Like a tinge of dye dropped in a pond of water, your entrance into the world changed the hue of my being.  Your birth warped me back to rebirth because your earliest wail woke up the romantic in me.  Twelve years my eyes found none; seven years preparation time; funny you're only six minutes away, what kept us separated for so long?

Happy birthday hun! I do love you, still as full as the first time I pronounced those words to you.  Until forever.

I've been a given a very bad evaluation by my students this semester.  According to them, the teacher (me!) doesn't show care and concern for his students.  I am told that I don't return papers within the reasonable span of time.  I also need time management.  I don't have time for consultation.  More, I don't follow my syllabus.  My lectures are disorganized and the tools I use in class are inappropriate for the course.  I don't even make my course interesting and no effort has been made in motivating my students to learn.  Likewise, I don't encourage my students to do independent study.  To many, I am also not aware when the students do not get the lesson.  Lastly, my demeanor and personal qualities do not generate respect from my students.

Oh I blew it, when all the while I thought I was doing a-okay.  It hurts, you know, especially when I've given my all, literally wanting to stretch myself and extend time for my students and school work.  It hurts when you've given your best and still, you're found in lack.  It's surprises me how students who in the academic power structure are subordinate to the teacher, can inflict so much pain to the one above them.

How I love them!  I do still though I've given up hope on winning them.

I'm giving myself another shot at this and throw in the towel gracefully later.

Sorry Eva, I just have to.  Nothing to prove to myself.  You know my heart and my plans.  I need one last year and let tears be held back until they dry up inside.  There are trade-offs, says you.  Sorry, I'm selling myself out.

Note:  It's been a week now and I haven't gotten over the evaluation yet.  An email from a former student flew in this afternoon.  Even that can't take away the frustrating pain.  Teach me to smile again, please?

The Manila Peninsula has been a home for my cousins (including Rex, of course) and myself for years now. Back when we were still much active in the party scene, lounging and chilling out always has been at the Peninsula.  Monthly overnights, if not done out of town are without a doubt at the Peninsula.  We were so comfortable with its intimidating Gothic Victorian(?) interiors that we'd strut through the lobby dripping wet from swimming at the heater-ed pool (unlike Renaissance New World's).  'Twas a long catwalk, parading only with towels on from end to end, enjoying the confused stares of clients sipping their teas and coffees at the lobby.  We've also brought our friends at the Pen to enjoy its home-made sorbets (the calamansi flavor's the best!), their ice cream desserts, their Pen club or deli sandwiches as if we're hosting private house parties or cocktails.   I signed Manila Pen with my person when after a night of bar-hopping, like a dog or cat marking its territory, wasted, I marked it with barf.  That was how Manila Pen and myself sealed our fates--our own version of the blood compact

Marie's wedding reception was the end of our Peninsula days.   After which, we got caught up with our personal cares that our partying days ended and our Manila Pen rendezvous lagged to oblivion.  We go there individually now with our families and loved ones but never had we the chance to go there together to once again talk about our loves and plans and worries and nonsensical stuffs until Rex was to leave us in pursuit of his dreams in Malaysia.

Thursday was a sad day for all three of us even if we spoke none of how we missed the old days and how we'll miss each other later.  We had a hearty laugh when we called Leila to complete the circle, but dead airs were too uncomfortably present.  We are at the helm of the dark night of friendship as the world becomes too big and too wide to bind our dreams together in one place.

I wonder why the sun still shines at night at the Peninsula.  Why the beaming smile when everyone's in gloom?

There's no point in holding on to the past.  Create your own Manila Peninsula in Australia, the States, and Malaysia.  Friendship and memories know no geographical boundaries.  Let's meet one time in... how about South Africa? or in U.A.E's Burj Al Arab?

I don't like being asked about my plans however you formulate it.  How do you see yourself five years from now?  Is that for long-term?  What do you want to be?  Have you made arrangements for...?

Once in a seminar in Cagayan de Oro, one of the JVP local community "elders" asked me exactly just that:  What is your long-term goal?  What is your five year plan?  I didn't know how to hide my disgust hearing those questions.  One, it's none of her business; I barely know her.  And two, wtf?!  If that's how they talk in CdO, then excuse me... I'm off to Bukidnon.

What's wrong with me? Why don't I lay down a definite plan for my future?  Am I afraid to commit myself to uncertainty? 

It's precisely because of this uncertainty and the contingency of things which make planning so futile. I know what I want to do, who doesn't?  Unfortunately, it's not in any drawing board for everyone to see.  I've no clear-cut-bare-it-all-template for my life.  It's in my bones and it's leading me somewhere I know I'll find my happiness in.  And just for your information,  this kind of sentimentality does not preclude any concrete action towards my goal!

My best friend called in yesterday to ask about my wedding plans.  He said that by now my fiancee and myself should already be fleshing it out.  My mom too asked me hours later what my plans are.  You can see the grimace on my face as I controlled invectives against them both.

What's wrong with you, people?  Isn't the present enough worries for today?

Lecture-discussion classes officially ended tonight.  I won't see them as a class after this.  I could only heave in sadness (or relief?) after tonight's lecture.  And, all I was able to tell them was "thank you for the two sems."  Ironically, no drama, no theatrics from me.  I couldn't look at them in the eye.  There's so much to say but I hesitated, I withdrew, I detached myself.  I shut down, walked away, went blank.  I deadened dejection with loud punk music.  But there's no escaping it.

Pablo Neruda best captures my feelings and what I want to say to them:

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through the nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another’s. She will be another’s. Like my kisses before.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Love is so short and oblivion so long. Oblivion so long.  So long.

This entry will definitely gross out many.  It's about this wonder anti-perspirant I use to cure sweaty armpits.  Yes, sweaty armpits!  You know how embarrassing it is to have streaks of wet lines on your shirt during a hot day or when you're tensed up?  It's normal but we know shit, and no one likes to be stared at especially when it's only your pits being checked out.  Because usually, they are accompanied by a whisper to the seatmate or a sneaky glance book-ended by a devilish grin.

Dri-clor can save you from this controllable worry.  It will do the drying and when I say drying, you'll be sweat-less till next season and kiss your deodorant goodbye.  With just one swipe, voila!--you're free from wetness or any moisture build-up on your underarms.   It's like having a kanebo chamois implanted in your underarms.  No more sweat!  Yours are cool and dry. 

But wait there's more...  if you call within the next five minutes...

Geez.  I'm sounding like your typical infomercial.  I don't get paid for this, fyi.  It's just that sometimes, when things go out of hand and everything goes woozy up there in our crazy fucked up mind, all one has to do is call a friend just as I did, eat dinner somewhere, walk (in the unmapped territories of Cubao, that's what we did), and talk in formal seriousness for minutes then split, and talk about other life forms.  You'll burst out into a hearty laughter later and that heaviness inside, released.

Kopi with milk is a good de-stresser too. (Oops, did I just advertise again?)  Okay, add a kopi bun or a french toast with kaya and butter on the side then, you're all good.

Actually, it's not really what you do which de-stresses you.  It's who you are with!  Good company's like dri-clor.  They pacify your tears by simply being present with you in your aloneness.  That's what friends do, they're there.  Just there.  Quiet, while you sort things out yourself.

What juxtapositions and metaphors!  Sick.   You get what I mean though, didn't you?

There are answers to the questions we have--may it be the grandest existential questions or the most trivial ones:  friends,  Dri-clor,  a cup of coffee,  you and me.

Apart from spoken language, there is a host of non-verbals used for communication.  A wink may be a nod of yes.  A whistle can be a call for attention.  A kiss may be a greeting or an expression of affection.  A hair toss can be a signal for flirtation.  A ring may be a band of love.  These common gestures or symbols have been accepted by the larger community and is understood by almost all civilized societies as bearing meaning.

There are specialized languages however for more specific sub-groups.  Friends, as one such sub-group, have their own reconfiguration of language in general and the rules of communication therein.  Pauses, breaks, hums, and neck scratches communicate something privy only to the insiders.  Incomplete sentences are very well understood.  Politically incorrect statements, chauvinist and/or racist slurs, and even below-the-belt remarks are usually passed off as laughable.  To be a friend is to be rewarded with a microchip decoder implanted in one's senses.  To be an insider is to be a party to the foreign language of friendship.

We were on the way to the parking when my friend remembered she forgot to time out on her bundy.  I told her in jest to let it pass; she'll get overtime pay for it anyway.   She dashed back to the building faithfully accomplishing what needs to be done while we waited outside for her to sign the day off.   A student, apparently overheard my demonic offer.    He saw his Ethics teacher with me and thus recited, "Sir, dapat maglog-out sa bundy clock. Unethical yun diba, Sir?"  The student was beaming with pride as he delivered his assessment of the incident, repeating the word "unethical" at least thrice to his teacher ignoring the presence of this devil amidst them.  It was an indirect assault I thought.  Isn't it also unethical to interject in other people's conversations without knowing where they are coming from?  A judgment was made based on ethical principles blind to the context into which a statement was made.  His teacher hushed him down saying, "Magjogging ka na lang uli."

Ethics has always been clear and distinct on its pronouncements.  And it is but right that ethics be luminous on what it holds as moral and reprehensible.  However, it does not aim to be the hacksaw for the critic of people.  It is but a personal gauge whether one is living an upright or an injudicious life.    Philosophy in general should have taught its interns to be prudent in speech and wise in action.  This is the most basic ethical norm to be followed by all who seek to be lovers of wisdom.

Languages, gestures, acts, and jokes cannot be taken out of the sitz im leben from which it was borne.  To relate and communicate well is to participate in the context of people in dialogue.  Even ethics takes into account the unique historicities of persons it seeks to define and address, otherwise, it becomes a dead language which speaks only to itself.

There are insiders and outsiders in groups.  This is the hard fact of life.  However, this does not preclude an invitation to dialogue between groups.   The goal is to widen our roster of insiders and have less and less of the outsiders.

This morning I got that offer.  I don't know how and I don't know why me.  Nonetheless it is an invitation most cherished--

                      I am one of with them.        

Plugged into: Nobody Puts a Baby in the Corner, Fall Out Boy

"Is it 'comrades-at-arms' or 'comrades-in-arms'?" The three of us, who were doing our own thing in front of the computer, were boggled with the question from no less than our highly-esteemed professor.  I was about to say "at" when the other two answered "in" in unison, And maybe because of the lack of absolute grasp of the correct usage, I faded into the background while they both suggested in funny monotones, "Google it to be sure!"

I was flipped out by the suggestion but I was appeased (and amazed) when one of the two boys said that the right form is "comrades-at-arms" as was birthed by Google.  That gave me a shallow state of confidence within as I whispered to myself, "I told you so."  Case number one, proven: Quiet guys aren't as dull as everyone would normally think.  But this is not why I'm writing this entry...end  of that flow of consciousness.  But then again, I didn't tell them anything, so there's really nothing to be so confident about.  Omit this paragraph then!

Astounded by what just occurred, maybe it was a metaphysical unease, since when did Google become the gauge of what is correct or incorrect?  How does one actually accept something as true or false basing from the results in Google search?  Does one count the number of page results and judge as correct whatever is numerically greater?

Modern man is overly dependent on the popular vote, preference, value, or ideology.  He abandons the self when he is outnumbered and moves along with the rest of the herd.  Ironic that this is still happening at a time when he also insists on individuality and self-expression.

I cannot comprehend this oxymoronic state modernity is.  Is it a lack of openness to the self-contradiction in modern living or is it simply keeping ground and not allowing one's self to be driven by the popular vote?

My answer is, "I don't know."  People just have to stick together to find the answer to this question.  And that's what to be comrades-at-arms is: to band together and let go when needed in the pursuit of truth in the cloudy crossing of lines and borders in this epoch.  This is a far cry out of the other definition of comrades-at-arms which is to be "a fellow member of a group, especially a fellow soldier or a fellow supporter of a Communist or Socialist party."  To commune is to transcend what the community is and be in communion with others without losing the self.  Very much different from what communism as we practice it is.

One can not find this insight by simply google-ing.  One does not arrive at the answer by reading the first result released by Google.   Ask. Think. Answer.  This process cannot be abandoned because of the advances in modern technology unless one's in for a suicide.  One should be in arms against a sloth-y surrender to non-thinking.  Comrades in arms should we be against forces stealing away our being human.

Now google this:  human.  Stop right there or I'll shoot you.  Whoops! Didn't I just rewound myself back in the vicious circle?  Quit it!