Confused-Shoes

I won’t ever forget you. No, I never will. I promise I shall remember the good times. I will try to forget the bad. And I have forgiven you, just as I wish that I be forgiven. And I will move on, just as I always have. But I’ve learned one lesson, that, it seems to me, I already have learned but I just keep on forgetting (or neglecting): too much love chokes. Too little, it wanders. In any case, it will always fade away. Such is the fate of all whirlwind affairs, brittle, hopeless, unsure. But I promised you that I will always remember the good times. And don’t worry, I would not break that promises. After all, nobody, absolutely nobody, wishes to weep every night.

When you told me to say goodbye to you, you broke my heart. In my head were all the countless love songs that I have memorized by heart, all sounding together until they formed a monstrous, overwhelming tide of a crescendo that drowned me completely. I felt that I was being pushed and sent away. But unlike before, I knew that this time I could not push back. No, the law of action and reaction simply refused to hold sway. Your desire to leave me was far too powerful than my ability to love you back. After all, as my favorite song suggested, the questions of science do not speak as loud as my heart. But anyway, your mind spoke much, said much and I simply lost all wind to reply.

Why did it fail? Was I so impatient? I could take all th blame, you know. And, besides, my reputation doesn’t speak much for me. This is my best behavior. I am already in my sanest, most humane mode possible. And yet this was not enough. Naturally. This is not enough. I was born short on everything. Poor me.

How many times have I been on this similar situation? It breaks my heart, I have been running in circles, after all, breaking hearts and getting heartbroken myself. It breaks my heart to see all the lovers and the sweethearts that have come and go, either by my fault or theirs. No, it was always my fault. I’ve grown old enough to know that. But, I’m sure it just doesn’t have to stop there. But I am still too immature to know.

Where is the old soothsayer, that old witch from the dark dark caves from the deep forest who will be my fairgodmother and forgive me all my transgressions and absolve my name? Where is she, that old sage who will calm my mind and bring me back to the land of my birth, the stars?

Eternal recurrence - I shall try to live each moment as which I can will it thus to be repeated forever and ever, Amen. No, this heartbreak may have been the end of something beautiful and good, but it was never true. It was painful and it was sarcastic; it was in my face and yet it was so obscure. But there is no wound that I can not bear. I can face such pain everyday, and day by day I shall triumph over it. Like Zarathustra I shall proclaim, "What doth it matter?" And I shall be happy with the earth and shall rejoice in the worship of the sunrise and be content with each sunset - ah! what life should I have then, if not one of forgiveness and acceptance and the will to live? What can broken hearts do against me? Who can show me greater pity that my pity for them? Who can break me?

But you did.

__________________________

Nothing’s gonna change my love for you. But nothing’s gonna change your love for him too. So I’d rather keep on loving you but try to be happy with other roses too.

Oh shit. I can’t do that. I’m too kind. I’m too mature.

Well, if I’m too kind and too mature, then, why’d you leave me? Certainly I’m not ugly and poor?

Yeah, well, I’m being stupid here.

Always go to class. Dont skip classes just because you felt like studying some German 11 in the CAL Library. And don’t skip your meals.

The STS report should be easy as long as you go along well with your leader. NATSCI 1, well, you’re too old to be told this, but, hey, MST GE courses also need an hour or two of sitting down, if you get what I mean. CL 30 is negligible.

Don’t worry, although I know your whole sched (possibly better than you do), your rooms and your classmates and teachers, I’d be totally out of the picture. A policy of non-interference. I know you won’t miss our 2 month old routine becoming so drastically changed. You didn’t even tell me to stay. You just thanked me for my generosity and kindness. Well, I say to you, anytime. You know my name and my number.

But you see, well, if things will go along for you without me, I’d be sincerely happy. No, I’m not being bitter or plotting vengeance. In fact I’m being cool, giving you sensible advice and reasonable parting words. And, oh, always remember that The Little Prince means much deeper than what it says. Actually. Really. Im surprised you havent read it yet. C’mon, make sure the copy you have doesnt go to waste. Too bad you neglected Hemingway. He could have been influential. I see that you are not too impressionable, however.

A Lover that sends her lover away and does not cry and instead thanks the other person with a jovial smile is either a beast, or a god.

Prepare yourself. We all falter.

Not taking it badly. Still eating three good meals everyday plus maybe three of four snacks in between. Cigarettes kept to a minimum, just two a day. Spending less on books and records, saving up for neckties and slacks. Keeping pace with the demands of bachelorhood, making definite appointments in synch with my mood. Has become less agressive, temper’s been tempered and barkada life is booming. Dating occassionaly, textmates still at the backseat. Storms are irrelevant. Gas is the only thing that irritates me right now.

Keeping myself so busy just to be able to forget. Hell, I’ve been here before. And I’m enjoying the strength that builds up inside. I am able to forget heartbreaks faster than ever before, thanks to the wonder pills I’ve been taking since I was circumcised. Geez. But I didn’t grow tall at all. Must be the genes. And is it also genetic, that I can’t be in a long term relationship with another functional adult female? Either it is my psyche or my fate. Oh well. I’m quite tired. But why should I be? I’m just beginning to have a smashing comeback as the king of misery.

After 8 girlfriends, 6 informal relationships, 2 M.U.’s, 4 dumped occassions and 65 flirtations, I’m definitely back at square one. I can’t say that lovelife is booming. But it definitely really isn’t so optimistic.

So I end it with my classic questions? Was it her loss or mine?

Mine. Definitely. Hahaha.

My coolest girl friend (I mean friend, not girlfriend) texted me all of a sudden earlier this rainy evening about why my girl was blooming lately, or about the fact that she was, indeed. Well, I told my friend, I was pretty sure that I had nothing to do with it. I mean, my girl, for whatever reason there is in the world, could be blooming for a million reasons that she has come up with independently of me. Occam’s Razor tells us to dispense with the costly, unnecessary explanations. If I could explain that she has a million other reasons for her to be blooming, well, that’s it.

Wait a farting second. What did I say? Occam’s Razor? Well, Occam’s Razor would say that she was indeed blooming because of me! Come to think of it, it’s the simplest explanation and it ain’t too farfetched at all. Now, for modesty’s sake, I usually wouldn’t be assuming this much, but my logic tells me that it isn’t such a bad idea at all to think of oneself well sometimes. Especially on rainy evenings.

But I guess she was indeed blooming lately. Many other common friends have spoken of this matter to me lately, and well, what could I say, I feel fine knowing that, pretending, you know, that she was my girl and mine alone. But for all you know, world, she isn’t. Maybe to some degree, yes, but I don’t know, maybe not at all. As I try now to sort of sort things out I’m beginning to muddle things completely.

I’m not so sure about many things lately. I watched Pierce Brosnan’s and Julienne Moore’s Laws of Attraction and I kind of needed some light romantic comedies to restore my faith in faith; that’s not so clear, I must admit. But I understand it well because it’s about myself, now. But after it was over (the credits were with a kind of a good closing song, maybe by Johnny Cash or something) and when my Cheeseburger and two cigarettes and coke and fries were done, I started feeling funny again. Ah, whatever I see I keep relating to my situation. I’m supposed to be good at making connections, famous or infamous. But then again, who wants to make oneself miserable my making connections that should otherwise have been better to left unrelated? By making so many thought experiments in my head I have become a little more cynical than is permissible to the average normal guy. But how much degree of cynicism should each normal guy possess? And what makes a normal guy, anyway?

If she is blooming, so let her be. Marvel at her. Be glad for her. She might even get casted in some advert or anything. But as for me, I’d like to be at peace with my ongoing bundle of perceptions unhabitual-isolated-perceptive state. Making connections in my head isn’t really helpful for my lovelife, and, most importantly, to my rainy evening well being.

This morning she called me and told me that she was going to see her sweetheart later in the day. This was not so much as asking my permission as to just simply letting me know and being kind and honest to me. Immediately, naturally, I felt sad. Sad in my heart. It seemed as if I was really coming in circles, going nowhere, really. I was hanging with every word she was saying. Although she never told me categorically that she didnt love me, it was more like today i love you tomorrow its him, and vice versa. What the hell. I started feeling funny again.

Really ironic because last night before I had slept, I joked her about me having a date today with someone (because classes have been already declared suspended beforehand). She asked me who I was going out with and I didnt answer quickly so she asked me again and I finally said I was just joking and with a smiley she said goodnight. Now, Ironic because it was she, after all, who was going to have a date with someone else. With her special someone.

Funny. How long was I going to make a fool of myself? Or should I leave her? Well, if I do I absolutely have nowhere else to go. She knows that. And she wants me precisely to leave her, so she can have her peace of mind. Instead of consoling me, she constantly tells me to just forget about her, leave her to her peace. So in a way we were just tormenting each other. This is the price I have to pay for being a criminal in love in my youth and now trying to be a saint before the virgin image of my beloved.

Well, the night before yesterday I thought I had already transcended this hopeless romantic phase.

Yellow pin lights on, all white lights off, dining table chandelier blazing, I tried to relax with the ambiance. Before me was my Asahi Ashtray, two cans of Expertly brewed, full-flavored 5% alcoholic volume Pale Pilsens, a pack of Marlboro Menthols, a dish the contents of which had come from a can of Century Tuna Lite, and a glass of cold water. Heaven, I said to myself. The solitude of finding nothing lacking, everything in its proper place. Even my supposedly gloomy solitude had become a form of mystical ascetism. I tried to recall David Hume. I was a bundle of perceptions, pure sentiments, habitual, inconclusive. I was strong. I was human.

But those paraphernalias had failed to produce their intended effect. I remained the enemy of Nietzsche. I was still a slave.

Instead of sentiments I have sentimentalities. Instead of being the Overman I have become just the foulest among the herd.

I will begin this reflection by stating that honestly, truthfully, I did try my best to abstain from smoking for a whole day. Was I successful?

The reason for this opening declaration being that I was thinking that it is not very difficult to imagine that maybe some of us didn’t do the activity at all, or maybe, did it halfheartedly, or maybe, did it with a heavy heart. After all, abstaining from something that’s supposed to be integral to a person’s daily well being is hard, but not impossible to do. For my part, I did entertain the thought of not doing the activity at all and forego the experience entirely, because I thought maybe I could make a good fiction thing anyway but in the end my set of morals decided against it.

Thus, I have done the activity honestly.

Let’s see. I wasn’t able to do it Friday, because every school day is supposed to be so stressful. Earlier in the morning I was contemplating about skipping my first Marlboro for the day, but I realized that since I have conditioned myself to smoke while brooding in my throne, that means I would have a hard time inside the toilet. Besides, I thought, I need to unload everything out because it is a very dangerous thing to trifle with the digestive tract on a Friday. I guess have already explained that for me, in the mornings at least, smoking and defecating go together.

I started it Friday night. I did my usual de-stressing regimen: by midnight I had my tuna, my glass of red wine and, guess what, instead of a cigarette, I had a Toblerone. Haha. I didn’t feel so bad about not having a smoke. Anyway. I felt good.

Saturday morning: that’s when the fun really started. I woke up at around 8 and joined Manang Jenny, the lady who cleans the house, for some breakfast of fried eggs, pancit canton, coffee and pandesal. Oh man, after the meal I went to the toilet. I was doing my usual routine: take your shorts off, hang it in the pegs, get the lighter from the drawer, get the pack of Marlboro’s and…then it hit me: I Must NOT, under any circumstances for the whole day, I Must NOT SMOKE. So I closed the drawer and sat down gloomily to brood about my life as I tried to relax myself and let nature do her proper course. I guess it took me longer than usual to do my deed. Longer than usual but I had time to spare. Saturday.

Feeling a little resigned to the fact that I am really doing my lungs a big favor but I was really drilling my brain, I went out to the garage and cleaned my old car instead. Still, I thought I could have used another cigarette. But no cigarette. Instead my cat came to bother me with incessant purring and petting, so I used to hose to annoy it and leave me alone.

Surprisingly, I reflected about the activity just as I was washing the undersides. With a soapy sponge in the right hand and hose in the left, I contemplated Sir Valero’s question. What does it really mean to seek the I in me minus my physical traits, my sociological constructs, my emotional baggage, and my life history? Then, magically, it occurred to me, hey, maybe David Hume was right. All that was left was a bundle of perceptions in my head and, as I added for some sake, an empty shell for a body. I didn’t know if I had to be happy because I got some answer, or be depressed because I certainly didn’t agree to everything that Hume says. If at all, I am not a Skeptic, nor was I an optimist. I did think that I considered myself a Pragmatic Relativist. Sure pragmatically speaking I could have used a Marlboro right then and there, but relatively speaking I had to stick to this challenge. It was not even noon.

After lunch, I took a bath and slept like a log. Like a log and a hog who was in dire need of a drag. I was really being pressed hard in my head. It was shouting smoke smoke smoke. I knew it wasn’t easy, but I never though it would really be so hard. But I had no desire left in me to abstract and philosophize that horrifying experience, that of having a want and having all the means in the world to secure that want because it s only a door and a drawer away but because of some moral imposition your want gets repressed just to prove that your want isn’t all there is to life. Oh great. I went on sleeping.

Then, come 6 pm, that was it, I gave up.

I went to the toilet, took a seat over the cover, and, almost sadly, smoked my first cigarette in almost 22 hours. Not bad, I thought. I thought to myself, maybe I should have tried more, stuck it longer out there against the voices from within me that kept telling me to smoke. In the end, I guess, I lost. I wasn’t able to complete the journey towards the end of the road that had an arc saying ’24 hours of self-control, man! Good job!’ I felt kind of funny. Nostalgic, even, but still funny. I realized that half of completing the journey is taking the journey itself. I don’t know. I really was sad and lost and quite lonely, for some reason and another. But as I’ve always told myself, the cigarette is loyal. It keeps you company. It keeps me sane. It has kept me sane.

Don’t we all love it when the High School Beauty Queen commits suicide or gets pregnant all of a sudden?

Well, if you’ve been the type to have had the High School Beauty Queen for a girlfriend, obviously, you’d hate to see that happen.

Well, well, I absolutely know what I am talking about. Either I am being morbid or creepy, but certainly, I am making some sense. You make not like what I am saying, or you may hate what I am getting into, but you really can’t just ignore me.

Who am I talking to? To myself, duh. (laughs) It’s so hard to cope with so many perfect people, beautiful people, glamorous people, intelligent people, people people. Why can’t we just associate with the ones we choose to love?

Hell yeah. Don’t we all do that? (laughs) Oh yeah. We go out and hang out with the people we love. But does it come naturally? I mean, this love thing that’s supposed to make the world go round?

Heartbroken Hopeless Romantics, Unite! How I wish Marx said something like that. What the hell, the world could have been a better place. Then we won’t have to listen to Coldplay or Nirvana or Dashboard Confessional anymore.

Why do we have to love in the first place? Can’t we just stare at one another’s eyes and let sparks fly out and illuminate the universe with a ‘let’s get it on!’ kind of feeling and we shall always go forth and multiply, unable to subdue all those volatile passions and carnal desires.

But we have complicated everything by bringing chocolates and love songs and roses and tulips and teddy bears and diamond rings and loveletters and postcards and now, condoms and feminine washes and drinks and ambiance and coffee and whatever sets our minds in the mood for love.

Have I missed anything out?

I found myself staring at the stereo. Outside, a hard rain was pouring. The world seemed so gloomy. I felt so alone.

I tried my best to systematize. Is it true that systematicity produces better results than sheer will? So in my head I tried to sort out, categorize and contextualize such abstract notions as attraction, infatuation, lust, love.

Love, for Pete’s sake. Love again?

Mandy Moore and Jonathan Foreman’s Someday We’ll Know was playing on the radio. God, why that stupid song? Not that I was on the verge of tears or I was dying inside or what. I just felt funny. In my heart, in my head, I felt a little funny. Love made me feel a little funny.

With the song ending, I tried my best to adopt that scholarly set of mind. I tried to be busy. Maybe schoolwork would free me from whatever bothers me. But another song was beginning and it was Coldplay’s In My Place. Man, I thought. This is such a gloomy morning!

I was tired from conjuring up justifications in my head. Tired from devising schemes and orchestrating the biggest upsets. I was even tired of doing a mental list of all the potential lovers that I could have. I was tired of reading J.D. Salinger and playing Blur and Radiohead. I was tired of conversations with animated people. I was tired of driving myself around the places where we used to spend our lovely afternoons. I was tired of pretending to be the ultimate fortress. I was tired of simply being me, or tI was tired of being simply me, or I was simply tired of being me.

I felt like I wanted to rush outside this big building and throw myself into the hands of fate. I wanted to make another obscenity, I wanted to put up the world’s grandest show. I wanted to be revered and worshiped like a saint, or I wanted to be stoned to death, burnt at the stake. I wanted to be unnoticed. I wanted to fade away. I wanted to kill anyone, I wanted to make lives. I wanted…I wanted badly to be loved by the woman I love.

That’s it. I wanted love.

We all suffer everyday.

This is my life story, just as yours is your story. In my life I am the protagonist, the persona, the lead actor in his biggest performance. And in your life, too, no one shares the spotlight with you.

And in our individual life stories, we all suffer everyday. We bleed, some parts of us are broken, some dreams are snatched from us and taken away; There are so many episodes of depression, desperation, misery, alienation.

We suffer everyday.

The worst times come when we finally get to corner ourselves and ask our very selves a most bothersome question: ‘What am I doing here?’ Of course, we could  make up reasons for all throughout the duration of our lives, making a sense of purpose, or, even trying to fashion our existence according to the ways we dream our lives to be. But that ‘What am I doinghere?’ question would always be answered subjectively - according to how we wish such an answe to be. The sorrow lies when we realize that, because we can give an answer of our own conception, we can never be sure that our answer is the real and right one. Of course, with no God to appear before us and validate our claim (I mean, either you don’t believe in God or you do believe in Him but agrees to his reverent distance from our world), we are just as good as anything else in the universe. We can answer the question but it all ends there. And to think that Philosophers, Priests and Scientists have all sought to present us TRUTH!

I’ve tried to ask that questions countless times before. Of course, I’ve made up a dozen answers. But no answer seems potent enought to carry me through my life story, a suffering-based one. The questions remains in its core conception, but somehow I had it modified a little bit. Now I ask myself, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’

To which an Existensialist may answer, ‘You’re here because you’ve got no fucking choice!’

I still suffer everyday. Just like you do, just like everyone else. I suffer from the moment I wake, tot he moment I sleep. I am alone as I thread nameless paths and as I roam unlit corridors. The world is one big horror house to which the only escape route inevitably leads to death. Sure, there are good times, there are bad times, but I am so brave to proclaim that underneath it all is a very deadly and miserable formula for human existence crafted by someone whom we choose to call omnibenevolent. This suffering is the only (thing) I can really prove to exist. Well, debate on that. But really, but really, how else shall we put the human condition? In a sunshiny matter full of laughter and intimacy? Or is it a never-ending terror full of tears and angst and dread?

Maybe Kierkegaard was right. So was Nietzsche. But in the end it is this sadness that has caught up with them, as this sadness will definitely catch up on you and me. Or maybe not you. Maybe just for me. I dont know if it will catch you sometime. But if it does, there is no way to elude it. When you’re down and broken, I mean, existensially down and broken, no love song will ever make sense. No inspirational book will inspire you, no piece of advice or quotation from any holy book to uplift you. In the end you drown when you’re down.

Let us all take drugs and booze and smoke maryjanes and rape each other and fornicate and make love wildly and kill everyone and spare no one and cannibalize and feast on fresh blood and do everything so wildly, without thinking, without conscience, like the cults of Dionysius who have been so brave to enjoy the earth by simply letting their carnal passions show.

(I hate myself. Oh no my parents would kill me. Hehe.)