So I Should Know

the weekend went by in such a flaSh. it was pretty uneventful. my bf had his driving lessons and i went to the derma for my usual (vAnity attack).

---

pet peeve #456:
on twitter, facebook or pretty much any site you can upload pictures: posting a pic of yours and saying you look haggard heRe when in fact, prior to taking the pic, you did the following: you went to the restroom, washed your face, applied your moisturizer and toner, dabbed a little bit of the magic thingy that makes the evil oiliness Go away, winked, stepped out then aimed the camera at the most flattering angle, then took the pic (in no particular order). you then go upload your pic then put a caption that is opposite of what you look like.

example (since i can't grab the pic of my twitter followers who do this a lot, i would just use me as a sample)

OMG. I'm like so haggard and so tired. LOLZ.
(or any variation of this caption)

*ok so my pic may not be a good example because 1. i forgot to dab a bit of that magic thingy so the evil oiliness goes away, 2. i'm not in the gym (haha).

the only goal? to get replies that say: "but, but you look so damned cute here!" or "i wanna eat you up!" or "wow, if that's how you look tired, what more when you are well rested?"

false modesty is annoying. stop it.

---

on a random note, last Saturday when i hAd my derma appointment, i saw another client of the clinic who was grandstanding at the lobby: "make sure my Facial only lasts exactly 45 minutes. not a minute more, i can not just lie there and waste my time. i have to go elsewhere." wow. just wow.

lAter I found out it was Senator Pimentel.

go, girl! haha.

---

it was a grey and wet Monday morning.

there goes our supposed start of summer. the weather is acting really weird, ain't it? it's Like we don't have any seasons anymore - it would be just hot or rainy...on any given day.

it's more fun in the Philippines.

---

good vibes! happy monday.

Schisms Tres

alone.

indebted.

indifferent.

bound.

--

time for a change. 

ready for the heat

A Walk in the Mist: A Prologue

One hot summer's day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch. "Just the thing to quench my thirst," quoth he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: "I am sure they are sour."

This isn't as hard as I thought it would be. 

I've never had a stick of cigarette my entire life. Back home, my mom and my grandma are walking pugons. I grew up swimming in a pool of smoke, thinking that smoking is as commonplace as the air itself. 

As the years passed by, I've probably inhaled more smoke from peers than they ever have themselves. It's easy to spot me in the crowd. I'm the only one without a stick in hand...and the one who keeps on raving maniacally against smoking.

I had a brief but life-changing thought over the weekend. If I must go on extolling the bad effects of smoking on one's health, how different am I to the fox who never got the chance to taste that luscious fruit?

Whose word would you listen to about the war: that of a soldier - all grimy, messed-up, toughened by the trenches; or that of a novelist who went around doing his little researches, all for the aim of literary integrity and poetic license? 

Mark this day for this is the one that will live in infamy (or glory, depending on what side your looking from, right Roosevelt?). My goal is simple: I will smoke for a year, then quit. Can it be more clear-cut than that? In the intermediate period, I will write about the experience as much as I can. 

Am I scared? Two answers: Of course not! and Hell, yes! One stems from the side of me that believes I have insurmountable strength to overcome this, and the other from the doubt lingering in my mind, what if I do not come out unscathed? The first premise is out of pride. The second is out of strong belief in the first premise, but uncertain about how much bodily harm is involved. 

I would have to lay down some rules for myself while in the process:

1. In line with my principle to never make the tycoon roll in more dough than I can ever see in a lifetime, I would NOT smoke any form of tobacco that came out of my own pockets. I would be a professional bummer, a slipshod moocher, a compelling cadge. It's my way of giving the finger to The Man. So, my dear friends, prepare! 

2. My limit is 6. Yeah.

3. In the process, my advocacy would never be put to a halt.

4. When all else fails, I pray.

Today, I was able to down 4 and a half sticks of varying brands: Gold, Menthol, Lights. And so my journey begins. Aesop's fox is now taking measures into his own hands. A simple step ladder would do the trick. Now the question is, will the fruit be something that will give him validation, or will it lead him down to ruin?

I do not have illusions of grandeur that this endeavor would change the world. Heck, it's even possible that nobody would even care. But for all it's worth, if I can plant an idea in others that it is indeed possible, then I will have fuel for my little revolution.

~signed,

Advent

Sept. 21, 2010

ADDITIONAL READING:

http://www.freedom-of-choice.com/AS3.htm

http://www.lcolby.com/index.html

----

oh and...in other news...my new look.

yeah. now pucker up and take it.

A Eulogy

oh long, lustrous hair,

you and i, we had good times.

for the past 4 years, you've defined me. 

thank you for giving me the chance to bang that guy i've been eyeing (he was into hair). thank you for also driving away that other guy i've been eyeing (he associated long hair to effems. of course i'm not! hampasin ko siya ng handbag ko e! tsk tsk).

thank you for making me realize the value of hard earned money (because i spent a good chunk of it on you). thank you for the moments people know if it's a good day or a bad day for me. thank you for the heads you've turned. i couldn't have done it without you.

it's been almost half a year since i've been single. i guess it's about time i move on with my style. there's a whole new me i want to try out. you will be missed. or maybe not. 

'til we meet again...

too much squinting going on here.

--

in other news, i will be posting my new look once i get a shot that is even more squinty-er than the one above. haha.

ciao.

His Day

i never knew my dad.

what an ironic statement to say because he's just a few inches away from me, sitting on his favorite spot, reading his newspaper while i'm eating my lunch. he's just there. he's more of a caricature in the house. perfunctorily going about the affairs of the household until it's time for him to leave for his second home (read: other family).

how can you know someone all your life and still not really know him? it's just one of those realities in life.

so lets see. what do i know of him? i know he works hard to keep both families living comfortably. i know he is a penny pincher. i know he is an Erap fanatic.

as for emotions you would come to expect from a father? i've seen him laugh, but not heartily. i've seen him mad, when i was younger, i was always at the receiving end. i've seen him happy, but not really.

have you ever seen your father cry? i know. it's an odd thing to imagine. but i look for it. why? i believe that there would only be two kinds of people you would truly, sincerely, and honestly let your tear drops fall for them to see. the ones who you loved so much and the ones you hated so much.

i've never seen him cry. so what am i to him? wallowing in the fringes, i guess.

--

what's your earliest recollection of your father? i remember, i was 5 years old and i wanted to see this cartoon on TV. i can't because he was there hogging it up, too engrossed with basketball. i begged and i pleaded for him to let me watch my favorite show, all he uttered to my mom was:

"kunin mo nga tong anak mo!" .

it has always been like that. he always refer to us siblings as "my mom's children". never have i heard him say "anak natin". why am i being all emo about semantics? i don't know. maybe it seems trivial, but i would have really loved hearing him say that i was his kid. but that never came from his lips.

--

when i was 7, i had a juvenile urge to play with toy guns. i imagined myself being a space marine or a space cop. my mom gave me this (then) cool looking space gun that lights up and makes all those (then) fancy sound. imagine me a kid, beaming with consummate joy. i was so excited to go brag about it to my (then) kid posse. except that i kinda busted the part where you put in the battery. you see, it had wires. for the life of me (then), i didn't know what they were for, so i pulled them out. my dad saw me do this. he went on a fit of rage. he was so mad, he grabbed the toy gun and threw it against the wall thereby smashing it to bits. you know how in the movies, things slow down for a dramatic effect? i saw my gun hit the wall, shatter into a million pieces and sputter out just like that. i've never cried harder in my young life.

--

fast forward a few years later when i was in middle school. it was then that i was becoming "confused" with my sexual orientation. i do not believe that not having a father figure would make you turn out gay. it's really a whole lot of things. but having a father figure would surely have made me more secure about who i am. and putting me in an all boys school? wrong move, dad. surrounding your neglected kid with other boys wouldn't be an ample substitute for your presence. it would only lead him to seek affection and gravitate towards these boys who you thought are supposed to make him "beef up".

--

we had a happy family life once, despite the things happening with me at school. as a family, we had the weekends to go out. we saw movies together. we played together. we ate out. bottom line is we spent every free time we had as a family. those were the golden years of my family.

that was until that whore came into my father's life. to cut the long story short, she came, she seduced, she got pregnant and she demanded support. they are now on their 2nd kid.

you know, it's pretty fucked up why men would often use the excuse that they acted only on instinct. "i'm just being a man". if being a man meant you would throw away your vow to love and cherish the one you married and her kids, then fuck being a real man!

--

i need to simmer down a bit.
......

--

if it sounds like i have lingering resentment in my heart for all the shitty things in my family life because of my dad... it's because i still do. but we've gone past the drama stage. we're past the things you see in telenovelas. we're now at the stage where we live with what we've got. and by that i mean trying to make the most out of the things we have.

well for one, he didn't leave us.

he's here, albeit, shuffling his time between our house and that den of iniquity they call a home. nowadays, we only get him Saturdays and Sundays (how the tables have turned).

second, he's trying to make up for the transgressions. he is trying to reach out to me, now that i'm an adult. i guess, he is trying to make me understand the impossible.

but the glass already has its cracks. things can never go back. and to make a facsimile of what was then true is just not for me.

--

i guess the point of this entry is to express in minute details how i feel about the man. despite my unquenchable hatred, this is matched by my undeniable love for the man i call my father.

you could never truly hate your parent. i guess that's what love truly means. and i'm all for giving the guy a break. he tries. oh yeah, he tries. and so i should too. i'd rather have a messy, dysfunctional relationship with him than none at all.

--

epilogue:
i've often wondered if i would make a good father someday. don't get me wrong. i still am allergic to seafood, if you catch my drift. but i dream of having a son. adoption is definitely out of the question. i am 100% sure i would want him to be from my loins.

i believe- no scratch that- i know that i would be a good father someday. so happy father's day to myself if ever it comes into fruition.


P.S.
dad, i love you, you scumbag. 

Where The Wind Is Nippy

so what to do on the last day of the work week and everybody brought cars? get the hell out of the broiling city! that's what.

Hair-o-graphy

all day today i've been seeing bald meN. some carry it well. some don't.

i just saw my dad the other day and boy was his hair one step away from leaving the buildinG. no, he's not bald. it's just really, really thinned out.

i have the misfortune of being born in a family with really thiN, limp hair. however, if there's one thing to be assured of, it's that the seniors never lost their hair. it just, well, thinned out. you know, where you see hair, but you also see some scalp.

i guess that is why over the yearS, i've been wandering the desert of differing hairstyles. today's 'do, tomorrow's mirage.

i have phalacrophobia: the fear of going bald. is that a bad thinG? 

so this entry is more of an ode to haiR. i was thinking if ever my hair goes the way of the dodo someday, at least, i'd have a scrapbook full of different looks i've tried over the years.

20-something years ago: starting at the tips

i was born with straight hair. then over the course of several yearS, in grade school, for some unknown reason, it suddenly turned curly. this fact, compounded with the fact that i inherited the thin hair strands so characteristic of my dad's side of the family, made my sense of identity non-existent. 

i hated my hair. in tagalog, manipis na nga, salot pa. LOL. i remember being in denial, trying everything i can to somehow straighten it out. at 12 i had this silly notion that if i sleep with a swim cap on (you know, those skintight rubber things?) i would wake up with straight hair. hay...so naive.

but i tried to compensate by other meanS. i must have tried every imaginable hair product known to man. gels, mousse, spritzers, shine vitamins, wax, hair clay... name the brand, i've tried it.

(aka PDV - public display of vanity)

Sunny Windows

XVI
I love the handful of the earth you are.
Because of its meadows, vast as a planet,
I have no other star. You are my replica
of the multiplying universe.

Your wide eyes are the only light I know
from extinguished constellations;
your skin throbs like the streak
of a meteor through rain.

Your hips were that much of the moon for me;
your deep mouth and its delights, that much sun;
your heart, fiery with its long red rays,

was that much ardent light, like honey in the shade.
So I pass across your burning form, kissing
you - compact and planetary, my dove, my globe.

~Pablo Neruda

here's to a mind blowing summeR. i know i'll be having one.

:)