Weekend

28 May 2014

‘Twas past 5 in the morning as my phone’s digital clock said. The meal I was about to have awaits me until after I have finished preparing it.

Rice first. Scoop from a yellow sack three gantas of raw milled rice. Go through the notions of washing them. Don’t wash them too much, they lose their nutrients. Do wash them well or they’ll spoil faster. 

Washing’s done as I strain with my cupped left hand rice wash water. To leave rice on the stove as I bathe is not a practical option. Stove’s tricky to use in cooking, it cannot thrive on divided attention or I’ll ingest, masticate and digest the consequences. I don’t look forward to eating burned rice as I did last night. The rice went out white and warm, without a hint of burning this morning.

The saucepan’s being heated. So is the residue oil from the cook out not past 8 hours ago. Salted chicken legs are swathed in scrambled raw egg, pre-seasoned with more salt and fine black pepper. They dive but barely move in a shallow food keeper where they were shaken with bread crumbs. Oil’s fizzing hot, in the chicken goes while I, get oil bombs. They are very adept at hitting me as I hide from them. How sentient and precise those burning oil droplets were! Suffer for beauty has been uttered, so I daresay, suffer for cooked food.

The mistake I committed is very clear to me as I leave the room after my bath. Chicken drumstick’s black. The stove’s knob was subsequently turned counterclockwise to OFF. I brought above the still hot coils the melted honey and margarine leftover from the last dish I had.

I hoped it wouldn’t beg for salt as last night’s batch did. I ate all five of those mentioned glazed chicken in one sitting. Still, it explained via my palate how Bonchon was able to render a shiny edible patina on their fried chicken.

Alas, I had burnt chicken glaze atop charred fried chicken skin for a delayed breakfast. In the bus, I turn my emotions off, the candy crush maneuver setting it. Emotions are now off, another day’s just being geared on.

The workplace bundy informed me I was 2 minutes shy of being late. Put my hair on a bun before I get into the lab. For a change, my bladder demanded that it needed voiding out. What an exciting source of variety!

After breakfast at the workplace, I work. I work and work. I don’t stop to unwind or to take it easy. I moved and moved as if my very breath depended on it. If I stopped, I felt like I would drop dead. Working is my life now. There has been no life apart from work. It has been the most effective distraction from the unsettling worry and unending anxiety. For months now, it no longer is my anodyne. It is now a prescription drug I keep on taking to my own demise. I thought the anxiety, the emptiness and the injustice and their resulting anger camouflaged in sadness could not get worse. It did.

I’m back to square one, that pitch black space that stretches far and wide. That void is a square, my attempt to set boundaries on that unlimited and incompletely explored place, applying a bit of unverified definition to that wherein nothing could be certain. My being there in particular is not certain. What if I’m only postulating that it existed?

It was all empty save for pain. Pain is not an emotion, it is a sensation. It won’t leave.

It wasn’t being like somebody else that I wanted. I do not envy that some get by with doing very much less than little yet receiving more than all that I’ve worked for years to gain in wealth. I do not envy that others spend the time allotted for work to enjoy themselves at the cost of not fulfilling their responsibility other than it being printed in paper and reflected in their pay checks, while I labor to no end that every mark on my accomplishment report was not born of ink but by blood. I do not envy the beneficiaries of a system that rewards indolence and gross selfish abusiveness and grants impunity to the indolent but charismatic. The resonant scab of pain wasn’t for indignation on injustice; life’s not fair.

I will tell you what I envy: I am here, by myself, all but an onlooker on the intimacy among peoples. It stings. It is that openness and respect and ease of being before another person that I envy.

And, the zombies of my communication skills became vivacious: How would I rest assured when my conversations are either imperatives or I am discounted even before I speak because all other people want is to be listened to and to emerge as right? How would I speak my mind when I am met by an applause of silence, a waterfall of non-response and even a legion of ridicule? Even before I speak I am made to feel that I am wrong and do not deserve to be listened to. My ego can only carry on speaking to people in support of their need to be right for a time, not ALWAYS. I CAN’T ALWAYS GIVE. REPLENISH ME TOO. Why would I talk my thoughts out loud when talking to myself in my head is filled with unquestionably less rejection? So I tread on the polite interrogative or that honest or factual declarative and watch intimacy sweep the lives of everyone around me. I will laugh at their laughter and keep wondering when it would come when I am not alone but when I am together with someone, anyone, without being a burden. I do feel the unease of other people when they talk to me. When would it be us instead of them then me? Intimacy will keep on sweeping by me. When would it sweep me?

The day keeps on getting by, it is persistent.

The metal edge of the cupboard door slams between my eye. I thank the Lord I didn’t fall off the chair I was standing on when I was struck.

I burned my viand. I thank the Lord I had something to burn as I cooked as it is extremely difficult to burn water.

I was eating before my workmates undercover as I munch on blackened chicken. I thank the Lord only my viand was burnt and the rice wasn’t charred.

Both my shoulders are heavy and tensed from working. I thank God I feel pain on my shoulders and its adjacent back muscles, I have arms and shoulders to sense pain from than not to feel pain from them because I do not have them.

I’ve been told that what I am toiling for has no purpose at all. Detecting O antigen suspects for diarrhegenic E.coli is futile in outbreaks unless they are EHEC suspects. Identifying E.coli serotypes simply doesn’t count – it is not reported, barely few people now it, those who know it ignore and forget it, those who are infected by it get better without treatment, treatment for E.coli morbidities are argued as similar and nobody even uses this data for research purposes. What am I doing it for then? I thank the Lord I am doing faithfully utterly pointless things, I can tell Him in prayers that I have been faithful.

I am very tired already from having to work hard. I thank God I have work that gives me pay for what I do and He has given me an opportunity to be faithful.

My mom asks me for money and if I give her the amount she needs, I’ll have nothing more left. I thank the Lord He lifts my selfishness off that I could give to my mother without holding back. Now I could sit back and watch Him provide for me beyond what my strength has conferred me.

I hate the Lord because a lot of people are debilitated by emotional pain and suffering and that I strongly and deeply feel sad for them. I thank the Lord that I can be honest with Him. I thank Him because I can lift my eyes away from my suffering to see the suffering of other people.

I pass by Quirino to witness teenage kids sitting on the sidewalk, backs on me, as they bathe. I think that I should be grateful I have the privacy to bathe on a bathroom replete with its conveniences but I do not feel grateful. I feel guilty for not being grateful. I thank the Lord I have a morally vigilant conscience, I will hesitate to sin even in thought.

It has been extremely difficult for me to be at ease and to be happy. I thank the Lord that I am alive to feel this way.

I cannot see the reason why I keep on living day by day when I live to a new day where I will only bleed more. Why can’t I just die now? I thank the Lord He has a plan for His own purposes and I am but some transitory puff of breath exhaled to play a part in it.

I live daily either in terrible emotional pain or in a pit of empty existence. I thank the Lord that all things pass. This too shall pass.