antecoitus

Warsaw, Easter 2007

W and his dad

It’s appalling how similar we are to our parents whether or not we try to be, whether or not we’ve spent our whole lives with them. It might be a form of subliminal osmosis. We were in WAW this Easter with W’s dad’s family. His parents have been divorced since he was nine, right before the Velvet revolution and the time he moved to PRG with his mom. He has lived with his mother for most of his young life and all of his young adult period, until he met me. That probably explains his astounding way of connecting with a woman in a relationship; sometimes he has a more respectable intuition than me. Like kids of divorced parents he spent time with both parents separately and missed out much of it with his dad. It made me wonder if he has any bitterness in his life because of this before, but he told me simply, that he has never been wanting for love from either of his parents and he still considers himself lucky. 

Both W’s best friends have babies now. One is six months old and the other is yet to be born. Mateusz’s and Anya’s daughter is simply delightful, you always have this feeling that she wants to blurt something out but at the last minute decided not to. Her face shows every little emotion she can contain in her tiny breast - farting, taking a dump, hunger. Then finishes off with arms stretched in the most adorable “ahhh-ggooo”. It’s not even a word but I well up every effin’ time she says it.

W came to me in the kitchen and said, ‘Can you believe that after all these years of being so independent minded, peer pressure is finally affecting me. Now. At 27. Do you think we should give in to expectations this time? (smirking, seeing that I have my mouth unconsciously open)’.

‘Give me four maybe five more years, and…’

He gave me hug. ‘You look like someone who’s not able to pay her mortgage this month, praying for time’. 

- Jan (W’s little brother) and I won against W, 6-4 in football.

- Walking in the forest with the kids

- Fixing the fireplace and keeping fire at the guest flat where we stayed in.

- Time turning ever so slowly.

- W changing a flat tire with 20 shots of vodka in his blood when I encountered what looked like a shrapnel while I drive us to a friend’s place

- The Polish Easter tradition – blessing of Easter food and eating all day on Sunday.

- The Holy Sacrament guarded by firemen.

- Family. Even if I’m far away from my most loved ones.

Bits, pieces and one-liners

- It’s funny how PRG looks a lot more beautiful now that I know of the big possibility that I’m moving out and into a new position in another country.

-          PRG has taken me in, loved me and created the most hilarious yet most beautiful twists and jokes so far in my life.

- I’m still doing at least a couple of months of teaching this spring. Fate is not as nice to those poor people who’ll be hearing me bluff about economics in business; all I’m going to tell them is assume, follow your gut and never assume that heads cannot roll.

- I hate myself for not coming home again. I know other people hate me out there too, I can’t blame them. Unfortunately things did not fall into place as I planned; I’m still fighting to at least be at my high school reunion.

- I adore my two girls here so much – Rina and Elaine – I have to say thank you for reminding me that a good night out (which is equivalent to a wonderful dinner, two bars, several cocktails and non-stop laughter below the Tine) will always be better than a collagen faux fix at getting you to stay young.

- Paul Oakenfold made me high with nothing but my own endorphins and Judge Jules blew my mind. Paul’s set on Saturday was great but something we predicted, Judge Jules’ though was the one that made me pour my redbull and vodka drink all over arm because I plead temporary insanity. You can see how much he enjoyed doing his set, the standard 7 minutes progressive and then a trance break was a fulfillment of expectations. That and what followed really made my night.

- Wojtek’s mom’s 60^th birthday celebration was filled with a lot of older people, great live music – piano, guitar and accordion and good food even if W was repeatedly sneezing beside me.

- I’m in WAW again thinking of getting room service and… tomorrow. I left W with meds, a cold towel on his head and lemon and tea.

I
just checked out of the Hyatt in w a r s a w, killing
time before I have to go to the airport back to p r a g u e. I figured I still have a couple of
hours so I sit down and think about the schedule that will harass me for the
next three months. The company has asked me to help out in a project in w a r s a w and still handle the other job in p r a g u e which means shuttling back and forth between
the two cities every week. I’ll be moving to r o t t e r d a m soon, I believe, uprooting myself from the comfort zones I have not easily
built in p r a g u e along with the life of the man I’m currently with. It’s like starting over
without coming out of heartbreak, yet with a higher propensity to consume
ridiculous amounts of nostalgia and at bad times, alcohol. Most of the time, I
act brave even when I’m metaphorically shitting myself from fear of the changes
I make. Thinking whether they are too fast, too relentless, too focused. I
don’t want to grow old bitter, thinking that I did not make the journey slowly
enough to smell the roses and piss in the bushes. But I guess neither life’s
pace nor the quality of your journey can ever be compared to any person sitting
next to you. Some people want to drive their car, quickly and safely or slowly,
appreciating the country side. (That goes without saying; you won’t really
enjoy riding shotgun, with me on the wheel). How you want to live or have lived
through your experiences can only be measured by your ability to smile without
trying.

 

Staring
into space, I notice a woman looking at me, probably noticing that I have
shifted at least seven times in my seat — probably scared too with the
possibility that I have some psychosis. I’m thinking of the months ahead, of
the fun and the recurring migraine I expect. I hopelessly wish to be fifteen
again, when my only worry is how to get out of the high school beauty pageant I
was forced into, the scariest, most surreal part of my adolescence – only next
to being dead sure that I was spontaneously bleeding when I got my first
period. Then it came to me. Tomorrow all
my friends from high school are coming together, ten years from graduation
night. On that graduation night I didn’t shed a tear, not because I would not
miss those people but because I was excited about what’s next. I can be an
insensitive prick and I’m the least thoughtful person I know. I’m crying inside
now, not happy with myself because I didn’t get a ticket back to m a n i l a in time for it.

I
was always a cynic when it came to reunions. I thought people came to measure each
other up, to see who got what they wanted and who got what they deserved. I
mean, after years of being separated from all the drama of growing up, of
wanting to be good enough, or of simply belonging, not to mention the years of
finally getting over adolescent acne and awkwardness — why go back? I roamed
the streets of SIC asking people to either — fall in line quietly, remove any
form of jewelry attached to any part of their body or measuring their skirt
length with a ruler. I lurked the corridors with a persistent breakout, lanky and
with a constant clumsy feeling of being too tall and hair that would never
cooperate.

 

To
me high school was a blur of classes, spiritual recollections and retreats
where we outdo each other at crying, first Wednesday and Friday masses, chats in
the auditorium, the corridors and even the chapel, flag ceremonies, talking,
laughing and snorting with Jeje, my best friend of more than two decades about
anything and nothing at the quadrangle while munching on hotdogs on sticks. I
remember the GIs I used to conduct which I think then were so serious and now I
think are a hoot. Those many precious times when I confiscated walkmans and
extra necklaces which most of you hid behind the Manila paper stuck to the
bulletin board – a place people thought the SBO would never look, I used to
secretly admire the sheer sophistication and cunning of it. I confess to turning
my eye away occasionally from little violations, pretending I didn’t know about
them. I have a lot of times re-lived in my head those many nights we’ve spent
in the nearest fast food joints talking about the booboos we’ve made in our
latest attempt at making a real high school play or those field trips where you
pass around a bag of chips in the bus during a field trip and it comes back to
you empty. I can’t remember how many times I’ve seen where Jose Rizal lived. I
mean how many times do we really need to go to c a v i  t e and stop to buy buko pie in l a g u n a?

 

We
assured each other in the corridors that friendships will never end and
exchanged letters we wrote every night, folded so artistically that I have
never been successful at refolding a letter back to its original shape after I
read one. I have, a couple of times, begged the wonderful manongs and manangs
to please fetch a shoe which fell into one of the ledges of the building on the
third floor and not knowing how to answer them when they ask ‘how the hell the
shoe got there in the first place’.

 

I
was amazingly proud of our batch, when we won the first cheering competition we
ever joined. That is, we won third place when freshmen are supposed to always
be on the fourth. I obsessed about how we will manage to tear the enormous
Japanese paper we broke through which was hanging from the first floor and how
we will get through the whole routine with voices that can take a lead in the
American tale, we sounded like little baby mice on Prozac and red bull. I’m
proud of every performance I have been in with my batch mates and I profusely
apologize to those I have shouted at or even cussed at. I guess nobody ever
really got mad at each other and instead we joke about everything that went
wrong after.

 

I
reckon what made batch 97 really special is that I’ve never seen us try to be
something that does not come naturally. We never tried nor were we ever proud
about being called geeks, nor we ever took pride at being notorious. We never
labeled ourselves because the differences and the respect we had for these
differences was the thing that made us unique. We never needed to call what we
have… something, we just knew that it was.

 

Now
hearing news from friends, checking friendster accounts (yes I am a sucker), or
bumping into some of my former school mates – I know that almost everyone is
either here or somewhere else, hard-core career people or happy mothers and
wives or both, entrepreneurs or licensed professionals. All of us are kicking
back at life with enough skill using all that we have experienced – most of
those lessons I believe we have subliminally learned from high school when we
weren’t being taught. As I write this, I am with a gin and tonic specifically
in a whiskey glass shaving seven minutes of my life with a cigarette… I didn’t
grow up perfect. I made mistakes and hurt people and I bet the Sisters would
not be proud of me cutting someone in mid sentence during a meeting when my
impatience is getting the better of me, I can be at times cocky and arrogant.
Still I try to be an honest, decent person everyday (though I still sometimes
have this paranoia that if I wear extra jewelry a nun will appear outside my
flat with a violation report hehe, kidding) That I think is what I have brought
from spending four years with those people from high school.

 

Remembering
all of that is funny, weird, scary, heart warming and downright cool. And I
have to say that you guys kick ass.

 

Yesterday,
I got a call from one of my most memorable teachers in high school, the first
one who made me feel like an adult instead of a fourteen year old who did not
know her behind from her face. Ms. Gatmaitan or Ms. G as I fondly call her
asked me if I was coming. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her I wouldn’t be, as
much as I couldn’t respond to the core group members on the reunion letters
about my presence there. The core group I believe has done an amazing job with
the event. The people who have threatened my life, along with my family’s at
times, if I would dare not to come are —

Kate,
who was one of the prettiest girls from the batch who didn’t ever have to try
but only one of the few who never tried hard to impress has maintained her
winning personality and her shrill, giggly charm. Lei, the girl who I remember
was always a demure quiet beauty, whose face as one teacher said in one of our
classes in Grade 2 would break hearts — has the persistence of a raging bull
with this event (yes, my memory has not been eaten by any toxic substance I’ve
taken nor bad decision I have made). Joanne, one of the cutest and smartest
people I have known in my life and with whom I have maintained a decade of
great friendship with, called me twice from

s i n g a p o r e.

Her ability to do this
remotely shows how far she is able to go in life. All the others whom I fail to
mention here, I’m sure you guys had a difficult time putting all of it together
– thank you so much. 

 

I
realize now that there are parts of my life which I would gladly go through again
if I were given a chance. One of them is those four years of high school with
people who are different and yet still inherently the same as I. I would have
had a chance to go through all those emotions, excitement and fabulousness
today. I would have had a chance to see all those people I have spent the time
with during that period when I was just trying to figure out who I am, who I
can be. Those people who bore with my graceless, self-conscious period of
growing up. It was a truly great ride, and I’m eternally pimped.

 

I
have made it a rule to never regret any decision in my life, but I think for
this one I will make an exception. I should have been there, because the night
my high school friends are all spending together would have been another
turning point in my life. Knowing that all of them grew up to be wonderful,
beautiful and strong, that all of them grew up well even with taking different
directions, would have given me the strength and the courage to assure myself
that everything will be – okay —  and
maybe I even can have chance at doing great in the future.

 

I
hope those who came to the 10 year reunion will use that night well and enjoy
it, because they made the right choice of coming. They shouldn’t waste that
luck.

 

Welcome, please take everything in here as an open invitation to laugh

When
I was younger, my mother had this constant urge to bribe me with shoe-money to
buy sexy fuck- me sandals. I stayed with my DM’s for two years and with
trainers for another two, they were comfortable and they afforded me clean feet
at the end of the day which I didn’t use to manage to have in sandals. I have
fat feet and I think I look absolutely undeserving of a second glance. Unlike
Librans who are predisposed to grace and attractiveness and Scorpions who ooze
sex appeal like a toothpaste tube with a hole, Sagittarian women are apparently
more masculine than most. The genderless look is a look I go for or maybe it’s
more appropriate to say— it’s the look I cannot seem to avoid. I used to
wonder (and believe me I like knowing more than wondering a thousand times
more) — Is it the way I walk or the way I skip when I’m extremely happy. Is
it the fact that I take on my guy friends’ challenge of unbridled jousting on
about any joke they want to throw at me, whether they are sexual, sexist or
simply stupid? Is it because I cut my hair, when having it long endows me a 75%
probability that I will automatically look like a woman, and a 25% chance of looking
like a hippie child/punk rocker. When I wake up each morning, I look at myself for
two whole minutes waiting for that ever elusive fertility goddess look to
miraculously appear. They told me that French fries go straight to the hips,
I’m overloaded with saccharides and yet my hips remain unperturbed.

 

I
wanted to look soft even if I know it is virtually as impossible as growing more
tantalizing breasts without the silicone implant. Women (or anyone of any
gender) who are beautiful and fragile looking are easier to forgive and easier
to do favors for. When you look like you can smack someone in the head with a
mere dagger look, even if you entice him with the sweetest gelato voice that is
3 octaves higher than Mariah’s limit, it won’t work. If you can say f*ck off
without having to raise your middle finger, if you can make a joke without fear
of stepping on their testicles, or if you laugh heartily without throwing your
hair to the side, smiling your sweet slightly flirty smile and putting a
kerchief to prevent people from seeing what you had for lunch — you can be
sure that men will think you are one of the guys, you’re in the friend zone,
you’re simply not the girl to bring home to momma to help with Christmas dinner
but… you’re really cool to just hang with.

 

When
I am not having any man hanging around me for more than chilling with a drink
or an occasional joint when they’re really depressed, I used to tell myself in
order to feel better, ‘ah they are intimidated by me, damn, that is the bane of
my existence – my independence, my fabulousness’. At the back of my head though
there’s this teeny annoying voice saying (as annoying as Kris Aquino’s
infotainment addiction – she thinks she’s royalty and that its actually public
service to announce to millions of viewers that she has VD) – ‘But what if the
reason is because I am simply challenged in the face value department?’

 

Why
do we hype beauty so much when it’s something which must be measured only with
a carefully chosen yardstick? How do we know what to hype? Why do some people
who think they’re beautiful bully other people who aren’t up to their
standards?

 

I
realized that a lot of women in Europe can make a lot of money in the p h i l i p p i n e s. In
the p h i l i p p i n e s
where talent scouts hunt for faces without talent attached and make them into
celebrities. Showbiz in our country is filled with too many Paris Hiltons. A
lot of them are celebrities… not actors, not singers, just celebrities. Most of
them should just end up in porn, really. In our country
or maybe in the whole of Asia (though I don’t dare generalize about a s  i a )– we want fair skin, preferably long hair, a nice
straight nose. You can be sexy but if you don’t look good enough, you’re shrimp
(the rest of the meat is eatable, but you throw away the head). Here they want
blonde hair, big boobs and solarium burnt skin with full lips and a cleavage. Very
different and yet somehow the same, we still demand something out of each
other.

 

Beauty
is simply relative. Yeah, who doesn’t know that, right? Well tell that to all
the skin and bone models and the throngs of people who have suffered from
anorexia because they don’t want to be people, they want to be models. Tell
that to all those who have had cheek implants, botox injections, too much
facelifts you couldn’t tell if they’re in rage or in rapture. We all want to be
beautiful the way other people tell us what beautiful is.

 

I
realized that as you grow older you are less and less impressed by it. Beauty
which doesn’t go with anything else is like drinking non-alcoholic beer. You taste
it but it doesn’t cause a stir in you at all. Me, I go for that look which
makes me stop and say ‘interesting’. It’s more than beautiful, its worthy of my
time. When it’s too simple, too everywhere else or worse, when there are people
who seem to be beautiful just because they look a certain way because of height
or hair I don’t seem to notice at all (or sometimes some women cover themselves
with makeup and clothes, that they draw attention because of their ability to
accessorize instead – which is real talent, I agree). When there is somehow
this special spirit that draws you, that’s beautiful for me. The good news is
there are more and more discerning people out there who understand ‘interesting’
because there are simply too many other people trying to catch their eye with being
flashy.

 

I
do not really know what beautiful is. In photography there is this magic number
1.618, the Golden mean which is the basis of the rule of thirds – a photography
rule/technique. Years ago, apparently there was this study that discovered that
the faces of fashion models (who we regard as beautiful) have characteristics
which have exactly the ratio 1.618. This ratio is found in all of nature –
petals, seashells, etc. Should we start measuring the ratios on our faces, then
to find? =) Hell, no. And risk a lifetime of shallow insecurity because we are
off target by a couple of decimal points? I believe that there are parts of our
character which we somehow exude without the help of rouge. It’s a very
difficult task to allow ourselves to see what’s really beautiful about other
people, much more about ourselves. Everyone is inevitably hung up on beauty in more ways than one. I mean, look at me, as I write this, I still think I look like a pole
with nothing to offer and I would willingly go lesbian if Angelina Jolie would
join me.

 

All
I am saying is that for me beauty is so difficult to grasp that people should
not give each other a hard time about it. Or more appropriately we should not
give ourselves a hard time about it. We must never let the beauty of others get
the better of us. So when that bitch at work and in school who thinks she’s all
that gives you a cold shoulder while fake-smiling at you, sarcastically
compliment her on a flaw and you have her by the throat. Everyone is anyway in
one way or another insecure about how she looks. So, everyone should just put
herself out there and flaunt whatever he’s endowed with and learn to appreciate
other people’s attractiveness as well. What do we have to lose?

 

 

 

 

**posting for the last week of Feb to March 7

I was gone for business to Poland and Germany for a week and returned tired… both rushed and dizzy with adrenaline and lack of sleep from all the long dinners and drinking compulsory to meeting counterparts. There are a couple of rules that I try to follow during such social gatherings related to work. One, never get drunk enough to make a complete moron of yourself in front of your colleagues, especially if you need something from them or you just met them for the first time. If it is fated that someone makes an idiot of himself, be kind enough the next morning by telling him ‘No, it wasn’t that bad. I just didn’t realize you could be so much fun.’ Be vague about it, and good karma will come to you. Hehe. (also be discreet about it to other people, or else they would think you gossip about them too – you freak =)). This week a couple of shots of schnapps almost threw me off, but it was nothing two orders of espresso cannot fix. That’s another thing, this is different from deciding to get totally pissed with your mates enough to, say, sing in the streets with your pants pulled halfway down. People who are not as drunk as you are, then, will remember how you started to dance on the bar singing the Coyote Ugly theme song. Worse, if you are unlucky enough to meet highly competitive corporate whores, it can be used as effective ammo against you. Two, if you are not a white male over 30, you are somehow a minority in some of these meetings. Use that advantage by being interesting, exotic or simply be a breath of fresh air. Do not exploit your exceptionality to max levels though or otherwise suffer being regarded weird. Just be cool enough while you pull off a couple funny remarks and you’ll at least manage to stand out. You can talk about the eccentricities of your country, a couple of biting but not overly done feminist remarks or simply be interested in what other people have to say and some good comebacks will come to you. Three, be humble and know your boundaries, these people are not part of your college clique. They’re not your high school best friends. Sharing anything wild that you’ve done or making a stand up comedy act at their expense or your own, with enough charm can be amusing, but very very rarely. If you’re not sure, zip it. Walking on eggshells with nasty Doc Marten’s will get you nowhere. Four, make friends, it always works. A personal relationship built on being genuine with each other even just for a night over a couple of bottles of Merlot, is always good for getting things done.

Such business meetings can be thoroughly exhausting in the beginning but at some point I guess you learn to enjoy it. It can have huge downsides, however. Apart from only being blessed with 4-5 hours of sleep each day, you also do not get to see much of the cities you visit. I still cannot imagine having to work in projects and having to travel more like some of the people I know. If I am called to stay for at least three weeks in another place, that means I get to miss a lot with babuy, friends and my other activities. If you’re gone for too long, the quality of your free time is compromised inevitably. I totally admire the resilience of some people in projects.

W picked me up at the airport in the afternoon of Saturday, we had lunch and I had a couple of hours of sleep before I had to move again to use the remaining adrenaline in my blood by having some extra inches of my hair cut off again. It’s a bit obsessive of me to schedule a trip to the hairdresser right after arriving from a long week of working. I don’t know why but I just can’t seem to keep myself from looking my usual androgynous self. =)) They say that leaders do not have inertia. Well tough luck since I do HAVE that. I can be a body in motion which remains in motion unless an outside force prevents me from doing so (though, it can also happen the other way around. =)).
———–

Currently, babuy and I are in the mountains enjoying what’s left of winter. The season is almost over and for me it’s the perfect time to be finally earnest of learning to snowboard because there are less bodies on the slope which are endangered by my clumsy presence. So I crammed two meetings, approving invoices, an interview for marketing and emails in the evening on Monday (and ended it with a glass of red of late harvest grapes with a friend at the National Wine Bank – which I didn’t know existed before). I stretched myself then to get the remaining days of the week for vacation. On Tuesday, I decided to just laze around, wake up late and finish a couple of episodes from Ugly Betty – since I am still only on the fourth (haha oo Stella, John Rae, Mark – sa wakas kilalang kilala ko na si Gina Gambaro – sino nga sa inyo yun?). We had breakfast at babuy’s mom’s place after which we went to buy snow pants (which took about 20 mins given my shopping skills, or should I say disability), watched Cocaine Cowboys and packed.

This is my first day on the board and just getting the bindings on took me about 20 minutes before I comfortably was able to do it on my own. I rented the boots and the board. In the rental shop, after I have fitted one boot, the store owner caught me by the shoulders and started turning me, he said he was going to see if my ankle was comfortable by rotating my whole body on my ankle. The moment I had my back turned away from him, he pushed me hard. WTF, I thought loudly. But before I got my fist up, he said— LEFT (as in left foot, hindi Beyonce to the left). Apparently, if someone pushes you unexpectedly, the foot you use to prevent the possible fall is your lead foot in snowboarding. He had to screw the bindings of the board accordingly. I thought that was so fetch. Hehe, fetch anez?

After the first lesson my legs were shaking heavily from tiredness. Muscles I never knew I had are aching and I am pretty sure that I will soon learn of other places in my body which I never new can break my fall, my face included. Babuy is amazingly patient with me the same way he was when I had to relearn driving here, what with all the signs which we didn’t have in Manila. Like in driving, he’s not the type to shout at you making you feel like you intentionally are trying to murder him. He’s not the type who’s going to scare you to tears as if driving is a death defying circus act like sword throwing. He told me not to be scared, but a proper amount of respect and managed expectations will not hurt. Tomorrow, I’m going to the blue slope (black is the toughest, red is difficult, blue is easy-average and green is relatively flat). God bless my soul.
—————-

There is a chance I’ll be having a teaching stint in one of the American colleges in the city. Babuy is not thrilled with it and I know it’s because he knows too well of my tendency to spread myself too thinly, but I am a slave to my own stubborn streak. If all goes well, soon, I will be polluting young minds with nonsense blabbing like the one you just finished reading.

A question hit me hard on the forehead and I itch to retort with this.

What do I look forward to in my life?

My
problem is that I lack explicit introspection. Explicit introspection
is a conscious and regular (bordering habitual) effort to examine one’s
life at each point and stage. This is like an annual event to
me, okay, sometimes it comes twice a year. And I suck at it so much
that my private session with myself can be mistaken for lunacy. Once a
year I just start crying for no apparent reason and for all the reasons
that I have failed to contemplate on. In college, the Sunken Garden and
the sunsets bore witness to this partly entertaining ritual of crying
until I nearly shit myself. So in honor of the eccentricities that life
obliges us to have, I write this piece with much consideration and a quiet smile on my lips. Yes I have to schedule it, that’s how insensitive I can
be to my own feelings that I can be a man saying no to sex in exchange
for the football season.

I do suffer from an overdose of uppers =)) so this review cannot be stained with tears.

The
challenge: I am so everlastingly happy about things and about myself.
Impatient -yes, ambitious -yes, reckless -check, restless -of course,
extroverted -definitely, prudent nuh-uh, blunt -unfortunately, high
strung -rarely. I forgive as easily as I say yes to ice cream and I also
forget in the same manner. I lie sometimes but mostly I am so honest
that I get into trouble. I can coat a rude remark with diplomacy and sarcasm at the same time, but my questions are often stinging.

If I was a shrink half of my patients would
have committed suicide infront of me. I would have committed euthanasia
to get them out of their pain.

How can you think about what’s wrong
with your life you see a possibility almost everywhere you turn? I sometimes think that I am
not normal and that my life will be so dully written because I have
never been genuinely melodramatic over details. An HR analyst told me that the big picture is my only picture at times.

Not even a bad
lovelife can stir me from my half dreaming state. Especially if there is no point waking up. My blood probably has
the same mixture as prozac. I can be upset and go on a rollercoaster
blim of tantrums and then forget about what the argument is about two
minutes later. One time, I kinda broke up with my kinda boyfriend and
during the kinda breakup scene I was guilty of thinking about the things I can learn and the places I can go to after the possible breakup even before we said goodbye.

There are times when even if I have honestly forgiven and forgotten… some people still think that I shouldn’t, and they get touchy about things that were never really meant to be associated to them. Even if they secretly wish it to be. I  still get disoriented to the why’s and the how’s of some things of the past at times and still ask the same stupid questions to myself. Mostly, its either because, I never got an honest answer to them or people are just too scared to face their own ghosts, they never really faced the person they wronged.

When it
comes to melancholy I have the attention span of a two year old. I
bitch in the shallowest manner and grudges are unknown to me. One
grudge took me two long years but most of my friends can see through
that it was mostly just a lameass excuse to escape a scary
confrontation that will only end up with me making up with the person who I
was supposed to curse to kingdom come,  terrified that I may look like I
do not hold principles dearly. But I do. I just find some emotions
useless and boring. (when in truth, I’ve never really stopped loving that friend, because she will always be a big part of me)

Maybe I just prefer laughing at things after obssessing over them for a limited period of time, which I do set myself. Maybe I just prefer raising my middle finger with a bit of a stuck up smirk on my face more than a red face, a hoarse voice and a totally unglamorous bitch fit.

This is all because I feel like I can die
any minute. That, one moment can change so many things and that time
must be taken advantage of . I am excessively frugal with tears and
time spent wondering about what will happen next. Because no one ever
really knows… so I look at the future, look back at the past and
realize that there is nothing sweeter than the Now. 

I don’t
pretend to be deep by using misery. So when I ask myself what I look
forward to, I say nothing and everything at the same time.

I
look forward to a life in Africa or South America or Fiji as much as I
look forward to dreaming about it every night. I look forward to how amusing my little mixed boy will be and how many smartass kids I’ll have - and how many trips we will make to the forest looking for Goldilocks and the three bears - and I will be half believing with them.  I
look forward to my wedding without makeup and without shoes and my
marriage with the only man I loved like this. I look forwad to the
possibility of working in the peace corps as a single woman who owns
ten dogs and walks them on the beach everyday. I look forward to a good
life for everyone I love and have loved. I look forward to a life of a successful entrepreneur mom with a dark room of her own, a column on the local paper and husband and kids to devote herself to.I look forward to each party
over the weekend and the possibility of getting drunk with laughter and
choking with a ridiculous smirk on my face - or just simply vegging on the couch with pizzas on Saturday nights.

I enjoy each dream as if I already have them, and wish I can live seven lives until I am ready to die. Or at least I dream that I can inspire at least two lives in this lifetime to be worthy enough to die in peace.

I look forward to
turning each bruised moment in my life into a scar covered with a new beautiful
tattoo. I look forward to each painful encounter and to each step of
moving on.

I look forward, but most of the times I just look around.

It’s four in the morning and we just came home from a party. Yes, it was hip hop and yes I am not seventeen anymore, if you would like to apply a stereotype.  Raekwon of the Wu-tang clan was here. Methodman will be here on the last day of March, but I won’t be. Hay. I’ll post more on it tomorrow, when the cuba libres stop ruling my consciousness.
—
I saw this beautiful woman today at the party who totally took my breath away. She was, let’s say effortlessly beautiful. No, she was so interesting that it encompasses just being beautiful. You know how sometimes you think a woman is pretty because she is tall, or with beautiful hair or has nice skin?… when all she really is is more conspicuous than normal? This one is nothing of the ordinary criteria of the easily beautiful just because of one or two traits that automatically puts her into the deserves-a-second-look box. She had a bundle of dreadlocks, but when you look at her something jumps out of you. I realized beauty is tricky. And really what hits us varies.
—
I still have to cook, pack and fly tomorrow. Being an adult sucks.

There
is something about big cities that attracts the natural live wire in me. I’ve
forgotten how walking along busy streets shoulder to shoulder with people who
have an instinctive forward lean to their gait and a speed that makes you
imagine what very important event they are about to go to, is simply
intoxicating. l o n d o n is like that, p r a g u e
on the other hand is like a big-small village, a bit more laid back and with
less of the crowd. I’m here again in l o n d o n in my hotel room, fresh from
the drug that is a musical from the Queen’s Theater and it is midnight. I watched
Les Miserables on my own. However, I still managed to chat with a sweet young
lady beside me who asked me during the interval why Jean Valjean was still
being chased by Javert after such a long time. Consequently through the chat I managed to meet her father who was
visiting her and who insistently offered to buy me ice cream. The show was
wonderful and it was actually my cab driver coming here who inspired me to
choose Les Mis. He was an engaging, charming old gentleman who talked to me
about how his passengers have pulled out the cab ashtray to keep people from
smoking, the fact that flowers are blossoming in the middle of January and how
his favorite number in Les Mis was the Landlord’s song. I looked out for that
song tonight and imagined him singing the same song in his cab, like he said. I
loved it, it was a bit of a relief from all the despair that hung throughout
the story. (Of course Eponine’s On my Own was still one of the more popular
from the play.)

 

At
five thirty in the afternoon today, right after the session, I rushed home and
finished a sandwich, booked a place in the Heathrow shuttle for Friday and
walked to s h a f t e s b u r y a v e n
u e for the play at half past seven. It’s
exquisite that I have been spending a lot of alone time this time. The training
I am in is relatively short and participants are housed in different hotels so
you wouldn’t feel socially obliged to join dinners or anything, which I usually
would enjoy. However, this time it didn’t bother me walking alone along r e g e
n t s t, passed both the o x f o r d and
the p i c c a d i l l y circus tube stations on my own without having to rush.
I people-watched (and managed to stop by Boots to buy Princess’ cocoa butter as
I promised ;)). I felt like the only one in slow motion and felt especially
weird.

 

 

 

 

 

Anyhu,
those are the updates. Ang buhay kong feeling ko makulay pero mediocre naman
talaga. Pfft.

 

Last year we went to David Morales’ party for Valentine’s Day. (Yes, we’re one of those couples who enjoy going to parties even if it’s just the two of us). Last year after the party we went home at 7am, drunk with vodka and redbull and with an overdose of hung paper hearts. Since we both took a day off the following day, we opted to stay in the living room, talking until 10am after the mandatory shower to rid ourselves of club smell. We woke up at 3pm, stayed in until 5 and went for dinner at 7. It was perfect.

This year, he was closing the financial month a little bit later because he had other work priorities and was in the office until 3am of the 14th. I, on the other hand, drove to the Polish embassy (I need a visa for a meeting in Gdynia on the 26th) at 7 in the morning to give them my new 64 page passport which they asked me to get so that I’m sure to never again run out of passport space again, went to fetch a colleague from her house, drove 314 kms to a branch office out of Prague, had a meeting and drove back. I called him when I got home to tell him that I was going for yoga. He said, ‘okay, I’ll see you in front of the building at 8pm and we can go straight to dinner.’ I was not supposed to cook tonight.

We both forgot about Valentine’s Day.

At 8pm, I went back home. He was getting out of the building and I was walking towards it, when I instinctively ran to him like a kid and gave him an enormous hug. I was tired from the day and that hug will be my first form of rest. He pushed me away… I frowned…then he pulled out a bunch of flowers. ‘Happy Valentine’s Day, babuy. I remembered.’ It was valentine’s day.

I told him I had nothing for him, as I felt shame wash over me. I was supposed to be the mushy one. I was the freaking girl, for f*ck’s sake. So I just stood there looking stunned and with my mouth open while he escorted me to the car and said as he closed the door— ‘don’t worry you’re still with me, that’s enough.’

That’s when it hit me… why do I still have to train myself to be a girl? When I so easily can be one with this guy. Dang, I can be a girl. Finally.

One of the most precious lessons I have learned in life is that there are two types of pride people choose to cling on to. I do not prefer to call arrogance, self-righteousness, or lording over people, pride. I call it insecurity.

Pride is that which makes you inadvertently guard honor and reputation.

The first type makes you greatly careful about your decisions so that you can protect your values, your integrity and your opinion of yourself. In the extreme it produces a bit of an anal-retentive behaviour (also indigestion, a lot of cigarettes and sometimes even ulcer). But people who succeed in keeping this type of pride, usually end up quite content with themselves. It definitely does not mean being averse to risk - exchanging cartwheels with briefcases- it just means you try to make the best choice that your conscience and your heart leads you to in every situation, hope that things don’t go awfully wrong, and own up to them.

The second type is what I refer to as quicksand pride. Have you ever had that time in your life when in order to protect your image of yourself as someone who very rarely makes mistakes, to follow society’s demands or  to cover up into admitting something wrong that you did to save face,
you made one more wrong turn? Your pride tells you to prove that you actually meant to do it, so, you made another wrong one. You further indulged into several other wrong turns in order to reinforce that actually it was all intentional, and that you are still right. Then you find yourself one day wondering, how come you ended up here where you do not know who you are. Worse, nobody does. That’s quicksand pride. Its not malicious, but it sucks you in with precision.

I hope I never land on quicksand, even if it means a larger hole in my gut.