All The Empty Things Disguised As Me

"The moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies." 

(Ah, the irony of explaining why you hate to explain!)

-

I have been a Facebook prisoner for the better part of six years. I feel helplessly trapped, like an innocent man sentenced to Life Without the Possibility of Parole. 

An overwhelming chunk of the world's population thrives in the digital world. For a long time, I was part of this population. Until the unthinkable happened. I began unveiling my soul through social media, Facebook in particular. 

I am horrified at how I knowingly continue to be the most untrue version of myself. Upon reflection some years back, I discovered I lacked the gift of social grace. The smallest pleasantries vex me to no end. I am envious of people who can manage themselves very well privately and publicly. I wish posting my innermost thoughts brings me the same feeling of release as it does everyone else. Reluctantly, however, I can't help but regard certain people with the highest respect. Those who couldn't care less about Facebook. 

What a lethal combination for me to have a public account and yet hate small talk. When I post, it will almost always be about something or someone I hold very dearly. I am increasingly alarmed at the rate I am sharing the deepest parts of who I am and feeling extremely depleted afterwards for having let loose a part of me that I can never get back. Commiting treason against myself? A hundred counts or more.

Inevitably, with alarm bells unheeded, the Facebook culture has slowly seeped into my veins. I am aghast to look back at status updates about stuff I used to have the slightest concern for. 

The most distressful thing, however, is having to make allowances for the eyes that might read my posts. I keep making these allowances against my will and my better judgment. I abhor it in the strongest possible terms! It is like a corrosive substance eating away bit by bit the very fiber of my being.

So how do I walk away from it all and live as close to my nature as possible? Funny, to be in the viselike grip of something I thought was an instrument of Freedom!

To the digital world, please find below the reasons I am reluctant to deactivate my account:

1. How do I transfer into one personal file all the beautiful memories I have kept a record of in my account throughout all these years, except by the painstaking process of doing it manually?

2. Facebook bridges geographical distances. It keeps you connected to important people in your life no matter where they are in the world. Cutting this cord could mean ending the one thing that holds your relationship together, that sense of still being able to share the milestones in each other's lives, even if only digitally.

3. Facebook could save your life or those of others. Like television news, but only more accessible, it can be a source of live updates about current events, disasters and emergencies. And oh dear, I can't even begin to explain what this means to me.

Having reassessed the possible impacts of relinquishing these conveniences, I again vacillate. 

Aidez-moi s’il vous plaît! 

Cultivating the love of Woodpushing

The kids are becoming too addicted to Minecraft, esp. Hauz. So much so that Pappi and I had to stage an intervention. Any form of Minecraft is banned from being played at home. Pap and I have had a lot of rifts about introducing chess to the boys. 

We finally had a breakthrough when the other day, Pap found a way to make learning Chess more interesting. He figured that if there are youtubers for Minecraft, there must also be youtubers for chess. He found chess animations that really caught the kids' attention. 

And Lake is now becoming more and more engrossed in the game. Just about an hour ago, he pressed me to create an account for him at chesskids.com. This was such good news that I immediately obliged. His account name is NarrowSmoke. It's so amazing to know that these kids have a knack for online stuff. Lake has no trouble locating a player and inviting him for a match. I think his first game was against CleverCake. A little later, Sigh also demanded to have one. His username is WarlikeShed. 

Just a little disappointed that Hauz coudn't care less. But no matter, we will find away. He is a smart boy with hints of brilliance. Hopefully, in the near future, he would have a lightbulb moment.

Block 118 Lor 1 Toa Payoh 310118
20 Apr 2014
0125am


bi,

I wish you were here so you could hold me and look into the depths of my soul, to see me for who I am- a cold steel with a beating heart. I read somewhere that we never really change, that we only become more fully what we are. So after 3 decades, the self I thought I have only stumbled upon was revealed to me in horror and fascination. I am a thousand Gabrielle de Lioncourts and Christabel LaMottes, rolled into one.

My longing for solitude is equaled only by my desire for another being who would have the slightest understanding of who I am so that I would have no need to explain myself, to venture with words that never fail to fail me. On second thought, no, I don't even require understanding, as Eudoxia would put it. I wanted only a kindred, a soul made of the same stuff.

But what a powerful adversary life is. How easy one can be thrown into the mundane and be a slave to it. How effortlessly it has engulfed that part of me that yearns for the mountains, and green riverbanks, to wander around at dawn, holding your hand, and no one else's. To bask in the fading rays of the sun, to hear the ocean waves, to watch the stars and look death squarely in the eyes while this little spark that is our life together outshines even for a fleeting instant what is to be our destiny- oblivion. I love you, without meaning, without compass. I love you, like a question with no answers.

the little drummer girl

I have officially become a Gosling girl, just like the millions out there swooning over you. I hate being run-of-the-mill but I guess there is no way out of it, as far as I can see. One cannot watch Blue Valentine or Drive or Half Nelson or The Believer without knowing that there is something unfathomable about you. So there. I declare, I accept that I am just another statistic. Happy birthday!

My Immoderate Fondness for Ryan Gosling

Temperature check: forty one degrees Celsius. I have contracted the worst case of Ryan Gosling fever. Knowing me as only B does, I guess it is only understandable that he would feel a pang. I have a tendency to lose sleep over film and book characters.  And when I develop an obsession for someone who actually exists, though clearly out of my league, it scares him a little. I go through an indefinite stage of madness. (Sounds like an exaggeration until you witness it first hand, lol.) And so it has been for this past month. It started when I watched Blue Valentine. I feel like my heart just got torn into so many broken pieces and they were taped back together all wrong. So as a way to erase from my memory that image of Dean (Ryan's character) at the bathroom looking coyly at Cindy taking a shower, I had to watch a comedy movie. For no special reason other than that it is the most recent non-heavy film I have heard of, I chose Crazy, Stupid, Love. I was dumbfounded that it would be another encounter with him. My heart jumped after a fleeting close up of his face, with an expression that so resembled B's. I doubled back and had to convince myself that his shoulders are not wide enough for someone his height. And that his face has a longish quality that you don't normally associate with good-looking men. Of course you know what happened next. So by now, I had to be crazy not to do my research. I watched Drive and was pretty amazed that someone can have so many tricks up his sleeve. The Notebook. Lars and the Real Girl. Half Nelson. Ides of March. Fracture. And most jaw-dropping of all, The Believer. I am a sucker for depth in a human being and it is at once intoxicating and exasperating to be drawn to a Hollywood celebrity, of all people. Shucks, I sound like a school girl at the dawn of a new love. But darn, how exquisite it is to be reawakened!

My Tambourine Boys

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMh8ReGEHdo&feature=g-upl&context=G2a6eb36AUAAAAAAAAAA

LOST

from my Friendster Blog
11/17/07

I’m crushed between
my left and right thoughts
I knock, and I swim, and I hide
deep in the blood of my veins
I wait to reach my eyes
as I open them
I float into the night
Oh, I’m lost, I guess for good
find me if you can,
I’m like that artist
with a carpenter’s hand.
I show mysef to you,
you try to read me aloud.
when you look again,
you realize I’m gone
won’t it be better if
I dont need you to understand?

Melancholia

from my Friendster Blog
written 10/17/03, 04:22pm 

you came like a vision. garbed in that raiment of shadows. you stared with clouded eyes and laughed with a mouth lined in pain. you waved to me. with that contriving left hand. that spins a wasteland of half-buried despair. i walked with hurried steps. to you. it was folly. you’d let no one through. that impregnable door of your desolation. in the silence of your wailing, i saw you smile in triumph. i’m sorry, i didn’t know. you were waving me away.

A Confession to Her

from my Friendster Blog 
06/28/06 11:55am, guada

what did i know of transcendence before i met you? i have always taken pride in my ability to brush aside conventions, norms… fancying myself too enlightened to bother with such social impositions. but your very name alone humbles me which is by no means the only thing about you that does. and i guess, finally, this is transcendence. what is gender to me now?


–about a stunningly beautiful being of the same sex (@ambergris)

Musings

from my Friendster Blog 09/04/07
written 08/14/07  9:25am, las piñas

I am a walking time bomb. I wait to explode but instead I crumple unto myself, like a doll made of paper. The past laughs at me, mocking my indifference to the lessons it had plastered on the walls of my eyes. You all smile knowingly and I look with studied nonchalance. Someday, John Galt will have nothing on me. For now, let the song stand in my stead. 

" And all the talks and all the lies were all the empty things disguised as me…"

Undead

from my Friendster Blog
written 10/30/07

how do you emerge from a life fraught with so much disillusionment? why have i allowed my insatiable passion to die? my tongue has gone to sleep and my fingers are typing words barely recognizable to me. have i finally succumbed to silence? i can remember a time when i was capable of extreme anger, joy as oppressive as grief, pain that makes you want to lie down on the pavement while it rains… i can recall purposely contracting dengue fever just to make a point and even hammering my first mobile phone into pieces in a fit of rage. i can recall how hard it was to breathe with my heart pounding while i willed the pacers to win game 7 against the bulls. i am reminded of the jolas days, the sorrow over the loss of my faith in a supreme being, the amazement at frank mccourt’s life, the bitter disappointment that i can never pen a novel as life-altering and all-encompassing as the brothers karamazov.

i used to feel with an intensity unparalleled by those i know. but i have forgotten how to become that person again. i don’t even know if i care. sometimes, i think to myself that like tristan (legends of the fall), maybe, i am the rock they broke themselves against. perhaps, it’s only that i’m too strong for normal people. but of course i know better. it’s only indifference, obliviousness, detachment.

it bothers me that this does not bother me at all!

The Downside of Acute Self-Awareness

from my Friendster Blog
written 12/05/07

for a whole month now, death has haunted me. i mean i’m sure most of us have a fear of death. it is a natural human reaction to the unknown. i used to spring from my bed at night at the sudden realization that we do die, all of us. for quite a while, this fear, well not so much fear as it is helplessness from something imminent and inevitable, this feeling had been relegated to some remote part of my brain. and for reasons still unknown to me, it has resurfaced with renewed force. i wake up and laugh at the meaninglessness of it all. why, we do worry about so many things! so many things that in the end would make no difference, would not cause a ripple in our transient existence! we work so hard to get paid to buy our needs to survive day to day only to die. it makes perfect sense to say IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE AT ALL!

Clever Little Big Boy

Today, Hauz found a link to y3.com games while browsing through youtube. He missed an episode of Fairly Odd Parents and got very mad with his Pappi for switching the channel to watch the World Cup. I don't know how he does it. He can't even read yet but he can already type keywords to watch his favorite cartoon shows in youtube. I think he memorizes how a word looks, what letters are in it and then he types them into the search filed. Pretty clever. What more, you would think he understands the instructions because he finds out immediately what key is for what move, where to find what, etc. This I could not explain. Must observe some more.

To Harvy, Beloved Brother

dear harvs,


you cannot imagine how i much i wish you were here. some days, i make-believe. i  imagine i could just go home to davao and yours would be the first face i would see. that our routine would resume, you bringing me to and picking me up from my friends' houses. i recall that joke you cracked about a few men who rode on a military truck. i smile at your hilarious impersonation of that Eskinol guy. oh, how your younger sisters laughed. and how proud i was of you. it seemed suddenly, you had grown up. that there was so much more to you than the tough guy we knew.  i drink up stories about you like i would a green mango shake, with zeal and dedication. i loved that you looked out for us. how my heart broke when i learned about you leaving the house. it wasn't really the running away but the image i had of you at the knowledge that you had been found. i felt the defeat as much as you must have. looking back, i am sorry that i wasn't there for you. not that you would have opened up to me but i knew it would have been great having me on your side at that time. i live everyday of my life thinking that i failed you. and this fear is assuaged only because you were someone who made his own choices. early on, you stopped calling me "manang" and started calling me by my first name. at first, it sounded weird but it endeared you more to us, to me. it made your "thank you's" the sweetest thing in the world. like tristan ludlow, "you followed none of the rules and yet we all loved you more".


i hug you with all the love i am capable of. god, i miss you so...


One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop


The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.


Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.


Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.


I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Don't Wanna Miss A Thing

Isn't it amazing how time flies? It's been over two years since I uploaded this video in Youtube.