Remembering the Now

I’m the only one remaining in the editorial department of our office. Half of the work force of the company has already left for home, yet I still have to linger for a while, waiting to complete my eight-hour stay.

Relative silence has already set in, the air getting colder, and there’s a palpable stillness among the rows of computer monitors around me.

Then, it hits me. Actually, it comes when Rivermaya’s hitsong 214 first notes seeped out of my earphones. I know it already. The stillness and silence of the place add even to this strange feeling of nostalgia for the 'now' – a now that eventually will become the past.

So right now, as I sit before my monitor, I know already that sooner or later, my presence in this place, this job that I have now will end; that this space in the universe will soon be out of the trajectory of my orbit.

To start, five people whom I come to know in this company have already left for various reasons. So this fact only reinforces my anticipation for my inevitable departure in this company.

I’m trying to recall when this feeling of ‘endless wandering in space and time’ started. For sure, when I was in college down to my nursery days, I felt everything would stay forever as it was; that there would be no parting of ways, the place and everything that came with it will stay forever with me.

Was it when I first dropped out of college? Probably.

Right now, everything is ephemeral. Nothing last long.

And while the people who walk and move around me, busy with their work, and even the interior of this office, I would watch and stare at them with distant, dreamy eyes of one reliving a past; everything that is happening right now around me is a past already.

It is as if I’m already in my senile life, staying in some cramped place, and remembering the days of my youth.

And right now, I’m experiencing with all my senses, the memory of the ‘past’.

Sentimental Yakking

Somehow, I know I have to let go. There's no point in entertaining the thoughts of any positive result that would come my way if I would pursue my interest. How did I say it as we walked back to the office: "People come and go," trying not to look at her since it would only pain me seeing her face as she ambled as if she did not care anything about the world she would leave.

I still tried to goof around, fishing a candy out of my pocket and stealthily, as if she would not notice it, I held her hand and gave the candy, smirking. Or did I winked. Or grinned sheepishly at our own little joke about my perennial need for it.

How did she take it? She said she would keep the candy. A souvenir. A token of our tempestuous short professional relationship replete with everyday argument of my pestering whines to raise the bar a little notch higher than what we could do. But when she said she would keep the candy, it came to me as if she said: "I'll wait for you." Or something like "You mean a lot to me. I care also about you."

But thinking about it now, I sure had mesmerized myself with her charming civility. Interpreted something that had no meaning as a reciprocation of my implicit attraction to her.

Didn't I react with great surprise upon hearing her leaving, or rather the news that she had left already. I got my worn-out cell phone and sent her my disappointment and feeling of lost. I asked her arduously where she was then. I got to see her. If not, my heart would stop as if freezed by cryogenic liquid; the too heart brittle to the point that another beat would break it into pieces.

Haven't I said that I rushed down the building, walked/ran the street to find the place where she said she was having a lunch with her best friend. Rushed of blood in my head, panting, I longed to see her for the last time.

Nevertheless, that is over. There is no point delving too much on the details of that overwhelming sad day.

She defined my several later after she left when we chanced our selves on the net; E for Endearingly annoying; R for romanticizing about my magazine; N for Naughty but deep, like a raging ocean. She should have said raging in furious explosion of gaseous elements forming a huge galactic nebula in the universe.

Yeah. I gave some parts of my soul to her. As if she would really know me. Dig me. (Though she said it didn't mean that if she did not care that she could not understand me. But my question was if she understood too, why the clash between our professional relationship.)

Ah, nonsense.

She is gone. For good.

The promise! So what about it? That we would find time to share our soul over bottles of light beers. Nah! It would never happen. T'was the trick created by a peek (or a show off) of an old battered sould to an an excited young one trying to find her place under the sun.

I tried didn't I. But I ended up a pesty bugger under her nose. "Pasensya na po. Don't worry, I will never bother you again. Pasensya na po uli."

Probably, I denied the obvious fact that there had been/was/is never been a natural common ground by which we can call ourselves really close.

To yak about it is really senseless. People come and go, didn't I say?

Right now, there is nothing better for me to do than try to take off, being a young writer.

Ah, what did Jack Kerouac said?

Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed down to me.

Nice said. Indeed, nicely said.

Goodbye Ruby Tuesday

She would never say where she came from
Yesterday don’t matter if it’s gone
While the sun is bright
Or in the darkest night
No one knows
She comes and goes

Goodbye, ruby tuesday
Who could hang a name on you?
When you change with every new day
Still I’m gonna miss you...

Don’t question why she needs to be so free
She’ll tell you it’s the only way to be
She just can’t be chained
To a life where nothing’s gained
And nothing’s lostAt such a cost
There’s no time to lose, I heard her say

Catch your dreams before they slip away
Dying all the timeLose your dreams
And you will lose your mind.
Ain’t life unkind?

Goodbye, ruby tuesday
Who could hang a name on you?
When you change with every new day
Still I’m gonna miss you...

No really sure if this song catches or holds the essence of someone who flitted by before me. Anyway, would I drink a Red Horse or a San Migs Lights after posting this... not sure... but probably not better to but just move on.

Stressed Out but Not Out

Ever since I took over the helm of our new magazine The Sun, stress have set in into me.

The primary concern is how could I apply the vision that I see for the mag, since as planned I would take over on the next issue not in the maiden. I thought of giving the whole line-up of articles a complete overhaul, since when it was conceived, the magazine would tackle the success people in every fields, so for the scratched title Success Today.

The first night was horrible. And even the brainstorming that came the next morning totally made my face haggard at the great responsibility of what I thought I should do to the magazine to make it politically and corporately themed mag.

My co-writers failed to see the great load bringing my shoulder literally down the floor. Worse, I could not tell them what my vision for the magazine was.

In the end, I compromised and let go of some of the obvious flaws I see in the line-up. Let it pass, they implied.

Nevertheless, the stress is not the thing that I avoid. It's is welcome. I had been just used in bumming around. So, I just have to adjust to a more active life, or in short having a job.

What I'm frustrated at and dread about is how will the magazine look, content included, when it hit the magazine racks.

I promise the next issue will be better. And, for sure, have the semblance of the vision that I have in mind.

A Thank You

For those people who shared their thoughts about blogging in the country with me (since I'm writing an article about it) thank you. You know who you are. :-)

Some Passing Thought

Deadlines for my contributions for other magazines in publication comes near, like a clock ticking inevitably to tell you that finish or not finished, you have to pass your work, if ever you have one. This is not counting the writing works that I still have to meet for my own magazine.

It seems day are fast passing by without any writing production from my part. Those pieces I finished, I've marked as 'draft', considering that I wrote them all in haste or just to fulfill the publication's quota of written work.

*****

If I would have my way, I would buy an ice-cold san Migs lights right now, stare at its beauty and cherish gulfing down the universe that it can offer. Can't help it. I know the ground beneath my feet cracked and its maw is slowing pulling me downward in spiral plummet down the abyss of eventual death of somebody cherished for so long and the immediate happeniness of just seeing somebody close to you with something between her ears. Life. Yes, life's intricacies. But every moves she makes is magic, no doubt about it.

The Journey Continues

A while ago, for sure brought by a bottle of a san mig lights, I was planning to yak about the concerns of the heart (specifically mine)... but it seems it does not matter now. The effect of the beer has waned and I can right now think of my true concern, the concern that define and the reason why in the first place I'm here in a small publishing trying to hone my language.

Though, I can say that I write everyday, I say that those written productions are really not the product of the soul by rather the product brought about by the necessity to perform to continue call myself as one who is employed.

So far, my language, inch by inch, is evolving (I think). Compliments come from my peers about my prose, though, of course, as they say, there are still some slight adjustments that I have to do, especially on my choice of words. On this matter, I recall what Dean Alfar commented on my rejected entry for his speculative fiction anthology that I had a bad choice in picking words or to that effect.

Well, what can you do. The journey still continues. Everyday, I hope, and see to it, that one way or another, I'm learning something new.

As I mentioned to one of my officemate here, I'm not really working for the money. What I can't say to him is I'm doing an apprentice job of learning the basics of the language.

Concerning about money, that will come sooner. Or probably not. But the beauty of it all is knowing why you are here in the world in the first place. Knowing the vocation that God or fate has bestowed on you.

And so the journey continues.......

Still a Tropical Paradise

A pensioner with wisdom of a homespun philosopher and with whom i share small talks about community going ons never forgets to pepper his speech with litany on distrust and loathing at the bureacracy of the government. The private corporate world, even, does not escape his scathing criticism over its unreliability in terms of reciprocating its employees loyalty. He would say: "They are just going to use and exploit you." I can't help but remain mum as he goes on with his spiel of street-wisdom commentary/monologue. Though, I sometimes think this is brought about by the previous night's lousy shag.

Yet, if this country is would turn into one big television show and the main actors are the whole population of the archipelago, the show can aptly given the title The Withering Banana Republic. Every actor's scripted lines will express nothing but how pitiful and miserable it is to live in this country. It basically no redemption on its continuous spiral plummet down the abyss of national destitiution.

Indeed, wherever one goes, at a small street caucus of grumpy old men, inside the transport vehicle one rides to go to work and back home, along the street where on the newstand scream the stark headlines on the country's abject political state, and even in your own home where the radio blares the voices of news commentators, the general outlook of the Filipinos leans toward a pessimistic attitude and hopelessness about the country.

I never cease to hear from the mouths of old people their feeling of nostalgia for the "good old days." They would harp like out of tuned violin that 'those days were better compared to now.'

They complain about the bad social and health services of the government; the rampant and increasing rate of crime; the unbridled corruption done by politicians; the blatant abuse of power by the police authorities; and with a stark, fearful belief that the government exists only to rip them off.

I have no recourse than keep my silence and bear listening to their complains since I have nothing to offer as a salvation to their deluded life-enforced perception about the country, and even about the world.

They are, in a way, the products of the messy mismanagemet done by the leaders of the past generations.

But the worse, for me, that you can hear from them is: "Buti pa sa America mas maganda buhay." Then begins another litany of how good American life is.

If only these people have seen the documentaries done by the filmaker Michael Moore about the true state of the streets in the States, probably they would reconsider their paens to the global empire that has a role in their hard, miserable lot.

There is one modern social wisdom appropriate on this case; every citizen of a country almost always complains about his own country. True, indeed.

For I rarely hear any good thing about a certain country unless the ones who are speaking are the diplomats and ambassadors or their advertising work force under the payroll of their department of tourisms.

Methinks, if you cannot bear the shortcomings of this country, and you really feel the urge and passionate about what you see as wrong, and you want a change, get your butt off the couch and do something about it. Go on a hunger strike along the middle of Ayala Ave. if need be to drive your viewpoint. (But that is already an exaggeration.)

Warts and all, this country is still, and is, a beatiful tropical country. Just consider the prevalent weather throughout they year.

Hey, every day is almost summer here. You can just go around in comfortable t-shirt and jeans. If that is ot a paradise of a country, I don't know what is.

Nothing to Write, Just the Urge to Read

Right now, there is no subject that stir my fancy to write about. I am not even in the mood to write. Yet, I feel the need to read anything that I can lay my hands on. It's like I've exhausted all the energy to write and discuss a subject, and the time calls for me to take a sit, relax, and just read a book. Learn again the texture of the printed words ... and probably after then, I can write something worthy on telling.

Need for a Good Rest

Slowly, the view of the darkening city, neons and car lights turned on already, outside the window and the view inside of the office is slowly merging into a twilight palimpsest of images. There is nothing that I want to do right now but to go home and finally have my deserved rest for working vigorously during the previous week. (Didn't I say that in my previous post?)

All I need right now is rest and a long time of sleep to get myself recharged.

Ahh, I want to post something longer but I think this is what happen when you have the resources to post on your blog for free.

Simple Blabber

It has been one hectic of a week working on my new job as a feature writer somewhere in Ortigas area.

I never thought, or rather expected, that after languishing in our subdivision's streets loitering without end, playing billiards and cards, getting drunk and just plainly bumming around for more than a year, a job has finally occupied my time at last.

Nevertheless, this new writing job seems something fate has designed for me. I knew then, even when I was still desperate to land on a good job, that there is something good that awaits for me. The only question that preoccupied my time then was when would it come. But fate really works in mysterious way. Here am I now, one of the numbers in the statistics of those employed.

Going back on the fast-paced, hectic week that was, I mostly spent my time infront of the computer, researching and writing for hours. Since the company which I work in now is not a legitimate publishing house in nature, our (us writers) work and worth as writers is gauged by the output that we produce at the end of the day. So our managing editor, on his suggestion to appease our demanding business-oriented boss, is to type-away/speed-write any article that has the possibility of being included as articles for future issues of our line-up of magazines.

Well, I don't have any problem with that. I can yak and pound on the keyboard without end (though the quality of the text is expected to be replete with grammar and syntax errors.)

The only time when I felt down was when the article I wrote with all seriousness and with the critical eye of a pretending veteran writer returned to me with lots of corrections -- murdered to use another term. It seems, I still have not learned my lessons in writing well.

But that can be dismissed easily with an alibi that I'm still warming up, still finding my groove in writing.

The only thing that I can brag about my attitude on this new writing job is my willingness -- longevity can aptly be used -- in working for twelve hours straight. For several working days now, I would stay till the office is about to close, using all my time to write a rush article and going home just to sleep. Then when I wake up the following day, I would just take a bath, take a sip of coffee and probably even a couple of cigarettes and off I go again to work.

It is, indeed, hectic working days with this kind of working style. But I cannot find myself getting tried or grumpy during the past days that I have been doing this. I can even say that everything I do in the office is a respite from the lack of nothing to do I suffered during the previous year.

Probably, I'm just compensating for the time I lost and wasted then. Can be.

Well, I just want to say that I feel good that I am being paid to write, and can call myself employed.

Some Changes

It is funny how, like in a flick of your fingers, your circumstances just altered.

For two days now, I've been working -- yup, working, as in employed and being paid -- for a writing position. (Though, pessimist as I am when it comes on having a job, I've programmed my mind on anticipating any moment of notice for my termination -- I guess, that's what past experiences do on your psyche, especially if those experiences are similar to mine.)

What made this new circumstances finally sink in in my consciousness is when I visited a blogsite where I frequently drop by to update myself on local the literary scene. I was looking for list of books which I could write prodding me to check the previous months' postings.

Then, like a cold wind that breezes on your skin to trigger the recollection of the recent past, I chanced to read a blog post that told me nothing, nothing, nothing but the total change of my circumstances; that, hey, you're writing, yet somebody is paying you to do it.

Definitely Not a Writer's Block

I want to write something. Anything. There's an itch tingling on my spine and body urging me to get a pen and papers and start writing. After spending sleeping the whole day the previous day, I just want to write and vent my frustration over performing badly on an exam for a writing job (why the fuck haven't I seen sooner that the sentence How quick Mary runs should be How quick does Mary run? and the other sentence He and she were good friends should be They are good friends. Why the hell that I always turn into a clueless lousy writer when faced with the opportunity to get a writing job or, if am already have the job, I would always regress into that old me who writes haphazardly, in haste thus producing badly written articles whose grammar mistakes are so atrocious my editors would always love to hate and kick me out the job and out of their professional lives?) I just want to write to prove and tell myself that I know how to do it, and do it very well.

The force driving me almost mad is so intense that I rush to my chaotic room, where books, piles of papers in which unfinished stories, stories needed for revisions, draft essays, scratch copies of my blog postings lay splayed on everywhere. I rummage for the pen and papers. I got a couple of used papers but there is still free white space to write on on the back so I take it. I pay no attention on the computer at the corner which is basically dead and useless for several months now. It's harddisk bogged down and I have no extra cash to purchase a new one.

And then I promptly sit before the table, raring to write, something. But, wait. I fidget for several seconds and strare at the white space of the paper, holding the pen in the stance of writing: I HAVE NOTHING IN MY MIND TO WRITE ABOUT.

My mind runs fast and I cannot get hold of something, any idea for a subject to write about. There is nothing in my head. Nada. There is only the urge to write. The terrible, frustrating feeling to write. I can hear myself saying: You can write. But there is nothing; there is only a meaningless transparent air around me, and that desperate urge to write.

I have been in this situation before. The realization is like a deja vu, and I know very well that I could sit and think and force myself to write something for hours on end on the blank papers staring mockingly at me and, still, nothing will come out of it. Nada. I would still produce nothing.

I don't know what I should call this experience, but it definitely is not a writer's block. For how can I call it as such, when I am NOT even a writer in the first place.

The Little Mystic Indian Inside My Red Horse

I had already down a bottle of Red Horse and flushed without doubt, taking deep, lungful of cigarette smoke.

I could not sleep then; the socket of my eyes were tired begging for that final snap of my consciousness, the letting go to arrive at the dreamland, and my head also throbbed in intense stream of pain and jadedness. So I decided to haul myself up from my bed, go straight passed the living room into our small store and get a couple of Red Horse. If I could get myself drunk, then probably I could sleep. Cut the waiting period for my consciousness to snap so I can finally sleep. When my head hit the pillow, I expected that I would quickly black-out.

I was on my second bottle, smoking without letup as I sat before the cases of SMB and Red Horse stacked in our kitchen, when I saw a little mystic Indian smoke signalling inside my bottle of Red Horse. The smokes of bubbles rose upward in the liquid space of the strong beer, and there at the top, the smoke formed into white benevolent clouds of galactic universe of suds.

I smiled, drew my face near the bottle and trained my eyes at the world of the little mystic Indian inside the bottle of my Red Horse. I smirked and drank the liquid universe with dreamy eyes.

After a while, I knew already that I was tipsy. I was wading amidst the jungle of this world's dreamscape, steadily pushing my legs ahead, groggily tearing the heavy growth of grass and accumulation of dried leaves. I was about to stumble and fall to the ground yet I kept on with the direction in my head, from where I could feel the invisible vibration and stream of radiating flow of oneness came from -- the One. And I was heading towards His direction, to finally, at long last, rest my tired soul in his presence.

What Time is It?

In quantum mechanics, time and space is one and the same. So, if somebody asked for the time of the day, it is acceptable to reply: "It's 32 km already, baby."

Farewell

The talk was under way. I sidled toward the last pew of the chapel and there took my seat. From my vantage point, I looked over the shoulders and head of the audience on the speaker seated at the center, behind her the marble altar and the huge wooden cross lingered as if letting her take the priveledge of using the venue for secular purpose founded on basic moral religious grounds the Church in the first place believes in.

I had to lean forward, resting my chin on my palm, attracted by the clear, rhythmic voice of the speaker resounding inside the chapel -- I could not recall whether she was using a microphone or not but the voice came clear and lean.

The subject of the talk dealt with then on-going peace process between the Ramos regime and the moro Islamic secessionist groups; an urgent, important subject to tackle upon, without doubt. Yet, my person could not deny the presence of a much more important factor of the talk: the speaker herself.

Her wiry hair, dropping eyelids which says as if she had a sleeplessness night reading tomes, would shine in a matter-on-fact mien as she untangled the intricate knots of the subjects into simple thread of ordinary man's terminologies; her benevolent professorial voice would pause to give way for full absorption of her statements. But her delivery was not the sum importance I could tangibly felt then. Rather, her delivery showed the tip of the iceberg of her real nature, the essence of her importance.

Her fragile, sage-like physiogonomy cland in flower-designed loose blouse -- her presence alone, so to speak -- could fill the whole chapel with strong positive energy of Intergrity. It was so strong that the audience could feel the invisible stream of grace and bliss running and seeping into the pores of their skin deep into the marrow of their tingling souls.

As I raptly listened to her, I had no doubt that I crossed path with one of the extraordinary persons this country had ever produced. Being with her at a same place, breathing the same universe as hers for a short time, listening and seeing her talked, it was the secular version of blissful experience of having a glimpse of the Pope.

That was more than a decade ago. Now the speaker left this earth to where she could be close to God. On her journey to this place, I bid her Godspeed.

You had walked upon this world Ms Haydee Yorac radiating with the power of inherent Integrity, and many have learned and been inspired by your example. Thank you. And farewell.

Invitation for Story Tellers

Since I already mentioned the project anothology book of another blogger, Vin Simbulan, I might as well give the details of the project here for the benefit of stray bloggers stumbling on my virtual space in the net.

Open Call for Submissions - A Time for Dragons: An Anthology of Philippine Draconic Fiction

Specifics:
1. Word Count. For fiction, anywhere from 2500 to 6000 words. For poetry, short or long form is acceptable. Englsh language only.

2. Language & Setting. English language. Can be set in original imaginary worlds or the "real" world, not necessarily the Philippines (as Dragons are "universal"). Absolutely no fan fic.

3. Number of Entries. Each author may submit up to two (2) submissions.

4. Format. Only via email. Attach as a Word Document - just make sure your submission is virus-free. Please email all submissions to: viniquest(at)yahoo(dot)com

5. Cover Letter. Kindly include a cover letter that includes the title of your submission, the word count, your full name, contact details including contact numbers, as well as a list of your previously published work, if any. New unpublished authors are more than welcome to submit.

6. Compensation. Each author whose work becomes part of the anthology will receive two (2) author's copies of the final publication. Similar to Dean's anthology, the Dragon antho is completely self-funded - except that selected authors may also avail of special discounts at Comic Quest and Petty Pets (right, Dean?) ;)

7. Deadline & Publication Schedule. All submissions must be received before midnight of January 4, 2006. Authors of selected pieces will be informed thereafter. The book will be released by the first quarter of 2006.

So there you go.

On 'Complimenting' Our Own

You have surely encountered on local print and broadcast media the penchant for branding our talents with such titles like 'Hemingway of the Philippines', 'William Safire of the Philippines', 'Frank Sinatra of the Philippines' etc.

Methinks, this is a blatant self-deprecating act of putting ourselves inferior and relegating ourselves as mere copycats of those of the West. Worse is, those people in the media who should know better are the ones guilty of propagating this style of 'complimenting' our own talents.

One must understand that, for example, a painter from Italy or Spain or from any other Western country is no different from the painter from our local shores. The Westerners may be popular and famous but you must consider that this fact is brought about mostly by the supplementary benefits of their economic power. Same thing applies to other disciplines.

One instance when this issue is put on its rightful place and perspective, though through a corollary matter, was when in an Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APE C) conference, question regarding the Asian consumer purchasing power was deemed be gauged by the price of a McDonalds burger. Then Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad stood up and said that the question is better answered not by the price of a McDonalds, BUT rather by a Jolibbe burger.

I've Read It Already

I've read it already.

Who cannot tell the circumstances, motivations and aspirations behind the full text that smacks of a familiarity and path over-trudged upon by aspiring writers with nascent writing talent. I can even smell concretely the pervading atmosphere that brought the text into its final form and substance.

It cannot escape my proving eyes used to these kind of babblings. I did brushed elbows and mingled with my contemporaries during my college campus days who had the same artistic pursuits and goals (me included). I know exactly the crux of the matter regarding these attempts to 'feel.'

So what precisely is the thing that I'm discussing here?

I'm making my point on the usual practice of novice writers on their attempt to delude themselves that they are cut to be writers on the basis of their pretensions of suffering from some turmoil of social or self alienation or spiritual distress. (Of course they wont admit to it, and they may even be probably not aware of what they are really doing.)

They desperately, upon realizing that they want to be writers or poets, try to rummage amidst the chaos of their memories for something painful experiencesor circumstances that they can claim themselves to be in duress. Worse, others create an imagined crisis of their spirits besieging their existence day in and day out. And when you read the text of the latter case: it reeks of phoniness and pretensions as can be seen on his obvious attempt to be literary and writerly in his delivery of his 'pain.'

Usually these are the young aspiring writers and poets you would bump into in college and university campuses; mostly those who are staff writers for their college papers and those hangers-on who surround them.

They assume this gibberish on spiritual alienation and destitution or on whatever suffering it might be, as a shortcut on opening their pores and sensibilities to human sufferings and conditions. Another reason is to give justification for them to continue to write; since they are in pain and suffering then they have something important to share to humanity.

Sadly, they even assume that the more and deeper their pains are, the greater the possibility of writing a better piece -- as if their present endeavor, if done in a state of misery can keep par as far as quality vis-a-vis for example Slyvia Plath's Bell Jar.

Don't get the impression that I deny the ability of young writers to experience and understand true human conditions. I would say these kind of writers are usually the ones who don't subcribe to the tactics mentioned above. I met several of writers of this kind, and all I can say is when you read their prose or poems is was as if they were old souls in young men's body.

I say, aspiring writers should not mind if they don't suffer from any obvious pain. Or if they don't feel such kind of pain stated above means they are not cut for a writer. Everybody can be a writer. It only takes a decision to be so. Going back to the subject of pain: Pain will come along on every writer's path. That's for sure.

Note: The experience that pushed me to write the above piece comes from reading a blog posted by a young, intelligent college student who tries to force or pretend that he suffers from spiritual alienation and he fears for the future, yet it is obvious from her credentials and achievements that he is highly a functional young adult. Well, the blog's text betrays him of his intention... Though I may add, that young student writes better than me. Hehehe

Dragon Tales

There is another anothology being cooked, now by another blogger Vin Simbulan and it is titled A Time for Dragons: An Anthology of Philippine Draconic Fiction.

The story I did sent to Dean Alfar got the rejection slip, but this does not daunt me on participating in any upcoming anthology. So, I'm bracing myself now for putting an entry, no, probably two entries (as it is the allowed submission per contributor) on Vin's planned anthology.

There's already a good story brewing in my mind right now about dragons, and I hope, come January 4 next year my entries will be ready for submission.

Yeah, another writing assignment adding up on my to-do writing list.

Bilog ang Mundo

Nobody had seen it coming. That is if you asked the neigborhood of Cityhomes over the destiny that had embraced Ignacio Guevarra. Who can, in the first place, notice such talent about to take by storm the local literary scene and the international as well, when a man's worth is gauged by his material success seen through the eyes of drivers, welders, office employees, accountants, secretaries, housewives, and, well, bums. They did not even know such professions such as writers exist. For them, it seemed, taking a supervisory position in a small company is proof already of outstanding and uncanny talent.

Well, who could have thought Ignacio Guevarra was groomed for something greater than they ever had thought. They never paid attention to him as he burned the streets, day in and day out, in his tribike delivering softdrinks and beers to the stores in the subdivision. For them, Ignacio was merely another man breaking his back and stubborn against the elements to put food in his grumbling stomach.

They were times when they heard Ignacio talked about who he really was, or what the future that awaited him. A new customer asked him once if he had skipped going to work as he put the cases of softdrinks at the back of the store. His reply was: "I'm a writer. I don't work."

"Oh, what do you drive then?"

"No, sir," Ignacio said. "I'm a writer that's why I just stay at home."

Yet, nobody really took his pronouncements seriously. Ignacio, afterall, had been a delivery boy for several years now, and this kind of pronouncement coming from a person such as he, could only be attributed to delusion of grandeur.

Probably, if someone who had known his for the first time his claims would be given thought and consideration. But it was inevitable that after weeks he would be seen sweating under the noonday sun paddling desperately to carry the load of his tribike. Then they would eventually gauge him as another nobody dreaming for an unreachable social importance.

So during those times when they found themselves sitting beside Ignacio in some neigjhborhood yard boozing, they would let him put himself a little higher from his social status as a delivery boy, listening halfheartedly to his style of wisdom.

At first, they usually would mock his statements by sarcastic rejoinders to put him to his right place: "Then how can you explain your life?" they would ask and convulsed in a fit of laughters. But Ignacio was quick to parry these blows by enigmatic counter-rejoinders such as: "I dont have to explain myself because nobody can understand somebody who understands everybody."

So they let him be with his sense of grandeur. Anyway, they thought, he's harmless. What can little grandstanding done by a dregs of society do to them. Nothing. The fact is he is still a delivery boy no matter how hard he tries to claim as somebody, their collective judgment concluded.

Then one day, a couple of sleek cars began to pull over by the front of Ignacio's house. Neighbors would see well-dressed and groomed individuals came and went out of his house, and one neighbor even spotted a television personality he could not put anywhere in his map of showbiz people. Probably, somebody important, the neighbor thought.

These were the times when Ignacio's presence in the streets paddling his tribike diminished until nobody could no longer see him delivering softdrinks and beers. They thought Ignacio went bankrupt.

It took sometime before somebody could give explaination as to what Ignacio was up to those days. A neighbor reading a national broadsheet chanced him on its pages. There on the glorious pages of a national broadsheet, Ignacio had written a column, with a picture of his darkened face brought by too much sun, smiling pedantically beside his byline.

It was then when everybody in the neighborhood started treating him differently, and with seriousness now. They were all, in fact, would do anything even if it meant forsaking their lives just for their names to land on the pages of a newspaper. And, Ignacio had done it without doing something as imaginable as that.

Then Ignacio moved out of their neighborhood. The last thing that they heard about him was he had published six books, three of them novels which some of their children in college read for book reviews, and had been jet-setting around the world as a respective writer lecturing on modern human conditions and literature.

Well, nobody among them had seen it coming until it happened.

Now, when they drink during weekends and talk about the past years, they never forget to mention in their conversation about the delivery boy who used to claim himself as a writer. Twist of fate, they would say. One of them aptly put it: "Kunsabay, bilog ang mundo."

Toothache

I have this toothache for several days now and by the look of it, it seems there's already an infection. The right side of my jaw is swollen, though not that much, and my gums feel itchy. Gingivitis? I don't know.

During the onset of the pain in my molar on the first night, I had taken 1,500 ml of Ponstan yet without any relief. I must attribute the failure of the painkiller on the Red Horse that I had prior to the attack; drinking an ice-cold beer when you've already a controlled toothache will set off the pain again with an intensity no painkiller could neutralize.

Well, tootaches are one of the pains of living. Anyway, this kind of pain rarely falls on me so I just have to bear it.

But when swollen is gone I go directly to the barangay health clinic and get the pesky molar pulled out. The only problem while I wait for it is the throbbing pain that runs up to my temple.

Ah, this pesky toothache

On Guerrilla Writing

I’ve come across the term ‘guerrilla writing’ on the blog of Dean Alfar. He coined the term to describe the strategy he employs on writing amidst the non-stop calls of responsibilities as a father, businessman, comics artist/writer and other permutations of his person as a working man.

Later on, I encountered again the term in the Charles Tan’s blog, and obviously he adapted the term of Dean (well, bloggers in this country, especially those who write are each his own readers, so the terminologies they use becomes homogeneous.)

When I read the term, what popped up in my mind was Rage Against the Machine’s Guerrilla Radio mixed with the name and image of Che Guevarra in his green beret hat. It was as if someone hollered: “Hey, we are on a war here!”

We are, indeed.

Writers in this country have to fight their own wars to survive writing without suffering an early demise because of hunger. The shower of mortars and zipping of 50 caliber bullets relentlessly released by the enemy (practical reality) don’t give creative writers a minute of peace and rest to go on with their real work. The mortars and bullets are in the guise of jobs to earn money and put food on the dining table so the stomach can churn something other than air.

Ah, guerrilla writing. It seems it is the only viable way to sneak time to write and, for several minutes, breathe as a real human being expressing his state of soul and mock the stark countenance of practical reality.

It's inevitable. One way or another, the cudgel had to hit me straight in the face and knock me down from the pedestal which I stood on, put me where I rightfully belong, and deflate my over-inflated self-importance; the impact stirring the decade-old pretension of being a writer.

It has to happen, no doubt about it. Unfortunately, its realization had been delayed until recently when what was at stake was my financial well-being.

The issue: aptitude on my English grammar.

As a backgrounder, this problem first crept in as a serious disability on my last writing stint in a small publication house. My editors there burned me with their surreptitious gazes, loaded with enmity and loathing, as I speed-wrote every assignment they gave me, witless on the gruesome grammatical errors with which I murdered my articles. Before I finished my two-month training period, they kicked me out to their relief.

Still stubborn on claiming and acknowledging my deficiency, more than a year went with the winds and here I am again getting a crack on another writing job.

As a requirement prior to hiring, this organization is asking for a sample 250-word article. Brazen and my old self getting the better of me, I write the article as if a hyaena were chasing me. Written in haste, and even ignoring to do a proofread of the text, I send the article with blind confidence of having done a good job.

When the verdict comes, it spells a resounding and embrassing implicit question: You consider yourself a writer with this kind of article?

I am devastated. The pain of rejection spills on an argument with the writer-friend, who referred me to the company, through text.

Grammatical errors are unavoidable even to the best of writers. A couple or three errors, yes, but on the whole article near of beingpainted in red ink? I know I have mistakes, but I'm open for somebody to tell me what are those. You don't need anybody. Correct grammar is basic in every writer.... and by the way, FYI, your messages are full of grammatical errors.

The cudgel landed right on my face.

It's obvious, my responsibilities as a writer was not taken seriously, if not altogether taken for granted. I failed to do my assignments, and laziness has breed a lousy writer like me.

And now, I know where I rightly belong; my self-importance shrunk to its true size.

The Rejection Letter Finally Comes

August 18, 2005
Dear Ern,

Thank you for your submission. I'm sorry to say that I am passing on the story. While "...Mariano Torres" had much merit, it is not the type of story I'm looking for. The story could also use some polishing up for grammar and choice of words, and the latter bits could use revision.

I hope this doesn't discourage you. As writers, we all have to keep on trying and writing. I honestly think that you have great potential. I'd be doing you a terrible disservice if I told you otherwise. I look forward to reading more from your imagination in the future.

Thanks and regards,
Dean Francis Alfar
EditorPhilippine Speculative Fiction

Regarding My Short Story aka Speculative Fic Kuno

I mentioned during one of my post here, when I was starting a new story and was immersed on it, that I knew how to write the story the moment I started writing it. The intention and vision for the end product was clear as a pristine brook.

Yet, after a couple or months or so, and after attempting to beat the deadline for the anthology of speculative fictions Dean Alfar plans to publish, I am not sure anymore whether the first vision I had on the story could be seen on the last metamorphosis of its text. I even forgot altogether what the first vision was. I just hacked on the story during the last remaining days prior to the deadline; my head swirling in giddiness, with blurred vision and pumped up adrenalin.

Honestly speaking, I don't know whether I wrote the story enough for it to be merited as a well-written one. I even doubt, yet hope, that Dean Alfar would accept it in his anthology. The opening paragraph alone is below par compared with my standard, yet I could not do anything about it as I had limited prowess of putting it the right way.

Nevertheless, the story is already in the hands of Dean Alfar. He's the one who will tell me if I did a good job or not. I hope I did.

Amid the Cloud of Crisis

The issue besieging the leadership in this country no longer needs a backgrounder. Rather, it needs clarity and proper perspective amid the smoke of propaganda and befuddlement of the issue being belched by some politicians and sectors of the society.

There is no doubt that President Macapagal-Arroyo no longer enjoys the moral ascendancy to lead this country. Assuming that she won the presidency last 2004, her mere actuation of trying to rig the election as revealed by the ‘Gloria-gate’ tapes is enough reason for her to resign. Her resignation is the only ethical way of giving back the lost trust this country has on the highest office of the land.

A lot has been said about forming a new leadership after her. A lot has proposed ways on how the government should be by the time she steps down. These are all garbage talk.

The Constitution has an installed crisis resolution program for an event such as this. The Constitution, obviously, gives the mandate to the Vice President to succeed if the President resigns. It is very clear.

Yet, we hear the Opposition, muddling the crisis even more by acting like a pack of wolves by trying to dictate who among on their likings should come next into power. They are nothing but power-hungry low-lifes that deserves the stake so as they could be burn.

The Opposition might have done the good deed of exposing the ‘Gloria-gate’ tapes, but choosing or dictating who should lead next, as if the revelation mandated them to be in power, is an absolute delusion on their part, a delusion that the likes of Rep. Escudero has been indulging himself throughout this crisis.

When asked whether Vice President Noli De Castro can succeed in the event of the President’s resignation, this holier-than-thou pretender brazenly replied: ‘Hindi pa sa amin nagpapakilala si Noli de Castro… We still don’t know his kind of government…etc.” What strong stomach he got there, eh. Rep. Escudero manifesting his presumptuousness to reveal the tail of power-lust demon he and his colleagues has within them.

Of course, this argument rest on the assumption that the President will resign. Something that she strongly denies she would ever do (as of press time). She thinks she can survive this storm with imperturbable indifference to the clamor of the people. Yet, can’t she see that her office has been buried without salvation by the catastrophic avalanche brought by the thunder of her own ‘lapse of judgment’?

This writer hopes that self-sacrifice wins in the heart of the President soon, and gives her the courage to let go. I hope it happens before this crisis is forced to end in an ugly resolution with the absolute certainty that it would be on the expense of the Filipinos in general.

Note: This should have been posted in the midst of the crisis besieging the Arroyo regime. Though it might sound passe since the Arroyo has survived the onslaught of calls for her resignation over the Gloria-gate tapes, this writer thinks it is still revelant on the issue of her damaged moral ascendancy over the Filipino people.

The Adventure of the Man They Called Mariano Torres

It took a light tap on his shoulder accompanied by a haste greeting the discovery of how he was called: Mariano Torres. The name had an awkward impact on him. It reverberated in his ears with the difficulty of associating it with his person, like a placard with too weak adhesive it dangled from his being like a fake belligerent attribution.

His confusion began after less than an hour of marvelous experience of observing the changing of the sky’s hue during the last faltering glow of the sun as it crashed with thundering silence at the horizon. He stared at it with astonished eyes of an adolescent boy terrorized by ecstasy of the anatomy of the opposite sex slowly being stripped of garments before him. He would crane his neck in half-circle, from one end toward the opposite, to contain in one sweep the whole vista of heaven in outburst of colors, only to let out a deep sigh of resignation in the end due to his inability to put logic into it. And, probably, due also on his failure to contain it maddening beauty.

It was only when dusk had set in and the slithering tentacles of darkness crawled with inevitable certainty when he snapped back to his senses, as if waking from a wet dream. He realized he had been squatting on a breakwater, his feet dangling over the rhythmic onslaught of waves against the boulders beneath him. He looked with squinting confused eyes at the boulevard that ran behind him. His head throbbed in pain, like that of a drunkard’s hangover, not knowing what he was doing here or of what circumstances precipitated his being here, void of notion of the preceding night’s eventuality after drowning in the deluge of alcohol.

He must have sleepwalked, he thought. And behind his trail left the debris of memory of his personal history. Though this thought passed like a wisp of wind that had no shadow thus he was more concern on the possibility of having sleepwalked. So his reaction took the form an idiot looking again at his feet to check whether he had his shoes on. He had, as he found out; a black leather pair polished and glinting above the splash of waves. But the realization only aggravated the issue.

He must be dreaming then, so the reason for the indefiniteness of everything within and around him. He paused to think, as if to catch his breath, then stared at his hand that loomed before him, concrete and palpable. It did not change into a misshapen cactus or into an iguana or into wriggling worms. The hand remained the same; the knuckles were covered by dark coarse skin and the nails harboring specks of damped dust. He knew then that success at staring at it was enough proof that he was wide-awake. The remaining recourse for him then, in this hour of complete confusion, was to pray and rely for a providential appararition of an entity to lay the answers on the puzzle right on his lap.

As he deliberated on these issues, the street lamps had been switched on. The throng of promenaders that moved in perpetual flux along the boulevard had grown thicker by then.

He stood up with a blind effort. Standing amid the stream of strollers, he let himself drift without definite destination, guided only by the vague desperate hope of stumbling into lucidity.

He noticed most promenaders ambled without preoccupied thoughts and malicious intentions about the others. They were engulfed in their own stray thoughts caressed by the evening’s gentle sea breeze. Overwhelmed, he walked with adapting their behavior, a tactic he employed to hide the tremor of perturbation of his soul.

Then a group of young people walked towards his direction. They were laughing in their shared camaraderie replete with guffaws that nobody paid attention to except him.

Contrary to the others with whom he found sympathy in the solitude of their universes, his affinity as promenader to this group was a murderous enmity. Their naïve cheerfulness struck him with the monstrosity of alienation, though the venom of this reaction diminished as he observed that a company or a small group joined most of the strollers, something that he failed to notice earlier. It became obvious to him since those who were involved in casual chitchat on the benches along the side of the pavement knew each other and those who strolled had someone whom they talk to as they ambled forward.

A profound terrifying comprehension with so strong its tectonic shifting in his thoughts stirred his guts. The wisdom popped up in him like an introduction to some complex mathematical equation reserved to a handful of reclusive physicists: promenaders almost always knew someone here. The realization freed that he was able to paddle to the surface of his ocean of solipsistic solitude and breathe the fresh idea that it would not be far that someone among this throng knew him.

All he had to do was to make himself as visible as possible to most strollers. He followed this scheme by keeping a modest distance from the strollers in front of him, good enough for those who walked towards his direction to have a good look at him. Though he also had to ignore the push of those behind him who urged 0him to walk faster.

And there he walked for the first time content and happy with a purpose. He would look farther ahead of him, gauging as by what side he could come across the more strollers. He would veer to the left, then center, then right as he walked on. He would scan the faces of the strollers in an attempt to get an eye contact.

He had covered a good distance yet he seemed to have become invisible the more he tried to be noticed. Gaining no favorable result, he was prompted to walk on his toes to create an elevation so that his head would protrude above the crowd and could be seen from any vantage point.

He reached the end of the boulevard, where beyond led to the city proper and the perpetual noise of insomniac establishments and where from this point the promenaders would turned back to continue their walk. Frustrated by his failure, he went on with his walk toward the direction he had come from. Resigned, he was more concerned now on reaching clarity through pondering than being chanced by someone who knew him. He walked with stoop head, contrary to his earlier posture of putting his face before every strollers he crossed path with.

He had been mesmerized by his empty meditation that only led his thoughts groping in the depths of incomprehension on his journey within when somebody patted him from behind. He turned, enough to catch the passing feature of a lanky man, lugging a leather brief case under his arm, who made a quick greetings to him: “Mariano Torres, it’s already time to be with your family.”

He could have had stalled the man, trap him in a short conversation, or make a rejoinder that had the necessity of a reply revealing added information about him. But the man strode in hurried wide steps, and dissolved in the flow of the crowd before him.

Left again in his solitude, he repeated the name by which he had been addressed. Several times the name came out loud from his mouth and heard by passing strollers who would look at him, certain that they had been called and mistaken for another person, and would contort their faces at him in surprise. But he was no longer aware of these. His focus of was the name. For him, it had the nature of a stranger who was introduced to him for the first time. The name adhered to him as misrepresentation of who he thought he really was, and too difficult to fit to himself.

He might as well have had the same confused reaction and contorted faces of the strollers who thought they had been called for somebody. But he could not afford to do that. For, simultaneously it was during these repetitions when the void of not knowing how he was called opened its hole before him. Each invocation supplied the pieces of a dormant puzzle he was not aware of until he got the glimpse of the wide picture.

Then a voice speaking to him cut his thoughts. The crowd of promenaders materialized again from the haze of his vision.

“Mariano, I’m glad to see you here.”

He looked at the person talking to him. It was a lady protected from the cold breeze by a blazer, and panting with suppressed heaving of her bosom.

“It’s the same way for me,” he pretended.

“How’s your family,” the lady said.

“They’re fine.”

“Anyway, I wish I could talk to you longer,” the lady said. “But I have to rush back to the office. I forgot something.”

Then the lady hopped onward opposite his direction, and left on her trail the clatter of her footsteps and a fading remark:

“Just give my regards to Mercedes and the rest of your family.”

The weight of how the world knew him as who was reinforced with greater certainty now. Its gravity rested on the quiet pronouncement that everything that had something to do with the name Mariano Torres all winded down as attribution and definition of him. The name was him.

He could not escape from it now, what more with the sly contraption of fate that he had a family. The first one mentioned he had. And now, the second validated it. “But where are they?” he asked.

He continued his walk clad now with an identity and definition.

By then he was used already to the smell of the liquid taste of ocean salt carried by the breeze along the boulevard. As he progressed, the throng started to thin out, until he reached the part where the brick pavement was cut by the penumbra of a grassy field, and where farther ahead, the expanse of the sea lay with its steady waves in the dark, deep and mysterious.

It was only then when he noticed the cluster of houses across the road. There must have gone the man who greeted him earlier, he thought. Probably, the fine lady lived there too. He crossed the road in dazed intention and motive, for he did not know where to go from here.

He followed without pattern the maze-liked streets, looking furtively at windows that revealed the well-lit interior of houses and the souls residing inside. Along narrow alleys, he listened to the voices carried by the wind that seeped through thin ply-boards walls. On several occasions, he found himself facing dead-ends, only to retreat in embarrassment to where he had entered, avoiding the eyes of loiterers to parry attentions.

During this time of aimless wanderings, each street’s and alley’s blind corner presented the horror of finding himself on the precipice of the end of the earth; pitch black in darkness and bottomless in depth.

Then, someone hollered out his name as he trudged along another unfamiliar street. He found the origin of the voice coming from the bungalow house he had just passed. A woman on the veranda was waving her hand at him. He forced a smile loaded with the intuition that she could be his wife and drew toward her. But the impression lasted until she uttered her rejoinder to his soft statement: “Mercedes.”

“Mercedes is not here,” the woman said. “But mother will be happy to see you.”

The woman then grabbed his arm and led him inside the house where an old, fat woman, hunched like a meditating Buddha on the sofa, welcomed him with a smile of surprise. He tried to reciprocate it with cordiality as genuine as he could display, without the tinge of hesitation that restricted his movements into nervous jerks. Around the heavy presence of the old, fat woman a young man and a girl occupied the space offered by the couch and divan. They looked up from the television set and greeted him.

When the old fat woman stretched her flabby arms at him, he stooped toward her in suspended animation, as if for a century, not knowing whether a hug or a kiss was necessary, but the latter had captured her by then in her arms and supplanted a kiss on his cheek, and told him, as if he were a boy:

“Where the hell have you been? You’re soiled and stinking like a street dog.”

“He’s looking for Mercedes, Mama,” said the woman who had led him.

“Did you two had a fight?” asked the old fat woman.

“No,” he said as the only honest reply he could think of.

The old fat woman said then to the woman:

“Give your brother some fresh clothes. And could someone call Mercedes and tell that Mariano is here.”

to be continued.......

Note: This is partial of the story I'm trying to write now. I hope stray blogger in this site would appreciate it.

Underneath the Tectonic Movements as I Plod Writing a Story

Begin. For the first time in years (yes, after writing several mediocre story stories in 2000) I have the terrifying ecstatic feeling of knowing how to write a short story. Even the way it should be written came into my head like a path well-trodden and learned and studied. During the marathon sessions of writing the rough draft of the story for more than four, probably five, my wind still last as if I could go on for hours still. I just have the road well mapped out. My goal, which I repeat to myself as I write, is to write as simple and as clear as possible. Even when the time for the first rewriting session came, I know what to do with the text.... Drat! .... more next time......

Busy Days

For those who once in a while visit this blogsite, I want to apologize for the infrequent posting I've been making here. I've been preoccupied for a couple of weeks now writing a short story which I think has the potential of being published if written right. Though I feel I know exactly how to write the story and the rewriting that I have to employ on it. So bear with this blogger for the lull in posting peripatetic thoughts here.

The Fifth Estate

I chanced to watch a CNN special about the phenomenon of blogging sneaking into the frontline of infomation dissemination and I was happy to call myself part of the Fifth Estate.

Today is Sunday

For the old man who sits on the bench along the well-lighted corridor, nothing appeals him than watch the thin hand of the wall clock recounting the passage of seconds in this somewhat flat morning. He puckers his lips and munches with his toothless gums the profound idea that seems to have struck him, though he would shrug his head and squint his eyes as negative validation of its importance.

But what he plays in his head is of no great consequence to the world or to the public that passes along the corridor this early morning. Nobody in fact gives the old man a merit of their attention. They must have seen him sitting on the bench, but nothing than a familiar, dull ornamental sight of no value.

So the old man sits still on the bench with his own alcoholic thoughts, drunk with ideas that he himself could no longer instigate the power to put order in the stream of chaos in his reason. A concrete structured philosophy is totally absent, leaving behind his peripatetic mind an invisible trail. Though the old man could feel sporadic pain and twitches in his guts, as he anticipates the millisecond interval of the clock until it ticks, concluding that a second has elapsed.

With difficulty, he tries to navigate his thoughts to separate the days, those that have past and that of this day, yet he cannot distinguish them with difference. For a long time his mind plods on the miasma of identical events, the same well-lighted lenght of the corridor, the white walls, and faces, that only heightens the pang of pain of his confusion.

Nevertheless, a vague realization, like that of a man who wakes up from a dream that he could not define with concrete shape, that what he searches for is the tacit sign that today is a different day, or for the simple act ofr naming it, that he can tell with certainty whawt day is today.

The old man has been still in that position, staring with animal attention at the wall clock, when he catches the cool, feminine voice of the nurse inside the station, bearing in its message the only clue he finds out as what he has been searching for all this time. He hears the nurse tell the doctor on duty that Father Almanzares will arrive late because the good priest would have to drop by first at the sixth floor where one of his relatives had been rushed late last night because of a stroke.

The creases on the old man's countenance grow deeper caused by an electrifying excitement, his aura of destituteness turns into that of a genius who suddenly discovers a resolution and answer to the question he has pursued for a lifetime.

Then the old man stands up, closes his white robe, ties it in a hurry and runs towards the first ward at the end of the corridor, careful that his steps, as his slippers land on the floor, not to create noise, a clown's comical gait with the impression of keeping a great surprise he is about to bestow and reveal to his audience.

As the old man stands at the door of the first ward, where inside several patients fight in their dreams their own solipsism and personal demons, he yells with gusto and glee:

"Today is Sunday. Mass at ten." Then he proceeds to the next ward hollering the same sentence repeatedly.

A nurse cuts the old man's round, pacifies him, explaining to him that he needs to be quiet because the tenants inside the wards are still asleep. But the old man cannot contain his enthusiasm. He looks at the nurse and says to her: "Today is Sunday. Mass at ten," as if the fact is the most marvelous discovery he has ever found. And for the long time that the old man can recall, this is the first time that he felt an absolute happiness.

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.