meetjopeblack

When you sent a cute uberly romantic text to your loved one which you don't usually do and don't get a text back, you're scared and begin to entertain doubts on your relationship--did I do something wrong? Has she gone tired of me?  Why the silence?  Is she playing me up?

When you say goodbye and goodnight and she doesn't hold you to stay a few minutes more, you think she doesn't want to spend time with you anymore.

When you spent hours mixing and matching the few of the stuff in your wardrobe and she doesn't give you the slightest bit of an eye, you feel you're not pogi enough and that she is having the hots for another guy--her ex or a long lost highschool sweetheart she didn't have closure with.

When she doesn't miss an episode of Prison Break to catch this Wenty guy and can't wait to see the next season, you feel you are not the right guy for her and she fantasizes on him when you're making love.

When you tell her about a blog you're writing and are so excited to post it and she analyzes it and deconstructs it and discusses the faulty reasoning you're using or the off tone of your exposition, you see the world crash down on you like you are a worthless wannabe writer.

When you wake up in the morning and get nothing from her--no ring, no word, no call, you think she doesn't love you like she used to and that soon you'll here the "it's not you, it's me" lines. 

Yes, I still feel insecure--it's the worst a guy will admit he is being.

And worse, when you admit you've lost a hold of yourself and has surrendered to self-doubts (see also jealousy, insecurity.) and she giggles in delight because she sees you curl up like a salted worm because of lovestruck pain, you want to bury your head to the ground to suffocate and just die in shame.

[cellphone beeps. i read.]

She texted me an "I love you too" hours later.  Delayed message.  Telecom problems.

There's no reason to be insecure after all including all the snowballing of doubts bred by a single delayed text message.

Ah love.

Why does it have to be so unclear and unpredictable?

Plugged into: For You I Will by Teddy Geiger

Ken sho gan shing vao ma na ley chi
Yow o de raw ma fan she rhen shi
Cha ma wo shing way tao ching
Hen la ming fu chwo
Ni may yaw kwey ying

Ken sho gan shing la niyaw lei bu cahiyaong shing
Ni o ye chi chue po chiyen shong yin
Ni kei dhi yen sheng hao ping
dha raw chiyen li
Ni dao lang khong chi

Wo-oh...
Wo sher chanda chanda chanda he ay ni
Ying wey fu chow la ley chi chyow fey dei yow yey yi
Ni kei de lan ching wo pho chen khaw phing
Chi chiyaw wo ei ay ni chen shing
Chong yow lee chiyen kheng yi yong li
Ching ching baw chow ni (baw ni)
Ni ching chi sher kaw po chi
Ye yaw yow kiyen mo ti
Ni shen dao shang pho wei shi
Wei chi siyen how shing
Chay ni fang pei kheng yen ching li
Dao she li

Ken sho gan shing la niyaw lei bu cahiyaong shing
Ni o ye chi chue po chiyen shong yin
Ni kei dhi yen sheng hao ping
dha raw chiyen li
Ni dao la khong chi

Wo-oh.
Wo sher chanda chanda chanda he ay ni
Ying wey fu chow la ley chi chyow fey dei yow yey yi
Ni kei de lan ching wo pho chen khaw phing
Chi chiyaw wo ei ay ni chen shing
Chong yow lee chiyen kheng yi yong li
Ching ching baw chow ni (baw ni)
Ni ching chi sher kaw po chi
Ye yaw yow kiyen mo ti
Ni shen dao shang pho wei shi
Wei chi siyen how shing
Chay ni fang pei kheng yen ching li
Dao she li

Wo sher chanda chanda chanda he ay ni
Ying wey fu chow la ley chi chyow fey dei yow yey yi
Ni shen dao shang pho wei shi
Wei chi siyen how shing
Chay ni fang pei kheng yen ching li
Dao she li

I may not understand what this [song] means; the title says it all, I truly love you.  The music feels right, it must be saying the right thing.  Besides, truth does not come from rational thinking.  It is delivered by the heart.

Plugged into: I Truly Love You by Jerry Yan

meetjopeblack

The witching hour is not 12 midnight.  The movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose says it's at 3 am--a mockery of the holy trinity by the devil and the reversal of the 3pm death of the savior.

Today is the 6th day of the 6th month of the year 2006.  666.  The number of the devil per tradition.  Revelation 13:18 states, "...let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a hundred number, its number is six hundred and sixty-six."  A report from BBC news says that some Dutch Evangelical Christians are preparing for a spiritual warfare on this day to counteract any move by the satanists.

Although there's nothing wrong with gearing up for a battle with demons and other entities beyond the physical plane, the real war should be waged against the evil we see in the streets, in the government, in the media, in the alleys of human greed and apathy.  There's nothing to be frightened about the number 666.  Diachronic interpretations of John's Apocalypse point to Neron Caesar as the man behind the number!  There's the beast, long dead!

The fear of the number 666--the supernatural license and the unnecessary dread accorded it--grants more power to a rather inert human construct.  Because of this, we have at the onset already have lost our stand against it.  The number then is truly owned by "the devil."  It seceded to the spiritual level because we've removed the number from its context and from our lives.  Its once  impotent nature now becomes potent with ominous grip beyond the control of man precisely because it was given a life of its own.  Bottom line is, we create our own ghosts--our own angels and demons--and that the witching hour happens everytime we become frightful of the ghosts we ourselves created.  Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia shouldn't have existed had we understood the non-existent danger posed by the number 666.

In Neal Bell's Monster (based on Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein), a character says, "if you keep repeating a word over and over, you'll notice how it loses its meaning."  666 is not a bad number. Try repeating it to yourself out loud, you'll soon realize how sterile it is and that there is no spiritual entity residing in it.  Repeat it to expel the ominous trait trapped within it for years.  Repeat it to free yourself from the tradition of the fear of 666.

P.S. The Omen opens today.  The producers did an excellent job in picking  the sixth of June, 2006 to retell the story of Damien, the boy marked with the number of the beast.   666 now becomes a marketing number, let's see if this new usage works.

We had a blast in the 1^st Myx Music Awards even if our "favorites" Mark Bautista, Rachelle Ann Go, and Cueshè won the top awards.  Watching Pepe Smith and Sandwich perform, Parokya ni Edgar and Kamikazee go wild on stage, and The Dawn, Bituin Escalante, and the vocals of Sugarfree and Urbandub cap the night with Enveloped Ideas and Isang Bangka, made up for the losses of our personal favorites.

I can still hear Sandwich shout, "Sugod, mga kapatid!" and Parokya and Kamikazee growl, "Paorder, paorder, paorder!" up to now.  Can't wait till next year's awards night.  Hope real music wins next time.  Let us have more of Spongecola, Parokya, Kamikazee, Junior Kilat, Amber, and the like, and less of Yasmien Kurdi, Cues(pootah!), the Bautistas, Santoses, and Gos, and no more hellos from Mr. Ogie d' Pogi.  D-uh! Even the Vjs didn't seem delighted with the results of the awards.

Kudos to Chito Miranda, Jay of Kamikazee, Keanna Reeves, and Teri Onor (yes! s/he was there!) for their hilarious antics which eclipsed the Vj hosts and turned the house into one rockin' show!  Without them, Damayan would be more fun to watch.

La luna at 2, two nights ago.

meetjopeblack

The librarian asked me as I handed him my ID, "hanggang 2007 lang ang contract mo?"  I'm not even sure if there's a "lang" included in the question; what hit me is the question.  Does this stranger also know about the shit I'm in?

Paranoid.  That's what I am.

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

I'm living a lie.  How do I get myself back to the real world of jope spontaneity?

"A man who loses his privacy loses everything... And a man who gives it up of his own free will is a monster."

Politics turned me into a monster.  No!  It was my own doing that I became a monster because I allowed them to get the better of me.  Now, I'm in the point of no return.

WHAT HAVE I DONE?
I AM NOT THIS MAN.

Plugged into: I Don't Want To Be by Elliot Yamin
Currently reading: Part III, Chapter 7, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

hope too, sometimes tells you to stop.

i miss you.

I took an MBTI test today.  Twenty, thirty, forty items through, I am somehow able to figure a pattern in my answers.  I want things in order.  I'm more comfortable when things are planned and scheduled.  I am quiet and reserved.  I talk to a select few rather than be gregarious in a big crowd.  Etcetera, etcetera.  After the test, I was struck with an existential unease--who am I?  Am I the Jope that will come out of that test?  Will my answers to a 126 test-questionnaire accurately describe my personality?

Honestly, this is the only psych test I took which I allowed myself to be as true to myself as possible.  The other psych tests I did when I was an undergrad were bogus ones--I went ahead of the tests and tried to shade the answers which I deem desirable.  True enough, in one psych test, I got a hundred something margin of error!  (Is that possible? I don't know.  I could care less. I don't bet a penny on psych tests anyway.)  Philosophy says, human beings are dynamic creatures which one cannot contain in labels and boxes.  To be human is to live the question.  I guess that's the general bias of a philosophy major against psych tests.

In an MBTI test, there are only two answers to choose from.  Although a lot of the questions provide for choices which include my preference, I wanted more questions asked of me because I know given another circumstance, I will answer differently and will therefore shape another personality mold for me.  But the test didn't do anything of that, it stuck to the 126 test questions and I'm left wanting for more.  Aren't you gonna ask me about how I want to hold parties and be the life of the party?  And how I enjoy mingling with other people in events, chitchatting for a while before skipping, hopping to the next guest?  And how I love being a star and that I'm just waiting to be egged on acting uninterested and coy?  And how I don't like repeating things more than once (okay, twice at most!)?  How I want things to be always grand and original and different?   I was waiting for those questions so i can show the other side of me, but like going to the a candy shop with no money with you, you're left wanting and to salivate is all you can do.  Or when you're offered to have lunch at your neighbor's which you decline waiting for another insinuation or a repeat of the offer--it  doesn't come and you just have to walk home hungry.

I'm afraid the test will draw a generalization of myself based on my reactions to the given scenarios.  We can't  call what will comle out of it as my personality type; I'm that person only in those special situations!   In that test, the more I tried to be honest with my answers, the more I cheated myself.  I am not that person --at least from what I know of myself.

Or perhaps, I'm only deluding myself to think that I am this sort of person when in fact, I've changed a lot through the years and I'm a different "jope" now and I know nothing much about this new person.

Is jope present in the roles he plays in front of his clients?  Is jope the deep solitude in the loudness of everyday living?  Is jope the loud social animal in the quiet vessel of his private space?  Is jope just putting up a facade?  Is this the real jope?  Is there a real jope?

Will the real geoffrey please stand up?

Maybe jope is just a character and geoffrey's the real deal?  --I love my invented name so much, I don't want to give it up just yet.  Never.  Won't revert back to geoffrey now and later.

Quarter life crisis comes to men at the age of 27-28 (earlier, 24-25, to women), studies say.  Tough times ahead.  But then again, when have we really pinned down an exact description of our personality and character?  When have we gunned down the question of who I am?  Plato and his footnote-rs have been grappling with that question for thousands of years now.  An MBTI is just a baby step to answering that question.  The rest is left to be answered in the events of daily choosing, deciding, procrastinating, and doing nothing.

Fact: Psych tests reveal only 30% of the person's profile, studies say.

More questions:  Where is the other 70%?  Will we ever know that?  Does a 75 year old man know much more about himself than a 28 year old lad? 

I don't know.  I'm just as confused as any average person is about life.

Plugged into: I Just Dont Know What To Do With Myself by The White Stripes

meetjopeblack

I'm not that type whom you can invite to go to places or do things without telling me about it two-three weeks prior.  For one, my weight lifting is non-negotiable plus rest plus my alone time.  When I'm on my bed, I'm on my bed and it would take an emergency or something urgent to make me get up and get out.  Yes, I put a premium on rest and alone time.  I'm a passionate worker but I'm also a sickly person. Pushing myself to the edge has serious health repercussions--as proven by years of being downed by a flu or colds or some viral infection when stressed and battered with work.

Yesterday, Cathy texted me about her own emergencies at work. She had to cover for her officemate who has a scheduled meeting with GP Reyes, et al.  She had to meet them up at the Embassy with no ride to and fro.  I already had my day fixed--I'm off at 4:30, drive home for 15-20 minutes, rest awhile, and weights at 5:00.  But because Cathy has no one to go with her to the Fort, I'm sort of impelled to drive for her, accompany her, CANCEL my weight training! (Brain overload--too much a change for me to cope with!)

Somehow, by some cosmic power, I found myself texting her back, "I can drive for you," translated as, "I have to cancel my plan!"  I don't know what's with Cathy, but she derails me off my routine and schedule most of the time with her frequent change of plans, indecisiveness, and "emergencies" yet I don't complain.  This is so unlike me.   I'm able to juice me out of more energy and free up more time for her, for us.  Some people call it love.  I'd like to call it, weight lifting.

It's the cathy-effect when I'm being rigid (and frigid) and Cathy ambushes me with extra-demands, I'm stretched to the max and the weight of structure and order is lifted to awaken the playful child in me.  And I'm happy--happy being decentered and free.

After dinner, still too early to go home, I suggested that we whiled away our time at the Mall of Asia.  She was surprised; it was 9:15 and we didn't even know if it's still open.  But I insisted that we go and try it out; it'll be a new experience for the both of us whether we're able to actually set foot in the robust structure or not.  We arrived at the mall a quarter before 10.  We walked and talked and shared a large cup of Wendy's iced tea.  We had fun.  Her work burdens were lifted off her shoulder; my own rigidity was softened.

We drove home soonafter, singing to "O Happy Day" and "Joyful, Joyful."  It was a different kind of weight lifting yesterday--focussed on the chest, mainly the heart. 

Plugged into: Dragostea Din Tei by O-zone

The only problem is that man behaves as if the return is nonexistent.  Cruelty and folly are pardoned so easily; memory does not register anything other than the belief in ever after.

We are bound to repeat everything in circles until one is able to pause and notice how everything recurs and will continue to recur infinitely.  Unless we consciously stop the careening of our lives to aimless redundancy, nothing will change and the hurting will continue.  The curse of eternal recurrence will loom over generations until the chain is broken by a person who resists the tide of woundedness even if he himself is so wounded.

Did you notice how a single thought was repeated in the three sentences above?--I drag you now in the infinite cycle.  Wake up.  Surrender to the crushing sadness of empty fantasies, that is, our so-called life.

Currently reading: Nietzsche's The Gay Science

meetjopeblack

Cooking time for a longaniza is 7-10 minutes, rice is 10-15 minutes, eating 5-7 minutes.  It takes longer to prepare food than to actually consume it.

Moreover, you waste a minute more time in crushing and chopping a clove of garlic to be soaked in vinegar and soy sauce as a sauce-dip for only two pieces of longaniza.  What does that give you?  Nothing but extra sweat on your forehead.

But you continue sweating it out because you just love longaniza and that is all that matters.

We were ushered to the satellite lecture hall as the main hall is packed to the door.  We were a virtual participant of the forum as we sat in front of the screen, watching the live feed of the proceedings in the other hall.

The speaker was through with his speech.  The people from the main lecture hall gave him a round of applause.   We likewise gave him a hand.

"What for though?  He wouldn't hear us anyway," I snorted.

The thought hit me.  Do I clap because I want to be heard?  Do I clap because I want to affirm my participation in the meeting even if I were only virtually there?  Do I clap to release emotions stirred by the talk?  Do Iclap because I appreciate what the speaker said and I want to let him know that?  Or do I clap because it's polilte to clap?

You, why do you clap?

Not too many people do their groceries on a Saturday, at least in Shopwise,  Libis.  Or maybe it's a non-payday weekend and people just want a reprieve for their thinning wallets.  Everyone seems to be held down by the economic crisis; spending isn't as fluid as before.

I saw a young boy stare at me and my cart for an already bothering few seconds.  Their cart has only a handful of instant noodles and from the looks of it, his parents are having a bad time choosing which of the instant noodles will cost them the least while providing for their health requirements.

There are stories in people's carts.  There are stories in people's stares.  There are stories on people's faces.  I don't know what the boy is trying to tell me but I sense some questions brewing up in his mind--things I will never know and may not understand.  But one thing's certain, he has a story to tell.  I don't know him; I am not related to him.  But through that uncomfortable seconds of stare, our worlds connected.  I am now part of him as he is a part of me.  And I feel his pain; wish I can do something about it.  But...

...I too don't have that much money to spare.

Help?

I can't.

And so, we're all stuck in a rut.

meetjopeblack

While in class, I got an SMS from my dad:

"No display can be seen on the LCD (of your cam).  It's just black!"

"Try pressing the display button or turn the shooting mode dial to auto."

"I did just that, but still nothing.  A battery icon is flashing and it says 'change the batteries'?"

Trust is a prerequisite to a successful relationship.

I didn't know I have this much effect on my students.  My students recounted to me what they learned in my class--mostly anecdotes of personal stories which I shared with them to make my philosophical point.  They were telling me how philosophy, my class in particular, changed their lives.  They were narrating how they used class lectures on their relationships.  They reciting their post-class oral exams, giving me snippets of all their learning in my class.  They were like the apostles reporting to Jesus what miracles and wonders they were able to do.  Not that I'm assuming I'm on the same level with Jesus, I won't go that far. It's more of the Jesus-apostles relationship--novices narrating to their master what they have accomplished.

I didn't know I had this much impact on my students.  When I was so downed by poor evaluation from the same batch of students last schoolyear, it's as if this is my vindication.  The sour comments are replaced by fond memories and heartwarming commendations from them.  The chat lasted for almost two hours.  I was supposed to leave school early and buy Cathy's godchild a birthday present but I was cornered by my students whose stories did not even allow me to check on my watch for time.  For once, I wasn't listening to students' personal problems and trying to figure out a solution with them.  Yesterday was different--I was hearing thank you remarks from men who are not kissing me up for grades but who are sincerely appreciative.

I was near tears listening to them.  I can see sparks in their eyes as they went through their schoolyear with me, lesson per lesson.  Even my sly side remarks in class were noted and consumed as if they too contain philosophical food.  They loved what they've been fed and their lives changed for the better.

Honestly, I felt flattered, yes, but more than the initial feeling, I knew I am being called to renew my 'yes' to this vocation of cura personalis.  Today, while inciting my students to debate on which came first:  loving or knowing, I drew from my own chest of experience with my students.  I told them, "I don't know you, but one thing I'm certain of, I am already loving you.  And even if I don't get paid doing this, I can't even write this on my resume (and won't assure me of my permanency), I will still do my best to help you learn, to make our class easy for you, to spend time preparing extra materials for you, to listen to you.  I love you.  Why?  --because!  This is not only because it is part of my job; it is moreso, my responsibility as a teacher, as a Christian, as a human being."  I will probably get hurt again this schoolyear by my students whom I'm dedicating my life to--call me a hopeless romantic, I've been burned too many times--I'll do it again, if that's the way to make learning happen.

My friend Angela told me once, "Be aware that you are in a position of influence. Use it wisely for God's plan."  I see that now.  But more than my own agenda (or God's), being a teacher is, on the contrary, putting yourself in the position of vulnerability.  You know you know more than your students, but you delete all your academic expertise and age-won experiences and traverse the old roads again with them--clearing paths for them and even allowing yourself to be stepped on and trampled by the students you so love.  If that's the only way for them to get to their destination, so be it.  It will hurt.

Again. 

I know.

But heck...

Cheers to another year of love story!