And Here I Am Again

Features editor for the yearbook.

Strange that.

Mainly because I was an unofficial part of the yearbook staff back in high school. I never signed up for it, neither was I asked to participate. I was just at the yearbook/journalism room one day to edit the layout for our section’s pages and before I knew it the staff was asking me to look at the other pages.

Eventually I was given a free ticket to miss graduation practice because I was up in the yearbook room.

Weird how things turn out.

And now I find myself officially part of the yearbook team, on the recommendation of a friend to another friend.

Well, it is a pretty nice job.

Still, wait to see how the entire thing turns out.

“Depensa”

Because that’s what they call it, that ‘little’ community they’ve built on the beach.

Honestly, they might just be calling it  that because of their need to ‘defend’ their homes. Still, they wouldn’t have to feel that way if they’d actually had permission to build on the beach.

Yeah, informal settlers. A ‘PC’ term which I hate because it legitimizes them just a little bit.

Squatters.

Trespassers.

Intruders.

That’s more like it.

But according to my uncle I should not judge so harshly, because according to him somewhere there is a human right doctrine that says that nobody owns the world and that property rights are only inventions of society. Obviously every other institution that we have come to know logically falls into this category; I’d lump religion here too.

I’m sorry, but I am of the persuasion that if one decides to live in a certain community, one must play by that community’s rules. And weren’t laws put in place as an agreement between all inhabitants of a given society as to what is acceptable along with the sanctions resulting from breaching that agreement? Obviously government is a social invention, so if a social invention supervises any given community, then shouldn’t laws that were invented by society be enforced?

If what he is saying is true, then that means I can build a shack inside anyone’s yard and because property rights are only an invention of society, I can tell whoever lives within that yard to shove off because nobody owns the earth anyway.

Uh, no. I really don’t think it works that way.

And I don’t think these squatters should expect help from the local government, something my uncle of course counters.

If one makes a conscious decision to build their house on property over which they have no right – and then subsequently pollute that property – then they should not expect to receive any assistance from the community they have decided to inconvenience.

They already are impinging upon the community, so what makes them think that the community would like to help them?

Again my uncle tells me that not everyone has a choice, unlike me. This is why there is such a thing as ‘capacity building’ and sometimes people are born in a place that offers them no avenues to carry this out. So some people really do have to seek out a place that will allow them to build their capacity.

Again, I do not agree. There is really only one reason to build one’s capacity in this sort of context: to earn a living. This is where my contention stems from. One needs to earn money because one needs to survive. When one needs to earn more money, then that probably means that one is not only providing for oneself, but for a few more people, which most commonly happens in the form of a family.  Thus, if one finds that one has to search for ways to make more money, then that probably means that one is living beyond one’s means.

Most likely, this wouldn’t happen if one didn’t have more dependents than one’s income could support. This means, if you only have so much, then stop fucking and start working towards a better life.

If you really don’t have much means but still feel the need to procreate, then at least make sure you can provide for the kid before starting mass-production.

I am no sociologist, or community developer or whatever else title is usually attached to people who fix communities and these are in no way supposed to be a springboard of reform.

Just thoughts. What I think is the chain of causality behind squatters and why they really should not expect ‘social inventions’ to work for them.

 

Still, the family I stayed with during my immersion was nice. I could see that the kids wanted to move out and up, and they were all in school, with three of them already college graduates. Kudos to their mother for working towards that.

Seriously, good job.

Actually, there’s little I can do to put their niceness down in words. they were just that, a very good family stuck in a not-so-very-good situation.

I am sure, however, that they can pull up given their attitude.

 

Found out that fishermen weren’t just fishermen. They had specializations. Some worked only with nets, some with long chains from which hung ropes with hooks at the ends, some who worked with far smaller versions of the previous, some who did work with the typical rods and some who worked with explosives.

Cash was easiest with dynamite, but on the other hand, this will eventually lead to the decimation of marine population, ultimately meaning no cash for everybody.

Well, I can only hope that they come to realize that soon enough, as I’m not expecting organizations to do much about it. On the other hand, considering the state of the ‘Depensa’, there is little hope of that happening. The garbage is thick enough in some areas that there is no sand visible; the sand itself is now turning black where according to my foster family it was once quite yellow. Plumbing? This is all they have: a hole in the floor. Let the tides take care of the plumbing. According to one of the other foster mothers, the sea has receded because of the garbage, which is something I have yet to hear from any environmental review.

That last sentence might actually have something to it, as according to the eldest of my foster family, the water used to be able to reach beneath their house during high tides. Used to, anyway.

So it’s not very hard to imagine – and be horrified – at the thought that one day the entire beach will be covered in garbage of the synthetic and natural kind.

Well, whatever.

 

The house I – actually ‘we’ would be more accurate as I was paired with another boy – stayed in was pretty okay in that they had their own area for bathing. Only problem: the area affords practically no privacy, so there’s no way to take a thorough bath.

I couldn’t sleep the first night, partly because the straw mat we – the other boy and I – shared hardly offered anything in the way of compliance, mostly because the slaughterhouse that was not 10 meters from the house was operating until about 12.30AM. Screaming pigs + hard surface = very hard to sleep.

I couldn’t sleep the second night because there was a party going on in the neighboring house not 1 meter from ours. My partner and I were trying to guess when they’d stop: I put in 3AM, the most horrible prospect. Thankfully they stopped at around 9.30PM.

The foster family did have two adorable dogs though – well, bitches actually – with one being more adorable than the other. That helped quite a bit.

Could not wait until 1PM the next day when we would set off back to Manila.

Damn happy to hear the noises of the city again, and really happy to be breathing city air again.

 

Still, I guess it helped a lot that I was paired up with a very nice boy for my immersion. He was far better able to socialize with the foster family, and made for easy companionship for me. Had I been alone, I probably would have spent much more time by myself. Or gone crazy and run amok. Anyway, I thank happenstance for pairing me up with that boy, and I thank that boy a lot more for being so nice.

And for sharing that straw mat with me, because seeing the area made me nervous about being alone, something I was pretty passive about the Thursday before we left for ‘Depensa’.

 

In the end, I really don’t want to head back there again.

Because Holy Hell…

…it’s been a LONG time since the last post.

And just when I though I’d gotten rid of my ennui, an entirely new wave hits me and out goes the non-graded activities that aren’t crucial to my sanity.

Like this blog.

My COM142 professor tells us that the key to a blog is updating, because according to him the moment a blog misses a regular update, readership takes a tumble unless there is a solid readership. Well, looks like I missed that ship by several million nautical miles.

I’m not expecting anyone to read this actually, which is weird because there would seem to be no other reason for me to post anything anymore.

Meh.

Sometimes people just need a space to write senseless drivel on, so instead of using up the leaves of my notebooks, I’ll use this instead. It’s far friendlier than using up paper anyway. So I’m turning this into a self-reflective space, which might sound strange considering it’s practically public space, but whatever.

It’s not like I plan to say anything potentially life-destroying anyway.

Hmm, maybe I should change the name of this blog.

Immersion tomorrow. Leaving on a Five Star bus at 6AM but still awake at 11.29PM local time. Seats may not have been designed for sleeping, but I believe college students have learned to find sleep where and when they can. Or at least, they should have. Much like how they have learned to set their priorities. Or at least, they should have.

Immersion tomorrow.  Community has electricity and cellular reception, but very few houses have indoor plumbing. BAD.

Immersion tomorrow. Community is a fishing village that exists on the other sid of Manila Bay. Formator claims MOA can be seen from the community on a clear day. MEH.

Immersion tomorrow. Community is a fishing village. Houses are built on top of the water, with narrow bridges linking houses. Formator claims community is large enough to get lost in. BAD.

Immersion tomorrow. Community is a fishing village that exists on the other side of Manila Bay, which means it shares the unholy waters of Manila Bay. BAD.

I’m starting to see a problem here…

Immersion tomorrow. Community is a fishing village that exists on the other side of Manila Bay, which means it shares the unholy waters of Manila Bay. Community also has mostly no indoor plumbing, which means that human by-products fall into the unholy waters of Manila Bay. Homes are built above the water, narrow bridges linking the houses. Losing balance on these bridges means falling into the unholy stew of artificial and natural waste that is Manila Bay. VERY VERY VERY BAD.

Immersion tomorrow. One word: ARGH.

Wait, that’s not even  a word.

The Church, the State, and the Nurse

As part of the university program, we have to spend 12 hours working, supposedly to make us see how the “normal” lives are lead, but really just to make us suffer a bit more. What? Are we not human beings as well to have to be taught what it is to live life?

Well anyway, I guess that’s just the OSCI fighting tooth and nail for the relevance they no longer really have. Social involvement? Pshaw.

So as part of the program, I signed up for what is probably the lightest of them all: working in a parish. Other jobs entailed working as a bagger in a grocery, being a salesperson in a department store, selling corn along Katipunan Avenue, taking on janitorial duties in a class C/D mall and manning the customer service counter. No way I’d go peddling corn along a roadway or mopping up nose-raping bathrooms in some seedy mall, so I took the church. There was also a sweet opening for ushers in a theater, but slots ran out. On to the church.

First impression on the first actual 4-hour duty day: they seem organized in a pretty pell-mell way. The one computer with a bootleg copy of Windows XP certainly doesn’t help. They do have an information database, though, so that has to count for something.

The four of us are supposed to be assistants at the mass baptism, so I guess being set down with typing up baptismal certificates is fine.

For a slip of paper just big enough to cover my eyes, that baptismal application sure tells a lot about what kind of family a kid has been born to. Amazing what one can tell from penmanship, spelling patterns, and tidbits of information. I felt like I was gaining a prohibited gaze into the family that signed the application. Probably the most telling bits of data are age and occupation.

One couple had what looked like an entire platoon for sponsors. From Majors to Superintendents to Attorneys; no surprise given the guy was in the service. One was an exceptionally young couple, both 17. From the lack of additional sponsors and what wasn’t written on the occupation fields, another teenage romance gone terribly wrong. Then came the median couples; those with a statistically normal generation gap, so nothing special over there. There was one application wrought with bad spelling habits that I just knew what social strata the family belonged to.

The names some of these parents gave frankly made me glad my name was normal enough. I wondered as I flipped through the application forms what some of the parents were thinking when they gave the nurse the name that wanted on the birth certificate. Didn’t they wonder what kind of treatment their kid might soon get just because of the stupidly complicated/overly simplistic/trying-too-hard-to-be-unique name they gave their kid? That one poor kid’s going to have to go through life with “Nicey” as his name.

Parents, if you want your kid’s name to be unique, at least try to give it some class.

~

Or make it a bit easier to pronounce/spell. Because some of the nurses out there…

If I ever have a kid and the nurse asking for my kid’s name is some provincial bumpkin with crooked articulation, I’ll either tell her that I’ll type the birth certificate up myself, or look for another, more phonetically-able nurse to do the job. Hell if I care about the provincial’s feelings; it’s my kid I’m going to be worried about, not her/his misplaced pride and his/her English instruction. Blow off the provincial now, make your kid love you for not making life more complex with mismatching documents later.

The same kid with the nice “Nicey” name got unlucky with his nurse. The birth certificate said “Hicey”. The parents knew the kid’s name to be “Nicey”. Upon seeing their kid’s name on the baptismal roster spelled “Hicey”, the mother quickly corrected it, looking indignant that somebody misspelled her kid’s name. Not a year into his life and he’s already been dealt a tough hand.

~

Back to the church. The parish office is quite like an office, just take away a lot the structure, organization and pretty much everything else that makes office work move along nicely. Oh sure things still get done, but don’t expect it to be done with any measure of immediacy. Sure they were aware that they were running late for the baptismal, but it wasn’t like they were rushing or anything; they actually seemed to be quite fine that they were running late. The baptism started around 30 minutes late. Filipino time at work.

Organization? The four of us pretty much got shuffled around to random tasks from typing out aforementioned certificates to looking for mistakes in the database entries to fitting candles with cardboard donuts so the hot wax doesn’t go to the floor.

Sure a church doesn’t have to run like a business, but it sure won’t hurt if they get themselves a little bit more together than they are now. Maybe they might even want to offer their faithful some extra services, like getting in contact with hospitals to mend any dispute between the intended name and the name on the certificate. It won’t be hard on the church’s part because most Filipinos still have a special place in their minds for the church and it’d make life so  much easier for the parents.

But then again they must be pretty comfortable where they are right now, as they obviously don’t find the need to change it. Still, they could be running so much smoother, on top of providing better service.

Meh. Better a sloppy church than a sloppy government I guess.

~

Oops.

Dogged & Trolled

One of two things: deadline or being dogged. That’s how I get my work done.

Also, I like it when I’m kept in the loop, because I am certainly not going to go after someone to get an update when said person doesn’t even seem interested. That is, unless I decide to be the one to dog.

I either dog myself to move or the deadline makes me move. Either way I only get moving with any sense of purpose when I’m under at least some pressure, either by time or by my own creation.

I guess studying organizational behavior and having a basis for knowing just how you work does come in handy.

~~~

In current events, the Philippines has been blacklisted by Hong Kong government because of an 11-hour hostage standoff around Quirino Grandstand, ending with supposedly 8 dead, including the hostage-r. Ended just a while ago. Hostages were Hong Kong nationals, by the way.

Yes it was just an ordinary tourist bus and yes it took SWAT teams several hours to crack the bus open, whatever. Put blame where blame should go (or maybe you could just blame whoever you feel like blaming, but who really cares), but for me – and if the news reporters are correct – the cops have one heck of a sniper on their side.

As for the bus driver, maybe it wasn’t such a bright idea to let someone in who wasn’t on the tour list.

Still, shouldn’t we all just be happy that there were survivors instead of the grim all-dead initial prediction?

Oh and excuse me, but maybe the country should start investing in nerve gas instead of plain old tear gas. Makes crowd control and extraction so much easier.

On a related note, where else but in the Philippines might you see people actually setting up big, brightly-colored umbrellas to watch a tense standoff? I might also be mistaken, but maybe cameras and newsmen aren’t supposed to get in the way of the standoff. Just maybe.

Crowd control? Media discretion? What are those?

Oh wait, I got it. Cops used up all that yellow police tape to make those trendy “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS” bags.

~~~

Sometimes your family is just too much liability.

Of course it’s nice to have some people you can fall back on with no practical limit, but you might want to consider that there may be times that your sanity is more important than your family.

Like when you start thinking about taking an entire bus hostage.

~~~

Finally…

I couldn’t resist. Everybody on Facebook was going on about the standoff. Pity this, pity that. Blame here, blame there. Pray to [insert deity here] and hope for the best. Cops are stupid/incompetent blah blah blah…

So I said something about the nice dinner I had and about the nice day I had.

This, I guess, is why Internet trolls exist. And how they come to be.

As I hit “share” and watched my message go out into cyberspace, I couldn’t help but smile. Successful troll is successful, as they say.

I may get a bad rap for being uncaring and aloof, but I’ve found that when it comes to the affairs of this country, most of the time it’s better to just sit back, watch the fireworks and learn what you can from the experience. As opposed to bitching and moaning about it for a week or so without actually doing anything about the situation; that’s more annoying that trolling the Internet.

~~~

On the very last note, funny how years and years of excellent service can all vanish when one gets too complacent.

~

Moral of the story: never be the ripe fruit, for ripe is always just next to rotten.

Pros Down Low

So there were two women at the door-end of the jeep I was on, one each side.

From what I heard of their conversation (and from the way they were dressed) these two women were most probably strippers (or prostitutes), most probably employed somewhere cheap and dingy (this from the boy who once got asked if he was good with a couple thousand). I live in Quezon City, I’ve traveled along Quezon Avenue at night, I lived my first 15 years in Pasay and I’ve seen the night scene in Manila so I know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, for being “pros” in the world’s oldest profession (or so everybody else says), they seemed to live pretty crappy lives.

One woman did all the talking, steering my imagination along with the conversation. And we shall name her W1, which of course makes the other woman W5.

I arrived in the jeep in the middle of her “how to save money” lecture. She was talking about something she termed “take a ride”, saying that in her 2 years of doing whatever it was she was doing (never once did any specific term come up), she’d only learned about it about a week ago from one of her taller friends. For the life of me, I cannot figure out what the hell “take a ride” is. Is it nonchalantly stepping off the jeep without paying? Or does it involve Eros’ workings? Well, whatever it is, according to W1 it does not involve flagging a taxi. Actually, according to W1, taxis should be avoided as they’re just too expensive.

The “take a ride” discussion lasted all the way until the intersection of Kamias and Anonas, which is about 5-7 minutes’ worth of conversation, about only 2 of which was actually relevant to the topic at hand.

When the jeep turned onto Kamias W1 switched to saving money by where one lives.

W1 told W5 that she was saving a fortune by living in an apartelle as opposed to…

Huh. I can’t actually think of anything plausible to end that sentence with. Townhouse? Not likely. Rented house? Even more farfetched. Shanty by the side of the road? Possible, but just what do you pay for in a shanty except for that occasional extra sheet of plywood?

Anyway, W1 said that she was paying only 150 per month for the apartelle, which is when W5 asks about W1′s child.

?

W1 then says that she goes home every now and then. So it seems W1 does have a child, whose sustenance relies on W1′s performance at her job. Then W1 goes on to tell W5 about another girl who’s pregnant at the time of her telling. Says it was a Korean who got said lady knocked up. W5 says that the knocked-up lady was still coming in even though she was around 6 months, but then finally had to stop because the baby bump got too obvious. I for one,  have seen ladies at 4 months and cannot figure out how 6 months can qualify as “concealable”. But anyway, W1 asserts that the baby bump makes a woman disgusting to men, citing her experience with her boyfriend as proof.

At this point in the conversation, the jeep was stopped at the intersection of Kalayaan and Kamias, about 4-6 minutes after turning onto Kamias from Anonas. It was also at this point that I determined that W1 and W5 were either dancers or prostitutes, W1′s leopard-print leggings just starting to sink in.

So now W1 starts into a conversation about another friend (let’s call the friend F8) who ran into a bit of trouble with her boyfriend. Presumably F8 is also in W1 and W5′s line of work, as F8′s boyfriend (F8B) was loosely described by W1 as murderously jealous. F8 supposedly ran from F8B’s jealousy, opting to hide in wherever W1 was staying (apartelle?). F8B reportedly calls W1, demanding to know where F8 was. W1, obviously not willing to hand F8 over to a really-angry F8B, lied, at which point F8 screams to the heavens that she’d kill herself. Somehow W1 manages to convince F8B to leave F8 alone for a while, barring his new threats to kill both W1 and F8, because F8B had threatened to kill F8 a few times before and with more than just verbal threats.

How do these stories not make it to drama shows?

At this point the jeep had crossed the intersection of Kamias an K-H and this is where I normally get off. So I got off. I wasn’t going to stay for the rest of their life stories. Whatever else they may have been.

This is why sometimes, even when I’m tired and just want to get home, I opt for the jeep instead of flagging down a cab. You can’t put a price on local color.

Besides, according  to W1, I’m saving a ton and might even try “take a ride”. Although I’m pretty sure I won’t ever need to.

3 D’s and Overzealous Requirements

So last Saturday my uncle and I went to Trinoma because he was bored and wanted to check out Sony Ericsson’s new X8. But mainly because he was bored.

So anyway, off we went to Trinoma. First stop: The White Hat. A frozen yogurt joint. Their yogurt is less sour than Red Mango’s and they don’t leave a hole in the center when they fill up their cups.

Dairy Queen? What’s that?

After The White Hat, we went up to the technology corridor (wing?) of Trinoma and looked around for the Ericsson store. No longer there but there is a Sony Center around the corner. Into the store we went.

In one corner of the store was Sony’s latest piece of TV tech: a 3D TV. The TV included three glasses that incorporated an electronic filter to produce the 3D from the TV screen. Watching 3D-mode without the glasses still presented that blurry dual-kind-of-red-and-kind-of-blue image like you got on those old 3D animations they used to show theater-size (Enchanted Kingdom’s Rialto and that dinosaur film we watched on a field trip way back in elementary).

Put on the glasses, turn the electric filter on and BAM you’re watching 3D!

Eh…

So this is supposed to be the next revolution in TV how, again?

Call me a Luddite but I just don’t get it. The staff pointed out the depth of the image and then I kind of got it. While IMAX and Samsung have 3D tech that projects depth outward, Sony’s projects depth inward. Okay so it was definitely different compared to 2D TV (which has been declared fine for 50 years and counting by the way), but after the – very short – wow period all I could notice was that the image had an annoyingly empty feel to it. It was like I was watching layers of video playing on transparent screens contained within the same frame.

To put it simply it was like watching a moving paper tole a.k.a. 3D decoupage. The layers were definitely there, but the layers were still flat. And the TV had none of the complexity of paper tole where even just one figure could use several layers. In comparison, paper tole manages to impress me more.

Switching the electronic filter on and off did make the difference that much more apparent, and there I find another problem. After a few seconds with the filter on, I could hardly tell the difference. Which doesn’t take into account the reality that 3D media is… Well it pretty much isn’t outside of big-budget Hollywood.

After a few minutes of watching a man play golf with the crowd and the rolling green in their own flat layers behind him, I took off the glasses and turned the electronic filter off. Filled up the comment with some phony shit on how nicely the technology was used and left the store.

Much like what I thought when I saw that chick from Total Recall, I’ll take my double D’s thank you very much. I just wouldn’t know what the hell to do with the third one.

Besides, with High Definition we can now see every pimple on Tom Cruise’s face. Do we need to see just how high it is off his face as well?

~~~

On a completely unrelated topic, my Theology 131 professor requires us to do a marriage paper. The course title, by the way, is Marriage, Family Life and Human Sexuality in A Catholic Perspective, so maybe I should have seen this coming. But still, a marriage paper!

Seriously, I’m 19 and becoming the next dictator of the world runs around my mind more than does getting married. I get that the purpose is to prepare us for – possible – marriage, but I just can’t see the point of doing this right now.

And isn’t that what a counselor is for? Or your parents?

Yes this I’m ranting. No I don’t think the marriage paper – or Theology for that matter – will count for anything other than a fleeting fascination/nuisance. So maybe it’s an exercise in keeping your mind open, but I’ve got quite enough of that. Or an application of Philosophy. In that case I’d much rather apply it to the human being rather than something we’re not even totally sure is there.

Besides, it’s so hard to do something you just don’t feel like doing. Aside from dragging along every second with creativity squeezed dry, you’re also conscious that there are so many other infinitely more interesting and involving things you’d rather be doing with your time.

Against all odds, I managed to puke out a 1.5-page reflection paper on the “new” insights I had gained on marriage.

Ah well, at least our professor doesn’t require us to attend a marriage seminar like others do.

~

And so ends a month’s worth laziness with this blog. Yes, I haven’t been out much lately and ennui has taken root.

I could blame school, blame professors, blame whatever. It doesn’t really matter. I’m starting to not feel constantly burnt-out and that’s all that matters to me.

“Tribal”

A few years ago, there was this brand that somehow came up to be pretty popular. “Tribal” was the name of the store. They sold clothes in the baggy, trashy hip-hop style.

~

One of my female classmates, back in the second year of my high school, took a liking to that brand. I don’t exactly recall how often, but it became her habit to tell us about how cool Tribal’s clothes were.

I got curious enough that one afternoon I decided to check out Tribal. So the store design was pretty fitting with the kind of image they wanted its buyers to have. Rough, asymmetrical and red tube lighting all over the place. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the clothes on the racks, neither was I particularly impressed by the style of the clothes they had on. I heaved a sigh and a shrug and walked back out of the store, judging the entire exploration to be a big “meh.”

Although not totally revolted, I could hardly find any merit in any of the clothes. They just weren’t my cup of tea.

Then Monday came around again, and again I heard about how cool Tribal was.

When I heard that female classmate of mine, I wanted to buy something from Tribal and show her that I was wearing something from her favorite brand. Maybe she’d think me a great listener because I remembered the name of the store. Maybe she’d like me because I valued her judgement enough to spend some money based on it. Or maybe she’d just be impressed that my tastes were similar to hers.

And yes, I have to admit that I did actually kind of like her and that I was trying to impress her. It wasn’t even a subconscious decision.

So when the weekend swung around, I convinced my parents to bring us to Robinson’s. Into the Tribal store we went. I looked over the racks yet again, washed over by the seeming mediocrity of the wares on display. The rest of the family decided to look around as well, but of course my parents were never going to like the kind of clothes Tribal offered; my brother, maybe.

As I looked through the clothes hung up, I saw something that caught my attention. I quickly pulled it from the back of the rack to have a look. It was a dark green shirt with a simple black crew neck. Simple enough, but there in the middle of the shirt was a black rubber “Tribal” logo, which I would loosely describe as a hexagon made of stylized T’s that formed a star inside. All over the front of the shirt were these green rubber squiggles, kind of like terrain lines on maps. The back was just plain blank.

Ten minutes later we were walking out of the store with the shirt in a plastic bag in my hand.

When I got home I just tossed it into the laundry basket. I wasn’t quite interesting enough to warrant a final ogling in its fresh-from-the-bag state.

The first time I wore it, I think, was around October. I remember being able to wear it freely in school, so it was definitely not a normal school day. Maybe the school was celebrating its foundation day, which happens sometime October.

Anyway, it turns out that one of my guy friends, who was also friends with this girl I was looking to impress, had also decided to go get a Tribal shirt. This was a light blue shirt.

So she was both happy that we were wearing Tribal shirts, but then I noticed something about my friend’s shirt. There was a small tag on the back that said “BNY Jeans.”

I recall feeling slightly elated about finding out that the light blue shirt wasn’t a real Tribal shirt.

So I quickly pointed it out in my usual slightly-scathing tone. I hoped she would be a bit miffed at him because he had a knock-off, but she wasn’t. Instead we had a good laugh about it.

Funnily enough, a few months later she grew out of her Tribal phase. Which is not to say that I grew into one at all.

~

Tribal went out of my radar for the next few years, only pulling me in by sheer curiosity of what they might have in store.

I have just that one shirt from Tribal and none more. I even thought that they went right out of business. They did find a new customer base though, the currently much-lambasted “Jejemon” subculture (counterculture?). I do have to say that the kind of clothes they sell certainly feed the stereotype look, getting help from American Boulevard.

Anyway, I still have that shirt hanging in my closet right now. I don’t wear it very much anymore though. I never really liked it to begin with, and I have less trendy tastes for clothes. It’s hanging in my closet because folding said shirt will quite surely ruin the black rubber Tribal logo. But it’s just something I wear around the house now.

From  being something that I thought would get me into aces with a girl (kind of foolish upon reflection, because I was already great friends with the girl) to just something I wear around the house.

Funny what testosterone can do.

Children’s Stories

“This school was built on the remains of a hospital, which was built on a graveyard.”

“Every night, a shadow of a man can be seen sitting atop the mango tree.”

“That deck over there? That turns into a pool at night.”

“This school has a sixth floor, and all the ghosts stay there.”

~

Those were some of the ghost stories that went around back in my elementary years. Back when Santa Claus still kind of existed (and really creeped me out). Back then, we all thought those tales were as true as the words printed on our science books. Of course, as with every story, there has to be something taken away from it. In our case we stopped from stepping on the cracks that lined the first-floor hallways. Eventually curiosity about the so-called “sixth floor” overtook the fear inspired by the tale, and we went up there (recess can mean a lot of things to a 4th-grade schooler).

There were I think seven of us then, bravely venturing up past the boundaries of fear to rise triumphantly into the bright light and rarified air of discovery.

So we headed towards the rear set of stairs, the one that connected to the back entrance of the auditorium and was located right under the deck that was supposed to turn into a pool at night. Up we went, past the third floor where normally we would stop. There was no figure of authority around so everything was fine. When we reached the fourth floor the steps stopped and all that was before us was a short hallway that terminated in a narrow catwalk that wrapped around both sides of the auditorium. The catwalk then terminated in two small rooms on both sides of the auditorium. But neither of those two rooms were of any interest to us. The sixth floor was where we were going, and no small room was going to stop us.

There was a small door in the left side of the wall. Students probably weren’t supposed to go through. But we were on a mission of discovery. School rules and regulations did not apply. We opened the door with baited breath, wanting to see the other side and yet not wanting to at the same time. The door opened. A small room was revealed, mostly empty.

And there it was. The spiral staircase held to be the way to the sixth floor by one of the tales. It stood there, just about alone in the room, looking innocent and completely harmless in its coat of white. The staircase cut into a circular hole in the ceiling, so we couldn’t immediately see where the staircase led; if there was a sixth floor at all.

There was only one way to find out, and we weren’t going to back out. No, we’d already gone so far, why cease now?

We went up the white spiral staircase, nerves getting more frayed with every step.

At the top of the staircase came a sight that I still remember with extreme clarity to this day.

The top of the staircase came out to a smaller room, which in itself was nothing special. That room was empty, like the one below it.

There was a full-length mirror to the right of the staircase. The gateway to the other realm, as tales would have it. It certainly looked like one, for it had enough area to let an adult human being through. It was a surreal moment; we had scaled the distance to the sixth floor and here I was staring at my reflection as  it appeared in the gateway to the other realm.

I stepped off the staircase and out past the doorway onto the roof. The few steps to the raised deck that was supposed to turn into a pool was not ten inches to my right. I could have gone up it had I wanted to, but at that moment I found that I had no desire to see the deck.

We’d already made it up here, somehow we were already satisfied at how far we had gone. And the whole scenario was getting too creepy to handle for us.

So we decided to hightail it out of there.

But before I went back down the spiral staircase, back into the planned portions of our school building, I gave the gateway to the other realm another look. In that quick glance a small detail suddenly rose to my consciousness. The smooth surface of the glass had a crack, traveling diagonally down in a perfect line from the right edge to the bottom edge.

There was also a small detail that I was sure wasn’t there before. A brown, triangular, non-reflective spot, smaller but perfectly in line with the crack.

That quick glance turned into a stare. How could I have missed something like that? Missing the fracture could have been easy but the brown spot was harder to explain.

Then the spot seemed to shift. That sent me away.

Back in the classroom the seven of us were in a bit of a panic. But we were happy. We had gone where very few had probably gone before.

~

Thinking back, everything could be easily explained. The small deck that was supposed to turn into a pool? I learned the term for that a few years later: roof deck. The small room that held the spiral staircase to the sixth floor was later to be renamed “roof access” in my head. That fracture could be easily explained away by optics and thermodynamics. The brown spot is easily attributable to age.

But in those days, those tales were our metanarratives, tales to regale and/or scare us. To make us believe that our outdated-looking school building held infinitely more mystique than it had. Those tales were our distractions, things to let us while away the time when classes just got too boring.

In the end though, they were only ever that: tales.

The school was not built on a hospital which was built on a graveyard; the building started off on a clean lot. The shadow sitting atop  the mango tree is a manifestation of the Filipino belief in the supernatural, where big trees like the mango tree played house and home to a host of supernatural beings. The deck turning into a pool was no more than a mere figment of our imagination, owing to the way it looked a lot like a rooftop pool.

And the sixth floor? Never was, never will be. Yes, a fifth floor was added to the school building after the main construction was finished, but it only ever existed on one wing of the building, and held all of  the seniors’ classrooms.

About the most absurd tale I’ve ever heard about the school building is one that involves an earthquake and an overzealous-to-the-point of idiocy landlord. This one is true, and was an actual complaint for a little while (being the son of a teacher in the school has its perks). Said story had the landlord complaining because the school was supposedly leaning over his property due to earthquake damage. How a U-shaped building could lean over without any part of the building shearing off totally escapes me, but that’s why the story is absurd. In the end the complaint was stuffed into the “ha-ha” box and soon forgotten. Anyway.

The thing though, is that those tales still hold some mystique for me that I figure I will never grow out of. Even now as I recall that trip to the roof, I still get a bit of a shiver.

What holds the mystique, I guess, is the gateway to the other realm.

Try as I might, I cannot think of any reason a full-length mirror should exist where that mirror did.

5.18

It’s 5.18 in the morning. My eyes are tired and my chest feels tight.

Ever notice how when there’s something I really want to say I write it down and then show it? I guess I’m strange that way. It’s just my way of making sure that I can get my message across without risk of muddling it up. Maybe.

Do you know how hard it is for me to tell you what I really want to say? Every single time I feel like doing so, I pull back, afraid you’ll just brush it aside like you did the last time. I thought you understood me, but now I seriously doubt that. If you understood me maybe you wouldn’t try to mold me. I understand that you’re just trying to set me on the “right” path, but what is the “right” path? Is it something you’ve pre-destined for me because that’s what you think is right for me? Or is it simply the one you took before? I don’t know what your definition of right is, but let’s not care about right and wrong for a moment. What about happy and sad? Have those two completely flown out of the equation? Can what makes me happy not be right? I don’t know what I am to you anymore; then again I may not have known it at all.

Sometimes I feel as if you’re trying to make me into a blank canvas you can start fresh upon, but I’m not. I’m a canvas with things already on it. The pigments have already dried, and the most you can do is add to them.

More often I feel as if I’m failing you every second that I live. Is there something I lack? Something that you want me to become? Tell me, please, and I’ll do my best to be whatever it is that will make me shine in your eyes. I once said that I can be anything to anyone, so please, I beseech you to deign to try that with me.

Would you hate me if I made my confession to you? If I let you know the things that I’ve kept inside?

If there ever was a person in my life that made me feel like love was killing me, you would be it. Look at me, knowing that I’m going two hundred miles an hour into a dead-end street and not caring.

Would you hate me if I told you that I loved you too much to quit?

Would you ever be able to look me in the eye again if I let the floodgates open?

Do you know how much I want you to give up on me, just up and walk away? If you did that then maybe I can get the closure I’ve been looking for. If you did that then maybe I can have some peace of mind. But I know you’re never going to do that. Unless I find some way to break past your limits.

I’m a contradiction. I want you to give up on me and at the same time I’m desperate for your approval.

Maybe in the end that’s all I really want, your approval. Maybe I just want you to look at me with that proud gleam in your eye, to be able to tell everybody that you’re proud of who I am.

Maybe I just want you to be that one single smile within the sea of clicking tongues and shaking heads.

Maybe one day I’ll be able to print that out and show you.

It’s 5.50 now, and you have no idea that I’m up. I think it’s time to go to sleep.