not so nasty, now that i think about it. just more blather. i remember scribbling fragments of what became the entry below of little scraps of paper, most of which got lost. it was the baguio arts festival 1999. we were mostly drunk or stoned or both. don't try this at home. or anywhere else. makes me wonder just how many lifetimes we're allowed to screw up.
still 27 november 1999
i dropped acid yesterday, the best of all days. not because of the acid which was a disappointment. the performances were good and i liked having fingers growing out of my forehead and later from my left hand. baby powder, beer and strawberries tell you if you can't take it anymore, try giving a little. [sairo circa 2005: something to do with the performanace art at the festival, i'm guessing] but i took a lot yesterday. never has substance abuse felt so good; it is only now that i realize the actual validity of addiction. or why people are afraid of being in such a state. (i missed having people around just now so i moved up into the dining room to sit with people i don't really know who chatter about things i don't really care about. But just the same, it is nice feeling alive and part of a group of humans. but as always when among others, i lose track of stuff and the ability to think inside my head. i have to get out.)
anyway. i am not sure if these chimes are annoying me. they are ringing in my head, scattering notes like hard bubbles that stick--shaking slightly--into the dark inner hollows of my skull. i can't stop drumming, even on the thin metal arms of my chair. it gets to me, all this percussion. the hide-covered hollow instruments seem to be extreme cruelty but they make such beautiful music. (digression: got a taste of tobacco from thailand, a cigar. the wrapping leaves are green and leaves a fresher taste in the mouth, less burnt. the singaporean artist guy says they come from the northern part of what used to siam. i am wondering if it is cold there now.)
on acid, everything becomes knife-sharp. sound solidifies into a solid force that can push at you in waves or jab you like jets of dry water. the drums again, the drums. last night they played endlessly, the hard notes falling lightly on me, bouncing off my skin like invisible rain, and my bones hollow, filling lightly with air. dancing becomes so much easier when you're high. i was dancing in circles but it felt like i wasn't moving at all. i've never felt this recreative. even the configuration of limbs seem essential and must be precise. oh but there are costs. my insides are sour. the cocktail of hash, acid, tapuey and betel brought about most interesting effects. and the cigarettes, all kinds it seems. menthols, kreteks, bidis, reds, local, lights. all of them taste somewhat nasty but leave me pleasant with a head full of smoky bubbles.
(i don't feel like writing about C and the breakup yet. it feels right, right now, to push him from my mind. under K's huge bamboo installation [someone told me he did it but i didn't bother to verify that], a sparse shelter more for the spirit or the mind than for the body, the quality of light changes the way things appear. C's baby pictures, the happy one where he wrinkles his nose, took on reddish tones that made him look either feirce or edible or both. i find it a conscious effort to think about him objectively, not as one who is [or was?] an integral part of my life.)
K looked beautiful last night, like a young white messiah. i wonder about the quality of salt i might taste if i licked his bony chest. i imagine it might taste of thin communion wafers, the flat roundness registering as shape, disappearing before i can identify a specific flavor. it might be the taste of shadows, only paler and frail as his bird-bones. under the installation--woven grass and green bamboo stretched high overhead--the outline of a man has been cut shallow into the earth. i feel i am sitting beside an invisible dead guy, or perhaps someone who had been asleep for so long, he blurred and faded away, leaving only the shape in the dirt to warn poeple walking in the park not to talk too loudly.
just a while ago. a family man pointed out to his son the importance of people working together, seeing overhead in the bunches and tufts of dry grass people describing a circle with their arms. i didn't notice that. all i saw were heads of grass, silent like the dead.
(there is a lot of order put into these gardens. they prepare the soil in grids, like an ice cube tray with dirt wells. some have small mounds of ash. here, they feed the earth in a rough geometric method. efficient too: the gardeners' huts or sheds have walls of packed dirt and what looks to be sawdust.) the sunlight reveals where shadows are supposed to fall. i must move again after a while. i've been sitting here for a while now, moving occasionally among the different swells of these gardens as noise and sunlight dictate.
so i am here again. people pass by and exclaim at the dead man beside me. to some, he is not here, only a physical imprint on the ground as lasting as the memory of something compelling or profound. to young boys, he is just a figure to measure themselves against, to see how much more they have to grow. one of them lay down, like many have before him in the past few days, looking at the patch of blinding blue within the circle of grassheads, the boy's thin arms extending only up to the man's elbows.
Thursday, July 28, 2005
nasty old stuff #1
took a peek at Ye Olde Gatula message archives and found some blather i wrote a lifetime ago. judging from the date, this was right after my very first breakup (yeh), a couple of days after i turned 23. i only half-remember what all this was about. which is probably a good thing. probably the most embarassing thing i'll ever post here. have fun! (or not, heh.)
22 november 1999
monday
10:12 pm
the entire day i've been with a desperation i had not felt in months. there was despair as well since each attempt proves futile. every approach i tried seemed wrong, with me trying not to think of all the rules i've been breaking. wrong images, disjunct words, inconsistent strategy, unable to even focus on one piece, to picture in my head a complete image/vision. it was like putting together a puzzle where all the pieces are from the wrong boxes.
living with stacks and stacks of books, i am painfully aware of all i have to live up to. these writers, dead or alive, did not simply write (an activity i already find difficult to do) -- they also wrote exceedingly well. well enough for their work to be found worthy of publication, inclusion in some canon or another, and as such, worthy enough to have reached my shelves. these writings have travelled a long way from the writers' desks. these works outlived or will outlive their creators and have gone farther geographically than the writers could ever hope to go.
i believe this in a sense is true greatness. at the rate i'm going, it's something i feel i can't possibly achieve. even filling this small space with writing has been far from easy for me. it is impossible to compare the blankness of these pages with the consistent march of words in theirs, line by measured line. like ants following a single trail of thought, sure that there is a definite destination that will make following the trail worthwhile.
this obsession with worthiness. what the heck for? the expanse of white space i must fill, i have yet to fill, i must fill adequately or well, taunts me. this yellow pad's lines have been washed off by months of cleaning my contact lenses. the saline drops hitting the page morning and night like tears, soaking into the pad several sheets deep. the result is an uneven rippled writing surface that provides more freedom, not a set number of lines that run eastward like some reverse sunset. or the earth's revolution. and try as i might, i cannot seem to meet the challenge.
i want to break something. the glass jar half-filled with salted water and whatever undesirable elements that seeped from C's crystals. i imagine myself an ant picking my way through glass shards, the salt water seeping into paper like a disappearing ocean, bringing with it these words and the memory of lines running eastward. if i were an ant, i'd follow these lines right to the very edge until i fall off. other ants may will themselves to sprout wings and fly towards what they imagine to be the sun. ant-like, i might knowingly step off the edge, antennae twitching wildly, the momentary sensation of flight like gravity in my chest.
22 november 1999
monday
10:12 pm
the entire day i've been with a desperation i had not felt in months. there was despair as well since each attempt proves futile. every approach i tried seemed wrong, with me trying not to think of all the rules i've been breaking. wrong images, disjunct words, inconsistent strategy, unable to even focus on one piece, to picture in my head a complete image/vision. it was like putting together a puzzle where all the pieces are from the wrong boxes.
living with stacks and stacks of books, i am painfully aware of all i have to live up to. these writers, dead or alive, did not simply write (an activity i already find difficult to do) -- they also wrote exceedingly well. well enough for their work to be found worthy of publication, inclusion in some canon or another, and as such, worthy enough to have reached my shelves. these writings have travelled a long way from the writers' desks. these works outlived or will outlive their creators and have gone farther geographically than the writers could ever hope to go.
i believe this in a sense is true greatness. at the rate i'm going, it's something i feel i can't possibly achieve. even filling this small space with writing has been far from easy for me. it is impossible to compare the blankness of these pages with the consistent march of words in theirs, line by measured line. like ants following a single trail of thought, sure that there is a definite destination that will make following the trail worthwhile.
this obsession with worthiness. what the heck for? the expanse of white space i must fill, i have yet to fill, i must fill adequately or well, taunts me. this yellow pad's lines have been washed off by months of cleaning my contact lenses. the saline drops hitting the page morning and night like tears, soaking into the pad several sheets deep. the result is an uneven rippled writing surface that provides more freedom, not a set number of lines that run eastward like some reverse sunset. or the earth's revolution. and try as i might, i cannot seem to meet the challenge.
i want to break something. the glass jar half-filled with salted water and whatever undesirable elements that seeped from C's crystals. i imagine myself an ant picking my way through glass shards, the salt water seeping into paper like a disappearing ocean, bringing with it these words and the memory of lines running eastward. if i were an ant, i'd follow these lines right to the very edge until i fall off. other ants may will themselves to sprout wings and fly towards what they imagine to be the sun. ant-like, i might knowingly step off the edge, antennae twitching wildly, the momentary sensation of flight like gravity in my chest.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
the kindness of strangers
went to school today with a killer hangover and i had to teach frickin grammar at 830 in the morning. augh. what i thought was going to be a nice healthy evening of wall climbing with a guy who M says liked me way back when i could scale 5-storey monsters without breaking a sweat turned out to be a 5-hour boozefest that stretched from 7pm to well past midnight.
the company was interesting: the young hirsute musician, friends M and B, the wall climber, the righteous babe, the geologist with a phd earned in france. if i would ask them for an appropriate label for myself, i'm pretty sure they'd all say something along the lines of secondary virginity. for some reason they found that idea extremely funny. as in funny strange.
anyway. i didn't plan to get drunk. i never do. but those nice gentlemen just kept buying round after round of beer, i actually lost track of just how much i had. M told me she counted five. FIVE! never had that much before. (and i see that 5 seems to be the number for that night)
at some point this new guy showed up and was introduced to everyone. by then, i was so pickled i promptly forgot his name. so let's call him the stranger. all i can remember is that he was from sports science and is now studying to be a nurse.
alcohol makes me garrulous. the understatement of the year. i don't remember everything i said or did last night, and i think that's a really good thing. at some point M was already telling me to either shut up or lower my voice. i couldn't seem to do either so they decided it was time for me to go home and think of my various transgressions.
somehow the stranger ended up taking me home. really nice guy, whatever his name was, never mind the poor guy actually wants to become a nars. as far as i can remember, he behaved appropriately. was really nice, especially when i started bawling about the guy who keeps breaking my heart. egads. talk about embarrassing.
lemme just end this with the two really freaky-frightening things about last night:
1) in the cab, he very nicely asked if he could kiss me. and i very politely said i couldn't let him do that because i had only met him 2 hours before and that i knew absolutely zero about him. and he very nicely backed off. good boy.
2) when i saw M at the office, she told me she had never seen the guy before. that he really was an absolute stranger to her. she thought that I knew HIM, which was the only reason she let the guy take me home.
sticky note to self: must never do anything remotely similar to last night ever again.
another sticky note to self: lots of luck on that. ha ha. ha.
the company was interesting: the young hirsute musician, friends M and B, the wall climber, the righteous babe, the geologist with a phd earned in france. if i would ask them for an appropriate label for myself, i'm pretty sure they'd all say something along the lines of secondary virginity. for some reason they found that idea extremely funny. as in funny strange.
anyway. i didn't plan to get drunk. i never do. but those nice gentlemen just kept buying round after round of beer, i actually lost track of just how much i had. M told me she counted five. FIVE! never had that much before. (and i see that 5 seems to be the number for that night)
at some point this new guy showed up and was introduced to everyone. by then, i was so pickled i promptly forgot his name. so let's call him the stranger. all i can remember is that he was from sports science and is now studying to be a nurse.
alcohol makes me garrulous. the understatement of the year. i don't remember everything i said or did last night, and i think that's a really good thing. at some point M was already telling me to either shut up or lower my voice. i couldn't seem to do either so they decided it was time for me to go home and think of my various transgressions.
somehow the stranger ended up taking me home. really nice guy, whatever his name was, never mind the poor guy actually wants to become a nars. as far as i can remember, he behaved appropriately. was really nice, especially when i started bawling about the guy who keeps breaking my heart. egads. talk about embarrassing.
lemme just end this with the two really freaky-frightening things about last night:
1) in the cab, he very nicely asked if he could kiss me. and i very politely said i couldn't let him do that because i had only met him 2 hours before and that i knew absolutely zero about him. and he very nicely backed off. good boy.
2) when i saw M at the office, she told me she had never seen the guy before. that he really was an absolute stranger to her. she thought that I knew HIM, which was the only reason she let the guy take me home.
sticky note to self: must never do anything remotely similar to last night ever again.
another sticky note to self: lots of luck on that. ha ha. ha.
sad sad songs: the soundtrack
it seems appropriate to make a CD for this. kinda like The Happy CD for that pretty-boy-gone-to-seed incident. haven't really figured out the right order for the tracks but it seems okay so far. seems to end on the appropriate note. anyway, the songs:
Le Voyage de Penelope (Air)
Fuck and Run (Liz Phair)
Homeward (The Sundays)
Slimcea Girl (Mono)
No Myth (Michael Penn)
Sad, Sad Song (M. Ward)
Happy Sad (Pizzicato Five)
Go On Ahead (Liz Phair)
Losing Hand (LHOOQ)
Goodbye Baby Goodnight (Brownman Revival)
Na Rua, Na Chuva, Ha Fazenda (City of God)
Always See Your Face (Love)
Flying Away (Smoke City)
When I'm Thinking About You (The Sundays)
Adios Ayer (Jose Padilla)
Ce Matin La (Air)
Le Voyage de Penelope (Air)
Fuck and Run (Liz Phair)
Homeward (The Sundays)
Slimcea Girl (Mono)
No Myth (Michael Penn)
Sad, Sad Song (M. Ward)
Happy Sad (Pizzicato Five)
Go On Ahead (Liz Phair)
Losing Hand (LHOOQ)
Goodbye Baby Goodnight (Brownman Revival)
Na Rua, Na Chuva, Ha Fazenda (City of God)
Always See Your Face (Love)
Flying Away (Smoke City)
When I'm Thinking About You (The Sundays)
Adios Ayer (Jose Padilla)
Ce Matin La (Air)
a week later
what surprises me now is that i didn't do as much crying as i thought i would. and that i broke a lot of my old patterns, doing none of the wacko destructive stuff i used to do when that sort of thing happens to me. prayed harder than i had ever prayed, this being more painful than all my breakups combined. which is strange, because it wasn't a breakup. there was nothing to break up. at all. anyway.
i also found myself singing all these songs in my head. a most surprising soundtrack, with some song lyrics having more fidelity than others. some lyrics no fidelity at all, the songs just sounded right. i like that word. fidelity. in translation studies, it has to do with accuracy (a dry, bloodless word) but i like to relate it to closeness. there's also the idea of truth somewhere in there. or maybe "true-ness" sounds better. anyway, none of this really matters much.
still hurts though. still love him. very very much. and i know this is different from the way i had loved all those other guys because this time it isn't wacko-obsessive. and it was never about wanting any reciprocation. i can honestly say that for the first time it wasn't about me and what the guy could give me or how he made me feel. with this, i think i'm starting to understand a tiny little bit of what richelle meant when she says real love is selfless. maybe one day i'll get to know what that's like.
it's his birthday next week. same day as allan's book launch. i'm so tired. i want this to get fixed but i don't know how. i already said everything that night. i'm just afraid that if i see him, i might start bawling again. don't want that to happen. at all.
i also found myself singing all these songs in my head. a most surprising soundtrack, with some song lyrics having more fidelity than others. some lyrics no fidelity at all, the songs just sounded right. i like that word. fidelity. in translation studies, it has to do with accuracy (a dry, bloodless word) but i like to relate it to closeness. there's also the idea of truth somewhere in there. or maybe "true-ness" sounds better. anyway, none of this really matters much.
still hurts though. still love him. very very much. and i know this is different from the way i had loved all those other guys because this time it isn't wacko-obsessive. and it was never about wanting any reciprocation. i can honestly say that for the first time it wasn't about me and what the guy could give me or how he made me feel. with this, i think i'm starting to understand a tiny little bit of what richelle meant when she says real love is selfless. maybe one day i'll get to know what that's like.
it's his birthday next week. same day as allan's book launch. i'm so tired. i want this to get fixed but i don't know how. i already said everything that night. i'm just afraid that if i see him, i might start bawling again. don't want that to happen. at all.
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