What I Learned (or Not) in College – A Retrospect

A few years ago, I entered college with a dream of becoming a doctor.  I can still remember the exhilaration I felt almost eight years ago, when I received the news that I was accepted into one of the top universities in the country. It was surreal then as it is now. I was dead set on someday donning a white laboratory coat, stethoscope slung around my neck and a matching name plate affixing “MD” after my surname. That was my dream—and I finally had a ticket of achieving it.

Counting Sheeps

Five in the morning and wide awake.

Enveloped in darkness.

Small drops of rain outside yet no breeze.

None today. 

None tonight.

It is as humid as with the afternoon sun.

I perspire.

The gentle ramblings of the fan, steady and soothing,

as it kisses the heat off my moist skin.

In the still blackness I see nothing

Why I Say Yes To Divorce

While reading my daily dose of news, I came across one article that quoted Representative Rufus Rodriguez of Cagayan de Oro on the legalization of divorce:

 “[If divorce is legal] Children will grow up with only one parent. That’s the worst punishment we can give to our children.”

It is in fact a heartless punishment to let a child growp up with only one parental figure. Kids should be reared and nurtured by two people: primarily, a father and a mother. That’s how it's always been and that’s how it should be.

Tajo Chronicles: A Reprise (Part 2)

I opened the door that leads to my refuge.

As I walk inside my small, cramped bedroom, I see that things are in the usual disarray as I left them yesterday. My clothes are still scattered on the floor and my old books are still arranged chaotically in one side of the room. My tangled bed is still exactly the same. Everything is unchanged as I left the house.

I am still the same, I suppose.

Or am I?

  I plunged myself to bed eyes closed and recalled the night that was and how it made all the difference in the world.

Episode Two - The Night That Was 

My Improvised Friday Night Clubbing

Ugh, it’s a Friday night and I can’t go out. Apart from being too lazy to travel a good hour to get to the clubbing spots, I’m flat broke these days. And when you see your friends’ Facebook updates saying how excited they are to go out, or when they send you SMS invites and you reply that you can’t tag along, it takes frustration to a whole different level.

Being the type of person I am, I am not to be outdone. I decided to make my own clubbing experience tonight in the comfort of my own bedroom.  So I gathered what was necessary, locked the door, took off my shirt and enjoyed myself to my own version of Friday night clubbing - home edition.

The Improvised Clubbing Set-up

Bleed

Tajo Chronicles: A Reprise (Part 1)

Episode 1: Starfish and Snowman at the Movies

I can’t help but notice myself smiling as I hold on to the railings of the train. While my body moves along with every vibration, halts and motions of this silver carriage, I feel the beat of my heart racing as I come closer to my destination. I keep on telling myself to pull it together but anticipation floods over my being.  I feel my limbs trembling, beads of perspiration start to appear on my forehead as I stare on each sign that tells me I’m becoming one station closer to where you are. They are like pale ominous signs of impending doom, ghostly and eerie; but in this case I remind myself that they are bringers of something good. Those station signs bring me closer to you. My tall, thin frame gets squished and shoved by the numerous passengers boarding and getting off the train but I don’t care. I just keep my stare focused on those ethereal plastic signs. At this very instance nothing else matters:  just you, me and those signs.

Strawberry Fields for MM

The third episode of the Level-Up Brotherhood Salutations series of 2011.

“Hi, I’m MM!”

I looked at the girl who just uttered these words. I haven’t spoken to anyone aside from my seatmates and I certainly I haven’t asked this girl what her name was...but she said it anyway. I looked at her with an indifferent gaze and examining her stature, I wondered how she could’ve passed on as a college student. Standing like a 14 year-old girl, with short hair and a headband, she certainly looked out of place amongst the people in the room.  Her blue backpack appeared grotesquely larger than she was. She was fragile, and as soft-spoken as she was, she offered her name to a complete set of strangers. That was bold, I thought, for someone so little.

I’m sure you already had a fare share of “bansot” jokes; most of them courtesy of me. And I’m sure you must have heard almost everything about your height. I’m a bully, I know, and I’m not going to stop bullying you. But I ridicule you with awe and respect, with love; like that of a big brother to her younger, vertically-challenged sister. I am reminded that behind this little girl stands a person so tall and magnanimous, she has accomplished so far and so much in her life.

Having had the opportunity to be one of your closest friends, I am reminded that brave people do come in small packages. There’s Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great, Pharaoh Amenhotep III, and then there’s you.  We all had a tumultuous college life, with all of the Brotherhood members having their own epic story to tell. Each war story grand in its own right, but yours has got to be the most victorious of all. You came, you saw, you’ve fallen countless times but you have definitely conquered. I am truly humbled and proud at the same time to be your friend.

As the world celebrates your twenty-sixth year, I would like to express my numerous “thank you’s” to you. Thank you for the knowledge you have imparted: all things political which helped me become the philosophical man I am today. I owe you to be the person responsible for awakening my socially-relevant self. You were my biggest political influence. Thank you for imparting your vast knowledge on the culture and the arts, on literature and all things intellectual, for they helped me become the cultured man I am now (choz! J). Thank you for sharing your life, your numerous heartaches, your frustrations, for they remind me how human we are in the world. Thank you for sharing your achievements and triumphs, for showing us, your friends, that no matter how life treats us all, there is still a way to triumph above all things unfair and unjust. Thank you for always being a loyal friend.

Do you remember the time you wore a motorcycle jacket on our Pharm21 class? I laughed so hard and I teased you about it all day. We wore white uniforms and seeing someone with a jacket that a renegade bounty hunter would wear (especially if that person was you) seemed very funny to me at that time. But as I go back to that memory, I realized that it wasn’t surprising at all. It was not funny. It was very fitting, as you have always been bold and brave of a person, a maverick.

So cheers, to the smallest bravest person I know on her twenty-sixth birthday!

Happy happy birthday, M!

  

Your strawberry fields are definitely forever.

See how small she is?
Oh Pong  'wag kang magselos, alam mo yan!

Insomnia

I want to close my eyes

and fall into a deep slumber.

Yet your far voice whispers

in my ears.

The way you laugh when I kiss you,

your moans

how you say my name,

so forceful.

Haunting

as if you never wanted to let me go.

I remember how you smell,

the taste of your neck, your chest

Intoxicating and delusional.

Wild.

I want to close my eyes

and fall into a deep slumber.

Yet I feel the ghost of your hands touch mine

locking my body,

into an embrace I used to remember.

In the dark

your warm moist breathing in my ear,

the rise and fall of your body

your heartbeat.

Your fire revisits me at night.

I want to close my eyes

and fall into a deep slumber.

But my touch

tongue, soul

searches for the contours which are yours.

My warmth searches for your warmth.

I see you. Here. Now.

Yet I cannot hold you.

Nothing but a mere shadow.

Walls.

Distance.

Our bodies lay next to each other,

both devoid of passion.

Both trying so hard.

I want to close my eyes

and fall into a deep slumber.

Go back to a time, to our time,

 to our sanctuary

where I am yours alone.

Bring me back the memories you promised.

Make me feel

alive.

Loved.

But you are gone.

Because I'm Too Lazy To Clean My Room, I'll Blog About How Dirty It Is Instead.

I am living in a crime scene.

Or that’s how it appears to be.

It is noon. I wake up and I see my room is not as clean and organized as it used to be. I have always known myself as a well-organized person but seeing my room in such disarray makes me think otherwise.  I have been telling myself for the past few weeks that one of these days I’ll clean my rathole, but whenever I feel the urge to get up and get a broom, I sit down, close my eyes until the urge passes. Procrastination sets in, laziness gets the best of me and the room stays messy. People may call it a pig sty, but I call it necessary chaos.

I sleep on a futon mattress. Since I have problems sleeping on high beds, I choose to situate myself closer to the Earth when I rest. Physics tells us that a low center of gravity makes an object more stable in its balance. And since I’m deathly scared of unnecessary heights, I choose to sleep closer to the ground.  Looking at my “pseudo bed” I notice that I’ve been sleeping on a half naked foam, meaning there’s no bed sheet per se; just a thin yellow cover that stretches across the bed. I look at my three pillows, and none of them are wearing their respective pillow cases. I look for them and I see them over a stack of clean laundry that’s been delivered to my room a few days ago. That reminds me, I haven’t folded my laundry yet.  A few inches from my clean clothes are the dirty ones. Disgusting, I know. I see dirty underwear, soiled shirts and pants only a few inches away from the clean ones. How I haven’t mistaken wearing the dirty ones is beyond me. 

I look at my walls. They’re supposed to be white, but I can’t tell what their color is now so I’m going to pretend  that they’re still white. I see a couple of inside-out jeans hanging over a nail I’ve put on the wall and you can still see the mud stains at bottom part.  Creepy.  What’s creepier is, I can’t remember the last time I wore those jeans. Next to my muddy pants is another pair of jeans, a sando, a pair of shorts, a scarf (don’t ask) hanging on one single hook.  I walk over to it and smell if they’re still good. I can’t tell.

Over to another corner, I have the spot where I put my shoes. Good thing some of them still look like footwear albeit the week-old mud marks and sand dunes building under them.  Then I see my Chinese helmet toy resting on one of my shoe and the black box where I keep all my important papers resting on a pair of slippers I’ve been looking for for the past couple of days. Hello tsinelas, there you are!

I then see my gray messenger bag sprawled open at the tip of my mattress. It’s still wet from the last time I went out, so naturally it left moist traces on my bed. I don’t even want to look at what’s inside the bag. I see a pair of dirty underwear sitting next to it. I can’t remember if they’re mine though. Upon closer examination, I think they are, though it’s funny how I can’t remember when they started looking like *that*.  I turn my head to the side and I see a three foot-pile of books arranged beautifully like a stack of Jenga blocks. One wrong move or a renegade fly sitting on top of it would cause the tower to tumble down. From where I’m sitting right now, I can see dust building on the covers-which means I haven’t done anything remotely intellectual for quite a while. I better catch up on my reading.  Next to my “smart”books is my magazine rack with folded and torn issues of men's magazines. There are cobwebs on top of the rack. Open pages. Ear dog page marks. I guess the universe is sending a not-so-subtle message for me to read them too.

I almost stepped on an empty bottle of Tanduay Ice next to an entanglement of electrical sockets and cords.  I better return that bottle soon as I tend to forget these sort of things. I also noticed a pack of maroon Gudang Garam cigs, which I bought two years ago, next to a recently-reposed hard drive. I bent over to check and to my surprise I have a few more sticks left. Oh joy! If only I can find where I put my lighter. I lift the two day-old Abante newspaper lying next to me only to find it wasn’t there; but I did find the missing toe of my Kratos God of War action figure. That cricket lighter is bound to show up here somewhere. As I reach for my phone, I also see a bottle of Mojitos gold tequila next to my bed. On top of it is the shot glass which acts as the bottle cap because I can't find that stupid bottle cap anywhere. As I raise the bottle, I was thrilled to see that there still an approximate ten milliliters left. I promised my lips that it would taste that sweet liquid later on, after I’m done cleaning my room, if ever I clean it. Last drops are often the sweetest and pack the strongest punch, you see.

Now as I look at the chaos around me, I can’t help but ask if there is a need for me to clean up my space and organize my life. 

Should one be happy living this way?

If only mankind is smart enough to invent a self-cleaning room or a machine that has the ability to go to a parallel universe where your room is clean and organized, I wouldn’t have these thoughts.

Where’s that damn tequila?

Your Honor, exhibit A