Whichever way you're going
Friday, February 7, 2003 : 02:58 p.m.

You look like Joplin, I told her one afternoon a few years back. You know Joplin? She shakes her head, tells me "I'm really uncool." And as I'm thinking how uncool she is, she starts to sing in a raspy voice : "Summmeeeerrr---ti-ti-timeeee"

Hello, you can never be uncool. You're okay forever. You smoked your last cigarette when I was born, and you don't mind that I smoke now, how nice of you, you're always so nice. You're always so carefree. It can be good and it can be bad, and if they say you are an influence then influence me, how nice it was growing up with you. You don't care, you always care too much. How nice, nice, nice.

So. What do I owe you? Too much, too little? I owe you my first Catcher in the Rye book, you owe me Douglas Coupland, "I'll make you cool," I said as I introduced you to my classmates, Fine-Art-misfits-feeling-like-Brit-trash friends and you say "Nice friends"--- even after they started showing up every Friday afternoon with me and annihilated the peace you still say I've got great taste in people, because I do, and when people make me cry you don't tell me to stop crying but you tell me to cry harder, then it'll be easier to fight battles because everything negative is out of the way.

You met him, hitch-hiking during the 70's. "Where to?" he asked you, and you said "Whichever direction you're going". And you've been with him together ever since. Even if your love falters, even if you leave and return, even if your love is disguised as hate--- your concept of love..."whichever direction you're going"... is an impression ...well, who can forget?

He probably thought, "This girl looks like Joplin". And he was right. I always thought you were the best, how lucky I am. I always thought you were a flowerchild, lost in years spanning, choosing a life entirely different from what you wanted and rejoicing at the fact that I am living my own, on my own terms. You gave me that, you gave me what you never had. It seems I owe you everything.

Peace out, Elizabeth, you're the best mum ever. Happy birthday.

The Calm before the Eye of the Storm
Tuesday, February 4, 2003 : 04:18 p.m.

There were two sandwiches staring up from the plate, but she didn't really notice it because, hey, who notices sandwiches anyway, right?

There's this girl, she's sitting in a 7-11 at two-eighteen in the morning and staring at the clock that was staring at the spy mirror and she's fiddling around with her mobile phone.

In one deft move she presses the button : ERASE ALL MESSAGES.

A clean mobile phone is almost like zen : devoid of all those damn messages you save just because you don't have a reason to un-save them. And then maybe you'll find a reason just like this girl did, which she did because well, she was fucking out of her mind bored.

There could be a hundred and eighty definitions of boredom but this girl's reason was quite different, in a sense that she wasn't very anxious, but was simply trying to define the calm before the eye of the storm, or that moment before realising that shit I'm gonna drown and it's not going to be pleasant, I'm royally fucked up!

This girl's father told her when she was young during the 1993 storm that hit Manila that the eye of the storm had a certain sound before it arrived, "a hissing sound?" "no..not rea--" "a booming sound?" "more of li--" "then what sound...if it's not hissing or booming then you don't really hear it, do you?" and as if that was not enough she added "and if you don't know it then maybe there isn't any sound at all" and she left with a very dissatisfied look on her face, because in 1993 she was only 14 years old and didn't really like listening to explanations.

Of course, her father was quite amused because deep in his heart he believed this second daughter of his would one day be famous for snappy remarks such as this one, or it could land her in jail.

Now she assumes she's bored, and she's really bored beyond belief, but before you start feeling sorry for this girl you must know that this does not go wihtout saying that she tries her best to de-bore herself. She does a lot of things and sees a lot of friends and when she's alone she doens't fall against the bathroom walls bawling her eyes out, in fact she's a fairly happy human being and she just went second-hand clothes shopping with her mum the other day and had a lot of fun, for a shopping incident.

As long as it's second-hand, which is quite more entertaining.

But in the time in between I suppose this girl was still bothered by this eye-of-the-storm sound that her father had tried to explain to her, because every August or September when the clouds and thunder rolled in she would wait for the eye of the storm to hear that sound but since 1993 she hasn't really remembered a storm louder than that, therefore, the anticipation of the sound proved to be quite useless.

Anyway, this boredom is more potent because she really doesn't realise how bored she is. She has a job now, and as you may object a job does not really put one in the throes of far-flung happiness but at least she's not vegetating in front of the TV, or coming up with guerilla hypotheses(sis?) with her friends at some studio in Cubao. Or at least she isn't really staring at the sky from the Sunken Garden or taking a walk down the lagoon, at least she isn't being chased by stray dogs or watching Art Attack! at four in the afternoon, and its replays at nine. Get a job and de-bore yourself, was a plan she came up with, and lo and behold here she is.

Hey. Listen. This girl told me earlier that maybe or most probably, Mercury Drug sells bottles of anti-boredom syrup, or anti-boredom pills. She's just so unbelievably surprised that the Chemical analysis laboratories would release such a medicinal breakthrough before the cure for AIDS, but she guesses that there are a lot more people out there in life who are in dire need for this pill and she's just lucky to have such a lax governent...governing the country that chemical labs really do come up with miracle workers and sell them.

But for the bored, cigarettes are still the numero uno concoction. Cigarettes come in handy; twenty sticks to a pack, and it doesn't take much effort to light one, put it to your lips, inhale, and exhale. She reasons that cigarettes can be brought anywhere and you can have colourful cigarette lighters. You can even collect cigarette packs. She can maybe worry about her lungs in five years, or even ten years if she's careful.

So, to futher be un-bored, she insists on using a cigarette roller, see archives maybe you'll find it (Top Ten), because the movement of her fingers on the black roller texture gives her a reason to remember that there is more to lighting, inhaling and exhaling. If she runs out of tobacco she tears open a Marlboro Light, removes the tobacco, and rolls her own cigarette. Then, for a few precious seconds she is busy.

But she's not always bored, says people. How can she be bored, look at what she does, she hardly comes home, she hardly sleeps, she's always either getting out of the bathroom shivering wet after a shower and hurrying to get dressed "dammit I'm always so fucking late" she mutters, or she's always trying to talk someone into going out of town with her. Constantly hangs out with those damn noisy bunch of people who spend every available weekend holed up who-knows-where, talking till four. Or she's inventing jokes at 77 with the owner of the cafe who refuses to make cappucino "for personal reasons". If not, she's always trying to make the dog bark, make the dog angry, make the dog laugh, trying to teach the dog new tricks such as "Sit. Sit. I said Sit. Sit goddam it. Sit... can you hear me? I said sit. No dog of mine should be so dumb. Sit. Sit. Hey... Oh, comeon, don't be mad, I love you smelly doggy" *hugs and kisses to the dog*

And even when she's watching TV her foot moves, swinging left to right, back and forth, kicking the person in front of her, or behind her. She's always and forever walking as if she's got some big emergency, always running to the train before the doors hiss close, always wanting to be the first one off the bus. In front of the computer...? She's singing at the same time. When she's sending an SMS she's explaining to anyone who can hear what the SMS contains.

She's just so hyperactive.

She just can't sit still, can she?

It's such a zen thing, as stated in the first paragraph, deleting things you can't really figure out. Things that don't make sense. Her mailbox on Yahoo, it's about to explode. "You are using 99% of your account", says the attractive red bar that dangerously lingers to its maximum limit. She's feeling un-zen because of all these little details that surround her. Her paintings make her sick --- they certainly don't belong to the Shabby Chic(tm)palette.

Good lord in heaven above.

(and)

Hotheaded devil burning in hell.

But how can things be less crowded if, along with two officemates in the waiting room of the CAP Clinic awaiting their turn for the standard employee medical examinations, that "relaxing zen fountain" that trickles "relaxing water sounds" makes her want to tip the whole goddam thing over?

"I want to tip this fountain over," the girl muttered to her officemate.

"You won't do that. It's supposed to be relaxing for Chrissakes. Will you just relax?"

"I'll stick my hand in, then." The water, it's not cool. It's not refreshing at all. Yeah. That's what she does. She sticks her hand in things that are supposed to be relaxing, into things that are supposed to be left alone.

So many times have the tables turned, have the clocks changed, have the birds nested, have larvae turned into pupas or pupas into larvae or how does it go before they turn into butterflies? So many times of that sort of thing.

Manila has been chilly for the past few days. Dipping a bit under twenty if you may, and people use this as an excuse to shrug into light jackets. Her officeis freezing all day long. The temperature doesn't even bother her. And yet she lets it, just so.

Just so. There is a temperamental elevator at her office building, she knows it stops at the 8th floor, the 8th floor which is virtually empty, without lights. It's the first elevator to the left, and still she insists on riding it each morning, getting a thrill when it lurches between the seventh and the ninth, opening at the eigth. Yesterday this girl dawdled around the eigth floor, because it opened.

Is she, you may be wondering, equating zen to boredom? No she's not. "She's not? But it's been mentioned nearly ten times already." Has it? I don't know. I, as the writer of this little "story", do not reread anything anymore, do not print anything anymore, do not even bother to go back a few steps to wonder : "Hey, didn't I just have lunch?" And she, she as the subject of this little "story", is transported back to work, her teeth biting her lower lip, swinging in her chair. She's probably dreaming of her next cigarette break. The escape for a little chitchat, the need for hearing the noise before the eye of the storm. But really... when you think about it, she doesnt seem bored at all.

So that's why she didn't hear it --- because before the eye of the storm is the calm before the eye of the storm.

But calmness has a noise. It's not zen. It's not spiritual. She doesn't really feel like focusing on the poetic aspects of things anymore. These days, she refers to them all as "stuff". An example: "That stuff... what do you call that... over there." (she's ordering lunch, by the way).

She forgot the name of potatos.

But with white noise or without, who really gives one flying fish-and-chip dish care in the world... she doens't know, she won't bother, she wouldn't even bat an eyelash. Because who cares, right? She never deleted ALL her messages, she left just one on her phone, and if that isn't zen, she doesn't know WHAT is.

Things that I (really) like
Friday, January 31, 2003 : 03:52 p.m.

I like the way
people hold cigarettes
and dogs leaping over the grass and I like the way
unmoving photographs can move into your eye
a hand on encircled holidays
ashtrays with ashes with crushed sticks
or what about
the way people tip ashes into ashtrays?
or the way
people look after a sip of wine
a dog on his master's lap
while his master watches a dog on tv
two glasses of tea, four grapefruit and a dog
or a dog, cigarettes, tea, four mangoes
what about impluse
what about sand
what about raised eyebrows
pouting mouth
wide cheeks where children jump on
like trampolines
foreheads, and everything lasts a lifetime

I like waking up beside him
a calligraphy in my bed

pictures of flowers
that would be perfect in colour
but become divine in black-and-white.

By the power of grey skulls?
Friday, January 24, 2003 : 11:47 a.m.

I miss cartoons. I miss Super Book and Flying House. I miss She-Ra and Punky Brewster (not a cartoon, but still.) In fact, I miss television, the corny shows I mean. I miss the Adventures of Pete and Pete (with its good soundtrack - I discovered Polaris and The Magnetic Fields thru this show.)

I am sleepy-eyed at work because my brother Tom a.k.a. PartyJesus and I watched an old, dubbed Chinese film on Solar channel. There were two main characters who vowed to defeat Mad Dog, Mad Dog being an old man who acts like a... mad dog with moves as suave as an epileptic on high doses of caffeine. Muy caliente! The film grain was terrible and the dubbing included lines such as :

"He's a mad dog... he's got rabies!"

"You silly, silly man."

"Before the grains of this sandclock disappear, so will you."

And a combination of lines such as : "You bit me...now I have rabies, you silly silly Mad Dog! I'll make you disappear like the sands on my sandclock."

The fight scene took place in the woods and lasted for 25 minutes. There was this other dude with a "The Strokes" haircut who kept popping into scenes to fight Mad Dog, then disappear. Curious fellow. The movie ended with Mad Dog defeated and lying on the ground with his tongue lolling from the side of his mouth. A mad dog till the end, I thought, sniffling back tears. The last shot was a top view of all the characters forming a circle around Mad Dog, with Mad Dog's apprentice's shout of "NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" rudely cut short by a lo-fi "THE END" sign. That was the end. No film credits, no director, no actor's name, no soundtrack.

Bollywood is NOT the future of cinema. The future is in the Chinese cinema past.

Whip it good
Friday, January 23, 2003 : 12:16 a.m.

I dreamt that the members of Devo were running after me, laughing and shouting, "Whip it good!" Something is wrong when you start dreaming of Devo. I do not want to be whipped by them.

But I like their red hats.

A few months ago I had a dream of Lionel Richie whispering, over and over in my ear, "Hello?" (in the tone of his hit single, Hello.) I was very afraid. I woke up crying for my mum. What is strange is that he didn't have his moustache. Can you imagine Lionel Richie without his leech-shaped moustache? I cannot. I am afraid that Mr. Richie without his moustache will upset the balance of nature.

Little child won't you dance with me
Wednesday, January 22 2003 : 12:03 a.m.

I like that tingle in my toes when you tell me that the water is freezing and still I dip my hand in and I turn to you and say "yea so it is i should have listened to you."

And similarly it's funny the way laughter automatically converts to "I told you so", "What did I tell you", and "Next time you should pay attention".

Isn't it adorable when you wake up on a Thursday with the feeling of Friday, waking up on Tuesday feeling like Wednesday but tragic when you wake up on a Monday feeling like Sunday?

(---If today is my Tuesday it's your Monday, my Saturday is the start of a weekend, my Monday is a Sunday ending, and Wednesdays I sit and ponder pressed between the pages of the week---)

Forward forward backward forward...

Which child am I, I remember asking my mother, an old dusty nursery book on my lap, reading the "Monday's child is full of grace, Tuesday's child is fair of face..." children's poem.

Which child am I, the one who does not do as told, the one who laughs when embarrased? Which, or who, am I to say?

Who knew, while I sat with my hands crossed properly over my desk age six, that I would be the child who'd find solutions in smoke or other highs, age 23?

Who knew, while I cried over a dead dog, a dead cat, a dead parrot age seven, that I would be the child who put too much trust on emotions, on years, on intuition, age 23?

Do you remember the first time you discovered Beckett while running your fingers over book spines? Who knew? And why do you still question so long after being taught? Because of discovery? Because of curiosity? Because you're trying to prove something to someone who exists. Because sometimes, you're trying too hard. And sometimes - no, most of the time - you don't try at all. But then again, who knew?

I like the way your smile says "I told you so" when I purposely do something you specifically told me not to ---because, you make me want to pay attention, and I'm the exact replica of the child who will listen to you.

The Opposite
Saturday, January 18, 2003 : 1:22 pm

I can tell you what I don't know. I don't know how to react when people tell me things straight from the heart. Should I feel cut down, should I be relieved. I don't know how huge the sky is already, I don't know if it will ever stop expanding in my mind. I don't know the concept of misconception anymore. I don't know who to avoid when I want to disappear, I don't know who to approach when I want to be seen. I don't understand why train rides take so long, or why people seem unaffected, or why the punchline never seems to come. I don't know why staring into confusion makes me retreat.

I don't know how to see people, don't want to meet people, don't want to stop meeting people, don't want to extend hands to the next person and answer how-do-you-do's with I'm-fine-thank-you's when inside all I feel is the opposite of fine, the opposite of knowing. I don't know what to do, when everything becomes the opposite, and everyone is laughing at a joke I just don't get.

E.O. (enjoy, occasionally.)

Plotting the Shapes of Interplanetary Magnetic Field Lines
Thursday, January 9, 2003 : 12: 29 a.m.

Mostly dancing is all about the timing : like stumbling over in midwhisper, or bumping heads. The most beautiful human dance is getting up after falling down.

Should the mind be organized into neat yellow folders, labelled with black magic markers that dispel heady scents which, while strongly familiar, make you remember weakly.

Do you, like me, dive and dissolve into water as gracefully as ink, spreading like the thin ballet spider you know you are, afraid to look into mirrors and be blinded by something special?

...the sole traveling companion being dropped into coffeecups, stimulant galore. Your eyes being mints that taste so much like Love. Still wrapped in candy foil, stored in pockets, taken one by one. When you move you move me, don't you know it. When you cry my eyes sting. And like the connections you don't believe in, or are wary of, I sit in empty stairwells and draw them up carefully with rhymes and puns --- one question, one statement :

are hearts siamese twins? our hearts, siamese twins.

Can you imagine it's just another atlas, just another globe, just a map. Just a compass needle forever flirting with polarity. Can you imagine. Whole civilizations have been borne and have died and still your love that tastes like mint remain...a crudely folded paper with directions by a handwriting you can't read. But does it matter?

And wrapped in cloaks of dark night, there are lamp posts along the way, and from where I stand lost, why do I know all roads lead to you.

Can you imagine.

The Teaching Globe
WEDNESDAY > JANUARY 1 2003 : 3:15 p.m.

The advert for the product showed a picture of a globe, very colourful, with the following 3-easy step instructions:

(1) Place thumbs on each of the two locations.

(2) Rotate until thumbs touch horizon ring. Using ring as a straight edge, draw a line connecting the two points. Measure distance with scale on ring.

(3) The line drawn clearly shows the shortest route between two locations.

What can I do
Monday, December 30, 2002 : 9:09 p.m.

I can't even reach out

10
Wednesday, December 25, 2002 : 11:38 p.m.

(in no particular order)

Cigarette rolling paraphernalia. A cigarette roller, Samson tobacco from Holland, rolling paper from France, Gizeh filters from Germany, all purchased in Aqaba Jordan by my French boyfriend. I smoke the world, mes amies.

Freelance. The abrupt end of my nine-month stint as the starving artist has made me arrive to the conclusion that freelancing is, in one word, enlightening. In the best way ever.

Mahmud the Robot. My robotic companion for over a year. Is either grinning or gritting his teeth. Has fallen twice but doesn't mind. Goes Whirr! Whirr! Whirr! as he walks across my belly (his favourite place to walk), staining my flesh pink with heart-shaped metallic footprints.

BBC. Not CNN. BBC.

Adobo Republic delivery service. Their motorcycled delivery men all seem to have failed the compulsary Sense of Direction examination. We always get our cola free.

Margaritas before dinner. Two is enough. And then, only beautiful things appear.

The Cubao Compound (a.k.a. Prosperous Empire). Compound where the new SBW is. Empire in the making. I have magnificent friends.

Grandaddy's So You'll Aim Toward the Sky. So far, still my undisputed numero uno achingly beautiful late Sunday afternoon song.

SCUM Manifesto, by Valerie Solanas. And then she shot Andy Warhol.

errrr, yes, I know there are only 9 here. There were too many for number 10, so I decided not to include them.

No one was born with an accent
Tuesday, December 24, 2002 : 2:12 pm

Whenever Julien asks me, "Ca va?" over the phone I sadly realised that I only have two answers in French:

1. "Tres bien"
2. "Pas mal" (which I ripped off from one of our chats; automatic disqualification)

I climbed your arms and you moved away, new cavity moved into my heart today
Thursday, December 19, 2002 : 10:10 p.m.

The beauty is in the after-effects.

My friend decided to adopt droopy-faced Kala for a homecooked dinner. I sat on the kitchen stool, watching them putter around their kitchen. They've got a place for keeping the good frying pans. They know the best time to go to the market for the freshest vegetables. They know the name of the neighbor's dog. We sat down and while eating, they recounted for my benefit, in turns, about the suspected reincarnation of their pet cat to a fish to a lizard and back to a cat; finishing each other's sentences like periods and capital letters. It's nice to see other people happy. It's wrong that it's easier to feel sorry for yourself than to be happy for others, but sometimes you just want to stop seeing other people in their bliss.

I said thank-you for the meal it-was-delicious, and they bid me good-night, come-join-us-for-Christmas-dinner. I said I'd think about it, but we all knew I wouldn't come.

Halfway down the street I remembered leaving a cd on the couch, but before I could knock I saw them lying on their carpet, pointing at their ceiling, discussing animatedly; perhaps arguing, wallpaper or paint? The Christmas lights bounced off the girl's shiny blouse and suddenly I knew what I was looking at, it was Pure Contentment, not being anxious but not being relaxed either. You would suppose it would be boring, but it seems like, being with someone you want to be with is always your Home. Their sudden laughter made me afraid they would catch me absorbing their 'feeling'.

So I left. Left, leave, leaving, trying to find. The gradation has flattened into a monochrome. You abandon the steep decline for a plateau.

Sometimes, all your efforts to keep busy catch up and it feels easier to cry for home than go looking for it, because at this point, it is, realistically, the only thing you can do.