Why do I have to?

Like the red traffic lights on the streets, there are many things in life that try to slow you down.

They make you stop, they make you wait, they eat up your time as if it’s nobody else’s business.

And of course, you put on the brakes to bring the momentum to a halt.

And then you wait until the green light tells you that it is safe to go.

And then it’s the exact same thing on every other street and corner and junction and intersection.

Stop, ready, go.

Stop, ready, go.

Stop, ready, go.

The uniformity and conformity of life kills me.

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.

My life is like your dilapidated rubrik’s cube.

You know, when you buy that stupid cube, it’s already arranged for you.

And then you go screw it up, twist and turn the cube along that inner central pivot, feeling hysterically happy at the same time, as if you naturally find a sense of joy and satisfaction in screwing things up, until everything is in chaotic order.

And then you pause. You try to make sense of what you’ve just done and attempt to bring it back to its original orderly manner.

And most of the time, you can’t, since you’re neither  god nor Quang. And then you get frustrated; you get tantrums, you throw the cube on the floor and they all scatter into baby cubes each one-sixteenth the size of the mother cube.

*

I’m just sick and tired and fed up of trying to restrain my human existence by doing what everyone else is doing – going to school, doing homework, submitting projects, worrying over grades, stressing oneself with asthmatic friendships that are in desperate need of friendship-restoration-nebulizers, horrendous canteen and hostel food gaaaaaaaaaaaah.

FML.

I’m sick of learning things which are beyond my field of interest.

I’m sick of writing essays, answering tests, researching in the library, and having nightmares of failing my IB Diploma.

I want to escape from here and never return anymore.

However, if I could, I wouldn’t know where to go anyway.

I was thinking of going for Gawad Kalinga and then escaping somewhere else after building a house or two, never to return ever again.

Wings and Swings.

I Always try to swing as far as I could reach, to reach for the skies, but I always end up in the same position where first begun. I wonder why the swing’s stuck on the ground. I wonder why I can’t have wings instead. wonder why I can’t fly. I wonder why the chains won’t stretch. I wonder why the sky makes itself perfectly visible but physically unreachable. And I often wonder why gravity always holds me back.

Can’t I be where want to be? What I want to be?

*****

Sid told me, “Rowland, you’ve been getting a lot more quiet.”

Padia adds, “and skinnier.”

Well, I am. Too bad.

Sa loob ng bus.

A pitiful poetic effort written in my mother tongue.

I know i’m a big loser when it comes to written prose in Tagalog – my vocabulary is of nursery school standard – but hey, at least I tried. (:

***

Sa loob ng bus.

Sa loob ng bus,

Maliit, masikip, makipot ang daanan,

Masakit ang umupo sa matigas na upuan,

Minsan punuan, minsan walang kalaman-laman,

Maamoy, masangsang pag maraming Indian.

Araw-araw, ay aking libangan

Ang tumingin-tingin ng mga kotse sa daan.

Hindi kagaya doon sa Gensan

Magagarang klase, makikita dito saan man.

Subalit gaya ng alinmang libangan,

Ito’y ‘di mo maiiwasang pagsawaan.

Kaya naman batung-bato ang isipan;

Parang nakalubog na sago sa ilalim ng gulaman.

Mahirap ang maglakbay nang mag-isa lamang;

Walang kausap, walang kakwentuhan,

Walang karamay sa sikip ng upuan,

Walang kasabay sa patutunguhuan.

******

Sa loob ng bus, buhay ay walang kulay

Pakiramdam ko tuloy may kulang sa buhay:

Isang taong pwede kong maging karamay

Sa aking araw-araw na paglalakbay.

‘Di ko naman naisip ang bagay na ito dati

Ngunit ang kalungkutang nadarama’y tumitindi.

Tunay ng pag-ibig, puso’y humihingi

Makatakas sa lungkot ng bawa’t gabi

Sa loob ng bus.

*******

3-in-1.

My brain is really interesting. It can manufacture bizaare night dreams and daydreams out of the mere shit food and unalluring tap water I eat and drink every day. I don’t know how it works lah. It just struts its own thingy. This week in particular was like imagination week. There have been millions of random stuff popping out of my brain every single moment I begin to wander off into my subconscious mind.

Subconscious mind. Yeah. Today, I told John and Nalaka I have multiple personalities. But I didn’t tell them what they were. Okay, I’m going to tell them here. My first personality is this crazy flagpole-shaped guy who wanders around in school doing crazy weird stuff, smiling excessively, as if heavily drunk on soy sauce, giving the people the impression that I either have a problem-free, cheerful disposition, or simply an eccentric nature uncommon to most humans.

I dunno. I think I have this seriously introverted personality which pops out every time I am confined to places with people I don’t really feel like talking to. Or to public places. Public areas. I hate talking, actually. Sometimes conversations can be a terrible ordeal for me. I don’t like sharing stuff verbally. I don’t even share that much to my parents. Even friends. I dislike the idea of disclosing my personal life. Okay, maybe my life is just too lackluster or too rigid to  be worth sharing about. But seriously, try talk to me about life, your life, their lives, I will just listen. I will listen and listen until I can listen no more. I actually like listening to people. You can categorize gossiping under listening. I just like to listen to people brag, slander, gossip, back-stab, praise, rant, muse, fantasize, demonize, commend, comment, whatever. It opens your windows to the world out there. You see the world in a different light. Different people, different views, different experiences. When you listen, the world doesn’t just revolve around you. You revolve around the world, and you see more of the world than when you simply talk about you and you and you and no one else but you. (:

My third personality is affected by my second personality. So I won’t be talking about it here. d:

Heh.

It’s always been a wonder how her small body can accommodate such a huge vital capacity of air, how her diaphragm can contract so powerfully, and how her larynx can manipulate the pitch and the volume to generate a stream of jaw-dropping, beautiful melodies. However, she has amazed me not mainly because she sings as if she’s been singing for for 48 years, but because of the way she has stunned her audiences; the way she leaves them speechless at the moment she begins to sing; the way her very last high note pulls their bums out from the seats to give her a standing ovation.

**********

I only have a few days left here in the Philippines. Believe it or not, the desire to go back to Singapore has been building up pretty fast. I guess I’m not really used to slacking any more! \:D/ Which is kinda good, I think? For the past two years and eight months, I have been constantly bombarded with so much work that, without much realizing, it has become the quintessence of everyday life. It’s like rice. That white rice you keep on eating everyday. You don’t really like it since it’s hardly got any taste, but you keep on eating it everyday, and after getting used to it, when you have the yummy viand on your plate but you don’t have that tasteless rice in front of you, your lunches and dinners don’t feel like lunches and dinners at all. And I must admit. I have been enjoying doing work this year. There isn’t much of a pakyu-gaddamet-this-life!!! rantings this year; stress has been more of a consolation, actually. Heh. With a multitude of adolescent emotional outrages here and there, doing homework has been my sort of diversion from all of them.

I miss those long, frustrating journeys from sjii to de casalle at the end of every day. Those moments when I have to choose between the Old Police Academy and Trellis Towers bus stops. Those moments when I fall asleep on the bus and miss the After Still Road bus stop. Those long, obliterating processions along the stretch of Lor N Telok Kurau Road. All those ordeals which I have to do while carrying a hippopotamus bag on my back. And I miss that crazy hill. And that effing overhead bridge. And most of all, I miss being broke.