Of horns and halos

Being almost three years short to claiming three decades of existence gives me the license to pick an unforgettable year. That would have to be the last year of my naiveté. 1996.

1996 was when I found an angel. Part of the pre-examination requirement of a pedantic religion teacher was to participate in our church's station of the cross meditation in observance of Lent. For a Catholic-raised schoolgirl who can barely get out of the house at nights let alone a school night, it was indeed one of those few well-liked school activities. On that one balmy night of March, some of my classmates were kind enough to pick me up on their way to church and thankfully, it was enough for my mom to deem the situation "safe." The activity ended rather late and my classmates decided to stay and feast on the sidewalk's entree of tempura and fishball before heading home, much to my annoyance of not being able to partake in this rare impromptu soiree. Knowing my mom (and the small city swarmed with mom's prying friends), I knew I had to hurry home. Perhaps, out of guilt, my classmates walked me to the jeepney stop while gobbling a stick of tempura swathed in a tasty-looking, gooey sauce. As we passed one of the makeshift roadside stores, a torso-baring idler who obviously had taken more than his fill of tuba that night, jumped right in front of us and grabbed me by the arm. Too scared and nauseated by the stinking breath of this drunkard, I was completely immobilized. Luckily, the braver one of our lot was quick to yank the man's arm, pulled me away from his grip and we ran all the way to the jeepney stop. Perhaps sensing my fear, that classmate accompanied me home even if home was quite a long way off. And that was how I came to know an angel.

Sharing incidents like these can inevitably spark friendship despite having personalities not unlike the opposing poles of a magnet. We became good friends after that though not the type who would hang out after class to swap droll classroom antics or share a plate of Pinoy-style spaghetti. We barely even keep up to the latest details of our respective lives. This, I guess, is a trait of true friendship. Except that I really never thought of my angel that way that time.

Exactly a year after the torso-baring, tuba-drinking idler episode, I found myself back in the throes of trouble. I could've prevented this if I used even half of my brain to decipher the omens or the makings of a Trojan horse in a bag of Hershey's Kisses or in that tawdry doll with an oddly-braided hair but due to a teenager's credulity to trust everyone except her didactic yet well-meaning family, I was hurled gobsmacked right into the pit of my own hell. Utterly disheveled and bruised from trying to escape the devil's lair, I found myself standing right at the doorstep of my angel's house. The two-faced devil scampered away, afraid of being unmasked and perhaps, of legal repercussions. At the sight of the angel, I felt safe. Still shaken but safe. That night, the angel walked me home again while I blabbered about the day's awful events through misty eyes.

"Save a person's life once and you become responsible for him forever."

So goes an old Chinese adage. True enough, it's been twelve years and when the going gets tough or when I manage to hurl myself in trouble again or when I'm just being my restless self, the angel remains.

A scarred part of me badly wants to say that my angel brought me home for good. But that would be a complete lie. Happy am I right now but I still have a thousand steps (maybe even more) to take before reaching that self-made person I've always imagined myself to be. When I can finally summon that nascent courage to take my first step towards finding my home on my own, it would not be without lachrymose eyes.

Blown

(Phew.. a moldy and funky-smelling this blog has become. I must say, this writing mechanism deserves a bit more oil than ever. For now, let me just grab my broomstick and sweep all the dust and cobwebs away as I can't summon the right alibis for my absence. While I'm at it, enjoy yourself with this quick read.)

Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff
One word.
Mind-blowing. No pun intended.

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.

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.

Disturbed

Laudably disturbing

Cleverly disconcerting

Repulsive but not exactly (?)

Ian McEwan's The Cement Garden rendered me too incoherent for logical speech. For now, at least. McEwan's style is uncanny. He forges the grotesque into something remotely tolerable depicting it in subdued horror, nonetheless. At one point, he makes you laugh and later in the day when you remember laughing over it, you suddenly feel a nagging guilt of having a sick sense of humor. Just when you thought of finally shedding off its effect on you, the story invades the mind in between REMs. No, the mind doest not attempt to direct a reel to reel plot of the story instead, it shamefully rehashes extracts of your life which you hypocritically deemed innocent. And you wake up profusely sweating, gasping for air and then, curse the poor air-conditioner.

The story also calls to mind an idiosyncratic film director in the Philippines when asked about the movie he dreams of directing, "... a movie that exposes the blackness of the human soul not one that attempts to judge or seek redemption... just the sheer blackness of the human soul."

of white roses and hot chocolates

Flipping through old posts always leaves me feeling guilty of being pompously garrulous. Yet there are times when I feel like I haven't said enough to get my point across. I've always stated clearly (or so I thought) that I want a love so real that it's almost tangible. A love mad enough to shake up my too organized world. Shaken, I am, undeniably. Shaken and swept off, to be exact. Sadly, as I run off relishing promises of white roses and shared mugs of hot chocolates on cold, rainy days, I would find myself falling flat on my face and realizing a little too late it was all a mirage. Have I been too parched that I am hallucinating of white roses and hot chocolates?

Am I being delusional? You tell me.

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.

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. ☺

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.

Saccharine High

The Tumult: Obliterate my memory of your poetry. Ravage the thing that dares speak your name. Deafen my ears from the lilting strains of your song. Shield my sight from the trance of your gaze.

The Poetry: All of these don't mean I love you less. I still plan to live my life with you. You mean so much to me. I hope you realize that also. Sorry if you didn't understand me. I want you to know that I truly understand you. Wish I could be there just to hold you tight.

The Tumult: ...................



Then there was just silence. Merely silence...