69

soulshaker

For the green of mind, I AM SORRY.
If your eyes are watering and your saliva levels (and God knows what else) are fluctuating, think again.
There is nothing green whatsoever about this entry.
Nothing.

There is one radio station that has incurred my ire ever since I started commuting from Cavite to Manila and back. This particular station plays all the corniest songs ever created, makes green jokes that are graphic and sexually suggestive from any angle of analysis, and is an expert at turning nice songs into delectable garbage by over-playing them. The worse thing is the fact that most public transpo vehicles tune in to it.
Kailangan pa bang i-memorize yan?
Whenever I sit down a bus, I cross my fingers and fervently wish that there is no radio playing. If there is, I hope it’s not Love Radio. Unfortunately, I am usually wrong. I retch when I hear the first strains of the novelty songs making their rounds in the ears of the listening masses. I prepare to throw myself out of the window when the jokes of Nicole Lihiyala and Kris Chupet (is that the right spelling? Who has a surname of “chupet” anyway?) are on air.
Due to my unending patience, though, I stand my ground. I plan my revenge and I will execute it when I become a corporate lawyer and control the stocks in the house.
I will ruin Love Radio.
I still get my moments whenever I pass by CCP, moments when I just want to bomb the Love Radio station. But someone told me that Joe Taruc broadcasts from the same building, so I control myself. I don’t want to ruin a respectable media man’s future because of my (eherm) charitable intentions.
*lalong titigas
ang masel namin
lalong hahaba
ang buhay namin
hanggang mag-69
ay malakas pa rin
ay swak na swak pa rin*
I sit in silence, try to drown out the detestable music with my MP3 player, and plot my sweet revenge.
But then the question.
Why do Filipinos buy that kind of radio station?
Is it because of the jokes? The cheap music? O korni lang ba talaga ang masang Pilipino by nature?
There must be a logical explanation. What would Emile Durheim have thought? Is this a demonstration of the social currents he ardently wrote about? How does a popular radio station like Love Radio influence the modern organic society? Does it promote anomie, catering mostly to the manggagawa and mala- manggagawa?
Questions, questions, questions.
Interesting answers.
Argh!
I am steeped in SocSci. Over-reading ang tawag diyan.
There’s only one solution.

Kukurukuku.
Bakit lagi siyang lumalayo?
Siguro kasi…
Uutot.



When I become a lawyer…

On Pity and Mashed Potatoes

soulshaker

I was walking along Taft the other day early in the morning. When suddenly, I saw Batman happily swinging towards mashed poatatoes.
Well, anyway, a poster of him.
I stopped in front of KFC Taft and drooled over the mashed potatoes peacefully sitting beside the bucket meal. This is the conversation as follows:
geek lizette: Oi, teka, mag-aral ka muna! Dun ka sa library! Test sa math!
glutton lizette: Di mo ba alam kung ano ang nakikita ko?
geek: uhm...mashed potatoes.
glutton: ano nasa taas?
geek: ahhh...gravy...
glutton: napapansin mo ba yung thermos nun sa loob?
geek: uhm...
glutton: ano uli sabi mo?
geek: Oo nga dali tumira ka na ng patatas!
In verbatim form. I ended up staying at KFC for an hour or so and eating cholesterol-rich french fries and hamburger, plus of course, the coveted butter-rich potatoes. Maybe it was because of Batman. Or maybe I'm just another stupid consumer lured in by highly effective ads into spending my money.
I know impulsiveness does not solve anything. It didnt help my (eherm) weight loss program, that's for sure. I wasted time I shouldve spent for studying that dreadful torture, math.
Next time, I shall control myself. I will not look at Batman whenever I pass by him in Taft Avenue.
Right.
*Sigurado ka ba sa sinasabi mo Ms. Minerva?*

There are parts of Manila where everything is clean and green, new and shiny. Where it's either historic, or modern, but as a whole, beautiful. Those parts are what the innocents see. By innocents I mean those people with big blue eyes looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses. Those people who have enough money to live comfortably inside their own little worlds, believing that the whole universe goes the same. They have problems, true, but their problems only involve their immediate circles and not the others outside them. They know the world is not perfect; but just as far as that.
They dont know HOW imperfect.
I used to be one of them. I still am, I guess, by still a large degree.
I havent seen the world. I havent seen all of Manila.
But Ive seen a part of it. The dirty, miserable part of it, where the denizens of Pedro Gil reside.
Ive seen children half-naked sleeping on the streets. Young men walking around with red eyes as if lost. The dirty women who seem to have no tomorrow.
One would impulsively feel sorry. In other words, pity. But it goes only as far as the feeling.
There would be no action.
Ako ay taong walang awa para sa mga mamamayan na tulad nila.
What I feel is a strong impulse to understand them. I want to know how they ended up that way. What made them into what they are now. They werent born that way.
Why? How?
And maybe I can help them.
But these are only words. Im not doing anything either, like the people who only feel pity. Empty, meaningless pity, erased from the heart the moment the object is out of sight.
Those people are not like mashed potatoes I can buy off, and go away happy and satisfied. I want to change the way they are living.
But how?
I will wait. See options which may come up. I have time.
I will not be impulsive.

Distansya

Mahabang panahon kaming nagsama. Sa iyakan. Sa korning tawanan. Sa kabagutan sa mundo, lalo na kay Ms. Vangie.Nung grumadweyt kami, maigting ang mga pangako na hindi magkakalimutan, at di mawawala ang pinagsamahan.
Hindi nga nagkalimutan.
Nasan ang pinagsamahan?
Nasa Netopia ako ngayon at mukhang may malawakang pagtitipon mamaya ang mga ka-batchmates ko sa Quantum. Nakita ko yung iba kanina, kasama ang matalik kong kaibigan. Pero iba na eh. Hindi na tulad ng dati.
Siguro sa akin lang yon. Pero nawawari ko na iba na talaga ang aming mga mundo. Iba na ang mga bagay na pinagtatawanan at kinababagutan. Wala na yung mga araw na lahat kami poot kay Ms Vangie at kay Ms Gigi at kay Sir Alex. Ngayon, kay Ms Zaragosa, Ms De Luna, Mr Magboo, at kung sino pang Honcio Pilato ang magaling na nagpapa-ikot ng aming mga klase.
Wala na yung mga araw na lahat ng joke naming bulok ay naiintindihan namin. Hindi na. Milyon milyon kasi ang mga maliliit na bagay na hindi na naikwe-kwento o nababaggit; hindi na na-eexperience ng sama-sama.
Iba na talaga. Ilang buwan lang ang lumipas, ngunit malawak na ang distansya.
Muli, siguro sa akin lang. Kunsabagay, di ko na sila masyadong sinasamahan. Nakupkop na ako ng UP. Unti- unti nang nagbabago ang mga paniniwala ko, lalo na ang aking pagkatao. Marami na akong napapansin na gusto kong tamain; marami akong gustong malaman at gawin pa.
Siguro ganun nga. Hindi ko na sila naiintindihan.
Hindi na nila ako naiintindihan.
Ang aming mundong ginagalwan ay hindi na Atheneum.
Lahat ay nagbabago.
Kasama ang mga pangako.
At kung distansya lang ang pag-uusapan...
Lahat ng pangako ay babagsak din sa kawalan.

in bogart's mind

soulshaker

bogart is friendly and nice. "SHE" does not bark at strangers. she lives a very simple life, eating from HER red dog dish and drinking from her yellow dog dish.
simple. red, yellow.
what is inside her head?
is it always food? or the time when her freedom from her red, belled leash will come? is it the belly-scratching when i come home?
or does she think about the world and who made it? does she talk to the dog of Aling Elsa? what do they talk about? do they want GMA to resign?
does she have regrets? maybe she was sorry she ate that dead bird the other day. or maybe when she didnt run away from my mom when it was her bath time. or maybe when she woke me up at two am just to look at me from the living room window.
do dogs cry? do they have feelings?
and this is the most important question of all.
what do dogs think of us complex, supremer humans?
maybe we are not complex at all. maybe we are not supreme at all. we pride ourselves in our capacity to think. but where are we now?
individually, maybe somewhere.
but as a nation?
it could never be a red dog dish and a yellow dog dish. for us people, nothing is simple. but look at bogart. she lives a happy life. if you look in her eyes, she seems wiser than everybody else. she doesnt speak, yet i hear her voice at two am, whining.
what is in bogarts mind?
what is her secret?
and maybe, she can share it and make the whole world happy.

Philosophy From A Lost Soul

soulshaker


I read a lot of books. Sometimes, I read too much, and what is the reality in the paper pages become the same for my world. Realities intermingle and become one, that sometimes it feels as if I am living in at least ten worlds at a given moment in time.
I read something from a cheap sci- fi paperback. I don't remember who wrote it, im not even sure if its a novel. but something written there struck me profoundly and haunts me still in the silence of the tombs inside my mind...
was this from plato?
in the ancient times, before man is as he is now, there only existed sexless humans on earth who are neither male nor female. it seems as if they were a combination of both. as humans do, from stark innocence they started to live sinful lives that angered the gods. the all- powerful beings sent a catastrophe, a violent storm (if i remember correctly), that split the sexless humans in half. in the confusion of the storm, the two halves of what was once one ran everywhere for cover, towards the other ends of the earth.
of the two halves, one became male, the other, female. ever since their separation, they searched for each other all throughout the four corners of the world. others died, and became reincarnated because his or her search wasnt over. completeness as everyone once knew it before the storm did not exist anymore.
if we follow this story to word, everyone living today is still searching for the the other half of his or her body, heart, and soul lost a long time ago...
how whimsical. romantic, you may call it. tragic, definitely.
true?
do you feel like you have everything? or is it there one tiny corner in the deepest recess of your heart that seems to have a hole in it?
what is your purpose?
what is mine?
they say love makes the world go round. living in a cynical world where hapiness and contentment is measured by how much money you have, love seems to be at the back of everyones mind. never a priority. always a responsibility. im in college right now where almost all people have fallen romantically in love. and got their hearts broken. their minds disillusioned. they seem to go together.
does the status quo always stand?
i have a dream. how martin luther-y.
i want to meet two people who is the half of one another. who embodies the so-called true love.
and maybe.
just maybe.
i will believe...