Does anyone have a

goooooooooogle

WAVE

ACCOUNT?

INVITE ME.

pleaaaaaase

rowlandanthony.imperial@gmail.com

merci!

Are we? ):

As if

it’s hard to paint

a smile

over a forlorn face

because tears wash them away

to the ground below your feet.

Nor to speak sumptuous words

and phrases

to mask the bitter aftertaste of that

old sweet feeling, running

through your veins.

Nor to move on without looking back

because behind those seemingly

momentary eyes

the mind can still clearly see

the lurid reflections of -

- the past ;

constantly digging it out

of the ground,

while time keeps on

pouring in more.

Constantly colluding

the realm of reality

with your

facile fantasies -

as if there was

no dividing wall

between them.

As if the hands of the clock

never moved at all.

As if your heart

was totally unrestrained

by the crossroads of life

and irrevocableness of time

that forever intangibly separate then and now.

Na, na na, na na na na, na na na na…

I held opportunity.

I held a moment in my hand, brilliant as a star, fragile as a flower, a tiny sliver of one hour. I dripped it carelessly, Ah! I didn’t know, I held opportunity.

—

Hazel Lee

Every day feels like Wednesday.

Wednesday is the third day of the working week. It is neither here nor there. It is three days after Sunday, two days after Monday, a day after Tuesday, a day before Thursday, two days before Friday, and three days before Saturday. Basically, you are stuck in the middle that is Wednesday, stranded on an 86400-second, 1440-minute, 24-hour period of stagnancy and uncertainty, squeezed in between the indelible past and the unforeseeable future, constrained by the fact that there is no other choice but to simply make it through the day.
Every day feels like Wednesday.

Finally decided to revive my Tumblr account.

Four years (and) running.

20 October 2009

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

At the very last minute before handing in my final draft, Father inserted this quote at the very beginning of my valedictory speech. It was a concoction of words, wound together by the invisible strings of childhood memories and experiences, all of which had to be carefully restructured by the cumbersome hands of my parents and teachers, alluding to the idea that perhaps I – even though I was the (allegedly) smartest kid in the cohort – was too young to understand what the hell Lao Tzu really meant. Well, I didn’t even know who the hell that guy was.

My childhood memories have slowly disintegrated away to the most unreachable corners of my mind, but somehow, I have managed to hold on to this particular fragment of the past, embedding it on my life like a hammered piece of nail on a white, empty wall of cement. The resulting crevasses, fissures on the wall, those little distortions circulating the nail, stagnant and permanent in the immaculate sea of white, hid beneath the overhanging framed picture of a twelve year-old boy with a sun-lit smile tightly sewn from ear to ear.

Four years have passed and I have already hung so many pictures on this wall. The collection has kept on growing and growing and growing. Whenever I felt that I had to keep a memory or two, I would take a nail and a piece of string and hang them, keeping them alive with the stillness and tangibleness of these photographs. Looking back at them once in a while, I can’t help but realize how much time has already gone by; how many things have changed; how much experience I’ve gained; how far I have journeyed on my own. I also can’t help but realize how much of my life has been kept beneath these photographs: the sadness, the sorrows, the pain, the secrets, the bad experiences of the past, all trapped within the crevasses of my existence, cunningly transcended by my extroverted attitude and almost unearthly happy disposition as flatly seen by a typical outsider.

Well, it’s overwhelming. It’s a continual bombardment of the past, the present, and the prospects of the near and distant futures. Leaving home at the age of fifteen, facing the trials and obstacles of the unforgiving world without the physical protection of the hands that I once deemed cumbersome, encountering the kinds of people that I’ve never imagined I would actually meet, opening my eyes to the reality that life is not as clear-cut as black and white, questioning the validity of truth and the meaning of physical and supernatural existence, having to shave every three or four days for a nice and clean face, I must say that I have already traveled a long, long, long way.

It doesn’t sound like I’m happy, but don’t get wrong. I am happy. I really am. Seriously, I’m not kidding. LOL. I’m extremely thankful for everything; for my family and friends; for the awesome education that I’ve received over the years; for that person that I was, that I’ve become, that I still am.

It’s already been four years running, and I am still having the time of my life.

The contract is going to end soon, but life doesn’t just end there. There’s still a lot more ahead. There’s still a lot more things to do. And there’s still a long, long, long way to go.

A journey of a thousand miles,

of a million kilometres,

of a billion light years,

of eternity,

begins with a single step

and a simple smile that says,

LG, life’s good. ;D

Happy 4th anniversary.

Autumn leaves.

The falling leaves drift by the window
The autumn leaves of red and gold
I see your lips, the summer kisses
The sun-burned hands I used to hold

Since you went away the days grew long
And soon I’ll hear old winter’s song
But now I miss you most of all my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall

**

C’est une chanson, qui nous ressemble
Toi tu m’aimais et je t’aimais
Nous vivions tous, les deux ensemble
Toi que m’aimais moi qui t’aimais
Mais la vie sépare ceux qui s’aiment
Tout doucement sans faire de bruit
Et la mer efface sur le sable les pas des amants désunis

Make-believing.

You can’t ascribe great cosmic significance to a simple earthly event. Coincidence, that’s all anything ever is, nothing more than coincidence. There are no miracles. There is no such thing as fate. Nothing is meant to be.

The deep voice of the narrator was awfully right. Serendipity, Fate, Destiny, Soulmates, True Love? It’s amazing how human beings can suffer so much from being obsessed and possessed by the orgy of such trivialities that they themselves have created and molded out of thin air. I don’t understand how these unbelievably fantastical and fanciful ideas have easily withstood the test of time. Thousands of generations have come and gone but we still remain prisoners of our own obtuseness, doltishness and vanity.

Many times I’ve thought that I’ve discovered what love was, but then I’d realize that everything was just a product of pure coincidence. Would I have felt a special feeling for that girl standing beside the bus stop had I not missed the only bus that goes to school? Would I have even seen her standing there at the first place had it not been for my phone that slipped from my hand and slid all the way to her direction? Many people would think  that it’s the product of fate, or the working of the hands of destiny, but one should not rule out the idea that it might simply be just a random occurrence, created by the hands of chance. Life is a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.

We all exist above the thin layer of crust of this planet bounded by the indestructible, undistorted, perfect laws of the physical universe, but rather we choose to live inside our own little worlds, our own little ideas of what should be and what could have been.

This world, this Earth, this tiny speck of dust sitting unnoticed in this vast expanse of space and time, is too muddled by our own fetishes.

This writing might not be making any sense, but one thing I know is for sure.

We need to stop make-believing.

Painted joys, hidden sorrows.

Why were there no tears?

There were ear-to-ear smiles on everyone’s faces. The joys and laughters reverberated through the corridors and inside the classrooms as if it was actually the first day of school. There were jokes. There were people who attempted to defy school rules by making impromptu pranks here and there, albeit executed with extreme care and subtlety, as if they were administering a last-resort placebo drug on a patient suffering from an impossible disease. Everything seemed so happy. Everything seemed so ordinary.

But it is, of course, a painted facade for everyone to see. While it was a fact that nobody within the confines of the school campus expressed grief through the shedding of a tear or two,  everyone knew very well that those smiles, those laughters, those jokes, were all nothing but lies.

Like a fish bone stuck on your throat.

I just had the last Physics lesson yesterday. The last English, Math and French lessons today.

Mrs. Hammond is transferring to Malaysia, and M. Heusdens is going back to Europe.

The last Economics and Chemistry lessons tomorrow.

It’s hard to swallow the fact that everyone is slowing leaving, fading away. That everything is slowly coming to an end.

Is it possible to fall in love with a movie?

Yes.

(:

(:

Check the movie’s track listing here.

Mon sort.

I am facing a vast horizon

of opportunities

waiting to be struck, to be grasped

by my hands that have endured

the burning sands of time.

 Despite slicing through the gusty winds,

and traversing under torrential rains,

constantly challenging death,

this arduous journey

will lose its meaning

once my feet are stripped of their garments.

Barefoot,

I cannot continue any further

for the terrain ahead

is merciless and unforgiving.

Disappointing indeed

is the veracity of life’s misfortunes.

Clinging on like a relentless shadow,

sticking like unwanted dirt,

invisibly rushing from behind,

the perennial, stinging pain

of double-edged knives

inextricably stabbing at my back,

leaves me with no option

but to resign to my inevitable denouement.

 

If fate means you to lose, give him a good fight anyhow. ~ William McFee 

  

Light.

With the modern-day physicist’s current knowledge of the universe, nothing - at all – travels faster than the speed of light. Based on the empirical calculations of his forefathers, light travels at an amazing godlike speed of 300,000 kilometers per second. Usually travelling on a straight path, its propagation can be influenced by the gravitational force of a massive body floating in the universe, say, the Sun. In addition, depending on the opacity of the object in collision, a ray of light with a certain wavelength may not be able to pass through it. Nevertheless, regardless of its bendable nature and variable penetrative power, Light travels faster than anything else, and perhaps, to him, that is all that matters.

But it seems that certain circumstances prevent us from seeing things. Perhaps the very notions that it can only travel on a straight path and pass through a specific object, already give us a sufficient idea that a cashier can steal her employer’s money in the cash register while he is inside the toilet; that a man inside a car with tinted windows can drive along the highway stretch with his left steering the wheel and his right veering his pussy plunger like a gear shift lever; that a revered, retired army general in his 60s can spend a lovely afternoon reading People Magazine while ostentatiously singing and dancing to the beat of Madonna’s Vogue; that a stout, ugly and sickly mother of five badass children can find enough reasons to divorce (or even better, kill) his good-for-nothing husband by secretly finding out the existence of his online PerfectMatch account which he uses to impregnate his lifeless Saturday evenings. While light allows anyone to see and witness anything within the range of his stereoscopic vision, regardless of whether or not they bring about human pleasure or satisfaction, the limitations to its immense power actually lie in our inability to break the physical, impenetrable barriers caused by us ourselves. We cannot be in more than one place at the same time. We cannot see things beyond mountains. We cannot see what’s underneath the sea. While light is everywhere, we - in any moment in time – can only be somewhere, at some place, and not anywhere else.

Perhaps the invention of high-speed Internet has somewhat overcome these barriers. It has allowed man to access the world and circumnavigate its entirety as if he was the sole commander of his very own ship.  Without an inch of my ass moving out of the plastic chair inside my room, I can reach the beautiful beaches of the Bahamas or the pristine waterfalls of Tanzania in a few seconds or so, depending on the strength of my wi-fi connection. I can even travel to outer space. While we cannot see what the light in another part of the world may allow us to see there, the images of foreign lands and peoples can simply be just a click away. We can also hear things as if we are really there: the sound of traffic, cackling laughters, cries for help, among many others.  Never had we held so much power right under our very fingertips.

And this has become so evident in the past few days. Like a travelling wave of light, with so much energy along its incessant and relentless propagations, news about the then-city, now-wasteland that is Metro Manila, hijacked cyberspace immediately after Ondoy’s wrath came and left like a loan shark demanding the monthly interest payment from his unfortunate victim. Pictures swarmed the electronic world and their copies multiplied like bacteria, sending concerned spines shivering all over the world. News of the worst metropolitan calamity in the Philippines in four decades, regardless of their reliability and accountability, spread like wildfire and filled up the headlines of every imaginable newspaper. And as the commander-circumnavigator of my own ship, I somehow reconnected with my identity and found ourselves steering and veering towards my desolate and grief-stricken country. Although in reality, I was stuck in another piece of land, which is a hell for any IB student, but which would undoubtedly be Nirvana for anyone who lost their homes to Ondoy. And, more sadly, all I could do was to watch the calamitous events like flashes of lightning, discomfortingly filling my heart with amazement, anxiety, and fear.

Such power I had, under my fingertips, to be able to see my countrymen covered in mud, traversing the torrential currents of rain and sewage. Such power to be able to witness homes being destroyed and washed away like children’s toys. Such power, to be able to witness the new generation Bayanihan, utilizing all forms of media to reach out for manpower and financial assistance. Newspapers. Radio. TV. Google. Facebook. Twitter. Such power indeed. Much more powerful than light, whose absence on that unfortunate Saturday left twelve million in complete darkness.

Ondoy’s wrath drowned the hearts of many with its relentless, continuous downpour of a month’s worth of rainfall in six hours, and left a multitude of hungry, naked, and homeless civilians. And while Manila was submerged in darkness, the Internet proved its increasing dominance in our lives. It became the fastest means of communication with the rest of the world. It’s accessibility, ease of use, simplicity, and unparalleled speed allowed us to know about the disaster within just a few clicks. Regardless of where the rest of the Filipinos were at that moment, they all gathered together as one force in cyberspace. Once information spread like virus, the consequential actions then came down to each computer user. Many Filipinos harnessed its power to further spread the news to help speed up financial assistance and increase volunteer numbers to make up for the government’s unsurpring failure to come up with preventive disaster measures, or at least coordinate its forces and allocate its resources (because there were no resources to allocate anyway, since the country’s Emergency Funds were diverted to sponsor the diablo’s international ventures such as this).

Well, everything all came down to me. I had the chance to use its power to - at the very least - help spread the news, in the hopes of getting more outside help. But instead, I simply sat down on my plastic chair, drowning myself in the comforts of my room while watching a submerging metropolitan of twelve million people desperately trying to make ends meet.

Three

Photo courtesy of Time Magazine

By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer

One, after Fernando Poe, Jr. died on Dec. 14, 2004, they did an inventory of his things. In one bodega, they found cartons of relief goods that were meant to be delivered to Infanta, Quezon. Infanta had been buried in mudslides a couple of weeks before his death and, along with many others, FPJ had bestirred himself to help.

With one difference: While all the other relief-givers were busy putting their names on their donations—or as in the case of many public officials, putting their names on other people’s donations—FPJ was not. His people would swear later he would not hear of it. He gave strict orders for the relief goods to be unmarked and just sent where needed. It altered my view of the man completely and made me vow to make amends to his family for some of the things I had said about him.

That is class. Which makes me furious today about the politicians who want to exploit the misfortune of others for their ends. Or indeed their continuing travail, many of them having lost everything in one of the worst disasters ever to hit this metropolis. It’s a sentiment I know is shared by many, even those who were not directly ravaged by the floods, as I’ve seen in news reports and blogs.

Heading the pack is Willie Revillame who was busy announcing that “kami nga ni Senator Villar” have been tireless in delivering relief goods to the needy. You’d think the guy would have learned a thing or two from being crucified after he vituperated about Cory’s coffin being shown on his show, consequently disrupting his and his audience’s fun. Clearly his chastisement hasn’t chastened him enough. Or he’s just fundamentally tasteless he cannot see that the last thing the victims want is to be treated like contestants, or supplicants, of “Wowowee” waiting upon his generosity.

Thankfully the tack is likely to backfire. People are in a foul mood and are not likely to remember Revillame—or his principal—with fondness come election time.

The last thing we need is to see politics mix with relief. “When you want to shoot, shoot,” as Eli Wallach said in “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” finishing off the guy who was threatening him with all sorts of mayhem. Same principle here: When you want to give, give, don’t advertise. All you’ll get back is mayhem in the minds of the beneficiaries.

Two, on Tuesday government’s disaster council gave a briefing. They were three days late. The time to have done that was Saturday at the height of the rains. The time to have appeared in public to calm down a metropolis in the grip of panic was last Saturday. The time to have gone to the aid of people who had every reason to panic (some of them were huddling on the roofs of their houses, along with their children and their aged, pounded by unceasing rain) was last Saturday. The time to have unleashed the full resources of government, which should have been there because government has—or should have—billions of pesos in calamity and emergency funds, was last Saturday.

In fact the monumental thing that happened last Saturday was the complete absence of government. The only government there was were the media, notably ABS-CBN and GMA-7. You can forgive both for advertising their wares, or relief efforts, under the extenuating circumstances. They were the government. They were the central authority apprising the public of the situation. They were the central authority coming to the aid of the victims. They were the central authority running the country.

The Internet is full of reports that the emergency fund is depleted, having gone to fund Arroyo and company’s not-very-emergency trips abroad. I’ll leave that for when it’s confirmed. But the breakdown of government is staggering. Arroyo should thank God, or whatever entity she worships, we have elections—the same elections she tried to monkey with earlier with Charter change. Without that she would probably not last this week, given an incensed citizenry, given an aroused citizenry, given a citizenry that will no longer brook abuse. This is as angry as I’ve seen residents of Metro Manila in a long time.

Three, indeed to this hour, what government we have is courtesy of the private sector where voluntarism has sprung like wildflowers. That is the bright spot in all this, the light amid the darkness, the blazing sun after the storm. Truly the Filipino rises to his finest self during trying times, the more trying the times, the finer the rising. Or it is in times of disaster that the Filipino ceases to be a disaster, thinking of others first before self.

It’s especially heartening to see the kids go en masse on relief mode. Many of the kids in my neighborhood have done so, teeners who normally while away the holidays playing basketball, flipping rollerblades, and drinking beer in the stores. They’ve enrolled themselves to help without thought of pay, without thought of recompense, without thought of reward. Just the thought of doing something nice for a change, just the thought of doing something to make things better.

It rekindles memories of the July-August floods of 1972, when students also went in droves to places in Greater Manila no longer traversable by land, or indeed outside the metropolis where they were greeted by a greater ravaging. But then there was activism to fuel, or goad, or flagellate the youth to idealism. Well, there was also the prospect of meeting a cool chick or a cool cat while on your best form. Today, there’s just spontaneous goodwill to do the trick. And the prospect of meeting a cool chick or a cool cat while on your best form. The kids come home happy, comparing the welts and bruises on their arms from lifting crates while drinking beer in the stores.

Makes you wonder what on earth you need government for.

I will live to see my future.

Whatever it may be.

Through the louvres of the belfry windows.

Whimsey did not want to hear it anymore. He made his way down to the belfry door and climbed the stair to the ringing chamber. The bells were still sounding their frenzied call. He passed the sweating ringers and climbed again – up through the clock-chamber, piled with household goods, and up on to the bell-chamber itself. As his head rose through the floor, the brazen fury of the bells fell about his ears like the blows from a thousand beating hammers. The whole tower was drenched an drunken with noise. It rocked and reeled with the reelings of the bells, and staggered like a drunken man. Stunned and shaken, Wimsey set his foot on the last ladder.

Halfway up he stopped, clinging desperately with his hands. He was pierced through and buffeted by the clamour. Through the brazen crash and clatter there went one high note, shrill and sustained, that was like a sword in the brain. All the blood in his body seemed to rush to his head, swelling it to bursting-point. He released his hold on the ladder and tried to shut out the uproar with his fingers, but such a sick giddiness overcame him that he swayed, ready to fall. It was not noise – it was brute pain, a grinding, bludgeoning, ran-dan, crazy, intolerable moment. He felt himself screaming, but could not hear his own cry. His ear-drums were cracking; his senses swam away. It was infinitely worse than any roar of heavy artillery. That had beaten and deafened, but this unendurable shrill clangour was a raving madness, an assault of devils. He could move neither forward nor backwards through his failing wits urged him, ‘I must get out- I must get out of this.’ The belfry heaved and wheeled about him as the bells dipped and swung with their tongues of bronze, and through it all that shrill, high, sweet, relentless note went stabbing and shivering.

He could not go down, for his head dizzied and stomach retched at the thought of it. With a last, desperate sanity he clutched at the ladder and forced his tottering limbs upward. Foot by foot, rung by rung, he fought his way to the top. Now the trap-door was close above his head. He raised a leaden hand and thrust the blt aside. Staggering, feeling as though his bones were turned to water, and with blood running from his nose and ears, he felt rather than stepped, out upon the windy roof. As he flung the door to behind him, the demoniac clangour sank back into the pit, to rise again, transmuted to harmony, through the louvres of the belfry windows.

An extract from The Nine Tailors

Dorothy L. Sayers, Landsborough Publications 1959

Five from Pizzicato Five.

I highly recommend the first two songs ;D

Sweet Soul Revue

Baby Portable Rock

La Règle Du Jeu

Happy Sad

I (All About Me)

Trigger.

He was there - he was sure he was really there - sitting on that hollow, immaculate throne like any other normal, abnormal, supernormal human being, or paranormal entity, or even any mutant like Wolverine and Magneto would do to mark the beginning of a fresh, new day.  He was half-asleep. Half-awake. His joints, muscles and ligaments, tired from his restless acrobatic dream, and battered by his inconsiderate backbreaking mattress, were incessantly pleading for a morning stretch routine. His senses, kept awake by his destitute stomach growling from the inside, were craving for the smell of wheat and caffeine. But there was a different smell perpetrating within the very four claustrophobic walls of that miniscule kingdom, where only he existed and ruled, where nobody else really mattered at all. It was just him, and only him, doing his own business.

It’s funny how people can be reminded of the biggest but most forgettable and unnoticeable things in life through the simplest and most ordinary things revolving around them. How the simplest sensory impulses can trigger the most outrageous and bizaare trains of thought at the most unexpected places and circumstances still remains a mystery for many of us, including me. It’s a discombobulating and intriguing phenomenon.

Did you ever realize how many times you’ve visited that same place ever since you first realized that your existence is actually real and not just simply a prank joke made by God? Did it ever occur to you, how you’ve changed over the years? Has that smell changed? Has it stayed the same? Don’t answer.

Did you ever realize, looking at that mirror, seeing yourself in full glory, witnessing for yourself the embodiment of your physical existence, your physical transformation, or metamorphosis if you want to put it that way, beholding your true self in front of your naked eyes, how much you’ve changed over the years?

When you look into your half-closed eyes; when you feel the edges of your freshly lathered skin, cleared of dead skin cells; when you hear your own lungs breathing for you, your own heart pumping blood for you; when you smell the faint traces of shampoo on your hair; when you taste the lingering, cooling sensation of menthol in your mouth; did it ever occur to you how much of your life has remained the same? How many times have you used the same toothpaste brand? How many times have you changed it? Was there ever a time when you forgot to brush your teeth before coming to school? Was there ever a time when you did not take a bath before going to school? I’ve always taken a bath and brushed my teeth.

And when you look around the four corners of your truncated, undersized kingdom, have you ever thought about how much of your true self you’ve been hiding all this time?

Behind your kingdom’s impenetrable mahogany door, blurred, rectangular jalousies, and opaque, discoloured walls, lies your true appearance, your true smell, your true feelings, your true emotions, your true self, your true nature, your true soul. But as long as you are alone inside there, no one can take you away from your throne, unless it’s for public use. No one wants to be late for school or work.

OMFG.

Two years.

Two years of thinking, two years of stressing, two years of understanding, two years of forgetting.

Two years of blood, two years of sweat, two years of tears.

Two years in ten minutes. Two years in five pages. Six pages. Seven pages. Many pages.

Two years in four thousand words.

Two years of calculator pressing, two years of graph plotting, two years of experimenting.

Two years, running through the edges of my pen. Two years, fading like the writings on my notebook.

Two years of walking, two years of running, two years of rushing.

Two years, all coming down to sixteen separate sittings.

Two years, like a bubble, disappearing at the gentlest touch of my fingertips…

*

Today, my ToK presentation marked my emancipation from all IB coursework. Now that all of the many small hurdles have been overcome, the time has come for me to sit back, reflect, come up with a plan, and prepare for the biggest and most unnecessary obstacle in nineteen years.

I CAN DO THIS.

It doesn’t hurt to be optimistic.  You can always cry later.  ~Lucimar Santos de Lima

*

*

Senakulo.

Ang Senakulo ay tradisyonal na pagsasadula ng mga pangyayari hinggil sa mga dinanas ni Hesukristo bago at pagkaraang ipako siya sa krus. Hango ang nasabing tradisyon sa Bibliya at iba pang tekstong apokripa. Kadalasang ginaganap ito sa lansangan o kaya’y sa bakuran ng simbahan. Ang magkakaibigan, magkakamag-anak, at magkakababayan ay magkikita-kita upang panoorin at palakasin ang loob ng mga tauhan sa dula. Ang mga kasuotan ng mga gumaganap ay ginagad sa suot ng mga kawal na Romano at iba pang personalidad at kasaysayan at may matitingkad na kulay. Ang mga manonood naman ay may baong sariling upuan at pagkain upang hindi sila mainip sa panonood. Karaniwan ding makikita ang iba’t ibang tindahan na nakapaligid sa pinagdarausan ng senakulo. Hindi man atentibo sa panonood ang ilang tao ay madali pa ring masundan ang takbo ng pagsasadula sapagkat pamilyar ang bawat mga eksena. ~Wikifilipino

*

Stumbling over this article sparked something inside me. As a blind follower of Catholicism, it dawned on me that the notion of “salvation” has somewhat transformed since Jesus Christ’s crucifixion in Calvary. Back in the glorious days of feet washing, bread breaking, loaf and fish multiplication and miracles; back in the days when God’s voice was as audible as Brian Richmond’s voice on the airwaves; back in the days of  Barrabas, Passovers, parables, Pharisees, Pontius Pilate, hot Roman soldiers, slaves, Three Wise Men, worship temples, Judas, Thomas, and Jesus, salvation was achieved by means of a painful and bloody physical sacrifice for the common good. It was an act to salvage people from the wraths of hell, where eternal burning of the soul in the company of trident-armed diabolical creatures await the non-believer, the sinful, the immoral, and the wrong, all of them who cohabitate just a few kilometres above Lucifer’s headquarters. Sacrifice was committed and suffering was inflicted not for personal gain, but for the salvation of the whole human race. It was the most impersonal and selfless act ever done by any human being - and God – and no other human being will ever be able to do such an amazing feat. Ever.

Especially in today’s society. Over the years the act of sacrifice has inevitably transformed into something else – something more… personal. Taking His crucifixion as our reference point, it can be said that the values of sacrifice and suffering have exponentially deteriorated over the centuries, asymptotically heading towards total selfishness that can potentially be exhibited by anyone: your bitchy classmate, your unfaithful boyfriend, overdemanding girlriend, overprotective parents, horrible teachers, corrupt government officials, yourself, etcetera. Hitler did not sacrifice millions of lives just simply for Germany’s expansion. Bush did not sacrifice his soldiers in America’s simply because he wanted victory against modern terrorism. Macapagal-Arroyo did not sacrifice the nation’s wealth for cash bonuses and complementary gifts to government officials around the country because she wanted to be charitable. There has always been a hidden personal agenda somewhere.

Well it seems that I’ve unknowingly created my own version of Senakulo by signing up for this two-year course. I’m currently carrying seven crosses, the heaviest and largest being Mathematics and French. While Michael Phelps is well-hung with fourteen Olympic gold medals on his neck, from which he probably suffers a backache but doesn’t mind at all, I am well-equipped and suffering from a Quasimodo-ish posture with seven impossible subjects in an impossible programme – and I really mind.

Every single day seems like a brand new station of the cross. There can be a day where I would fall down on my knees, but then on the next day I would get up on my feet again. A Veronica would come once in a while to wipe away the tears, sweat and blood on my face, but then she would leave me behind like the wind, taking away an imprint of my dishevelled face on her cloth. There can be a day where I would meet  a couple of intelligent men who would religiously volunteer to carry one of my crosses at a time, but then they would replace them back on my shoulders, leaving me feeling the same avoirdupois and affliction overbearing my shoulders and saturating my brain all over again. And there can be a day where I would feel my existence stripped naked of its garments; my biggest fears unconcealed, my littlest joys disclosed, my prized freedom debunked, and my darkest secrets revealed.

I wear a monolithic robe of an ‘exemplary’ scholar in an island kingdom whose aim is to promulgate a holistic environment but instead produces an agglomeration of rigid educational systems, intransigent structural policies, and insurmountably, robotic human beings.

On my head sits a heavy, thorny crown of expectations from my school, my teachers, my friends and family members.

I traverse a bumpy and rocky, uphill road towards my Calvary.

There I will be setting up my crosses, binding them together. And there I will be crucified, there I will die.

And I’ll probably be resurrected somewhere else.

But on that very summit I face my fate, sacrificing myself for a kind of salvation that does not concern the poor, the needy, the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, anybody else in this world. I am sacrificing myself to save my own self. Whatever externalities may arise – positive or negative -  are all beyond my control. I am no god. But I am heading towards my Calvary for my own personal salvation. Like everybody else.

Why does it always rain on me?

is it because I lied when I was seventeen?

Countdown lockdown.

He was staring at it for the first time. Had it not been for the cold air-con breeze circulating in his room, the undecipherable words and equations embedded on the yellowing pages of his textbook would have turned into ashes under his scorching gaze. He knew that it was too late. Nevertheless, convinced that it would be better to start late than to not start anything at all – like flipping the white pages of a telephone directory trying for particular phone numbers – he scanned the rest of book, highlighting words here and there and everywhere. He had to believe in the power of highlighting. He had to believe that his expensive, magical yellow pen would photocopy the contents of the textbook and transmit them into his system. He had to believe that he had chosen the right things to keep in mind. Nonetheless, as in a telephone call, he knew that one wrong dial is all that it takes to end up calling the wrong number.

He closed the book. He stared at the window. He stood up, and sat down again. He tapped his fingers on the table, and then skimpily ran them over the surface like wriggly little feet, collecting a minute amount of house dust. He looked at the mirror and checked his hair. He raised his arms, stretching as if he was on a roller coaster ride, submitting himself to the power of the wind. He folded his legs, his arms wrapped around them like a blanket, his unshaved chin resting on his knees, his hands tightly clenched together, forming a protruding ball of yellow-stained fingers. He looked at his feet, dangling at the edges of the chair. And then he closed his eyes, and fell asleep, forgetting everything that he had memorized on that day.

Fifty-eight days. Cinquante-huit jours. Limampu’t walong araw.

Why is it so awesome?

Watch and see for yourself.

GADDAMIT I could write a 20,000-word literary analysis of this friggin’ awesome show. Ah fuck I could write a book about it!