17 November 2007

Raw

Amazing how the subconscious can become a reliable map. Two Saturdays past, while enjoying my aimless drive around the metropolis in the dead of night, I came upon this old alley and felt the sudden nervous twitch in my gut. A decade has passed yet that street, where the all too familiar dismal looking house totters, remains to infect hostility and everything still looks as drab as if to mock at the supposed intrinsic invincibility of time and constancy of change. Sprawled like a massive horizontal triangle, the crude architecture of the house personifies the sinister vibe bolstered by the ungodly hour and the bare torsos of the istambays (street-side idlers).

The inability of the eyes to recognize a corporeal bit of the dreaded past, the subconscious compensates with its blow-by-blow exhumation of a presumably dead former self. The carcass of my former self awakens revealing the intangible yet throbbing wounds. Ten years failed to salve the wounds into scars. The raw wounds remain imprinted as if with indelible dye gloating at the passage of time.

If forgiveness is the only balm, as the righteous claims, then doom may be my sad comeuppance. How can the wounded concede forgiveness when the culprit still swaggers in her parade unscathed by the so-called karma or conscience? The latter I assume is nonexistent.

05 November 2007

Buzzed

It's almost 3 a.m. yet I'm wide awake. Awake and bored to death. I have been logging in and out of YM to find some "crazy" friends to chat with. None are crazy enough. Or better yet, the crazy ones have gone incognito and are merely ignoring my buzzes. Which rather irritates me, now that it crossed my mind. The two housemates are dead. Sleeping like dead logs, I mean. Pity outruns the evil desire to shout "fire!" and wake my two house companions as the older housemate just took a soporific decongestant while the younger housemate is still nursing an upset stomach.

Under normal circumstances, I enjoy the company of the inanimate. Me and my book. Me and my mug of coffee/tea. Me and the Internet. Me and my planner. Me and my eccentric imagination. Right now, I'm plainly stricken with distinctive boredom. Almost the kind of boredom that drove Holden Caulfield to yell "Sleep tight, ya morons!" then head to New York City to fritter away self-indulgently. The yelling part I can execute with panache. The frittering away is a luxury I don't hold at the moment as there is a vile lesson plan waiting to be accomplished. Harrumph... Harrumph..

Yummy macaroni! Somebody just buzzed. ☺

02 November 2007

Commander-in-misChief


In one of my summer vacations in Jimenez, my cousins' favorite agendum was scavenging through the musty and helter-skelter attic in the ancestral house while my royal ass merely watched, thwarted by the highly sensitive sinuses. Clutching my trusty Walkman, I went out of the room only to be called back by one of my cousins a few minutes later. Bored and drowsy, I entered the musty room again when my cousin, garbed in a scruffy Dracula ensemble, suddenly jumped right in front of me and wailed like a banshee. Funny how he has gotten his otherworldly troupe mixed up. But in sheer fright, I whacked his arm with my Walkman. Poor Walkman. That night, I lay in bed wide-awake while listening to the sound maker duo: the cricket and my sister. Poor me.


Strutting oneself in masks and costumes depicting gore and the macabre is not part of my fun list. Hence, at Halloween, I can't rub elbows with the manananggal, tikbalang, tiyanak and the rest of their kinsfolk. CdQ made a good point in suggesting a modern horrific mask with a Pinoy flavor (see PDI's There's the rub entitled Happy Halloween). It's not Roald Dahl's Grand High Witch. But of the same caliber. If not, more gruesome.

 
Template by suckmylolly.com