The beast of absence

29 April 2013

Hunger is a human-altering phenomenon. What would drive otherwise moral people into filching bread if not extreme hunger? In what instance would people resort to cannibalism as was reported in real life stories from plane crash survivors? What but hunger proves the carnality of the cultured and sophisticated human being regardless of age? (Fine, the anorexic and the clinically impaired from sensing hunger are granted as special exceptions.)

Only when I was experiencing extreme hunger did I know what being impoverished meant. Objections from other nationalities would not be much for my generalization that abundance of food has, for ages, been an indicator of wealth.  The control on food, the type and the amounts of it that we consume, has become more and more a lucrative profession and business for many. It is food that makes me want to live amidst my sullen petulant state. Before, I said I lived waiting for death, longing for it actually with the dawning of a new day. The tug from the need for nourishment told me, “Hey, don’t disregard me. I’m pesky and you have to drive me away every time I come back.” I had another to think about other than waiting for death, finding something to feed on.

I was content with living my life, subsisting on small shop meals and spending, Php 18 per meal thrice a day, so that would be Php 54. Or, on weekends, consuming three packs of instant noodles for every single cup serving of rice was all well and good. With Sam around, it just wouldn’t do. I knew I had to be rich. I have to earn more money instead of using my brain’s juices on mulling over and over on how I could make a single output, the only one that’s expected of me from work, right. When I was so in the sad zone, I was irrational and was blinded from practicality; thinking nothing of saving and investing but spending on whims and fancies, desperately buying what I thought was happiness. Now, when I feel that churning and get to hear the growling of that empty covetous monster that hunger is, it was a message. I really have to get rich. Hunger is a motivator that fuels me to dream. Hunger is a force that develops in me a craving. I am scared. Is this not greed? Is this not an itty-bitty symptom of avarice? I am more afraid of sin, or at least my hazy perceptions of them.

Our teacher in Mito and Alamat, Ms. Odal-Devora, implanted somehow in my consciousness, through the stories she obliged us to read, how the requirement of sustenance from food was bondage. In one of the folk stories which I cannot recall the title or the main character, the male protagonist, out of an illogical reason or some unbelievable deus ex machina, became a god and in the process was disemboweled. He became free and god-like in the sense that he did not need food to live. He could eat if he wanted to but food was not vital for his existence.

I fear hunger more than death. Death to me is a shadow, something that comes after you or before you, intangible but familiar. Hunger proves itself different. It is persistent and it cannot be silenced until you give in to its demands.

 It is alright for me to be hungry as long as I would have the means to satiate the demand. The scenario that your dwindling reserves of nourishment are not enough to fuel your brain for an inspired idea to obtain food or rouse some hormones to procure provision is what I never want to have to go through in a consistent basis again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                    

Dazed Manifesto

25 April 2013

There’s a high that comes with being with people you’re very comfortable to be with. After I have been late for picking-up Sam at Batangas port she ended up waiting there for me for two hours under the summer heat, we had a dispute again today. This is living as the James Bond movie, The Day is Not Enough says, you haven’t lived yet unless you’ve lived life on the edge.

 

I wasn’t late at all. I woke up at the same time as Sam was leaving from home, 7 am and I still had to wait on Gab to finish her toilette. As a gracious host I shared and bought siomai as our viand. Four orders at that. I was on the mood to spend for Sam. I ended up leaving the condo past nine and Sam was on her boat at 8. I was aware she’ll surely have to wait on me as I was on the bus queue.

The fact that I left her on her own was a blow for me. It is her first time to travel on a boat on her own, travelling to Manila in preparation for being a freshman in college. When I was in her place, dad accompanied me. I made her wait. My heart felt that arrow of bitterness. An ice of guilt was splicing me. I failed her just as I was failing at most of my endeavors.


Mom and I were screaming over the phone. These are my vital relationships, splintered. And I was still not doing well in work. I had no set of close, reliable friends I could frequently bother. I was bombarding Gab with my monologue of self deprecation. There was no time for me to communicate with people and to keep close to my friends and cousins. Nothing. When I talk to people, they tend to keep away from me. They were all closing in on me at the same time. I was beleaguered.

The bus television blared on a movie about the US president acting independent, valiant, honorable, courageous and humble, being the hero who actually played the undisputable protagonist. Some people just have everything going their way especially in the movies. My only responsibility for the day was to pick Sam up and early for her stay in Manila before she takes her college entrance exam in TUP. I blasted it off.

Sam is a very amazing kid. She’s grown so much that most of the time I feel the chasm lodged by the time when we were apart. She remained ever obedient though and more responsible. She cooked meals for me. Just last night she cooked fried rice for me. And this lunch, she prepared an egg salad. She also did the laundry yesterday aside from her daily household chores.

Though I do not mean to, at times I was irritated with my mom’s line of questioning when she calls. Sam wasn’t as tolerant as I was. She actually let mom know that she was annoyed. I felt guilty whenever I was irked by my mom. She’s my mom; why would I raise my voice against her on trivial stuff?

Sam was a fresh flavor for my week. Micai was too. She treated me out to ice cream and sent me links to two personality tests  at enneagram and rheti where I was type 4 and INFP respectively. Aids also received a visit from me this morning and since Monday, ate Ching was back at her post but I haven’t seen her until Tuesday.

As I reread through these set of sentences, I noticed that my sentence construction is monotonous. Variety is lacking, I appear to not know how to write otherwise. I am getting lazy with writing. Why?

This day, I redeemed from the lobby Ling’s mail for me which according to the Manila Philpost stamp, arrived in the country last April 23.

With all the beauty that there is in the world, why should I fret? I say this and my mind counters the statement. It constantly forgets. My mind mulls over topics I do not even know, it makes me tired beyond my usual schedule, emptying my energy reserves with only a few tasks. Before, it was very difficult to exhaust me into surrendering to sleep if I still have to finish something. Now, I only had dinner and my next agenda would be sleep already.

Another strange fact is that I find it hard to remember things lately. My mind is usually confused and unsettled and ever shifting. I know I am not in my optimal working condition. How may I get a vacation from myself?

Hear Ye!

18 April 2013

I feel like my school girl self again. I was happy and totally enjoying myself even when I was wrong so many times. I thought I could surely do well with admin work than my current job. Even when the BSPH summa cum laude standing student was there during the interview and she was turned down in favor of two others who were more, reality wise, adept at being vocal, I knew that it was a battle of guts. This was a battle of ideas and impositions. They were teaching us big time about what needs to be done, on what we should be doing. 

Prayers were doing me good. I will definitely see Grace again soon. She would be the voice that makes me hear the voice of truth better. We will be together again and I will be replenished by human companionship.

For so long I have been reticent not by choice but by force. I had to stay quiet. Talking wasn’t simply a utility or our means for legalistic and technical connection. It is a bond of truth and notoriety. Whether it be used for good or bad, talking, even when you know no one’s listening, is a therapy of sorts. Shrinks earn their living by the afflictions of us lesser humans who at the moment of therapy appear not as humans but merely test subjects.

How I wish the pace of my life was wholly dictated by me; not under the mercy and whim of somebody else. The workplace was teaching me one thing – that I had to fight and that I have to use my voice. We would talk easily and lightly and converse over a cup of brewing tensions and heated passions. The undercurrent of tensions is high wire enough that I know how it is to look at peoples’ faces and know how mine would look while watching someone hanging in a trapeze exhibition except that the circus performer knew exactly what to do and how to make it perilously safe. I was walking without training of sorts. And the high wire wasn’t only taut wire. It was electrocuted wire, shocking me at each step. I burned out far too early and I was told more than once that I would age fast. Let me. Aging fast meant dying faster. I cherish death without abhorring life.

I feel it in my veins that I was someone who didn’t love winning. I was someone who didn’t want to lose. Grace was wonderful to point out to me and to detect that I was feeling as if I was never doing anything good or that I was not doing enough. She’s right. Maybe based from her experience or maybe because of her discernment. How will I know? It’s alright with me even if I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to answer all the questions there is in life.

I was enjoying myself, basking in the pressures of work without developing a headache. My headaches are stress-induced ones and the only way to counteract these tensions, as I was told by too many people already, was to not think about work as much as I did to the point that even if it’s the only thing I’m thinking of, I’m not doing it right. The mind works dreadfully amazing, superior but at the mercy of hormones.  Fight or flight impulses were this primitive and this guttural. Unhealthy thinking causes your brain to work faultily.

I am trying to strike a healthy work-life balance. And that meant seeing people and actually communicating with them. So what I did today, since no one speaks to me constantly in amounts of speech I wanted to have, was to find actively people to talk to. I used my Facebook account for an hour and had an hour and a half’s worth of phone calls. Only when I am inspired and at peace would my mind stop fretting like a dancing bean. Peace was something no money could buy. I will not let anyone rob me of it. I will preserve it better than pickles or holiday fruit cake.

Let me blog and hopefully my blog would be my mouthpiece where no one would censure me and where I would most feel free. This is my channel of freedom, the kingdom of my thoughts where what I say never was wrong especially since no one comments. No comments or commendations. A life like that was what I wanted to live. But I see clearly that that life would fall. A life like that would not progress at all. It will remain at that same level. If people were to live like that where everyone did as they desired, wouldn’t that be anarchy? 

A comfort zone and a zone of conquest are not named as such for nothing. In your comfort zone, you need not expend extra efforts because there you are at ease. In your zone of conquest, you really have to prepare, train and strategize, not knowing what’s out there to come and get you.

Stuck

11 April 2013

This is how it is to always be wronged in whatever you do. I am getting a good grasp of living that way. It is not my fault that I think differently from those of the team. But because I have subscribed myself in this working sphere, of course, I should attune to the music that’s playing. I have come to terms to accept myself no matter how off my thinking seems to be compared to theirs. If I really want to perfect what I do, I have to accept the intrinsic component of having to be wrong big time. The problem is I also persecute myself. Please hear me out reader. Whatever happens, do stand by yourself even in repentance or humiliation. Never abandon yourself.

The mistake that’s lashing out at me is that I’m living only one life, a life dedicated to working all the time. I can’t let the thought of work go as easily especially when I’m not doing well at it. I keep on thinking about it until it is resolved and it usually doesn’t. Since I keep on seeing the loose ends in a tangled skein of yarn, I am driven crazy.

Many are the matters I am grateful for. These things are consciously acknowledged but not taken in by my whole being to be celebrated. Perceiving and processing logically certain matters does not translate to doing them immediately or acting upon them as we supposed we should. Through this mumbo-jumbo I entertained that this was how it was to live through hell to risk experiencing heaven (not that that actually happens). I saw how I was very inadequate and ill-equipped for the professional world. My heart is weak and so is my resolve. I allow things to unfold on their own, without any effort on manipulation from my side. During these moments was I acquainted to the series The Game of Thrones. It made me see how explicit violence and sexual themes no longer held their impact through often exposure and, borrowing from the field of science, desensitization. There, peoples’ allegiances are not absolute and trusting directly translated to hurting. The build up for the first two episodes was slow for me but eventually it picked up pace.

For all those times when I was immune to the beauty of life and all that there is to make me question why I feel that bad when I’ve been given this much, I was undergoing a process. Child-likeness would diminish from me. The propensity by which I carry my responsibility, especially at work undermines my productivity. Our summer interns, senior PH students for next school year, started working this week. They revived in me a sense of being, not a sense of doing and meeting other people’s expectations. It was coming hard on me since I did my best but it always was not good enough regardless of the efforts and time put into it. A tick exists. I should point it out and deal with it at once. Passion and effort in tandem do not fail easily. I am being stretched. It’s a necessary pain for an irreplaceable gain.