i miss the me i was with us

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12/19/04--01:18: brief elaboration of deviance (chan 3176551)

i've outgrown Deviance Day. simple as that. that's why i was practically ranting the last time. but to take advantage of the indulgent powers of blogging, let me elaborate my folks regarding a rather decadent recent past:

Won Deviance already when i was a freshie, and then for the second time the following year. you can ask gabby if you want, she was there avoiding and disowning me the whole time. :) 1st year: i wore a pink and black leather ensemble with pink butterfly antlers that glittered in the dark and then I donned my ROTC boots a la demented cocksucker from Uranus(!). --second prize easily in the bag.

2nd year: an homage to nicole kidman's Moulin Rouge parisian whore chic with all materials coming from a trusty ukay shop downtown: imagine black lace underwear, dogtag, inverted crucifix, voilet lipstick, a gallon of hairgell, fishnet stockings and powerboots; to complete the S&M motif, i sort of copied Marilyn Manson's makeup in his video "Sweet Dreams(are made of this)". ...


12/23/04--04:01: massive crush (chan 3176551)

oh fuck it, i crush him:





12/23/04--04:06: and here's another one (chan 3176551)


the "move-over-vic-zhou-i'm-so-much-prettier-look".



12/23/04--04:13: and another one (chan 3176551)


the "my-outfit's-kinda-weird-but-my-triceps-totally-rock!-look."

all photos from: http://leedonggun.istar.co.kr/

ps. i took out the road trip photos because they mess the lay-out up. i'll put them back again when i have time to properly post them here. k?



12/27/04--01:55: i'm back to I-N-S-O-Mnia land (chan 3176551)

cardinal rule: when you're writing something, be sure to finish it first before you go editing. i'm doing exactly the opposite right now; editing is compulsive, and i'm down the finish line but i still couldn't get there because mr. itchy ol' me halts a while and deletes some sentences here, adds some phrases there, changes words here, re-arranges some scenes there...it seems endless. but i'm gonna get there no matter how OC i'm becoming; it's really a bad habit, to edit your work when you haven't finished it yet. it's dangerous because you might just seriously mess up the work, paradoxical lagi--but hey, i know what i'm doing so nothing bad's going to happen, i hope. i can't believe i wrote all that for that. whew.

***

no real christmas thrill for me. i greeted a lot of people and it's the most christmassy thing i've done for the season. it's no fun when you ain't a kid anymore (now this what i get from reading too much flannery o'connor lately). odd thing though, my long time schoo...


12/29/04--20:21: and finally (chan 3176551)

god! finally it's done. the longest story i've written so far: 20 fucking pages (single space garamond) and for the last three scenes i sat down from 12 midnight until 6am and my eyes were puffy and my back ached like hell but i was very happy that i finally wrote it all out. when i climbed to bed really bushed, it started to rain. a light rain that poured from a silvery firmament. i have a good feeling about this one, i know you shouldn't be so attached with the things you're still working on but i just enjoyed writing the ending--the rest though was pure agony, sweet agony.


now i can finally edit in peace. :)

[to marie: i'll email you a copy the moment i'm done editing, and when my adviser approves it, k? :)]

***

tsunamis in south asia is making me crazy. wait, let me change that: TV Patrol is driving me insane! since when did broadcast journalism become milking melodrama, gore, and sensationalism? when fpj died, the TV screen gave us all the impression that everyone lost a majo...


01/03/05--20:21: i didn't want to say this, but here: (chan 3176551)

my new year was unbelievably, unexpectedly! sad--a stunning 1st.

there. i planned not to say it here--but there, i've already said it.

of all the times for things to fuck up, it had to be that midnight. fuck superstitions. i was sad, too tired to be ballistic even if i should've been. after ignoring the countdown, i went to the shower and let the cold water flow. in my head it was like: "Taking a bath isn't the worst thing i could do now." and i'm glad i did. after bathing, i changed clothes, went to bed, and slept the first few hours of 2005.

there. i said it; not further blogging about it.

so cosmos, what's fucking next?



01/05/05--18:44: on the last post (chan 3176551)

(this blog isn't supposed to sound like this, but i'm making an exemption.)

i'm not really okay--trying my very best to be level-headed about the whole thing. i have other things to think about, work on, and bleed for (um, like my thesis; my remaining 15 units in UP; my moribund social life--"happiness, happiness, what is youth?")--this is just one of them, but i know it got me really bad; this one's different and big--this one's about the Patriarch. it has always been like this between us. i'm not really up for details. it was a new year, a long distance phone call, and a harsh dismissive comment that led to worthless, hurtful exhanges. my plan/s after graduation is very much a part of it all [friends from metro manila and cebu have offered me and my blocmate friends probable job ventures, and it just fit perfectly with the yearning to be away from davao even at least for the next three years]. and then something's happening, a major one, in the family now which's causing tremendous ...


01/06/05--21:18: "Jan Van Eyck was here" and others (chan 3176551)

thinking about: a swift ride home and a warm bowl of chicken noodles
stressing about: nothing (i'm too tired to stress over)
wanting to see: someone whom i've been thinking of in the past few days
currently happy about: my thesis work/s in progress and friends who know me well
currently feeling: numb, weightless, longing, abandoned, indifferent, insignificant, empty

and now for some good diversion...

Things Not So Trivial:
what i do before, during and after bedtime



1. become a couch fry

i'm addicted to The OC. very unexpected. i've always ignored this before, taking glimpses of episodes and then flipping away with other useless cable channels--but because SFU hasn't been on for a while, i sort of sat down during one episode at ETC tuesday--about Ryan Atwood trying to handle an ex-girlfriend named Teresa working in the same town where he's been living in the past year while his girlfriend Marissa and him are trying to mend a newly recuperated relationship, meanwhile...Julie Cooper...


01/13/05--13:52: happiness is a most fleeting moment (chan 3176551)

i'm inside the university learning center checking mails when i suddenly realize that my boytoy crush is sitting right behind me. and he's surfing the net and looking at Slamdunk files, the japanese high school basketball anime. how cute! he's an architecture student a year older than me and i've had this thing for him for two years now. when he passes by i feel like someone's pulling a rug under me. and i swoon eternally. swoon. swoon.

i wrote a poem about him that made my poetry teacher's blood simmer in poetry2 class. sigh. some people, especially poets, could be so unabashedly macho.

i'm posting that poem next time i'm back here.





01/19/05--20:43: beautiful loneliness (chan 3176551)



"Memories are the traces of tears."
--2046

wong kar-wai's 2046 is such a lonely film that doesn't make you feel lonely after watching it: you are awed, simply awed by the images to even feel loneliness.

in the chill of an empty cinema house, my senses gave in to the lyricism of the camera. every single scene is framed so beautifully. i have not encountered before sci fi sequences done over that lush, as if muting away the synthetic surfaces of a novel vision of the future.

i have not seen anything with so many lonely characters.

and the music, hinting the end of a long silence, swelling over slow footsteps, embracing two sad creatures making fierce love in the dimness of a cardboard box room.

when i came out of the theater everything seemed to move so gracefully: faceless people passing by, cars from outside the glass doors, the smoke rising softly from my cigarette, ash collapsing on a sodium-bathed pavement.

2046 is longer, and more brightly lit than In the Mood for Love, tot...


01/19/05--21:32: meanwhile... (chan 3176551)

fuck marboros! the prices are soaring beyond god's gaydar! geez, can't one smoke in peace anymore? i walked into my suki smoke store at SM ganiha and i found out that the filters are being sold for 26p a pack! 26 pesos! and if you're the flip-top type, it's an extra buck more. argh! lucio tan sucks! why does my brand of smoke has to be owned by this tax-evading capitalist monster? so what's a smoker gotta do with this bloodcurling inflation? switch to Luckies filters. that's five pesos less, minor difference in taste, doesn't make me want to gag once i start puffing off a stick. hey, jaybs, i don't get that weird aftertaste your talking about. how about you, girl, can you still afford your marlboros? i bet you still can, you future boutique-owning, rasta faerie you! :)

***
sound tripping: i'm just sooo happy listening to this Greenday track!



Boulevard Of Broken Dreams
Greenday

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and...


01/25/05--01:12: an uneventful, loveless, nerdy, faggy life (chan 3176551)

First of all: HAPPIEST HAPPIEST BIRTHDAY AGAIN TO MY GORGEOUS WRITER/SUPAHMODEL FRIEND GINNY MATA!!!

***

Nonstop, since last night, I’ve been studying for my mid term exam in the dreaded STS. My head is buzzing with genetic engineering babble…Bacillus thuringiensis, Agrobacterium tumefasciens. Wala—just practicing spellings. :)

Rainy, rainy day in Davao. Woke up really early for my 10am class (yes, I have to kick myself at 6:30 palang since I have to take an hour-and-a-half double route) only to find out that the rain has caused malfunctioning in the electric wiring in the university. So we can’t turn the widescreen TV on. Neither can we the DVD, the PC, and the VCR. No film viewing today then, no lights even. All’s dark as I walked by myself down the science building hallway. And our teacher hasn’t comeback from UPLB just yet. And he’s giving us an exam on Wednesday!—I tell you, this one’s omnipresent.

***

Fact: there already have been 33 people killed by the infamous vigilantes/assassins/...


01/28/05--16:02: "With a thrill in my head, and a pill on my tongue..." (chan 3176551)

Was wandering into downtown Davao yesterday and found myself in a hidden warehouse of pirated DVDs. So many good movies there. I only had what’s left of my week’s allowance, which isn’t much really. But I had to look forward to starving for a few moments the next day when I saw a DVD copy of something I have been wanting to watch for a long, long time—Adrian Lyne’s film adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.



When I got home, with the DVD in hand, I sat down, slid the disc into the player, and I hadn’t even changed my clothes yet.

Once again, Jeremy Irons made me fall in love with him. Again, and again, and again…that shy-catholic-school-boy-in-an-older-man’s-face smile of his is lethal. It’s hard to play a middle-aged man who acts and radiates like a fourteen year-old boy. That’s the tough order of playing a character like Humbert Humbert—because his obsession with Lolita isn’t about perversion, isn’t about sex, isn’t about power—it’s about how one’s extinguished youth could free...


02/01/05--13:14: .... (chan 3176551)

moving on, moving on, moving on...

the days are sooo slow. i feel like i'm tied to a pole, struggling for motion within limited space. so much work to do. all the effort to keep up.

on cold mornings when i wake up, my eyes hurt like hell from sleeplessness and listlessness, i try to convince myself: "it's worth getting out of bed for."

but there are just days that it's not. like now, like yesterday. what a hellhole.

"out of pure will, can one just slip away, and fade?"

poof!

anyway. got to keep on moving.



02/02/05--14:46: bouyancy in the time of automatons (chan 3176551)

he walks into the room and you are the first one he finds, freezes you in your seat with his eyes. you know each other, but you don't: in your four years in the university, living in the same dormitory for a year, sharing several GE subjects, not one from the student population has introduced you to each other.

but there are no vacancies in the computer room. he eyes you, as if speaking with his eyes, "Can we share?"

"I have been wanting to share for such a long time," you almost tell him.

again you never trust words; they have failed you so many times before.

he leaves, closes the glass door behind him. in a room full of people, you feel so alone again.

thirty minutes pass and you're done with all the rubbish you have to deal with that day. you scratch your tired eyes, stretch your arms; the ceiling seems to spin.

you walk out of the room and tell the student-in-charge that you need to claim your ID now. then you notice the queue of more students waiting for computers to be vaca...


02/04/05--22:23: poetry schmoetry (chan 3176551)

sidenote: last night in an annual acoustic night--RocKEumentary--a girl, with two other guitarists, played Urbandub's "New Tatoo." Before they started, she gave this disclaimer: "It just sucks when the person who you dedicate a song to/play a song for isn't around...but I hope the song's message transcends to wherever he is tonight, because I really am singing this for him." and then they started playing. it was a beautiful. (although i would have loved it more if they played "Quiet Poetic")

my heart just goes out to her.

***

we had a poetry reading today at the Lorenzo Hall, in lieu of the February foundation month, with readings and symposia and other such events. my adviser--Sir Nino--read a paper on Intertextuality and teaching literature. the bloc was tasked to read poems and story excerps from our theses. on my part, i did not read material from thesis; i read instead an excerpt from a narrative poem written for sir ricky's poetry2 class last semester. good thing i was done reading ...


02/06/05--19:48: sunday night blues (chan 3176551)

it's a sunday and nothing much's happening in the house. on the tv, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is playing. i'm not looking forward to school tomorrow. the wheather in davao's funny. one time it's so hot you'd want to strip in the middle of the street, and then it's so cold you'd want to hold the person nearest to you inside a bus.

on the other hand, i finished my second to last story for thesis, the final one simmering well in my word processor. my novella has been approved by the adviser. goodie! there's always that desire to finish college, but since the possibilty's become so unimaginable at this stage, i'm exhuasted just thinking of it. that light of star you long to reach for, and yet it's infinitely distant, immensely far--and i only have a few weeks left. and then what?

have to keep on moving. i feel like that lyric from a bic runga song: I feel so tired/I feel so uninspired.

there is nothing to hold when you feel sad, only the cold beside you. like how you're alwa...


02/07/05--22:00: swim fan (chan 3176551)

we played piko in our Fil21 class this afternoon. it's been eons since i last played that game. but most of us enjoyed it. i won a game. plus points dayun. anyway, i should know in advance if we're going to play again so that i'd not wear clothes with thicker material, like really stiff denims and rayon polo shirt. was sweating like hell ganiha.

***

what i learned tonight: when you tell your friend the truth, like how you feel about certain things that involve the two of you, chances are you'd still hurt that person.

...and they'll end up sending you text messages of apology, and then you'd be confused if they're sincere or just getting back at you, psychologically, by "conceding," that what you said was right all along.

ah, the politics of conflicted psychology. my social engineering skills are rusty.

***

by the way, this movie's absolutely fantastic:



if you can, find a copy, watch it. best for nights when you want to feel warm. what a clever, clever sexy story too.






02/10/05--10:14: waves of joy are drifting to my open mind (chan 3176551)

massive hangover now. weee! alcohol fix gives me the willies! staring into a pool of colors by the jeepney window on my way back home. was smiling ear to ear as i walked toward our house. then in an inspired moment, i paused by my mother's orchids and puked happily into the grass. wonderful, wonderful. how inebriation can wash away all your worries, insecurities, your fears, and reluctance. all right, gotta get going.