29 January 2008

Blame the archer

Notice how the very things you are so keen to escape from seem to always catch up? You keep running, hiding and dodging the suspected intruders of your territory. In your mad scurry you never dared to breathe and just when you thought you can pass being the elusive Frank Abagnale Jr., in exasperation, you will realize you haven't actually managed to even break a few steps away from it all. Yes, you have grown more white hairs, earned more furrows upon your forehead, exhausted the verve of your youth, accumulated more books you dream of adding to your "future" home library aggrandized with a bay window but everything you've sworn to escape stares right back at you with a swelling jeer.

In one blurry episodes of the past, I remember plotting my future post-college life plan like a precise historian. Historians, nonetheless, have ancient scrolls to support their claims. Being a futurist, is a daunting feat. What is it that validates your belief of a good future? Back then, however, I had a clearer concept of what future (my future, at least) will be like or I thought I did. Five years since college and the focal object of my hankering has materialized and has been my prized coup. That is, independence. For the past five years, I've been promenading aimlessly in my soliloquy. Sadly, independence is the only checked entry in my life plan. And I still hold on to that life plan while I loiter at this juncture. Not because I am optimistic but because I am a creature of habit.

It is always easier to point fingers on things. Blame it on fate, destiny or even, karma. As these scapegoats are all clichés, I'll take G.noyam's nifty rationalization for this stagnation. We are merely victims of the inherent peculiarity of our mutual zodiac sign to zigzag through twisting routes which we are bound to overcome by the time we're in our 30s.

In effect, I still have four more years to amble around my territory feeling not unlike a caged hamster running frantically and yet pointlessly on a wheel.

11 January 2008

Voice Regained


Days before Christmas, an overwhelming stream of thoughts were racing in my mind just as I turned off my bedside lamp (see picture -- a beauty, isn't it?). The adamant lexical stream was set to foist me up and start clacking the keyboard but after a mad day of rush shopping, menu planning and frantic gift-wrapping, I can truly empathize with Santa's harried elfin kinsfolk. After a few minutes of battling drowsiness, my eyes finally gave in and the mental chatters droned, ebbed and slowly drifted away like spirits departing from their tombs for a nightly scare. Unlike the spirits, the mental chatters never returned and even had the gall to put up a strike. I can only grit my teeth in exasperation as I repeatedly faced a blank document on my PC and can never seem to frame my thoughts nor summon that je ne sais quoi to write hence, the long silence and inactivity of QuaintQuill.

2007 took its final bow, 2008 bustled in and both caught my site in a torpor. Is this the faint echoes of a eulogy?

My very first entry for the year and I'm talking about spirits, tombs and eulogies. That isn't necessarily cynicism. It's the inseparable shadow of melancholy. Now, this reminds me of a conversation three years ago...

Officemate 1: Com'n Issa, let's go to the party. It's going to be swell. Everyone's going.
Myself: Just count me out. I hate V*d*, anyway. I'm just going to sulk and be my nasty self while watching blokes who think they can dance.
Team Lead 1: Oo nga, Issa. Sama ka na para masaya. (Right, Issa. It's going to be swell if you go with us.)
Officemate 1: Don't be such a killjoy. What are you going to do anyway?
Myself: I don't know. Whatever strikes my fancy that time, that I'd do. But you can never make me go.
Team Lead 2 (my favorite!): Leave Issa alone. Ano ba, hayaan niyo na. Sadyang malungkuting bata lang talaga 'yan. (Spare her. She's just plainly a melancholic child.)

People have a peculiar sense of assuming that the world agrees unanimously to their perception of fun. But yes, melancholy is my inseparable shadow. And at 26, I am still a child.

Happy New Year.

 
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