Perfecting Death

Dean CLV once said that being in law school is like going to your death. You have to allow your old self to die in the process so that a a new you can rise from the ashes (or something to that effect... exaggerations mine). 


With one week of classes to go, I can't help notice that the final traces of the pre-resurrection ashes around me are being wisped away by even the slightest draft. 


Five years ago, here stood a man who was ready to enter a lifetime commitment and be a father. That man became broken, bitter and angry because of the loss of those dreams. His jealousy and hatred resonated throughout his little universe but he never said a word. The worst part was that he was already in law school. His grades had suffered a blow he would never recover from as everything was a mess inside him... emotional cancer had struck and there seemed to be no way out of it... and as the demons seemed to take everything from him, he prayed that he would be removed from this cursed place forever... this was not to be...


The heavens opened a window... one that would allow the man to expand his universe slowly so that the cancer would be isolated in the old areas... and so he took it... to escape what he has become with a hope of becoming something totally different. That window was called the Ateneo Human Rights Center... and this would soon become part of the triangle that was his new universe. It was here where he learned that the only way to start becoming whole again was to expel all that negativity. He focused more on what he could do for other people to distract him from the crashing tides inside him. Fortunately, he was never alone in this task. He found kindred souls and fellow lost spirits in the trenches. It was the summer of 2004 and the curing process was terrible and slow... but it it did happen... and because of this, he was not only healed but transformed into something totally different. He would stay for four more years, loving the work and the people involved in it. This was the work that blessed him with a chance to take his first trip to the West and shrink the world in his mind. This also helped him to find the greatest friends he could ever ask for in his life... and a continuing source of people of that same quality and caliber.


And in the process another window opened: The man started writing music once more. After having abandoned a dream for almost eight years, he just picked up his guitar and wrote what he felt. This became the second part of his current universe: Music. On that same summer of 2004, a more experienced musician friend came to Manila and called the man up... said he wanted to hang out. The man obliged and the talk turned into a jamming session after the man told his musician-friend about some material he was working on. In a single evening, the veteran and the rookie were able to record two songs of amazing quality on a beat-up PC. The rest is history, the band Sundown Caffeine would be born a few months later at a psuedo-Mexican bar in his hometown of Cebu City and the music would go on to be not just a source of amusement, but a viable career path for the two (not so) young men.


So what's the third part of the triangle? 


It's family. The past, the existing and the future. The beginning and end of all that we do and all that we work for. This is a point in time when such an elusive dream has to be cast aside, at least partially. You want your own family and your own home but you have to get there first... and though you keep repeating the words to yourself that "there's no rush"... you realize deep inside that you wont be in this waking world much longer and that your present family will probably outlive you by several years. Perhaps you've accepted that you end up dead without ever knowing that sensation. Perhaps living vicariously through your brothers and sisters will do the trick. In any case, this leg will have to be set aside... 


I've been walking on two legs for years... why should it be a problem now? 


A few days more and I will face my final recitation, my final classroom session, my final hours of detention in the necessary evil that is the formal education system.


CLV was right. My death is almost complete. Entering law school was perhaps the best mistake I ever made in my life. And if could talk to the me five years ago, I'd tell him to brave it out... because things are really going to be alright.


_____


And so it's time. 


I walk out that door with no regrets... only honest mistakes. 


And I will walk with two legs for now, if only to carry a steeled heart.


My death is almost complete.

The Morning Post

So you feel the alcohol and the smoke have settled down -- transformed into noxious colorless vapours -- your dreams that brought you close enough have been ripped open once more for the coming of the waking world. Water. More water.


The somber tones outside leave little doubt about where you are right now. The guitar cables are tangled and your phone's battery pack is screaming death.


Why fix what isn't broken? Why make carvings upon the clean smooth finish? Why complicate things that ought not to be when you're so close to the end? (an end).


Perhaps because I've lived a little too long without it. Time zips past you when you're not really paying attention. And this time it did and I wasn't. It dawns on you that as long as it stays out of your reach, it depreciates into mere memory, then history, then myth and finally a mere concept. How easy it is to dismiss other people's problems with parenthood statements and condescending "been-there-done-that" advice when you deal with mere concepts.


But it's not just some abstract concept that anyone can just master. There is no master. We are slaves because we submit our freedoms for its disposal. Is it a bad thing? Not really. The initial freedom to enter it and the sustaining freedom to dwell in it are always there. But along the road, we twist and tumble, we dive and lift off, we shape and mold, we change our course into a bleak grey area called compromise. Individuals die. And we see something ultimately more powerful emerge.


I am tired as I wake up. It's no concept. After the songs and lyric fragments that flood my mind and hard drive, I seemed to have lost sight of the very meaning of it all. Yes. Meaning. It's not truth that we search for because truth is amoral and inhumanly neutral. What we want is meaning. The type that gets you up when you don't want to. The type that makes you walk under the rain and look up and clench your fists as a smile curves up your face. The type that causes you be both impatient and terrified about the very next day when you know you'd just wake up sober again only re-enter the cycle of self-destruction.


It's not just a concept because it has to be necessarily trapped and incarnated by context. Particular who-what-where-and-when's surround you and you have to act within these parameters. And yes, it's inconvenient. Square one always is. It's full of anxiety and empty of confidence. How much truth are you willing to give and how much is enough so that meaning can be drawn from it without flooding another's life? How much unchange can you tolerate and how much of change can you offer? It freaks you out because you know in your mind that you will suffer -- and suffer again. But sometimes, the thanatos does come -- the human desire for pain and death -- and we embrace it... perhaps because death gives us a chance to mirror our lives and see that we don't have to do all this alone.


You need a walk. Think, though you grow sick of it. 


It's square one and you're in the context.

Don't Drink & Text

My advice to everyone is this: Never hinge your hopes or expectations on an anecdotal singularity or a short series of them. A single instance can mean nothing. Even several instances can fall short of what we can consider as true. 


There are flukes in human behavior that are neither measurable nor contained by reason, logic or faith. They are simply abberations in the universal scheme of things. For indeed, we are creatures of habit and any deviation from these habits are not who we are but what we do under the most irregular of circumstances. 


This thing we call romanticism is our curse as a human race, fueled by the noxious gases of art and literature. It makes us attracted to chaos -- something that impels us to stick our necks out of our shells, only to lay them softly on the chopping block. 


Reality is something we all want to escape from. The human mind can wander to any place without any restriction other than experience. We can revisit our past and explore our future with ease. But none of these can truly emancipate us from the prisons of our own flesh, which carries with it all our limitations and shortcomings. We take ridiculous risks every single day just by leaving our homes. We expose ourselves for all that we are and all that we can never be... and this is always a terrifying prospect for any of us. 


The great Ryan J. Roset would sum all these up in one word: "Olats!"

Writer's Blockade

It annoys me that it's been four months since I wrote my last song... for someone who does this for a living, this is a terrible pace. Nothing moves me anymore... I'd rather crawl back into my hole and stay in this deliberately chosen isolation until I get tired of the indoors once more.


I hate how it's so cold outside that it makes my head throb like a tired wall clock. I hate how I miss the feel of a cigarette on my lips as the smoke penetrates my every vein... Twenty days, and it's only now, under the cold, that I miss that warmth and that smell.


I grab my guitar but nothing comes. I used to have something to say about everything. Now, the words just sound like the crumpling of loose asphalt under my heels. The sirens several fire trucks speed off in the distance. I wanted to kick some movie star's ass earlier today, just for giving me a nasty look. I wanted to... but I was smarter than that.


And some people do write... but only out of ignorance. Judgment after judgment. Conclusion after conclusion. There is no art in the absence of logic... no guidance... the elitist way is always suspect. And some people try to sound intelligent by criticizing others... but they will never be able to offer an alternative... such hollow existence.


You sound like everyone else, they say... well, I have twenty thousand strong who will disagree... art is for the people. This is what I do.


It annoys me that it's too cold to be outside... and there's nobody to meet.

Don't Ask Me About It...

I remember walking around in the mall today, just observing the people... so many different lives... what could they be thinking?


They say love is real... that nothing could be more real than this... but how come so many people die unloved? Why do so many people walk alone in this world? And so we come to the painful realization that love might be real... but it's not for everybody... 


So is it really just some kind of social construct... a capitalist propaganda used to sell beauty products and Hollywood movies? How can it be real when it's too arbitrary... when the standards we set for it are highly elitist and unreasonable -- the exact same standards that we are passing on to our children every day...


People are so obsessed with beauty. Billions of dollars are spent in fashion, fitness and cosmetics each year, just to make people feel worse about themselves... Magazines, movies, music, heck even the automobile, liquor and tobacco industries rely almost entirely on this illusion of beauty... and society's response is this: only the beautiful deserve to be loved.


How about the disabled? The dark-skinned? The burn victim? People who have an acne problems? Fat people? Ugly people? I see so much imperfection in the world burdened with so much sadness. 


My family has been lucky so far... each of my siblings have experienced love at one time or another... but I think about the people who surround me... even my closest friends... and I see the hard-to-acknowledge truth that most of them have never known love... and an even sadder truth is that some of them might never find it in this lifetime... If I could use my own friends as a measuring stick, I would say about 70% of humanity will never find it... and of those who do, they will never understand it... Darwin would have been proud to see all this pain.


I have been a very lucky bastard. Time and again, my friends remind me... and time and again, I forget. I've had my unfair share of love... I cannot count the times I've been hurt just as I cannot account for the girls I have hurt in this short lifetime... but one thing's for sure, I have loved many... and I've been lucky enough to have sometimes known what it is to be loved in return... and though I do not consider myself, by any means, as an attractive man... I have no choice but to consider myself a very lucky one (my closest friends can attest to this).


So why am I still complaining? 


Because in spite of all these things... all the luck... all the experiences... all the insight... I still know nothing... and I don't know what to tell a friend of mine in New York when he asks me about how to attract women... I don't know what to tell my little cousin if he asks me 'how do you know if a girl likes you?' 


All the books, all the poetry, all the crap ever written about it is of no practical importance at all... all the motherhood statements, the cliches, the annoying anecdotes, the idealistic bullcrap have no value whatsoever out there... Out there, it's a jungle... it's a cruel, sadistic jungle... and there are no answers, no strategies, no solutions... love, if it exists, is too arbitrary to be claimed as normal human experience... there are too many factors to consider... and most of them, you'd rather ignore... there is just too much randomness... too much uncertainty... and it makes me nauseous just thinking about it.


It sickens me... I feel this strange churning in my stomach each time someone tells me that he "looks up to me" or that "I have it all figured out"... What the hell is wrong with the world?


My friends, you want me to be honest? Well... I have no freakin' idea what I'm doing. Not a goddamn clue. 


My only advice: Prepare yourself for a lot of pain.

Final Days

And after the third hour of running through your first set, your voice is hoarse and your fingers, numb... a strong reassurance that this is what you want to do for a living.


One more hour and it might be enough for tomorrow.


You pack the letter neatly into your blue planner and say a prayer... finally, its maker shall be justified.


Your phone has been silent all night... not a word... not an acknowledgment... not a new thing, though... but there are some things people should never get used to.


Another German invitation lies on top of your desk, and you wonder if another escape will help at all. Perhaps the words will make sense if you stare at them long enough... perhaps not.


Your room is a mess... dad always told me that the condition of your surroundings reflect what's in your head... he was right.


He was so right.