Mental Health: 1992 and 2010 Election Campaign, Noynoy, Miriam Defensor and that Paid Hack

I just got up from bed from a late afternoon siesta and took a quick drag of cigarette in the kitchen when unmindfully I failed to take notice that I was already grinning from ear to ear over a delayed realization concerning the campaign strategy in this 2010 May National Election. It was like an enlightenment of some sort, kind of Satori, a heightened awareness of a vision that is more of a rendezvous with the past. I could not help but smile and say to myself: Not again.

The vision or the memory brought me back to the 1992 Presidential Election. It was the time when a brave, articulate, intelligent young woman with the name of Mirriam Defensor Santiago came into fame for her no non-sense kind of administrative leadership. Ms Defensor was something that we young people then wanted our next president to be: gutsy and with a lot of doze of political will to crush all the disease in the national government.

Ms Defensor on the onset of the election campaign was the obvious favorite. She was ahead of the pack that it would almost take a miracle to beat her in the election. She was the voice of the youth then. She was the favorite in every big and prestigious universities in Manila and the whole archipelago.

Then a political strategy, brought about by the usual mudslinging, sprout out of nowhere. There was an issue with Ms Defensor; she was insane and suffered a nervous breakdown during her younger years. Now, this issue of mental health is something Ms. Defensor failed to fight intelligently. Because of having a short-temper and impatience to hear this issue thrown at her, she committed the mistake by folding-up to the pressure when several campaign sorties in universities made her shout at a student who was asking a question.

Now back to the future which is now. Noynoy definitely and without doubt is the favorite and it would take a miracle to beat him in the national election. That is not a product of the imagination but the truth. Now if you are a political strategist and lessons need to squeeze between your ears is something on how to beat a candidate who is evidently leading the survey what should you think or make as a good model? The 1992 Presidential Election no doubt. And I think the thinktanks of a political candidate just thought of it.

And what is making me grin and almost laugh to the symmetry of the situation in these elections is the same participation of one columnist who then had also weaved stories about the so-called insanity of Ms. Defensor and who right now had just created a seamless story about the mental condition of Noynoy. I cannot forget this columnist. I just know now that she is really a paid hack comes election time. Check Philstar.com for her column.

Ashtray

I and Lil Feather were in the supermarket buying something for dinner when out of the blue, as if remembering an ingredient for a meal, approached a stocker and followed him down to the section where the supermarket was already selling dry goods. I in turn had to follow them, pushing the orange trolley where the basket for grocery was put less I lost them. I usually know what Lil Feather wants to buy or look for in the supermarket that the pace of our steps was abreast with each other. But this time it was different. I barely had an idea what she was up to when she approached the stocker.

Several aisles behind them I saw her and the stocker veered in a section of the dry goods department. Then she emerged walking towards me and shaking her head as if frustrated.

“What are you looking for,” I asked.

“Astray.” Still looking left and right as to where we could find it.

It was days since she decided that I should get an ashtray if I could not hold myself from smoking inside the house. She said to pacify my mother and all the members of the household from the smell of cigarette butts that I usually surreptitiously put in the recesses of the kitchen.

I read somewhere that if you smoke one stick every hour of the day then you can be already labeled as a chain-smoker. I usually smoke at least a stick every half an hour so that would mean I am already a chain smoker. But the label concerning my smoking habit is begging the question since everybody would see me in the street or in the house not smoking or taking a drag surreptitiously any time of the day. I would say cigarette has been my closest companion and a very handy friend whenever I and her cousin Red Horse would create a drama out of nothing during the night. I have smoked since my teenage years as far as I remember. I hardly know whether it was due because of my environment (my father too was a heavy smoker one time of his life) or it was what they called the product of peer pressure. I recall smoking in some plushy disco house that was popular for those famous and wealthy people; I pretending to be cool or ‘in’ as I took a drag of strong Marlboro red amid the blinking lights of strobe lights and empty bottles of San Miguel beer. I recall too not getting any cravings for nicotine dosage the next day when I answered the call of nature in our house so I said to myself that smoking has no hold of me.

But back to my story, I am already held hostage by my vice and the only consolation I could give to my household was to make my bad habit not a cause of their comfort and the cleanliness of the house.

So Lil Feather could not find an ashtray for me. There was none that the supermarket/department store was selling. We had to think of an ingenious way to solve this problem as if solving this were saving our lives from some deluge or curse.

We passed by the aisle where dining plates were displayed. We thought of a ceramic were you usually put dip as a replacement for real ashtray. We could not find any fitting design: the dip holder was usually too hollow or too shallow and sold for many pieces that buying them was close to pure desperate insanity.

Now I asked myself where are those days when smoking was held as a respectable and sign of being a man of the world been that ashtray is something that you can buy everywhere like candy. The world right now was persecuting smokers left and right. You can no longer smoke inside a jeepney which when I was young me and my high school buddies would enjoy without the fear of the driver or somebody in the jeepney telling us to put the lights off.

I said we can look for it instead in the National Bookstore, which I now think was a stupid idea. We found no ashtray of course in the bookstore.

The answer only came later on when I thought of the hardware as a possible place where we could find one. And there we found one. A plastic ashtray designed like a miniature pot where you can flick your ash there and it would slide through the middle where there was a hole. Yes, it was made in China.

NBA Playoffs, Haruki Murakami and Need for Cash

I just woke up last week with the surprise that it is already the post-season in the NBA. Barely having any thoughts to do in front of the laptop and doing the ritual of checking first my emails, the automatic homepage of yahoo told something about the Playoffs 2010. That was the only time that I realized that my usual cycle of yearly anticipation had been broken somehow.

Usually, weeks prior to the playoffs, I am already checking and getting into conversation with anybody in the neighborhood who are following the NBA. But now this time. As I said the usual cycle of yearly anticipation have dissipated in the air somehow.

As far as I remember, going way back a decade ago or even older than that, NBA playoffs (especially the Finals) has a way of bringing my world into a halt and put me in that state of heightened awareness of superb half-court basketball strategies of offense and defense exponentially faster that what the locals here are doing. (But don’t ask me how and what is the triangle offense that Phil Jackson and Michael Jordan did to their Chicago Bulls because I still have to figure it out until this time.)

It seems concerns and priorities have changed right now. Even right at this moment, I have the choice to turn on the tube and catch probably the fourth quarter of a playoffs game somewhere in the cable but I no longer bother to do it. I can not even imagine sitting relax and comfortable watching the game because I know I will just fidget and feel guilty about it.

First and foremost, since Lil Feather and I tied the knot and I no longer have an exclusive use of my bachelor bed (which actually was a hand-over furniture from my sister Jane, the pressing task that is asking for attention is for me to work as consistently as possible. And funds and cash is something of a need right now more than ever.

This is the reason why since how long I could not remember I bought a book (courtesy of Lil Feather’s one day work for her client) to unblock my rotting head and get it stirred up again and get it running and functioning like before. I got Haruki Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; a rather thick book but not a hard read compared with Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow.

Nevertheless, going back to the playoffs, it is just the first round so missing some games does not matter. I usually missed first-round playoffs games and only stick to the tube to watch games during the conference finals and all the way up to the finals. This is also the first time I think that my favorite team Pistons failed to make it to the playoffs, which is expected and understandable.

But for now, post season NBA does not matter because what matter most right now is to be a money magnet and that three articles for a client are waiting to be written already then transform them into dire need cash.

The Struggle to Get some Writerly Sense

I will write this essay slow with short breaks to read the text of Krip Yuson’s 1991 book Confessions of a Q.C. House-husband and other Privacies. Yes, of course the music background will be those new wave singles I have downloaded from Ares. Let the jumble thoughts or if there ever were force themselves into order so this essay will have some sense. Of course, there’s Lil Feather doing the laundry and egging me to write and work asking for my attention to see the developments in her task. During these times when my brain and mind lack any stamina to form a composition longer than a sentence, I would need to call for heaven’s help, call Kerouac (or curse him for the influence for the impatient haphazard type-writing yakking that would need the kick of one liter Red Horse to do), summon the souls of Hemingway and Joyce and guide me to go to Mexico to kill Ignacio Padilla heir to the throne of Latin-American magical fiction writers like Gabo. This is back to basics; the only difference now is that I’m dreadfully writing on a laptop and seeing the white pages of Word to be filled not the way when I started to write when I was younger, writing with ballpen and a piece of cross-wised-folded paper on the second landing of the apartment we used to rent back in the 90’s. The struggle is still the same: force myself not to succumb to the gravitational pull of the bed and just continue to write, yes yak, flex that writerly writer in me… (Intro: Leave me Alone of New Order… ever notes proves to be a tingling urging sensation in my legs… from my head to my toes I see a vision that would bring me luck… I just smile).