretty indeed; but not that kind of prettiness that you get tired of staring at after sometime.
I heard her soft voice, and I knew then that this lady belonged to those who can do her shopping anytime in Hong Kong or Singapore or even New York. And throughout the duration that they stood before they alighted at Ayala Station, I knew then that I saw and experienced magic.
Their movements had magic. Everything they did was magic. Not because they were in love. There was just magic in all their moves. It’s like the way when you see a famous genius or an artist. Every move has magic in it; beauty. This couple by their very person alone exudes beauty. They were young, confident, and simple but astonishingly stand taller than the rest.

For those who visit this blog from time to time, you probably already noticed the long silence between each postings. I don’t know whether I can attribute this to laziness, or to the fact that I make a living writing.

I don’t know. I just cannot find time now to pause doing my job, settle before the computer and write something to post on this blog.

Umm… just cannot feel the juice pumping in my head.