A Short Essay

Of what I could gather from my elders as to how was I during my early years as a baby, they are in unison in describing me as a wailer. Inay, my grandmother as I used to call her, would pacify me by lugging me at her side, catching me by her hips, yet I still would wail incessantly as if I had seen a ghost or the small universe I perceived around me were a chaotic phantom irritating my mood. Though the earliest memory I could rummage pertaining to my childhood was my quiet attempt to distinguish which among the pair of rubber slippers in front of me corresponded to my right and left foot.

Unknowingly, these opposite qualities of my younger years would merge to define and mold me as to what I would want myself to be. Probably, the first time I wailed was not for the reason that my lampin soaked in urine made me uncomfortable, but my pristine effort to narrate the story I had dreamt of. While the silence I practiced learning how to wear my slippers foretold of the virtue I would need in order to pursue my goal of self-actualization.

Still the perception of a chaotic universe around me prevails. It remains unchanged by time, though instead of tacit wailings brought by this overwhelming observation, the need to put an order and form to this so as to appease my senses has pushed me to grab a pen and there on the blank sheet of paper I would attempt to construct an ordered universe through words, by which as a baby I wailed due to my inability to perform the task. It is during those first tries that occurred the formation of my dreams.

Though the initial concrete steps I made happened years ago during my grade-school years when instead of staring at the idiot box, like the rest of my family, I would slouch in a corner and devour reading The Reader’s Digest, illustrated Gospel books, and the book Science in Everyday Living.

These efforts, unfortunately, would come to a grinding halt when I reached my secondary schooling, putting more importance on gaining an actual experience on my immediate world by hanging out most of the time with my school buddies.

Tracing the path that I used to tread would only happen during college days. Though by that time, the previous four years that had been wasted wantonly took a heavy toll on my ability to deliver on what I should by then had learned to do: write.

It was a humbling experience then to see my contemporaries composing several pages of essays and articles while I miserably struggled to avoid getting stuck with my first sentence. Like the quiet tot I used to be then, silently discerning which is which among the pair of slippers belonged to what foot, I played low-profile, diligent and with the determination of ten bulls reading contemporary works of master storytellers like those from Latin America who grow dinosaurs from iguanas.

Now, a decade after I left the university, the education continues, excruciatingly slow at some point in time but not as slow as a snail in tranquilizers. That path is rough and a challenging one which I expected from the very start.

Nevertheless, my wailings has metamorphosed into a decent reconstruction of the universe around me with deft combination of words. The wailing I only have to do now is how to find someone who would be willing to pay me work on something I love to do.

A Short Unfinished Autobiography of a Writer in Oblivion

The day I realized I wanted to be a writer, the ember of this ambition continuously burns since then, steadily casting a reddish glow in the depths of my soul. It was then that I decided loitering in the streets, hanging out to kill time with friends whose only vision of the future was an alien world they could not define with their notion of perpetual present, had to end. The circumstances called for a hermetic life, dedicated on reading books and writing the whole day. I saw no other path leading toward the life I knew destined for me other than this.

I was in the middle of my college studies then. I would spend most of my time browsing and scanning the books on the shelves of Humanity Section of our library and would read for hours. And usually during the afternoons, I hung around with writers and poets classmates in the campus field, talking about books, stories, writers and about life until the sky changed hues from psychedelic orange to dark blue and the guards had to tell us that the campus was already closed.

My best buddies Alex Capiz and Emmanuel Edu, who shocked our innocent and devout Catholic classmates with his introduction of himself during our first day in class with his audacious pronouncement that he was not a religious person with a religious name, helped me see what fate had destined of what I should be. Alex, as a brotherly act, taught me the lesson of investing in books, an inevitable part of pursuing what the future had stored for us as wannabe writers. They introduced me to the best and basic writers one ought to read: James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges and other slew of masters in literature.

So, it was James Joyce Dubliners that I would devour in solitude, dissecting and studying the narrative mechanisms of his prose. Then came the powerful, simple prose of Hemingway overwhelming me. Though years later, when the English language remained a monster I could not tame, I spotted the cause of the infantilization of my dream short of killing the individual writer in me; it was the wrong way how to work as an apprentice under the tutelage of Hemingway. There hangs a thin line in knowing the distinction between a teacher that would address your needs from the one that could hurt you in the end.

I failed to notice that Hemingway knocked me out in my attempt to assume my fate. Hemingway is the lone writer who can send every writer of this modern time straight on the canvas during the first round. It would take several years before I could shake the beatings that I received and spar again, and undo the wrong lessons I learned.

I should have had taken a serious look on my deficiency at its first apparition so I could have had avoided the trap I walked into when Hemingway overwhelmed me with his prose. When I uttered “I also want to won” in fighting gesture to equal the feat Alex achieved in winning the top prize of Ustetika, University of Santo Tomas’ university-wide literary competition, I should by then realized that basic English grammar was on the frontline of tasks I ought to work on.

I consider this my first failure as a writer. The assumption that I was already a writer by mere wanting to be one but not taking the responsibility that the language with which I would use as the vehicle for my work was as foreign as what Chinese language is to me started the history of my writerly journey straight to the Dark Age.

The exorcism of Hemingway’s ghost from my fledging writing wisdom happened with my introduction to the works of Thomas Pynchon, and later of Italo Calvino and the Beat prose of Jack Kerouac.

The stories I wrote after my acquaintance with these writers, though mediocre and peppered with literary flaws, seemed to have opened the reservoir of creative juice I had been trying to control, and in a way set loose the rein that tied my narrative voice, freeing it to become gregarious, free-flowing, experimental and inhibited.

When I realized I wanted to be a writer, I barely knew how to write, or pour into the blank sheet of paper my thoughts.

I remember during those early days when I struggled learning how to write when I would spend long time staring at the first unfinished sentence, stuck and stammering and groping how to continue. Those days were also trying times to stay awake and avoid succumbing to the languor creeping from my feet and calves upward as the lethargy of intense staring at the white sheet of paper hypnotized me.

Several years later, with nothing to show as a proof that I had become the writer I wanted to be, I stood among young people like myself discussing during that time community organization in our place when I looked passed them, into the darkness of the evening and tried to denounce that I wanted to be one. The illusion of becoming a writer was a product of my association with those who wanted to be one, I said to myself.

A void suddenly swirled centrifugally in my chest, consuming the meaning and purpose of everything around me. I muttered: “So, what I am now?”

Then there came the quick realization, more fix and surer than before, concrete and the only thing I knew with absolute certainty. This is no more an illusion, I said to myself. There is only one thing I know what I want to be. And it is to become a writer.

Civilize My Writing

There are times when I feel that my writing style does not conform to the 'civilized' form of writing as general readers define what is good writing and interesting to read. One possible reason is I write without any consideration whether the reader gets my point or not.

Most of my writing, or the posts I make here in my blog, are labyrinth ramblings of a soul trying to find his voice. So if a roaming blogger landed on the pages of my blog and read several posts I made here, he might find them uninteresting, vague, even to the point that he might say to himself: What the hell is he talking about ?

My posts are usually notes (lately written haphazardly due to the lack of time to concentrate, in spite of a good whole free day enough for me to compose a decent pseudo-article.) That is the problem when you have lots of time in your hands; it gives you more reason to procrastinate and delay the things you ought to do.

Well, this degradation on my writing can be also attributed to the fact that I have no computer in the house, and the place I use to write in long hand (the next door beside our house) is under renovation. I would not say that I succumbed to the blows of circumstances, but I'll just consider myself reeling from its blows. It is hard when circumstances, plus my being a natural lazy person, push me to pass the days just jotting down notes and desperately call them 'writings.'

One of these days, I will sit again in front of a blank sheet of paper, take my time, write decently, clear and true as I can, then alot a good time for rewriting, then, finally, finally, I can then call it a good writing.

For now, these little notes would be enough.

Notes

What if you struggle in oblivion, trying to interpret the world according to the color of lens of your perception? When you talk to the people around you, they cannot understand the things that you say or you sense that they have no idea what it is that you are trying to relay. Nobody gets you. You see a different world. Even if you and them live in the same neighborhood, it is as if you’re from a different galaxy, light years apart.

What is more difficult when you are in a struggle to something sensible and nobody appreciate it?

Yet, as I think now, it is not important when you are in the early part of your struggle to be noticed by the world. Or it is important that they promptly understand you. For everything that you will say, if you knew it is the truest of what you see, the time will come when they will be clear.

And it is during this time when the world will notice you. It is also during this time that they will notice that everything that you have said is something they would have had in thoughts, something that is true as if it came from them.

The only difference is you are the one who took the time to look at these things they ignored. And they falsely call you talented and gifted.

Thinking

How do you know if you’re still thinking right? How can you say you’re drowning in your own world, reading the world like a newspaper so intent and close that your face kisses the pages and the black ink looms larger and a blur and drowning you?

Logical check and balance in our pursuit of reality:

1) Challenge your views by talking to the people around you. They may have a good insight of what is the real or better world.

2) Do something and stop staring at the nothingness, sitting on your ass all day. Swim to the surface, probably you’re drowning.

* * * * *

Sometimes, there is one question that repeatedly bugs me: Why do I write this way? Why can’t I civilized my writing?

Seaching for the Book: Live to Tell the Tale

I could not help myself to slap my forehead at what stupidity I've done this early evening at Powerbooks. I was planning to buy the recent published autobiography of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. What stuck in my mind as the title of the book was Live to Tell the Tale.

Now, roaming around the bookstore, resisting the short-cut to approach the sales personnels, I looked for the book by myself. I was also killing time and browsing for other interesting book so roaming aimslessly around was a nice thing to do.

But I soon found myself asking a sales personnel for an assistance. I told myself that I would roam around after my purchase. And then, as the readers expect what happened, the sales personnel had a hard time searching their database for the book. Drat! How could the sales personnel find the book when the title was wrong.

After half an hour, standing at the counter and the poor sales personnel twisting her search style and even calling the nearby branch for that book, I was told that probably the book was already sold out.

"Would you want to make a reservation, sir," the sales personnel told me.

"No, it's okay," I replied. "I would try National Bookstore."

Then, there it happened. The discovery of what a bummer I did there in Powerbooks.

In National Bookstore, I was still saying to the sales ladies that I was looking for the book of Gabriel Garcia Marquez Live to Tell the Tale.

I only got to my right senses when a sales lady handed me the book and reading the title, I could not help but shrugged. It was Living to Tell the Tale.

I paid for the book, grinning from ear to ear at what an obvious lapse of memory I had in recalling the title of the book.

Delivery Boy Attempting to Write

It took me several minutes to prepare the coffee, boiling first a mug of water and when it seemed hot enough, poured it into the cup. I rummaged in my piles of papers for something to write on. All bond papers had been scribbled on and I knew then that I had to get a fresh supply of papers; available in the store and I could get several pieces so I could start.

Pens and papers were ready, and yes the coffee. It was time already to go to the adjacent house and write the narration that had been playing in my head.

Then the phone rang, as I was about to get out of the house. It was a client. It was an order for cases of strong beer and pale pilsen. Promptly, I had to drop the things that I would have to do, and hurriedly put on a shirt, grabbed my cap and asked the receiver of the call where would I deliver the orders. After much fussing about the exact location of the store, I dumped the cases of beer on the service tri-bike and sort out for myself where was the store from the vague direction that was given to me. The coffee would be cold by the time I returned for sure but it did not matter.

When you have set your mind on something to do and there are distraction like errands and chores to fulfill, you just have to understand that these are necessary delays. These errands are only momentary. After fulfilling them, there would be a lull in time, enough to retrace your steps as to what your mind was weaving earlier.

So after the delivery, I bid my time again, repeating the rituals, wiping the sweat from my brows and arms. This was the time of reconstructing the narrative that flowed in my head earlier; my head searching for that glimpse of the gist of the narrative, the rhythm, the juice. A cigarette or two would do the trick, I thought.

Then, as I got myself halfway back to the path (I could already feel the narrative beginning to flow again) moseying in the house as if trying to find something, another order came in. For the second time, it did not matter again. I got a good hold of the narrative in my head and nothing could erase it.

After all the distractions, finally, I was able to sit. It was already time to pour the narrative that had been bugging me into the blank pages of the paper.

It was near noon when he woke up. He stumbled from his cot and went straight to the kitchen. He boiled a mug of water. When he saw that there were little bubbles hissing on the casserole, he poured the water into a cup and made himself a coffee. He sat on the patio in front of the house, sipping the coffee. He fished for a cigarette in his jeans and lit it. He puffed hard, feeling the smoke went into his lungs.

The street was deserted. The sun was high over the sky, cloudless. The street was blanched white by the fury of the heat. Gabo could feel his heartbeat slowed down into hard, strong throb. He would squint his eyes as he stared at the street. He had many things in his mind yet he could not focus. All he could think was nothing. For a long time he was staring at the street until he could no longer see the baked cement pavement, the quiet prefab row of houses in front of him, until what he saw and felt was the fury flowing in his veins, the actions he had formed in his mind.

His coffee had become cold and he took it in one gulped. Then he puffed harder this time. It was time, he thought. He got his cap in his room, then put on a shirt and went into the street.

The heat of the sun was singeing his arms. His face sweated. But he was oblivious to it. He clenched his knuckles and jaw, easing down the tension in his limbs. He felt his face had been soiled and wet that he had to squint, and he squinted sharper and hard. He knew that he ought to do this. He knew it was the right thing to do. It was the most right thing he had ever to do in his life.

He still could not tell what changed him. But he knew something had changed in him since last night. He had been changed no doubt about it. This is already not the story he reads from books. No amount of reading can make you tough. It may give you the insight to face Death, but it can only reach up to that point. And Gabo knew about it. As he walked under the blistering heat of the sun, he could feel he was stepping out from the books he had read about courage. This time, he could breathe the air of fear that was making his knees wobbly. Yet the only thing that made them firm were his knowledge that it was the right thing to do for him. Live on your knees, or die in your feet. He repeated this mantra like it was the truest words that he knew. It was no longer a courage that you get from impulse. This was courage coming from a deliberate will, tougher, every second ticked with the motion of the will pushing him. This was the courage that he knew all along.

He was near the end of the block, and in his mind he could see that his foe stood behind the bend, probably talking to somebody like it was any ordinary day. He knew the other had a knife tucked in his pants, ready to stab his guts. And Gabo knew he had to be ready for it. They knew when they see each other that they would have to kill each other. He could smell the trouble waiting for him around the bend. And he was ready for it.

Thinking Slow

For the past two days, all he did was to sleep. It seemed he had slept for a long time and been tired so bad that he could afford to slept all that time. He had been awake only for several hours then yet it seemed he was still asleep during that time that he concluded that he had been asleep all those times. He had been thinking hard prior before he slept, thinking so hard and so fast he felt he had been running to keep abreast with what he was thinking and how he thought that he felt his mind was about to blow, or if not, he would start running with only his jockey on out in his room into the living room or maybe into the street, begging everybody to make him stop thinking. He had wanted to stop thinking so when he was able to sleep two days ago, he slept continuously even if there were times when he was awake to light a cigarette and smoke and had a good drag. Now, he is awake and thinking, though he thinks clear and slow now and can keep abreast with his thoughts that it feels fine. It feels fine to think clear and slow. It is a good feeling.

Hard Way to Love

You try to be cool but to no avail. Unknowingly you are cool when you least know it. You are cool when you strut in the street caring nothing about the world. You are cool when you light your cigarette without care, just thinking about having a drag and staring at nothingness, past the world around you because your mind is somewhere; you care about nothing, you are detached and nothing can hurt you.

You are invisible. Nothing binds you to something. You are tied not to a single soul; everybody is just a face, a name, a character to you that exists as mere subject of your observation. You watch them and that is it; they cannot reach you.

Everything you do is for the kick of doing it. You are studying, you tell yourself as you grin your way out of unscrupulous acts and violence. It is as if you were shielded by this mindset from getting killed, shot or stabbed, or from dying. You grin and smirk because you always get out intact, with physical bruises, yet still spiritually intact.

You care nothing about your women. There are there within reach. You are tied not to a single soul, do you remember? What the hell if they cried because of you. They are just women craving for your attention because they see that you are cool, that you have potentials, and you say a lot of crap about life, about the real life that you think you know a lot about. When something wrong happens, you tell them that you just gave and let them live the love story they endeared themselves. “It’s all in your mind, honey.”

Then suddenly, you lose your cool, sign that you begin now to care and you will get hurt. Indeed, you are already hurt, somebody has penetrated your shield; you are bind unconsciously to somebody. Now you see how she had had let herself fall from the heaven of innocence, how she had had fought her way to reach you.

Now you are wrecked. You are hurt and could feel the pain. You are wrecked in the marrow of your soul. Your angel of innocence has swept down into the maw of the monster that you are a part of, and you saw how her soul beaten up, her pretty, innocent face muddied to know your world.

And now you are wrecked; wrecked and in pain. You light your cigarette with trembling hands. Each drag intensifies the depth of pain you are going through.

Then, finally, you cry.

And you know from then on that you are bind to somebody; that you are no longer cool, that you can get hurt because you care, that you no longer just see to observe but to feel.

And it is Love.

Basic Logistic on a Personal Journey

If I would go on a personal journey and had to take a good look at the books that lined the shelves in my room and pick among them those that would be part of the personal logistics packed in my bag, I knew that I ought to write about them. I knew too that I would write about them either in the gazebo in Legaspi Village Park, or under the shadow of the trees in the lawn of Redemptorist Church, or in the stuffy Periodical Section of the National Library smelling the musty several-decade-old newspapers and magazines, or anywhere in the metropolis where I could sit and comfortably write. I knew I just have to write about them if ever I would.

First is M. Scott Peck’s Road Less Traveled, a book I stumbled upon when a monk friend lend it to me when I ran from home more than a decade ago, pondering now that learning about and from it must be the sole purpose why I had chosen to run to them past over mountains and seas toward the South. I now have my own copy, courtesy of my girlfriend, lil feather, who returned all the books (RLT included) and stuffs I gave to her as gifts when I tried to break up with her, so there would be no valid reason now to seek their generosity. The circumstances is different now: I would not run away as a rebel youth unknowledgeable of the real world as I used to be then, but simply would leave the comfort of my parents house to be the grown man that I ought to be.

M. Scott Peck aptly says the painful truth in the first sentence of the book: Life is Difficult. Indeed, nothing can be truer than that; “a great truth, one of the greatest truths,” he adds. Knowing about this bit of wisdom can calm the agitation of the soul. This is how life is, boy. No bed of roses, as the worn-out cliché goes.

This book is accompanied by Scott Peck’s two more works: The Road Less Traveled and Beyond and People of the Lie.

These three books would form as the frontline triumvirate in my journey as basic logistics as clothing, crackers, and candies (they have glucose and can make you last for sometime without food) would as I sneaked out of the house into the unknowns of my journey. They are invaluable companions to keep my eyes keen on different maps of reality with their wisdom culled from mystics, bards, musicians, artists, and conglomerate of gurus from various religions that Scott Peck learned along from his experience at poking at the contemporary human psyche and life.

Another book that would be included in the pack but sadly had to be returned to its owner, Pi, my senior in college, and also to reduce the weight that I would have to lug around, is Grace D. Chong’s Gifts of Grace Book 2.

There is no other book that I have read that skinned the layer of superficial and ordinary events to expose what marvelous grace they are when seen with the right insight. It was as if Chong could see the hands of Grace everywhere: in the simple call “Auntie,” in the desperate and failure of pregnancy, the silent patience of a spinster, the practical jokes of a sibling, the sheer single-mindedness of her son, a client with relentless pursuit for perfection. Even the commercialized slogan “Just do it!” rightfully comes back to its ancient owner Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings, to set up the unwavering human spirit to be bold, undaunted, willful, and win the fight. And it might be winning the fight of my life in the street as it would have been my case.

Then there is my paperback The Essential Hemingway, constant companion on important journeys. How does he say it in Nick Adams stories? “You have to be tough.” Or from The Snows of Kilimanjaro: “He could beat anything, he thought, because nothing could hurt him if he did not care.” Well said. Very well said.

If the thugs whom I would chance to cross path as I stay in the streets of metropolis would try to rob or maul me, I would put their faces in with the book, follow-up with an upper-cut under their chins then a turning round-house in their guts. They could get me bruised, but not my spirit. “After all, what can they do to you?… Worst one can do is kill you.”

Then what could be a better accompaniment to Hemingway’s hard, physical reality, an antithesis to his subscription with the world as you see it in one dimensional ‘the sun is the sun, the sea is the sea,’ but Carlos Castaneda’s Journey to Ixtlan: Lessons of Don Juan. “I don’t care what you see… How you feel is the important issue.” Hemingway from the short story The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber: “We all take a beating everyday, you know, one way or another” to Castaneda from the mouth of Don Juan: “What injures the spirit is having someone always on your back, beating you, telling you what to do and what not to do.” What could be a better combination than that?

Journey to Ixtlan is a sad anthropological book. Amid the laughter of Don Juan Matus comically mocking the writer Carlos Castaneda at his obvious puzzlement to his statements, there throbs a melancholy beat in the heart of the don, infinitely sad and lonely, in a journey without end. And aren’t we all lonely in our personal journeys, clinging to whatever we could hold on to, a palliatative to the sadness within us?
Nevertheless, the book has an effect of a conjurer’s trick; opening worlds within the world before us, marvelous and amazing, virtually giving off an aftertaste of peyote to the spirit. Reading the book numerous times, feeling the weirdness of the narrative of Castaneda, there is no other way to see the world deeper than this.

And like the worthy enemy mentioned in the book – an enemy I choose to chase – it is wrestling me now and would throw me past faraway mountains and deserts into the concrete jungle only to find back my way home again. Though I knew, like Don Juan, that there would be no way to get back home. The place and the house might be there, but something has changed that make them alien.

I would be in a journey anytime from now. And these books would be my companions as I stave off loneliness, keep the spirit intact and make me breathe in the vast desert littered by metal and concrete, hoping to find one day the soul of my existence and rightful niche in this world.

Note: This essay is my entry in Philippine Star 'My Favorite Book' contest. Hope to see it published anytime soon from now.

The End

He reached the south gate just in time to see the strange van, dark blue and heavily tinted, about to veer in the mix of the flux of vehicles along the main road. He followed it, three cars in between to avoid suspicion that it was being followed. But he sensed that it knew it was being followed, that it knew it was supposed to move as if it were not being followed and he to act as he knew he did not know that it knew it was being followed. He felt everything from the beginning, from the moment he heard of the van that it was a theatrical performance, where everybody was leading toward the two parties knew beforehand. He had felt this situation before but could not point on anything specific. A déjà vu, he thought. He followed the van as it circled its way around the metropolis ; along EDSA and the boulevard, engulfed in the din of automobiles. Once they even stopped in the same gas station to get a fill. The van finished first but waited at the corner for him and then they resumed their mock chase.

When the van reached the Libertad market, it dropped a passenger who walked briskly along the deserted side street. This is it, Edgardo thought. He pulled over beside a cheap record bar that was about to close. The Chinese owner looked behind as his two sons pulled the shutters down and the scene brought to Edgardo a pain in the prostate he could not understand. The man entered the market alley. Edgardo fished for a cigarette from his back pocket and lit it, then crossed the asphalted street. He entered the market and saw the man trudging along the aisles, zigzagging between closed and darkened stalls. Then the man slipped out at the back of the market. Edgardo found it led to a narrow street crowded by urchins and planked by a beehive of shanties. There was a wake going on, and beside the cheap coffin, the gambling table was thronged with bettors. He caught a glimpse of the man vanished into a street. He accelerated his steps. The street was a dark deserted, bordered by walls with the lamppost at the end gave it light. Edgardo knew the end of it converged with the main street, and knew he had to accost the man here or else he would lose him. He yelled at the man to stop or he would shoot. The man stopped. Edgardo walked toward the man, careful as he drew closer; the faint light revealing the face of the man who was slowly turning his face at him; a face Edgardo had seen thousands of times before in the mirror, though this face was scrawny with deep eyes. The eyes told him everything; his fate, his destiny. He felt he had to flee, he had to run and escape. He backed away, toward where he had come from, and halfway through it, running, a shot rang. Edgardo felt the cold cement pavement slammed on his face; a bullet had whacked his thigh. He writhed in pain as the gun powder scalded the inside of his thigh. When he looked up, a gun muzzle was trained at him, held by the man whose face bore the answer to Edgardo’s questions. In split second, he heard the gunfire, saw the sudden flash of light, then total darkness.

Second Lease of Life

My time right now is short and not enough to elaborate the action, violent experience I have had several days ago, me, almost tittering on the brink of dying, or rather getting killed. There is no replacement to see Death before His eyes other than committing yourself into his scythe, through the participation of lawless scumbags that are ready to kill you without conscience or vacillation. Yet, all I could remember is to die with dignity, die with my feet standing and forsake living with kneels folded. What did Hemingway said about it? The worse that they can do to you is kill you. Well, they didn't, and living a life like a boy, boyish and always preferring peace is already over. It seems there is nothing that can daunt your spirit. You've stared at the eyes of Death and it is already like dying. This is already my second lease of life. Death no longer frightens me. I'm already ready.

No Pc, No Blog.... But There's the Net Cafe

This is the first day that I don’t have a PC at home. The routine of waking up and booting on the computer and logging on to check my mails and scribble something for my blog has changed into a mere ritual of having a mug of coffee, a couple of stick of cigarette for my nicotine dose, and staring blankly at space.

Even though the computer table in my room looks miserable without the CPU below, and my fingers feeling the urge to pound on the keyboard and yak something out, which would eventually end as a pos for my blog, everything is not lost.

Though rare it would be, I can still post something here by going to net cafes and have my slice of flitting net pleasure there.

I’m lucky that I’m in my part-time job as a programmer here in Navotas and have a free use of a computer and later on rent an access to the net so I could post this short rambling of my thoughts.

Everything is still okay.

On the sketch pad: I plan to go to my own so-called training camp in Taguig, in the house of my older brother, where there is no inhabitant most of the day. There I can continue rewriting my long due project short story.

Will Be Gone For a While

The time has come... my sister-in-law is taking the pc with her already... it will take some time before i can post again here...

Farewell Pope John Paul II

I was barely awake when I found myself sitting in front of the tube. The screen scrolled down a solemn prayer, and it bore with it a sad news: Pope John Paul II has past away. My eyes turned misty, and after collecting myself, said a prayer for him.

I confess that I do not consider myself a Catholic, though I was born one. Probably I've read too much books, been exposed to too much radical ideas, and had had enough of the scandals going in the Church, plus the fact that I don't subscribe to some of its doctrines, that I decided to bolt from the congregation for good. I even would casually say to people that I don't have a religion. (Am I throwing the baby with the bath water? I'll ponder about it when the right time comes.)

Yet, this news about the Pope, saddens me. I shouldn't be that affected by his departure than a knowledge that a person has just died. But I am.

The closest the Pope had come near me, was when he visited the country, 1995 I think. Though, I did not attempt to take a peek of him personally, like joining the droves of faithfuls that welcomed him here. Watching him on the tube was enough.

And, in that short hours of parading on the road, amid the excited crowd, I felt a mysterious, almost unexplainable euphoria and realization of who really was this man waving and smiling at the cheerers. Someone I heard said that his aura is the grace bestowed upon him by his office. And I could not deny it. Upon seeing him, I backtracked generations to generations of long ago until I ended up seeing Jesus Christ. It seemed the gap between the time of the Christ and the present time was dissolved. Then the obvious, but now concrete moving evidence: the Pope is the descendant of Christ for our times. He is the present shepherd for millions of souls toward God.

The Pope is gone now. The thread that connects us to Christ is momentarily cut. In spite of this, Pope John Paul II deserves a thankful prayer for his service.

May his blessed soul rest in the presence of God.

Getting a Recharge

Sometimes, when both body and mind would not budge to get you going, due to fatigue or sheer laziness, it helps when you take a leisure surfing in the net and stumble on good reads (not specifically fiction or heavy essays) and feel a spark in your mind pondering again like a well-oiled thinking machine.

With the stultifying effect of summer that pulls you into languor, and you are woozy with the heat, it's almost insurmountable not to succumb to its effect. Your brain motor stops to work and you are helpless like an inebriated man who could easily find comfort on the gutter just to have a rest.

For a while, I felt just exactly like this. Dunno if its fatigue, with all that efforts to be creatively productive and my head heavy raking my brain for that so-called "good writing" lessons I learned from experience and also from the barrage of taking notes on new writing tips, my body just gave in. I could not go on further. The load was too much for me.

So, probably I copped-out by taking my time, a breather that lasted for couple or several days just letting things settle first in my head before continuing. I wantonly wasted my time in front of the tube, channel surfing since I could barely stand the programs that almost always gave me garbage. Or merely drinking coffee and smoking consecutive cigarettes, staring in the street to while time, until I feel nausea and on the brink of throwing up.

Then, came the leisure electronic walk in the net. I mentioned above that stumbling on a good read, didn't I? Yes, that exactly what happened. Little did I know that a simple good read brought back the energy that I needed just to go on writing.

I may be still tired, yet my cerebral capacity to think has been recharged. I look around in the street, at the children playing, the mothers chatting for the latest gossips, and the rest of other activities going on, and I can see them clearer now.

And somehow, as I sit in front of my monitor, I can pound the keyboards again with relative confidence with something sensible to say.

Summer Siesta

It is usually this time, after having lunch, when stupor and the gravity of the bed, or cot, or the humble sofa for that matter, the greatest. After starting the day loitering in the net, checking some mails and online friends, straying from blogsites of other bloggers, and doing some scribblings for a story, the call for a break seems reasonable.

But these days, it is not only the after-effect langour caused by lunch begging me for a siesta. It is the heat of summer March. (As I write this, the electric fan is trained at me, to prevent me from sweating too much.) I never felt this weather hotter than before.

Before Holy Week came, it had rained and the sky overcast, that I thought this summer would be different, as if were June because of the weather. But no. In the middle of the holiday, the sun scourged the earth furiously. Philippine summer has indeed formally already arrived, and I'm sweating most of the time. Plus, the attempt to circumvent siesta by drinking a mug of coffee aggravated the heat I am experiencing.

Vigilante: Anatomy of Infinite Worlds

They have been going on like this for several hours now; he in mad pursuit of the other man who leads him circling around the city, into the intricacies of rush-hour long traffic along the boulevard, blaring horns, shimmying motor cars, sweating passengers waiting for the vehicles to move on, and ubiquitous carbon monoxide fumes, in a melange under a sunless, overcast sky; to the dreariness and filth along the road beneath the LRT tracks, to the maze-like streets of the Manila Metropolis. Everything is a damned vicious cycle of frustrated pursuit. Whenever he would run at an accelerated speed good enough to collar the other man, the latter showing slowness in its pace, when opportunity just stares at him in the face, when an outstretched hands could grab the other man by the shoulder, pull him to a stop, or thrust him, aikido style, the other man's momentum flinging himself to stumble, it is just then that there happens an automatic reversal in their speed, inversely proportionate; as his speed plummets the other man gains speed. It is as if everything were scripted, controlled, written and directed by an invisible hand, and the specter probably could be hidding somewhere behind the mass of gray clouds above. A couple of times he has lost sight of the other man, and each time he would dart, a great jump, onto corrugated iron roofs of houses and top decks of high-rise buildings, reconnoitering under the bleary, dim sky, always spotting the other man far ahead, towering a hundred feet over miniature houses and streets. The moment he spots the other man, the moment all the houses and buildings start to swell centrifugally, the center as the other man, hiding him again from his view. But by then, he knows where the other man is, and on again the damned pursuit. Now the other man has led him to a dimly lighted asphalted street, barren of cars and plying jeepneys, empty and sparse with people. Along the sidestreet, between thick columns bordering the pavement, an old, white-haired Chinese businessman stands before what looks like his two sons, pulling down the metal shutters of their cheap recording store. The old man turns around and gives him a death-like stare, mocking and sarcastic. Night and darkness has enveloped the city; the sky's hue pitch black. The other man has slipped to one of the narrow alleys leading to a wet and dry market and he spontaneously follows. Inside, where most of the stalls are closed, he catches a glimpse of the other man veering toward one fo the narrow aisles. With the space gap between him and the other man, the other man could have had managed to get away and escape his sight, totally leaving him, but why was the othe man still there, as if goosing him to follow him, as if the other man, though running away, were making sure he does not lose sight of him, cajolling and directing. With his service .45 caliber pistol cocked now, he sprints along the market aisles carpeted by mud to where the other man has run. He ends up at the back entrance of the market, opening to a cramped, crowded squatter residential area, where loiterers, children, men and women squatted on gutters and huddled in groups. The other man is nowhere in sight. He scans the direction the other could follow but there is no trace where he could have gone. There is a wake in front of him and the brass-colored coffin lies in the middle of the narrow street. A yellow-green canvas perched on top to cover it from a soft evening drizzle. He slowly strides toward the coffin, as if magnetized by it. He peers cautiously at the coffin. His balls tightens, his prostate aches in pain, as he sees himself, or what could be his clone, lying prostrate in it; pale, mouth agape, showing a stiff tongue and has the smell of.... Death....

to be continued....

Note: So here it is the intro for my short fiction Vigilante.

Some Concerns

I'm not really sure if it's definite, but I was told that there is already a buyer for this pc. So, any day starting from now, there is a queasy feeling in my stomach that I will not have a pc for a long while. Posting in this blog will sparse, if not rare. But my main concern is how would I continue writing those stories that I have been doing lately. That must be where the blow of lacking a pc would hit me hard. Anyway, as there hover an invisible counter on this blogger's head tic tac toeing into a metaphorical countdown as to when the pc I'm using will be gone, I hope this is not yet the last post before the long silence.

Going to the stories that I have been writing, I'm stuck writing The Second Flash of Blankness. After having done several revisions for the partial draft and reading it the day after, I said to myself: What the fuck have I written! The prose is obviously neat, in a way, but drat! what's the point of the story and there is hardly any movement by the protagonist, even the plot is so flat any amateur reader would notice the linear style that I have done on it. And in the first place, the look of the story, of how it is written now, is not the vision that I had when I first thought of writing the story. The geography of the story is far from where I would have had wanted it to be.

I wanted the story to be like one-act-play where the actions and the message or the crux of the story will happen in just one sweep, no straying and procrastinating as it unfolds the meat of my thoughts.

But, probably, I just come short of delivering it right.

Regarding an old short story (Vigilante: Anatomy of Infinite Worlds) that I intend to submit to a prospective online publisher, I have done a good light revision on the intro. Though, it is still a long way to go before I can really have a good copy of it since what I have in hand is a 1997 draft, something that made me almost insane because I have another better written draft written in 1992 and I was trying to rummage for it in my old files but to no avail. So, bearing with the fact that this '97 draft is all that is left of that story, I have to retrace that path I did on the other draft.

And all these efforts will be put on hold due to the plans to sell the pc I'm using. Ah, gonna post the intro for Vigilante so the readers will have a good idea of what it is all about.

Notes

I've finally collected myself. Been trying to sleep the whole day but the heat of March had kept me sweating, and I dont know if I was able to sleep while lying on the sofa for couple of hours.

I am stucked with the short fiction I'm working on now, though an encouraging prospect for submission of another story is at hand. I had a short story written a couple of years ago but the electronic copy I had was hacked from my computer. In desperate attempt to find a hard copy, I rummaged into my old files like a man whose life depended on it. And, it almost made me insane to find a draft written way back '97. I thought, I have to retrace the steps I made on that story.

Anyway, sometimes it pays a good dividend in being nosy and sleuthing on the archives of bloggers to find valuable information that can benefit me. :)

Tidbits of Thoughts

As I ponder about the journey I am taking in on developing my story-telling skills, I cannot argue the benefits given by the research on how to deliver, rather I would say, how to write better. There has been for the last several days loads of tips on writing well. And, it is no doubt, brought a lot of insight on the craft.

Yet, as barrage of these writing tips flood into my thoughts, dissecting my writing prowess to an extent, formulating on the way on how to say what I want to say in my writings, my question now is whether are these pointers directing me toward a style that does not echo my true voice?

If I've written something standing on the foundation of these 'better writing' style or delivery, could I have not been true to myself?

I used to, and I am still, measure a good writing from the books that I have read. The focus alone is on the context of pure tone, cadence, and natural voice of the writer. Now, with the advent of these dissection tools, the simple question for example of whether to use long sentences over the more recommended short ones, is being debated, an issue that I find superficial. It is my reason that it is on the discretion of the writer to see what fits his style and if needed in his narrative or story telling to give a better impact on the reader.

Ah, gonna talk about it when everything has settled in my head.

Short Story in Progress III (partial draft revised)

It must be the proximity of their place to the business district, and the sea, a kilometer away to the West with some portions reclaimed, never reached them with its smell of brine, that the young people there would engage in regular reunions; former classmates in school in which one of them, amid the stultifying work in cramped office spaces -- articificial auspicious places that suggest nothing but an outlook for the future -- would think first on contacting his contemporaries and those few who had migrated to other cities for arrangements. If someone would take notes on what usually takes place during these get-togethers, he would notice that they begin with superficial details concerning their advancing careers, and when everybody have slackened off due to the languor brought by consumed calderata and pancit bihon, when what is left are wine and bottles of beer, they exchange tidbits of a shared past too much to their own pleasure.

One of the young people who subscribed to this was Jose Centeno, an abled man with no practical worries to make him look older than his age, and reunions for him were welcome rituals, perhaps to compensate for the slow ripple of his social life. And, perhaps too, for the simple reason of reliving the past.

"Carmelita dropped by this afternoon," said Dominic Crisante, cousin and constant classmate in school.

"What's her concern," Jose replied.

"The usual. And probably in a resort this time."

"We could try La Union."

"Yeah, never been there. Anyway, she has told the others about it already."

"What did they say?"

"It's fine with them. They already set a date when to talk about the details."

This prospect ran in the head of Jose as he combed the tuft of hair in his forehead with callous fingers. He was halfway done recording on the computer the birth and death certificates of the population of Hawaii, circa 40, from a roll of microfilm. The idea had taken much of his thoughts, and already he tasted in his mouth an urge for a smoke . He stood up. For a moment, surveyed the rows of computers around him and listened to the perpetual clatter of keyboards being pounded at an average speed of 45 word per minute. He walked past the working area, out into the corridor and veered for the comfort room. He found that several of his officemates were already there, cigarette smoke hovered in the air like a morning fog, slow moving while being sucked by the exhaust fan. He relieved himself on the urinal, then got a cigarette in his back pocket and lit it. His officemates were entertaining themselves with juvenile imagination of having a hot chick for a wife.

"Wouldn't it be great to have a wife like that?" said one.

"Sure it is," Jose joined in and added, "Just don't leave the country for you'll writhe in bed anxious that she is making out with other men."

"That must be hell," replied by another.

When Jose returned to his seat, he checked whether he had had recorded the certificate seen in his viewer, and verifying that it had been, resumed encoding the next data. For hours, he was deep in repetitious process of typing names, dates and causes of deaths.

Doing this job for a long time, Jose had marveled at the idea that this hynotizing task, bringing the sensation of the brain being massaged, makes one dumb. And already he feared he was starting to be one. Few more years on the job and probably he could degenerate into a moron, he thought.

He was rehearsing this wisdom when a flash struck him, like an apparition that swept by without portents. Actually, the flash was not a blinding light of illumination, rather, a blurred glimpse of a remote past.

It was a casual conversation with former classmates as they stood on the bridge near another classmate's home, a time prior to their discovery of holding formal reunions. He had mentioned to one of them a case of mischief several of them did during one of their school days. But the quick response was: "Sorry, but I don't remember it." The reply baffled him. He could have had retorted by saying: "Of course you remember it", and offered further elaboration to construct a detailed past. But the conversation was a merry one, straying to other topics, that to delve on an uncertain past was uncalled for and unnecessary. Thus the realization that he alone remembered it hung in the air; a benign terror that eventually dived in the depths of the sea and stayed there slumbering for a long time.

"Common." It was his seatmate nudging him. Jose snapped out of his reverie. Everybody around had started to stand up. Almost everybody were rushing toward the counter to pass the unfinished recorded microfilms. He pulled the microfilm in one sweep from the machine, put the film inside the brown envelope and stood up. The next shift, crowding along the corridor and spilling over already at the door, their heads peeking, was about to enter the working area any minute now.

He chose a seat by the window. When the conductor issued him his ticket, he crumpled it into a ball with his fingers, rolling it until the sweat in his fingers rubbed on it. Humid air slapped his face as the bus sped along the highway and his vision barraged by the lush of billboard ads' neon lights.

The issue could be treated as a simple case of lapsed in memory, he thought. But he felt otherwise. He tried to find a resolve to this anomaly, taking the stance of a homespun philosopher to regain his peace, anchoring his deductions on the events in the present times.
Jose focused his thoughts on the case of his officemates. They would remember years later the habit of sneaking out to smoke in the comfort room during this stint in their job. The repeated shirking would etch a strong impression in their memories that it would be certain that, if the situation calls for it -- when an early evening chat with their aging wives begs for a casual sharing of anecdotes or when their children have grown up and on their first job and need stories to teach them about work-place scenarios -- Jose's officemates would be able to remember and tell about it. And, probably, with a hint of pride for their laid-back coolness.

He continued with this line of reasoning, rolling the ticket in his fingers tighter now. What if three of them, instead of sneaking out to smoke in the restroom, decide to proceed downstairs, go out and eat at the open-air eatery beside the building which was not their usual wont. On their way back to work, they encounter a ragged old man begging for loose change. One of them, out of naughtiness and for the purpose of having a good laugh, gives the beggar an antiquated coin that would be without use for the old man. They would go back then to their work guffawing. Decades later, when fate have separated them, either to pursue other jobs or migrate in other cities, two of them chance to cross their paths in the street. As an old acquaintance and to say something special, the first one would suggest about that afternoon with the old man. But the other would deny that he was with him in that situation. He remembers they usually smoked in the restroom, yes. But about the case regarding the old man? No, he does not remember it. The one who opened up the subject would be left dumbfounded, but goes on, desperate, narrating this time the details of the encounter. The other says: "I still don't remember it."

The one with keen recollection, to his dismay, discovers that he alone the keeper of what was once, and holds on on something that is slipping into non-existence.

Jose felt a discomfort in his guts.

The conductor hollered: "Evangelista! Evangelista!"

He alighted the bus, the gravity's pull heavier than usual. He strode for the jeepney terminal, which was two blocks away, and still rolling the ticket in his fingers. At the sight of the terminal, he flicked the ticket onto the pavement. It settled on the slow stream along the gutter. As the ticket drifted down the sewer, he took one last look at it like a prayer of farewell for an intimate transient companion. He heard the barker yelled for the last seat in the jeepney. He ambled faster and hopped in.

to be continued......

Short Story in Progress II (draft-revised)

It must be the proximity of their place to the business district, and the sea, a kilometer away to the West with some portions reclaimed, never reached them with its smell of brine, that the young people there would engage in regular reunions; former classmates in school in which one of them, amid the stultifying work in cramped office spaces -- articificial auspicious places that suggest nothing but an outlook for the future -- would think first on contacting his contemporaries and those few who had migrated to other cities for arrangements. If someone would take notes on what usually takes place during these get-togethers, he would notice that they begin with superficial details concerning their advancing careers. And when everybody have slackened off due to the languor brought by plates of calderata and pancit bihon, and when what is left are wine and bottles of beer, they exchange tidbits of a shared past too much for their pleasure.

One of the young people who subscribed to this was Jose Centeno, an abled man with no practical worries to make him look older than his age, and reunions for him were welcome rituals, perhaps to compensate for the slow ripple of his social life.

"Carmelita dropped by this afternoon," said Dominic Crisante, cousin and constant classmate in school.

"What's her concern," Jose replied.

"The usual. And probably would be in a resort this time."

"We could try La Union."

"Yeah, never been there. Anyway, she has told the others about it."

"What did they say?"

"It's fine with them. They even had set a date when to talk about the details."

This prospect ran like an excited cat in the head of Jose as he combed the tuft of hair in his forehead with callous fingers. He was halfway done recording on the computer the birth and death certificates of the population of Hawaii, circa 40, from a roll of microfilm. The idea had taken much of his thoughts, and already he tasted in his mouth an urge for a smoke . He stood up. He stretched his limbs, and, for a moment, surveyed the rows of computers around him and listened to the perpetual clatter of keyboards being pounded at an average speed of 45 word per minute. He walked out past the working area and headed for the comfort room. He found that several of his officemates were already there, cigarette smoke hovered in the air like a morning fog, slow moving while being sucked by the exhaust fan. He relieved himself on the urinal, then got a cigarette in his back pocket and lit it. His officemates were entertaining themselves with juvenile imagination of having a hot chick for a wife.

"Wouldn't it be great to have a wife like that?" said one.

"Sure it is," Jose joined in. "Just don't leave the country for you'll writhe in your bed anxious that she is making out with other men."

"Ho, ho, ho! That must be like hell," one replied.

When Jose returned to his seat, he checked whether he had had recorded the certificate seen in his viewer, and verifying that it had been, resumed encoding the next data. For hours, he was deep in repetitious process of typing names, dates and causes of deaths. Doing this job for a long time, Jose marveled at the idea that this hynotizing task, which one's brain felt being massaged, makes one dumb. And already he was starting to consider himself as one. Few more years on the job and probably he could degenerate into a moron.

Then a flash struck him as he went on to the next data, like an apparition that sweeps by without portents. Actually, the flash was not a blinding light of illumination, rather a blurred glimpse of a remote past.
It was the time before they discovered the pleasure of holding formal reunions. It was a casual conversation with former classmates as they stood on the bridge near another classmate's home. He had mentioned to one of them a case of mischief several of them did during one of their school days. But the quick response was: "Sorry, but I don't remember it." The reply baffled him. He could have had retorted by saying: "Of course you remember it", and offered further elaboration to construct a detailed past. But the conversation was a merry one, straying to other topics, that to delve on an uncertain past was uncalled for and unnecessary. Thus the realization that he alone remembered it hung in the air; an unseen benign terror that dived in the depths of his soul and stayed there slumbering for a long time.

"Common." It was his seatmate nudging him. Jose snapped out of his reverie. Everybody around had started to stand up. A bustle of workers rushed toward the counter to pass the unfinished recorded microfilms. He pulled the microfilm in one sweep from the machine, put the film inside the brown envelope and stood up. The next shift that was now crowding along the corridor and spilling over already on the door, their heads peeking, and was about to enter the working area any minute now.

He chose a seat by the window. When the conductor issued him his ticket, he crumpled it into a ball with his fingers, rolling it until the sweat in his fingers rubbed on it. Humid air slapped his face as the bus sped along the highway and his vision barraged by the lush of billboard ads' neon lights.

The issue could be treated as a simple case of forgetfulness, he thought. But he felt otherwise. He was bothered, and at this juncture could be concluded as unhappy and had been robbed of his peace. He tried to find a resolve to this anomaly, taking the stance of a homespun philosopher, anchoring his deductions in the events in contemporary times.

Jose focused on the case of his officemates. They would remember years later the habit of sneaking out to smoke in the comfort room during this stint in their job. The repeated shirking would etch a strong impression in their memories that it would be certain that, if the situation calls for it -- when an early evening chat with their aging wives begs for a casual sharing of anecdotes or when their children have grown up and on their first job and need stories to teach them about work-place scenarios -- Jose's officemates would be able to remember and tell about it. And, probably, with a hint of pride for their laid-back coolness.

But what if three of them, instead of sneaking out to smoke in the restroom, decide to proceed downstairs, go out and eat at the open-air eatery beside the building which was not their usual wont. On their way back to work, they encounter a ragged old man begging for loose change. One of them, out of naughtiness and for the purpose of having a good laugh, gives the beggar an antiquated coin that would be without use for the old man. They would go back to their work guffawing.

Decades later, when fate have separated them, either to pursue other jobs or migrate in other cities, two of them chance to cross their paths in the street. As an old acquaintance and to say something special, the first one would suggest about that afternoon with the old man. But the other, surprised, would deny that he was with him in that situation.

He remembers they usually smoked in the restroom, yes. But about the case regarding the old man? No, he does not remember it. The one who opened up the subject would be left dumbfounded, but goes on narrating about their wild imagination of having a chick for a wife.

The former says: "I don't remember it, too."

The one with keen recollection, to his dismay, discovers that he alone the keeper of what was once, and holds on on something that is slipping into non-existence.

"Yes, the keeper," thought Jose.

The conductor hollered: "Evangelista! Evangelista!"

Jose alighted the bus feeling the gravity's pull heavier than usual. He strode for the jeepney terminal, which was two blocks away, and still rolling the ticket in his fingers. At the sight of the terminal, he flicked the ticket onto the pavement. It settled on the slow stream along the gutter. As the ticket drifted down the sewer, he took one last look at it like a prayer of farewell for an intimate transient companion. He heard the barker yelled for the last seat in the jeepney. He ambled faster and hopped in.

to be continued......

To the readers: The above partial draft is a revision of a story in progress this blogger posted previously. Still, feel free to bludgeon this blogger by comments, criticisms or questions on whether the piece above is readable, clear, and resembles an expertise in the art of story telling. The rest of the draft is still being written.

Short Story in Progress I (draft) First Flash of Blankness

It must be because of the proximity of their place to the business district and the sea, kilometer away to the West with some portions reclaimed, never reached them with its smell of brine, that the young people there would engage in regular reunions, former classmates in school in which one of them, amid the humdrum of routinary work in cramped office spaces, would think first on contacting the others and those few who had migrated to other cities for arrangements. If someone would take notes on what usually do they talk about during these get-togethers, he would notice that they delve on superficial details concerning their advancing careers, and, when everybody have slackened off due to the languor of consumed calderata and pancit bihon, when what left in their hands are wine and beers, they mainly savor the pleasure of repeated exchange of tidbits of a shared past.

One of the young people who subscribed to this was Jose Centeno, an abled man with no practical worries to make him look older than his age, and reunions for him were welcome rituals by which he used as an instrument to navigate how far, or how near, he had sailed from his boyhood, and also to compensate for the slow ripple of his social life. This year, the news about an upcoming affair came to him through his cousin, Dominic Crisante, constant classmate in school, who relayed to him that Carmelita Alonzo had dropped by at their compound, and brooched the idea for another get-together. Dominic had told him that she had had visited the others as well and a tentative date had ben set on when they would discuss the details.

This prospect ran like an excited cat in the head of Jose as he combed the tuft of hair in his forehead with callous fingers, halfway done recording on the computer the birth and death certificates of the population of Hawaii, circa 40, from a roll of microfilm. The thought took a toll on him and he felt an urge to refresh himself that he stood up, stretched his numbing limbs, and surveyed for a moment the rows of computers around him, listening to the perpetual clatter of keyboards being pounded relentlessly at an average speed of 45 word per minute, before he walked past the working area, straight for the comfort room. He found that several of his officemates were there already, cigarette smoke hovered in the air like a morning fog slowly dispersing and being sucked by the exhaust fan. He relieved himself on the urinal, then fished for a cigarette in his back pocket and lit it. His officemates were entertaining themselves with wild juvenile imagination of having a hot chick for a wife. "That would be good," Jose joined in, "just don't go abroad for you'll writhe anxiously in your bed that she is making out with other men." "That must be like hell," one replied.

When Jose returned to his seat, he checked whether he had had recorded the certificate seen in his viewer, and verifying that it had been, resumed encoding the next data. Engulfed for hours in the repetitious process of typing names, dates and causes of deaths, hynotizing task in which his brain felt the sensation of being massaged to an extent of getting dumb, when, brought probably by the wisp of air from the air-condition that whirred in the background, a flash struck him. His excitement about his previous preoccupation was replaced with transparent urgent concern. It was a casual conversation with former classmates as they stood on the bridge near another classmate's home, time before they discovered the pleasure of holding formal reunions. He mentioned to one of them a case of mischief they had done, with accomplices, during one of their school days. But the quick response was: "Sorry, but I don't remember it." The reply baffled him, quietly exasperated by unseen benign terror. He could have had retorted by saying: "Of course you remember it", and offered further elaboration to construct a detailed past, but the conversation was a merry one, straying spontaneously into other topics, that to delve on an uncertain past was uncalled for and unnecessary. Thus the realization that he alone remembered it hung in the air, had dived in the subterraneans of his soul and stayed there for a long time in slumber, but resurfaced only now.

"Common." A seatmate. Jose snapped out of his reverie. Everybody around had started to stand up, bustling, rushing toward the counter to pass the unfinished recorded microfilms. He pulled the microfilm in one sweep from the machine, put the film inside the brown envelope and stood up. The next shift, crowding in the corridor and spilling over already on the door, was about to enter the working area any minute now.

He chose a seat by the window. When the conductor issued him his ticket, he unconsciously crumpled it into a ball with his fingers, rolling it until the sweat in his fingers rubbed on it. Humid air slapped his face as the bus speeded along the highway. The lush of billboard ads' lights preoccupied his vision but they did not register in his thoughts, since it stubbbornly dwelled on the issue which to some would be treated by casual attention as a simple case of forgetfulness. But Jose felt otherwise. He was bothered. He tried to find a resolve to this, taking as a reference point the events in contemporary times, raking his soul like a philosopher searching for explanation on everything by sheer logic and reason. Jose took the case of his officemates. They would remember years later the habit of sneaking out to smoke in the comfort room during this stint in their job. Then repeated shirking would etch a strong impression in their memories that it would be certain that, if the situation called for it -- when an early evening chat with their aging wives begged for casual exchange of anecdotes or when their children had grown up and would be on their first job and needed stories to teach them about work-place scenarios -- Jose's officemates would be able to remember and tell about it. But what if three of them, instead of sneaking out to smoke in the restroom, decide to proceed downstairs, go out and eat at the open-air eatery beside the building. Then on their way back to work, encounter a ragged old man begging for loose change. One of them, out of naughtiness and for the purpose of having a good laugh, gives the beggar an antiquated coin that would be without use for the old man and then they go back to their work guffawing. Decades later, when fate have separated them, either to pursue other jobs or migrate in other cities, two of them chance to cross their paths in the street. As an old acquaintance and for the purpose of saying something special to share, the first one would suggest about that afternoon with the old man. But the other, surprised, would deny he was with him in that situation. He remembers they usually smoked in the restroom, yes. But about the case regarding the old man? No, he does not remember it. The one who opened up the subject would be left dumbfounded. He alone the keeper of what was once.

The conductor hollered: "Evangelista! Evangelista!"

Jose alighted the bus feeling the gravity's pull heavier than usual. He strode for the jeepney terminal, which was two blocks away, and still rolling the ticket in his fingers. At the sight of the terminal, he flicked the ticket onto the pavement, settled on the slow stream along the gutter, then, as the ticket drifted into the sewer, he took one last look at it and bid it with a fool's farewell by murmuring: "I'm the only one who remember you." He heard the backer yelled for the last seat in the jeepney, he ambled faster and hopped in in inside.

to be continued......

To the readers: Feel free to bludgeon this blogger by comments, criticisms or questions on whether the piece above is readable, clear, and resembles any tinge of rhythmn in his narration, for the writer himself sees a blurred picture of what the hell he has written so far. Don't ask what the point of the story is, it will be delivered in the second installment, where the Second Flash will happen, as soon as he has collected his wits.

Morning Page

Begin. Quarter to six. Pondering on whether to run as I woke up seeing that it was half an hour past five in the morning and the dreams I had still clear in my head; I was with Yani, cousin and brother during my early philosophising about life which we talked over bottles of Tanduay -- when it was the only liquor we could afford then -- and the blare of rock and roll sounds of Juan Dela Cruz, with our only pulutan Litson Manok, courtesy of another cousin, Vic, who owned a variety store. In the dream, backtracking a decade and finding myself in his modest school and crossing path with him along the corridors, it was said that he is also reading the same books that I read and plan to read; Nietze (sorry forgot the spelling), Pynchon was it? Some Hemingway? But the crux of the story of the dream is that even though I got to infiltrate a good university, and this cousin even was going in a so-so small college, we have the same access to those good books I considered I had the monopoly and fortunate to read. The dreams relays that it is not really where you study but on how you grab the opportunity on gaining knowledge and the patience to be profound that matters. Damn, still dreaming about school and student days when it doesn't matter now. Everything about books, and another chance to have a go on earning a decent grade and passing those examination which when I was a student I did not give a damn, just going to school to hang out with my friends, talk and yak about books which we read in the Humanity section of our library, which later on the university would housed in a huge building where reading got to be more interesting, where Carlos Fuentes, Hemingway, Jorge Borges, Gabo, had been perpetual companions, devouring as fast as possible before I leave the university as many books that I could read, dreaming of the gargantuan task of reading every dusty more-than-a-decade books cramped in those steel bookshelves, trying to get my head drawling English like a white man, though know at the back of my head, as I plodded on, that I would get there sooner or later, a decade probably... Been trying to collect myself to write something about the days that have past, during when there was a lull in posting something for this blog. Short of getting myself tied to a post just to prevent myself from yakking anything or writing for that matter anything that has nothing to do with the work that I was doing right now. Telling myself to get rid the unnecessary and focus on the priority task before succumbing to the pleasure of doing something that is easy and being done for so long knowing it would get me nowhere near the destination I had set for myself... Stop for several minutes yakking and speed-typing since people in the house said whatever I was doing was not really in a hurry or I could do later it and would I just give my time to their domestic plaints. Me, blood rushing to the head, pissed and grumbling and grumpy, checked what was the problem; the washing machine was again, as it rinsed the laundry, moving on its feet. Had to insert cardboard to keep it still. When it was done, got to smoke outside, and getting pissed off once again when the last remaining stick I got was lacerated just near the filter that I could not puff the right dose of nicotine to keep me breathing again and start something in my head running...screeeeech! a grinding halt. Stop.

A Short Action Scene

This happened about a couple of months ago. My buddies and I talked about the details of the story over bottles of Red Horse as it was the latest distraction from an otherwise ordinary days in the subdivision.

Jonas got involved again in trouble. Now for the readers to have an idea who Jonas is, he is a burly tough guy who seems will never get thin from all the speed he peddles around even if he used them all and stayed awake for months. As a backgrounder, he sneaked out of the jail a week before his release and been involved in gun running. He tried once to snatch the shotgun of the young guard we have here in the subdivision, though when he had grabbed it and was about to pull the trigger to blast the poor guard, the latter, by training or pure instinct, held the shotgun just in the right place so Jonas could not squeeze the trigger. That saved our street being splattered with blood.

The trouble happened one afternoon. Jonas was having a drink with some of the men here under the trees beside the basketball court. Another version said that he was not. He just tried to pacify the inebriated arguing parties when his good intention brought him in the middle of the ruckus. There was an argument. Julius ran in his billiard hall to get his samurai, knowing a fight would ensue. Cielo right-hooked Jonas who deftly parried it. Dante aka Tenga followed up with a straight punch that landed straight at Jonas face. Julius, back, ran towards Jonas and whacked him twice with his samurai that only bounced. Jonas, slightly shakened, stepped back, stooping and got his short knife behind him, tucked under his jeans. His Danao-made caliber .38 dropped on the ground in the process. Jonas swung his knife in an upward curve at Dante who, upon seeing the glint of the blade, jumped to turn around and avoid the thrust. Jonas got him in the buttocks. Cielo picked the gun, hopped a couple of meters away and pulled the trigger at Jonas. The sonofabitch Danao-made gun just clicked. Jonas stood still without any intention of scrambling for safety. Cielo pulled the trigger twice. It fired but it did not hit Jonas. Julius, Cielo and Dante aka Tenga, with bleeding butt, scampered away then. Jonas too ran out of the scene.

One of my buddies said as we talked about it: "Me agimat ata yun, 'tol."

"Swete lang yun," another said. "Kabado kasi si Cielo."

Then somebody blurted: "Putang-inang mga tao yan! Araw-araw magkakasama, sila-sila pa magpapatayan."

Not in Shape

Am not in top shape. Probably I have had too many, or too little, strong beer last night. Or probably I succumbed too easily at the sign of a coming headache that I went back to sleep early this morning that waking up, I already have a headache.

There was nothing to write then at the beginning. I just slacked off. But when ideas for essays -- sentences came rushing forth like F1 on the race track of my mind -- I copped out by going back to bed.

Now, my head throbs in pain. Woozy that even a dose of mug of coffee and consecutive cigarettes could not add an ounce of energy in my head to get to work. Worse, the cigarettes intensify the pain in my head.

I plan to get on writing the story which is halfway done for its first draft. But could not. This is the hard part when you have focused too much on practice-writing , like doing journals and essays, that when it is time for the real work, you realize there's still no replacement for actual story writing. So attempting to write one now is like chipping a boulder with a concrete nail.

The halfway-done draft of my story lies beside the paper I'm writing on right now. It is begging for a lot of rewriting and polishing.

But what can I do? I would squint and close my eyes just to write this piece.

Note: After hours of tossing on the sofa tortured by a headache, I took a paracetamol. That did the magic. I guess, I never learned to take the short-cuts when it is necessary. Back into shape.

Evening Page

There is really nothing in my mind right now of what to write about. I've just installed XP on the computer, a barrowed CPU from my sister-in-law, and just glad to be back again, having an Internet connection and the chance to check my mails and visit my blogsite and those of my favorites as well. Well, what could I say but I'm still elated that, finally, I'm using a computer that does not hang after several minutes and that tiring and frustrating booting off and on of the pc is over -- I hope. I should have had written an essay this afternoon but I chose to let myself get bruised instead by continuing to write a story that for sometime had been in my mind and part of it written already, though crudely written, of course, since I just realize now that I should have had paid more attention and effort on constructing stories not on practice writing like keeping a journal. Now, old and a decade has past since I said I wanted to be a writer, I'm still learning the basic of story telling. It's very difficult to get the cadence and flow of a story teller, that's what I discovered lately. I haven't developed that skill and somehow, forgot to. But the session this afternoon took a turn when I started feeling the language and the flow and texture of the text. Though I know when I try to look at it tomorrow, I will find it so badly written that I still have to rewrite it fifty more times. Guess, that's all folks. End of yakking.

The Greatest War Photographer: Robert Capa

Sometimes it pays when you succumb to pass time in front of the idiot box. It has been long since I ceased to be fascinated by what I see on TV. Rare do I find something worthy to watch. And that rate times came when I chanced a channel featuring a documentary that, at the beginning, I barely make out what it was all about from the black and white photos and old films of what could be the 30's Europe being shown. The narrator, to add, shifted too much from one personality to the other. Then one statement struck me, a sign of riveting biography about to unfold.

The narrator, quoting what was in the mind of the subject: "I look at the shoes of people. From the shoes they wear, I discover that you can tell whether they are poor or not. And from then on, I always look at people's shoes."

I knew quickly that I have stumbled on a gem in the quagmire of crap cable TV throws relentlessly on TV audience. The statement tells of a young mind with keen eyes in perceiving the world around him; a precocious sensibility that foretells significant participation in the turmoils that would happen during his lifetime.

The young mind belonged to Robert Capa, who would grow up to be the world's greatest war photographer. By the young age of 32, he had made his name a legend already. His works and exploits envied and admired by his peers and contemporaries.

He never avoided the most hostile atmosphere to take pictures of what could be the test of man's spirit to survive, where life and death hangs in the balance, a test of bravery and spirit paid by life with almost certainty. In fact, he embraced it.

Robert Capa captured in his rolls of precious negative films, about 70,000 shots, his coverage of the Spanish War, the Second World War, the landings of the Allied forces on the shores of Normandy -- where he was the lone photographer included in the first wave of attack --, the liberation of Paris, and several wars.

Part of the package of these successful exploits to record in photos an aggravated and hostile and bloody environment of wars, where his life tittered every second on the thin line of being hit by a bullet just like the soldiers he covered, was fame. Robert Capa was a big shot. He hobnobbed with some of the famous and genius minds of his era: Hemingway, John Steinbeck and Pablo Picasso to name a few.

He also never ran out of lovers. His biggest romance was his involvement with one of the beholder of the prettiest face in world, Academy-winning actress Ingrid Bergman. This man was blessed just to be involve with a goddess such as her.

What fascinated me most in the life of this Hungarian-born photographer was his extreme dedication to his craft. And he proved this, tragically, to his own demise.

For him, another coverage of a war is not merely a call of duty. It is, in his words, "pleasure to do the work."

This person did not rest on his past achievements. Would not want to. He could have had chosen to play safe when he had reached a status already revered by his contemporaries. He could have had enjoyed the safety of taking pictures of everyday people, something that he also loved doing. He could have stayed away from the the perils of covering wars.

But this man stuck his neck out, played again with Death, when he accepted another assignment to cover the Vietnam War. There, he took his last click of his shutter. He died when he stepped on a landmine. Death, finally, caught up with him.

The story of the life of Robert Capa, in time of Love and War, enriches a man's spirit. It teaches passion and ethics of doing one's work with the sheer determination to deliver. Even if it meant to pay it with your life. And Robert Capa paid it with his. But what is more dignified life than doing the thing that you love to the end.

I watched the biography for couple of hours, and, indeed, it was a gem.

The Attack

As far as I can recall these weird attacks go way back in the early 90's. I once had an entry in my lost/hacked journal tackling about it in not more than 400 words. Pondering about it now, as I write this post, it has been, after all, a decade already and the attacks seem like a long-running horror series, with one theme and storyline, and without an end in sight as the fear it gives me lessen to a degree.

The attack has been a sporadic companion in my pre-sleeping hours. From the countless of times that the experience has pulled me to plunge into the abyss, I have already noticed determinants when the attack would surely visit me the moment my head hit the pillow; when tired and tried to stay awake pass the typical hours when I usually hit the sack, and second when I have had slumbered too much during the day.

But then, sometimes, it comes without portents. It suddenly catches you unprepared, an invisible monster has trapped you between its paws, and is about to swallow you whole.

Lying on the bed, drifting into sleep, when one is having a stream-of-consciousness thoughts paving the way into an entry into the subconscious, the attack snaps out my control on my motor skills. This is the time when my body literally falls asleep, but leaving my consciousness intact. It's staying in the void between wakefulness and dreaming.

The silence whirr of the electric fan becomes a thunderous din. Proportional to the amplification of silence, my heart beats faster in panic. A horrible sense of vulnerability engulfs me. Stray evil spirit in the air can swiftly fly into me and I cannot defend myself. Sometimes, I imagined Beelzebub popping out in the darkness of my room, towering before me.

It is during this time that I try to move my limbs to wake up. But without success. Though I learned through time that I need to relax myself before I could do that.

I have told my buddies about this and their united diagnosis to my experience is bangungot or nightmares. They may have a point there considering that I have a penchant to sleep after having a meal. They say I probably no longer pray and have lost my faith. They too may have a point there since I would casually tell people that I don't have a religion. But this does not mean that I don't have a god. I still pray to the One above. It is just that I don't subscribe to what the different churches around me say about what God wants me to think about Him.

But this simple diagnosis cannot explain everything. If that is bangungot, why in the hell I'm still alive today? And bangungot happens when you're in the middle of your dreams. This one happens just when I knock on the door of Dreamland. The only problem is that my body sleeps first before my consciousness.

Could have I entered the "worlds within the world before us" as Carlos Castaneda quoted don Juan Matus, a Yaqui indian sorcerer. And have done that without the influence of peyote?

During those attacks, I could feel strong cosmic winds. It's frightening. But lately, the intensity of the fear is no longer that severe.

Does the decade of sporadic attacks is meant to teach me something? What if I control my fear? Relax and open my eyes to the mysterious vista that would have an apparition before me. Then, later on, try to sit, then stand up, and then probably fly into the space and experience getting tossed by the strong current of cosmic winds. That would be an experience.

But right now, the attacks just became pesky pre-sleep conditon that make me transfer to the living room to get a better sleep.

What's Wrong with the Computer?!

It came without portents. The new nirvana I found in my net experience had turned into agony when my monitor suddenly flickered; the blue screen signaled a VXD error. Though not new to this computer error since I had encountered it several times in the past but not without an easy solution like a simple restart, this innocuous computer glitch metamorphosed into a phantom dragon, in need to be slaught.

It breathed out fire. It saw havoc in my PC's circuitry when a friend, a computer technician and whom I sought help for a reliable cd-rom at that time, treated the error as a sign that my computer needed a new installation of an operation system.

I, confident that my friend's technical expertise was better compared with mine, just sat behind the scene and watched as my harddisk undergo formatting for the setting up of a new OS.

And there began the end of my long romance with my computer. The birth of the ghost dragon in the guise of VXD error. After the formatting, my computer was never the same again. It was as if it turned into a scrap hardware, useless.

Strategies to revive it came with taking from the slots the modem, sound and USB cards; even one of the memory cards was removed to an extent. This was to help the easy setup of the OS with the only basic hardware intact to avoid complex errors as my friend told me.

Yet, the process resulted without success. We attempted repeatedly to install an OS, which typically gives a positive outcome on the first try, byt the pesky VXD errors had hounded us like a sniffing dog. It did not help that great amount of time had been consumed just to do it.

What do we have to do? The exercise had led us to a dead-end. What options do we still have in our arsenal of computer repair know-how? We have run out of ideas already. Our heads throbbed in painful brainstorming to resolve the case. A slew of vexing errors had barraged us:VXD, VMM VFAT and fatal exceptions errors. What is wrong with the computer?!

In the world of computer hardware/software repair, malfunctioning components are thrown away and replaced by new ones. But where would we start?

In the end, I had to solve the problem alone. With the patience of a mule plodding on a muddy field, I did my share of useless attempts for a successful OS setup. Though, it paid a minimum dividend later on.

As of this writing, there is already an OS, Windows 98, installed in my computer. Of course, not without encountering the errors mentioned above.

The dragon that needs to be beheaded, unfortunately, still breathes out fierce burning fire in the circuitry of my computer. The PC would function normally for two to three minutes, then without warning, comes to a screetching halt.

Then comes the realization that my net journey would have to come in an agonizing halt, too.
To the tech savvy readers out there who happens to read this post, can someone tell me what these VXD errors are all about?

For the meantime, I have to force myself from running amuck due to extreme annoyance as I find a way out out of this computer glitch.

Note: This should have been posted last February 25th for an obvious reason. My computer now runs in XP and so far, as I have encoded this, there is no glitch yet that has pestered me anew. But things are still under observation.