The evil i

Dear Eena,

I know it is Daddy’s birthday. I was born with this ability to remember the birthdays of just about everybody who matter to me it’s uncanny…or maybe not. I have been trimming down that list of significant people in my life over the years that I’m down to twenty. I mean unless I have Alzheimer’s, I think I’d be able to remember at least twenty significant dates. Conveniently though, I ran out of prepaid phone load. So that’s that.

I‘m writing to you now, while I reenact inside my head the last conversation we had at Starbuck’s-Trinoma. No, this would not be a continuation of my listen-to-me-I’m-older-and-I-know-what-I’m-talking-about character. I’m actually surprised you didn’t throw those pedantic statements back at my face, preferably with an abundance of the red, ripe and juicy variety. I was so full of myself I still cringe at the thought. I’m sorry about that. I promise not let my evil alter ego (Jessica/Nikki of Heroes fame) get out the next time we meet.

I guess I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate having someone in the family I can really speak with without the fear of coming out as a candidate for self-restraint. God knows I tried with the others. Most of them would end up having this smile on their faces, which is a cross between condescension and downright panic. Fortunately, there’s Kuya Ronnie and your Mom, and from time to time, Archee. But with you, I can be my most free and uncensored self, just like I am with my closest friends. (This being an enviable position for you is still reasonably questionable.) And if only for that, I officially forgive you for temporarily cutting me off from your family tree. We should commemorate this occasion with fireworks or a virgin suicide, whichever is applicable.

So how are things on the academic front? And did you greet your Aunt last Friday? Sorry, I really couldn’t help myself.

More anon. With love always.

Peace by Peace

Dear Anak Tintin,

I went hiking this weekend to a local falls and slipped, painfully slid butt-first on a rock-face, and fell on an abysmal pool of murky water. After which, I was attacked by an invisible swarm of insects, known locally as niknik. We fast forward to now, this sorry little writer itching and aching, polka-dotted pink with Caladryl all over. Of course this was not the first time this happened. I had almost the same experience the last time I hiked to another falls a few months back. But who’s counting?

Somehow, I think this is how you must be feeling right now. You knowingly went to a place with hope that it would be different this time then fell flat on your face, the same rug pulled from under you. Still, I have this feeling that given the chance, we would still go the next time, even if it seems like a spectacularly bad idea. Funny, huh? Painfully so. But we’re stubborn, masochistic, and downright stupid. Either that or we’re just honest enough to accept the fact that we need people. That the choices we make may not be the right ones but come hell or high water, we stand by them. It’s the only way we know how to live. It’s what we are.

And no matter how much I try to rationalize and discuss this to pieces, we’ll do things the same way…always. We’ll take things as they come. Make choices when we need to do so. Take life moment by moment, one small slice of heaven (or hell) at a time.

Love you, nak! Not because you’re perfect, but because you are who you are. And there’s nothing you can do that will make me love you any less.

More anon. With love always.

Bottled fireflies

Dear Ben,

I am reading Murakami by the window, patiently waiting--Naoko searching for words in space. It's one of those uneventful Sunday nights when there's nothing really good (not that there's ever anything good) on TV. I have a half full mug of milk tea beside me, courtesy of a former student who just arrived from Taiwan, and an ashtray half-filled with cigarette butts and two empty wrappers of Flat Tops. The sea, just a hundred meters or so away, is so calm and silent that it might not even have been there. The dark night, a few degrees deeper than anywhere I have been in my life, conceals it. But it is there. I can feel it with unusual clarity. It is there…always have been and always will be.

When I was ten or so, a psychic friend of my grandmother visited us and read my future. Hazy as most of my childhood experiences are, I could never seem to remember if she used cards or read my palm. What I do remember is her telling me to be wary of water. And having had a few brush ups with drowning by that time, I couldn't help but agree. Of course, I drowned a couple more times after that before I finally learned how to swim. Funny now that I realize I learned how to swim at the exact moment I learned how to let go. Or maybe it was fatalism that I learned. I could never seem to draw the line. The details no longer matter. Only this: I found myself drowning, so I flailed, gasped, fought, got tired, went still, and eventually, floated. All these in a matter of seconds nobody even realized what happened. Those few moments may have given me all there really is to learn about life.

Back to now, still reading Murakami by the window, considerably at peace--Naoko chuckled…

Nostalgia as sounding board

Dear Jazz,

Men accumulate more ignorance than they can assimilate and people are bundled of prejudices wrapped in misinformation and tied together with rubber bands of mistakes. (Louis Ginsberg)

So who ever said I'm no longer cynical? All this time I've been preaching radical positivism, but when push comes to shove, I'm as neurotic a person as they come. Only death as surcease from paradox can fully heal me of this affliction by the modern man. God, the world is full of dreary fools. Unfortunately, I'm one of them. Of course, you' agree with me when I say that most people are candidates for self-restraint. It's like a wounded animal convention everytime two people decide to be in one place together.

Sometimes, I'm such a nutcase, I can't even begin to keep up.

Now, I'm sure you're asking yourself where the beef is. Either that or you've given up on this odious letter at the first sentence. Well, perhaps I've become sick unto death of talking about myself, or I've lost the ability to hide my own boredom, or this is simply a high blood pressure anger attack. It's frustration, mostly, at the humungous amount of ignorance that still persists in our society up to this day. Exegetes: did you know that there's an abundance of so-called "bisexuals" in Gumaca? When I asked pointblank one particular proclaimer how many times within the last 12 months he has had intimate relations with a woman, the answer is zero. How many men? Well, let's just say definitely more than 1. Still, he insists he is bisexual since gays here are still thought of as limp-wristed, beauty-parlor inhabitants. It's so damn incomprehensible! My eyes are shrink-wrapped in tears over this arteriosclerosis of views in a supposedly post-modern culture, I'm just about ready to strangle myself.

Too bad...he could have been a really viable prospect. I told you it was frustration.

More anon. With love always.

As we speak exploring

Dear Tina,

If you are the other sputnik*, then that probably makes me the metaphysical sputnik, being that I'm vicariously exploring Visayas and Mindanao through you. It has been two weeks since you left for that trip, and almost a month now since we last saw each other.

Well, you might as well know that I've been doing a little exploring of my own, albeit less geographically and more in terms of the unexplored regions deep within my psyche. Well, during one of these onerous contemplations, and this is quite relevant to another exploration I'm planning to engage in within the next couple of weeks, I suddenly realized that you were particularly against my reaching out and rekindling my friendship with Jigs. What gives? And although your opinion in this matter would not necessarily change my mind, as I have been known, from time to time, to go against your wishes (I am Cam Barros, after all--disappointing friends since 1975), I still am curious enough to know the reason behind these recently voiced objection. Another addition then to the growing list of topics we are going to shred to unrecognizable pieces next time we meet.

One more thing, please remind me the next time to be careful with what I wish for. A few days ago, I was silently lamenting the fact that after Paul and I broke up, my life seems to be suffering from a remarkable dearth in drama. Cut to last night: My brother and I having a minor argument, which escalated to a point wherein he physically pushed me rather unnecessarily, thereby resulting to a potential death by aquarium episode. It was straight out of a scene from Wysteria Lane, wherein psycho-needs-to-enroll-in-an-anger-management- program older brother turns on younger brother over a very miniscule legal argument, it was almost hysterical. Well, I'm still reeling over the incident as much from its melodramatic aspect as to the fact that it happened over something so silly it might as well have been the Marco Sison song "My Love Will See You Through." Go figure.

Now the previous disclosure is only noteworthy in that it compelled one of my mini-orations to emerge from the filing cabinet. Worse, it may just have roused my recently-dormant desire to flee. So much so that joining you and Ron in the last leg of your trip is becoming an extremely attractive prospect. Only, I might just extend that to a couple of years short of a death sentence. As such, restlessness has returned like a solid ray of consciousness shooting through my body.

I miss you, Tina. Suddenly, two weeks seems like such a long time. Come back soon.

More anon. With love always.

_______________________________

* See http://lostsputnik.blogspot.com

Aphoristic attempt

Dear Jigs,

How does one pick up from where one left off when it's no longer a certainty when and where that is? I may have already found myself, yet memory is such a vast labyrinth where one can still occasionally get lost. In desperate need of a milestone, I inevitably proceeded to ransack my drawers. And there, heaped amongst scraps and pieces that have refused all these years to hatch oblivion lay a memoranda written at a time when the taints I wore were barely noticeable. Funny now that I never realized how all along, this was my map in pursuit of the elusive. But I guess I was then too inadequately equipped to navigate through it. As a result, I avoided it like a turbuent sea to prevent myself from drowning in its depths. Alas, I was doomed to spiral down a seemingly endless series of nearmisses until one day, I woke up with my world strewn about me in pieces. Still, the map remained accumulating cobwebs inside my drawer. In the process, I had to take the longest route possible to get to where I am now.

Now, my world is as good as new, fate has become kinder, and the map has chosen to resurface reminding me that yes, things do eventually fall into their proper and predestined places. In all the pointless chaos that is this letter, I really only have one thing I needed to come across: gratitude, the same as that expressed in the said map-memoranda. Gratitude that you waited on the sidelines while I go about getting my shit together. Gratitude for the map, notwithstanding my constant neglect, both of the map and our friendship. And gratitude for being polite to all previous statements. I know the whole thing is as tedious as a warm Hallmark greeting followed by a gun in the head. But hey, I never did say I changed for the better.

Anyway, I still owe you dinner for missing your birthday party last month. Do take me up on that the next time I'm there.

More anon. With love always.

Hushed

Dear Glenn,

"You are such a masochist," said a voice inside my head. Somehow, I found it in myself to disagree. I mean, I don't exactly get any satisfaction whatsoever in grammatically bitchslapping myself to hell and back at every opportune moment. This is just my nature; the way I am put together. I believe this is what's keeping me grounded, considering I've always felt that I am genetically predisposed to arrogance. And with that tediously predictable disclaimer out of the way, let us proceed, shall we?

Aside from a well-thought text message, you never did officially respond to my previous letter. So I just decided to pick up from where I left off and continue with this prospectively one-sided correspondence.

So where, rhetorically, was I? Well, I know where I am, but do you? We never did get to meet up the last time I was there, did we? And here the questions stop. I can actually take a hint, you know. It appears you need some space. That said, it's now being freely given with complete understanding and without any ill whatsoever.

You know where to find me.

More anon when you want it. With love always.

As we speak inflated

Dear Tina,

E. Yevtuchenko once said that each poet is a farm worker if even a little bit. Well, this farm worker has been tilling the fields again after a very long drought. If not for anything, the pieces refusing all this time to hatch oblivion in my drawers may once again get another chance at life. Having said that, achieving transcendent emotional and cosmic heights in the process, shall we then continue with our newly-revived correspondence?

And now the ugly subject of Bubot is broached. Going back now, I feel that time was the lost footnote of astropheric idealism--a time when we had the luxury to pursue noble causes. But I guess the subtitle for the book, tatlong dosenang sundot ng damdamin, is just that: three dozen small jabs and merely a foretaste of thunderous outpouring in the future. All three of us are just waiting for it to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, perhaps? At any rate, we should be thankful for the measly trickles of the moment. Judging from recent conversations we've had as a group, I could safely deduce that we are all still deeply committed to presumptions and tedium. There may be hope for us as poets yet.

I was quite flustered by the fact that you find my pieces worth a second (or more) reading, but the comparison with Murakami may be stretching it just a wee bit. Yes, I'm quite elated that I somehow regained my Muse but, as is usual, I feel that what I've written so far are but a futile exercise to display new words of arranging boredom. My poetry are just journal entries in summary--sufficiently intellectual but possess deranged verbiage just the same. So I'll hold off on the ecstatic celebration for now. It's not the Cosa Nostra after all.

I'd like to disagree with you though on the getting on each other's nerves aspect. I am aware I sometimes still get on your nerves. But you have always been the impatient one. I, on the other hand, have come to terms with the fact that your whims can sometimes be likened to a pop-up book from hell. I've accepted you for who you are, eccentricities and all. Either that or I just refuse to let you drive me up the wall ever again. And now I'm ready for rehab.

More anon. With love always.

Peacemeal

Dear Anak Tintin,

Between the unbearable silence, almost cosmic solitude, and vacillating bursts of passing vehicles, I somehow lost the desire to flee. It's now half past nine on a very slow evening here at GCS (the koisk my older brother and I put up with some friends to build capital for a potential coffee shop). Late perhaps, but welcome just the same, the rains have started to trickle in. It began drizzling at four this afternoon and didn't stop until an hour ago. It left a pleasantly cool atmosphere that promises restful slumber. No wonder it's a slow night. Our regular customers may all be snoring at this moment.

The artistically slapdash concentric oranges, yellows and browns of the kiosk's interior now serve as the cocoon cushioning my tired soul. The haze has cleared a bit and revealed emergent patterns where I'm rooted to one spot, probably lying down in utter surrender like an awkward protagonist in a major motion picture. I finally understood dear old Gertrude when she wrote, there is no there there. For here is where I found myself, and here I shall ultimately remain. And for once, it didn't seem such a sad prospect.

You said you were looking for peace. I might just have found mine. And you will too.

More anon. With love always.

Nostalgia as substance of choice

Dear Jazz,

At a time when every known (and those less so) celebrity has been compelled to produce a book, autobiographical or otherwise--and yes, I'm currently reading an Ethan Hawke novel (gasp!) entitled Ash Wednesday--I regained my Muse. By now, you may have seen my recent poetry. If not, do check out the staccato, tangential, and stop-go ramblings at http://babblingpoetry.blogspot.com.

Now as to our recent cyber conversation. We were, as is typical, one-upping each other with witticisms, yet I could sense your misery almost as if it was emanating from the keyboard. But I do understand where you're coming from. I do know how it feels to drudge through the daily routine. How of itself, each was trivial; yet, after a time, they coalesce to form a dreadful personal incubus. I myself am surrounded by clods with whom any meaningful conversation would be impossible. It was fated that I be doomed to a life where provincial stupidness, consummate laziness and lack of imagination abound. Yes deary, sometimes it does feel like life is sucking honey from a thorn. (Louis Ginsberg) But I have aways been a pluralist or an eclectic, seeking the best in all types and seeing the good in all things. There's just so much perpetual neuroses that a person can take. So for now, I proceed pursuing the even tenor of rural ways. It's as fascinating as the Monkey Habitat. And I say that with absolute contempt.

Now back to the witticisms of yesterday. I felt I haven't teased you enough so I'm giving you a peek of our collection of books. Just a few I deemed to showcase out of 2 boxful. These of course will be under your care soon. But it would all depend on whether you finally come up with fare to come home or I get a VISA to go there. For now, salivate.

More anon. With love always.

Hope springs eternal...or so they say

Dear Stella,

Well, today the world is inexorably evil; I suppose tomorrow it will be better.

-- Eugene Ginsberg

Stuck as I am here in Quezon, the possibility of existential conversation is close to none. Lately, I am feeling urge to take flight again, but the pull of responsibility is yet too strong. I have work to do here for the family and I've spent too much time in my youth trying to ignore them that I don't have it in me to disappoint them of their expectations of me one more time. In the end, I would have to make do with occasional visits there for last minute patches to my psyche. Thanks, by the way, for doing just that when I was there last. You gave me a better perspective of my current rut, with an extremely large helping of a much-needed Grapes and Greens to boot. You cannot imagine how thankful I am.

And upon your urging (inferred quasi-permission at that), I finally made the jump and rode the summer fling bandwagon. Unfortunately, the subsequent event only strengthened my resolve not to do one-night stands. But "do," I did. And it left me an even bigger vacuum, both emotionally and sexually, perhaps psychologically even. It wasn't as tragic as a trauma from the past, mind you. It was just plain uncomfortable, for lack of a better term. There I was, naked in bed, restless as hell, and deeply uneasy while the brute beside me snores in complete satisfaction. I had nothing to say for myself at that moment except I should have known better. Then again, I just commiteed the supreme act of self-censorship when I deleted a comment on the guy's physically features. It's just that he was really kind and honest, albeit a "top." So what exactly was I expecting? A little consideration perhaps. I mean, he should at least have been concerned by the fact that I did not come. But no. He slept. Then I paid for the room. Now, why does this sound all too familiar?

Oh well, I suppose tomorrow it will be better.

As we speak

Dear Tina,

This is nothing new to me--untouchable ennui lodged in my throat. But it grows steadily and becomes more and more difficult to ignore. Motivation is my sofa bed, a cadaver in mid-autopsy, the sole survivor of my well-to-do years. Time is kinder now but the future is an unpenetratable fog atop a sheer cliff. This morning, getting out of bed was harder than usual. Several proddings, speciously veiled threats, from my older brother eventually compelled me to get up and start the day. But during my morning coffee and cigarette breakfast, the half-breeds commenced their attack. One was taking a very public bath beside the well, which is located just below the window. The rest were on TV. My world gets smaller and smaller, and I have no choice but to go inward. Have I become a snob of collosal proportions or is it just that more and more people are evolving into abrasive and self-absorbed creatures? Why do I persist on a radical optimism of seeing the good in just about everyone yet wallow in the pessismism of a world going to hell in a hand basket?

Now, I shall again effect self-flagellation for my pell-mell, tumultuous chaotic style of writing. How this, as is my wont, will be a series of half-truths, verbal cleverness, and dangerous ideas expressed in specious and dexterous verbiage. Again, nothing new there. My letters would typically be incredibly short yet rambling, totally bereft of details, and are written entirely in the stream-of-consciousness rifts. Of course, I am fully aware how I sometimes come out rambling, an unbridled and confused outpouring of echolalea, tacking sentence after sentence ad infinitum. I just couldn't stop. Maybe I'm really afraid of clarity, not finding clarity in life. But I refuse to apologize for this anymore. My problems are as external and real as they are internal and rise out of weariness and disgust.

Ultimately, it's not the writing that I find myself apologizing for these days. It is that I'm just an average Juan who has amorphous mediocrity written all over Himself; a semi-competent fool who is as set in his neurosis as any could; and with brilliantly myopic eyes, proceeds to draw his own confusions, like Camus wrestling sanity and order from an absurd universe.

I have never really left the clouds. And on a clear night like this one, I'm nowhere. If only I didn't have to go back. So when do we really leave?

More importantly, whatever happened to Bubot? Rusting on our faux laurels, perhaps?

Fussed

Dear Glenn,

Blue balled without the pain, a curious absence of feeling, originating from my balls, began to spread slowly until i'm almost fully enveloped by an egg-like shell of numbness. It's wierd. What should have sent me spiralling towards the emotional roller-coaster ride that is the dating scene made me withdraw even more inward. Conscious thoughts may prove otherwise, as my desparate messages begging for a date would undoubtedly atttest. Yet, I just realized that this is just another exercise at going through the motions of wanting something other than what I currently have (or don't have for that mattter). I admit that there has been a lot of contemplation regarding trying out the dating scene again. But yet unfounded fears and compelling motivations have coalesced to form an interminable incubus thereby leaving me bereft of the required energy and gripping desire to do so. What is wrong with me?

I'm not trying to be ungrateful. I'd have to admit that the few days spent getting to know your recent referral had its giddy, I-feel-so-alive moments. But whatever optimism I regained from that phase completely went down the drain after the actual sexual intercourse. Worse, I may have lost my phallic fixation in the process. The vacuum has progressed from emotional to sexual. Should I be alarmed?

More importantly, whatever happened to Bubot? Rusting on our faux laurels, perhaps?

Backwoods Sortie

I once read that love letters are the campaign promises of the heart (probably a Hallmark card, now that i think about it). Conveniently, it is the campaign season, where you see the beginnings of face collages on any given vertical solid space. And although, I do not intend to make promises (there'd be enough of that in the next couple of weeks to last us until the next election), this blog would perhaps serve as a repository of my love letters to friends who care enough to wonder what happened to me, or at the very least, those curious to know more than what my Friendster profile provides.

I know I have made this promise a long time ago never to start anything with the noxious phrase "To begin with...." But to begin with, I now reside in Gumaca, a bustling town in Quezon, which is the province of my birth.

In a lot of senses, I'm back.

Following now is an excerpt from a journal entry made June 24, 2006:

Back is the proverbial sound byte of my life as a journal keeper. I have lost count of the number of times I left and returned to the page without rhyme or reason. Nothing has changed. Back from almost two months of silence aggravated by transitions: from eventologist to school administrator; urban guy to rural boy; fast-pace marathoner to laid-back freak. Back to Quezon where I was born. Back to teaching (my mom would be proud) at my aunt's school which I helped put up. Back to a simpler lifestyle where rules/superstitions/prejudice are clear-cut. And for all intents and purposes, back in the dark caverns of the closet, only this time I view the world outside with amusement and derision....Back now to two and a half decades later. Scarred, jaded, and tired as hell, I keep on--slower now--still treading towards an interminable buildup to the ultimate finish.

And speaking of back, over the last couple of months, I have turned my back on a lot of things. But the ultimate rejection was when I turned my back on love. After almost four years, Paul and I decided to call it quits. In the end, the distance led to our ruin. Most people say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Unfortunately, a relationship requires more than fondness. Love wasn't there anymore, so we ended it.

Which brings us back to the beginning. This would be a series of love letters to friends and a documentation of sorts of my life here in Quezon. Now, as to the title. It may be read in any number of ways, but knowing how my life usually is, "inaction" instead of "in action" may prove to be more appropriate in most cases.