Ennui
Monday, April 24
Why are parents so stubborn? Why can't they see that I am no longer the mindless drone they want me to be? Why do they keep pushing themselves into my life when it is clearly unfit for them to do so. Yes, they may be more experienced but apparently, that doesn't make them any wiser. They may have experienced things I can only dream about but they clearly lack the capability to pick up lessons from these experiences (at least from my point of view).Can't they at least give me the liberty of deciding whether or not I want to go with them on a trip?
Today was a complete nightmare, I'm still quite surprised as to how I managed to survive a feat that I will be talking about a little later. I have already told my mother the night before that I would prefer more to stay at home than join them on their trip, but knowing my parents, I knew this was a futile attempt. And so, against my will, I was rackled at 3am by the wake-up calls of my father. I got fixed up hesitantly, and I was already feeling that it was gonna be a real bad ass day.
I might as well give you a better understanding of the situation so that you may be able to relate with my feelings strongly. A bunch of my cousins are taking a week's vacation in our house and my parents decided to show them around Tagaytay and have a picnic. Now, I've been to Tagaytay on numerous occasions and I was quite tired of the place already and I tried to tell my parents, but as I've mentioned earlier, the pleas were all in vain.
And so, there I was, grumpily sitting at the back of the car, desperately trying to catch some Zs to make up for my disturbed sleep in the very early morning. An hour later, I found myself hiking towards the top of a park in the sky (People's Park in the Sky), and 2 hours later, I end up sitting in a bench in a picnic grove.
I thought it will only be a short stay, so I said, "Ok, I'll just sit here and wait till it's time to go home". I decided to leave the sight-seeing to my cousins since I've been there quite a few times already and there's nothing new on the scene. So at first, I enjoyed just sitting there doing nothing but after an hour I got bored and asked my parents when will we go home. They said after lunch, around 1pm, and so I decided I could still endure 2 more hours of painstaking boredom.
After 2 hours, my father was dozing off at the mat, and there still were no signs that we were leaving the damn place. The lack of sleep, the sweltering summer heat, and brutal boredom all combined to become a catalyst to revive the repressed feelings inside of me. Soon enough, my eyebrows were already joined, tip to tip, and I'm pretty sure I had the facial expression of a mad psychotic serial killer onto the scent of fresh blood.
This hell was all due to my father, caused by this bloated egomaniac eager to have everything in his control. He often told me that I was always trying to have my own way, and all those times I wanted to tell him to f*ck off and go look at a mirror and see his rotten visage of hypocrisy.
My father is a perfect example of a megalomaniac. He always gets his way, no matter how trivial the situation is, i.e., the color of the shirt we are to wear. His words are like imperial decrees, absolute laws we have to follow even though how ridiculous or insipid it may seem, because once he's made up his mind, you have to follow whatever intrepid order he may give you. I saw this not as a superiority complex, but as an inferiority complex. An elaborate mask to hide his desperation, to run away from the truth that he is after all, only human, and therefore prone to failure and blunder. Instead, he thinks himself a god, supreme and omniscient, infallible and incapable of committing mistakes.
But after a while, I began to feel calmer, a result of the paracetamol I drugged myself with as a proxy for anti-psychotic. My head began to clear, and I began to wait in boredom once more.
Man, was I glad to finally leave that bench 7 hours later....
thrown by A.Paul @ 00:05,
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Easter Ponderings...
Sunday, April 16
Contrary to what I had expected, I managed to somehow enjoy my vacation to the province this Holy Week. Apparently, I had been blind and looked at it in only a narrow perspective. I wasn't really looking forward to the trip, due to reasons which I now consider as superficial, i.e. how time consuming the journey will be (from Cavite to Tarlac), the costly toll fee, the sweltering heat, the lack of cable TV and internet access, weak cellphone signals, in short, plain ennui. Add to that the fact that I didn't really like most of my relatives. But as it turns out, it was quite refreshing to see my folks back there once more since I havent seen them for quite a while. The trip gave me the opportunity to meet the uhm, for lack of a better term, my long lost relatives. It also gave me the opportunity to enjoy the local dirty ice cream once more which I have loved as a child. And most importantly, amidst the serenity and silence of the place (save for the eternal ramble of the pasyon), it gave me the chance to mull things over, to look back at my life.
As I dozed off in the hammock, watching the procession of people following the salagubat (penitents, those who whip themselves or carry a big wooden cross while wearing black cloth on thier heads), I began to think of my religious, or at least my spiritual life. Although I attended a Catholic School, I was not really raised as a Catholic at home. My mom was a born-again and imparted her ways to me when I was still a child. And so Catholicism didn't really form a sturdy root in me. I transferred to another school when I reached high school, and I started to learn about Buddhism, Judaism, Confucianism. I became less and less attached to Catholicism as I began to borrow ideas and concepts on how to live your life in this different religions.
But as I pondered it profoundly, I realized that I was fooling myself into thinking that i was agnostic, when in truth i was more of a pragmatist, that I did not really believe in these things genuinely, but rather believed in the practicality of declaring that these were the principles that I stood up for. But in truth these were simply lies to equivocate who I truly was inside.
I realized how all of us were victims of capitalism and commercialism. Not simply commercialism of products but the advertising of values. The way the society dictates how we should behave ourselves , how we should look on life, how should believe in their goddamn cliches and shibboleths. This how we end up lost and betrayed with nowhere to run to. It is a fate that is often of our own compulsive making. But more than that, we fail to act in a society bereft of decency and justice. We are here in this desolate and brutal geography, this world of ours. This wretched place filled with hypocrisy and pretensions hidden in every little pleasantry.
Lying in that hammock, I sort out my thoughts, try to understand, how it had been, how instinctively I had drifted with the seasons. Who was it who said that the bambo survives the storm because it bends? That is what I know-to say the right things, the correct things that signify my acquiescence, my adulation, so that the wind will not break me. The storm leaves, but I stand-I stand without triumph for I had done what must be done in order to live. Is life really worth all these bendings?
thrown by A.Paul @ 16:24,
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Grand Opening day....
Wednesday, April 12
Welcome! To this place I'd like to call the Deadbeat Dump! The Dumpsite of pointless rants from an angst-ridden teen with raging hormones. A collection of thoughts too elusive for my memory to store and so I choose to store it in the crevices of cyberspace and leave it for future reference.
Disclaimer: This blog has no intention of offending people. Free speech rocks, and we might as well abuse it. For those who would feel offended or insulted by the contents of this blog, or might have contradictory issues with the blogger, may air their sentiments by dropping a comment or sending a message to ill_kill_u@your_place.com. Simply include your name and adress, and we'll have a little chat about it at your place, and then afterwards I'll beat the heck out of you.
thrown by A.Paul @ 05:41,
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