15 pesos of fun.

It’s a light jacket weather, 7th of July, Saturday afternoon, just right after our Urban Plan Implementation class [around 4pm??]. He and I rode the jeepney despite the internet station being 0.75 kilometers away only because it rained so hard few hours earlier and as expected the streets are in a terrible mess.

While waiting for the ride I took a picture of a wide rectangular hole in the center of General Luna street, right across the UPV-Iloilo City campus because this would be the last time I’d see General Luna in its days of glory; it’s fading beauty. When the flyover is done, General Luna is also definitely done.
[the pictures were terrible.]
[literally.]


So we took a jeepney.


The internet stations in the shop are located at the 2nd floor. The first floor is reserved for gamers. We call it the stock exchange area because the atmosphere resembles that of the stock exchange. allow me to expound. The kids -- all of the kids scream in either frustration or glee every time heaven or hell comes in their gaming world. There are kids standing or hovering over a favorite gamer, a pawn, maybe. There are bettings, lunching on sandwich while standing up, spending almost the whole of daylight hours inside the darkened gaming shop, and once again, to reiterate, screams of frustration or glee resembling that of a stock exchange.
Half hour into our surfing a chorus of excited/victorious screams were heard form the downstairs. Somebody has finally sold a stock.
[more screams followed.]
[somebody have won.]


35 minutes into our surfing and we’re done but there’s still 25 minutes left so we decided to download MP3s and we’re lucky – the station has earphones. I’ve been wanting to have an MP3 of elliot smith’s song from the royal tenenbaums and another song, waltz #2.
[needle in the hay played when richie tenenbaum told himself on the mirror, “I’m going to kill myself tomorrow”].
My ultimate download was waltz #2. like a 5 year-old being handed down with the most delicious cotton candy she was aching for.
For almost 9 (nine) years now I only listened t a bootleg of it with first few notes missing because it tool me about 5 seconds to jump from our pink dining table to the bedside table where the beat sony cassette recorder was and push that record button on.
I carefully placed the earphones to my ear so as not to miss a single beat. A single note.
[waltz #2….
……how gloomy and depressing that day was when they played it on the radio…]
……elliot died. October 23. he stabbed himself almost 4 (four) years ago…]
……they said my mother called. I was still sweaty from the walk from school. My head is still groggy from the formalin in the dissection class…EMERGENCY…she will call again tonight…]
……I have to go home…tomorrow…lola died. Cardiac arrest.]
Series of calls were made to the airline companies…I have to go home. Tomorrow.]
……she took a full bath and ate full lunch. At 3:00 pm, she died.]
[summer of 1998.]
[manila is sooo hot. Sad and happy. Manic depressive.]
[I am happy to be leaving such a miserable place. I am sad to be going home to such miserable event.]


I told him he should listen to waltz #2.
[his grandma also died just a few years ago.]
He said our house is more appropriate for the just-rained-down weather. Waltz #2 can wait.
……on somebody’s death, perhaps.]


An hour into our surfing and we’re done. We were again met by seemingly thousands of screams coming from only 10 gaming kids as we made our way down to the counter.


It was the best 15-peso treat ever.


Outside, I took pictures of the NU 107 signage. They signed off the air 8 years ago.

It's Not

by Aimee Mann

I keep going round and round on the same old circuit.
A wire travels underground to a vacant lot.
Where something I can't see interrupts the current.
And shrinks the picture down to a tiny dot.
And from behind the screen, it can look so perfect.

But it's not.

So here im sittin in my car at the same old stop light.
I keep waiting for a change, but I don't know what.
So red turns into green, turning into yellow.
But I'm just frozen here on the same old spot.
And all I have to do is press the pedal.

But I'm not.
No I'm not.

Well people are tricky, You can't afford to show,anything risky, anything they don't know.
The moment you try, well kiss it goodbye.

So baby kiss me like a drug, like a respirator.
And let me fall into the dream of the astrounaut.
Where I get lost in space that goes on forever.
And you make all the rest just an after thought.
And I believe it's you who could make it better.

But it's not.
No it's not

good morning!

A prayer to start my day.

Dear Lord, I pray for Wisdom to understand my man; Love to forgive him; And Patience for his moods. Because, Lord, if I pray for Strength, I'll beat him to death.
AMEN.

exits.

I wrote this on January 8, 2008.

yesterday 5 people opened my office's door hoping it is the way out only to see another office and not lobby leading to a heavenly exit from the dusty and overused Elizalde Building. the same thing also happened for almost every day of the previous weeks, only differing in numbers and in types of people. so early today i did an experiment. before i could start working on my to do list i made a NO EXIT sign to post on my office's door. the "no" being in gray and the "exit" in black, thinking that it would make difference, if at all.
then the clock starts ticking.
surprisingly, the first people that got into my bait were, the stuart (??) couple. foreign videographers who go around Panay to film tourist spots, scenic places and Visayan cultural activities. the husband exclaimed: WHAT? no exit here?? he turned to the door and said, "But it says EXIT--"
"No exit," i said.
the lady, the wife, then said..."Oh, so sorry. it says no exit. sorry we couldn't read the gray ones," she said pointing to my sign.
then off they go.
experiment. experiment.
i need two more of the similar incident in order to change the gray "NO" into the purest, darkest black.

---------------------

after a week, a handful of people still opened my door thinking its the way to heaven (because the old building do looks like hell).
it got me into thinking that they perhaps could not really see the "NO" that precedes the "EXIT".
so i took the A4 sign and traced the "NO" with the red permanent marker and post it on the door again this time with...say, conviction that my sign would work.

PERO WALA MAN GIHAPON!!!!
LINTE!!
WALA GID MAN GABASA ANG MGA TAGA ILOILO HAW?

so i took out the signs again and rearranged them. made sure they are at the eye level.

it's been a week after that reaaranging.

and here is the statistics:

1 woman asked if my office is this certain office. (WRONG!)
1 woman opened the door and quickly closed it back when she saw me. (first time kakita tawo?)
1 old woman opened the door, closed it halfway and opened it again to ask me if this my office is not the way out. (lapit nalang gid. lord help me!!!!)
and notably they are all women. Noted down.

hmm... would a a life size sign of my agency's name across my office's glass windows make a difference?

thinking...thinking...thinking....

and just before i clicked the post button a woman in her ealy 30s (baw malagas gid!!!!) suddenly opened the door, took 3 steps and exclaimed surprise when she saw me. she asked for the exit.

tsk tsk

in the news today:

heath ledger was found dead at his manhattan apartment.

the same day i was finally able to post that post (see below).

so much talk of death today.

death of a father.

I could not quite recall exactly when it happened but I suppose the dying began in 2003, the year the family started rehabilitating the old lot across the river. Or maybe it was even way before that. Perhaps he began dying when I was still a child.

It took me a while to write the succeeding descriptives to
those lines I wrote having been overtaken by my own metaphoric ability. I wait on the bench under the trees in Jaro Plaza amidst the stench of the piss on the walls of the monuments. Today is a Wednesday. Time for the baby’s shots at the Health Center a spit away.

I strain my eyes to the lines I wrote having to content myself with a piece of stick-on ID I found in my wallet. That one was
meant for the trash but somehow saved itself by hiding amongst the receipt that I couldn’t afford to throw for plans of eventual household accounting. Colorful.
Like the tickets. Concert tickets that remind me of college.

His lifeless body moves across the house; wakes up, bathes, prepares for office, leaves for office and goes back just in time for the news or much later if there are visitors to entertain at the office.

He talks a lot about so many things but the current events is his favorite. He reacts to the news and talk shows on ANC. I’ve listened to all of it for 28 years; those very profound ideas I never thought I could even get to think of when I was a child. Five years ago I gave up. All I do now is give him a blank stare or plain yeses or nos in every conversation he tries to initiate. Those conversations and those arguments are mere repetitions of things already said by somebody else. If he were paid for every plagiarized statement or name he drops, he’d be a billionaire.

It is true. Indeed no matter how much you prepare for doomsday
you still could never be really prepared for it. You could always prepare a
script and trick yourself into believing something else is happening but in the
end you would still have to conquer it all by yourself and completely trust in
what doomsday has to offer you.

When I heard the news, I calmly told myself that such is expected. All men go through some midlife crises and my father does not deserve to be spared from them. He is no superhero after all. He will never be spared. And the thoughts crept into the farthest creases of my mind, kicked aside by plans of traveling and getting nowhere, getting drunk, kissing, hearing an old old favorite song, missing old old friends and eating putannesca or pan de sal ni Paa at dusk in August with the old old friends missed and new acquaintances met.

I remember reading LC’s beautiful letter when we were 17 and recently separated, she having to stay in Iloilo for Fisheries and I, praying to survive Biology and the jungle that surrounds UP Manila. She wrote the letter at the back of Brandon Lee’s The Crowe poster, photocopied on A3 paper. Such a long letter, considering her microscopic handwriting. She writing about her father having lung cancer was all I could remember from that letter, and that she was coping well with life in provincial Miag ao. I was not at all surprise by the lung cancer but was surprised at the timing.
How soon till he dies?
She laughs and tells me to read the letter again.
I didn’t. Of course. I wouldn’t.
She tells me it was just a wish, that she was wishing her father would die of lung cancer. Right now. When we are all 17 and young and naïve and boyfriend less and not yet jaded by life by love by everything.
It took me 3 years to understand what she meant.

News like that however, is also never spared from being talked
about during the Lenten holidays, Christmas or year-end reunions and the annual
family gatherings. First we talk of his inadequacy as a father. Then his
contradicting ideals, his rehashed ideas, his lack of a father figure, his
superiority complex, his sorry state having been very poor and fatherless as a
child. My mother would go on talking about how pitiful my father’s life was. I
get my mind and mouth working up until the talks about his superiority complex
then my thoughts would lock themselves and refuse to accept more thoughts when
my mother and other family members go into their social worker mode and be
empathize with my father. Of course all the talks about him happen in his
absence. He could never take the comments I give. What does he think he is, some
kind of a superhero? No, he could never really take them.

Did I also have a death wish for my father? For so so so so long I have put all those issues aside. For so so so long after recovering from the psychosis of Manila all I wanted was to give myself back something that has long been lost. I just wanted to stop blaming him for my dead dreams. But he never took a moment off to step back and look at what has happened.

Yes he died, at the very same day he began dying.

All the things he said. They never matter now. They would soon be dead deep within me.

20080121.