Vertigo

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Writes Neruda, no less. I just feel like reciting this poem tonight, although I'm not exactly sad. As I try to figure out how I really feel tonight, I am reminded of a part in Kundera's novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, wherein he tries to define vertigo. The dictionary defines it as a condition in which one feels dizzy or disoriented, especially when looking down from a great height. Or simply, the fear of falling. However, Kundera insisted that vertigo is somewhat more complex than that. He said it's actually the fear of wanting to fall.

To quote the Hedonist, "Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”

This is best thing I could come up with in my desire to express how I feel tonight, although I wish to personalize. I do not have this longing to fall; intead, I feel this hunger to be lonely, to be sad, to bask in my solitude which I find delicious. I know it sounds un-poetic but the word must really be delicious. I do not like to betray my Muse.

I am, in a way, suffering from vertigo. I would love to take that fall. I am not afraid of tumbling down, breaking some bones or even dying. But I do fear this desire. It somehow tells me that maybe, I have gotten really crazy.

Beer Dreams

I'm craving for a bottle of ice-cold beer.

I better put this on my bucket list. Blog as the bitter aftertaste of premium beer slowly spreads across your palate. That would be a very satisfying moment. I can even visualize how I would shiver a little and shake my head both in disgust and sheer pleasure of it.

The truth is that I should be sleeping right now. I'm getting more and more sleep deprived each day and that could really turn me into an overstressed mental wreck. And please add to that how I manage to look like shit every single day. I haven't brushed my hair since summer and this has successfully given birth to a new breed of dandruff. I got two huge, drying zits on my left cheek and some whiteheads here and there. My body's been seriously reduced into a skeletal model. Worse, I don't care. Or better yet, I do not have the time and energy to give a rat's arse about how I look right now. I do not intend to attract men, anyway. That is one factor, although it's absolutely stupid. You just don't doll up for men who would eventually come out of their closets and admit they're gay. That is absurd.

I want to feel and be beautiful for myself. I want to stop thinking about other people for once and just do whatever the hell I want. I worry too much. Perhaps I really need to take a break...And not feel guilty about being unproductive. I have turned myself into a working machine; I am thisclose to drafting a syllabus or, hell, a whole curriculum on how I should be living my life right now. I am too occupied. I don't even have enough space for me, if you know what I'm talking about.

The people I work with often assume that this was brought about by the break-up I had two months ago (yes, the longest time I've been single in seven years!), but break-ups don't have that kind of depressing effect on me. And I do not mean to brag, because that's not something to be proud about. It's a curse. My curse after I dared break a covenant I made with God. But that's another story.

Again, I should be sleeping right now. Tomorrow may be Friday, but in my line of work, any day is just as good as Monday. Happy dreaming.

Drunken Nights

There's drunk driving, drunk dancing or singing, drunk texting... And then there's drunk blogging. And I did it first.

I'd probably be deleting this tomorrow morning, as soon as I sober up. But hell, Edgar Allan Poe created his best works while under the influence. So who am I to fight the urge?

I am not really drunk, just a little tispy. I have earned this tolerance of alcohol over the past years. Being intrapersonally intelligent, if I may add, helps control your tongue in the presence of liquor as well. I have definitely learned to shut the fuck up.

This reminds me of the many drinking sessions in the past in which my then boyfriends would suddenly tell me that I have had enough because I was already getting annoyingly and incontrollably talkative. I, in turn, would stupidly wonder how the hell they knew.

The thing about being drunk is really not about letting the moron in you shine, but having an excellent excuse to say what you want to say wherever and whenever you want it. Alcohol fogs the logic. It puts you in the perfect stance to voice out the thoughts that should have been in the brain recycle bin. It liberates.

Saying all of these while alcohol is swiftly taking over me is like deciding to cheat on my partner. It's like spilling somebody else's secrets. I really am not making sense here.

I would love to talk about love right now. Love seems to be an ideal topic in times like these, but I'd rather not, lest I be accused of being old-fashioned and too predictable. Let me just say that love, as proven by all the other drunks that have attempted to define it before me, always , always, looks more astonishing when lighted by uncorrupted honesty and unadulterated truth. In human terms, it is best expressed when one is unapologetically true to what he or she feels at any given moment. Such as when one is awfully drunk.

I am watching The Notebook right now. You know how some movies could make you believe you can marry Ryan Gosling...

I should get some sleep. Really, I should. But I do hope you had the initiative to ignore some words I might have misspelled along the way.

Dear Phantom

I should have asked for your name.

I thought about this as I made my way across the open court, crushing some dried leaves as I sluggishly walked on. My shoulders drooped and it felt as if my sling bag had suddenly weighed a million tons more. You were not there.

Part of me would like to give myself a good spanking for, would you believe, not doing anything about it when I had a chance and the other is still rolling its eyes in disappointment while asking, "Are you kidding me?"

When I decided not to get married, I realized that the root does not lie in my incapacity to love but in my inabilty to stay committed. Whenever I find myself in a long-term relationship, there would always come a point in which I would feel as if my life is about to be contained within the four walls of a box and thus the urge to wriggle out of my would-be cage would persist.

I've read once that in this world, females are born to be farmers. They plow the field, plant seeds and nurture them. They are the soil from which life is sowed and reaped. Males, on the other hand, are hunters. They must leave and brave the perils of the wild in order to provide. Such is their task.

That is the problem. In this life, I am the hunter. And what I have realized from experience is that when you assume the role of a hunter, the other person, as if by nature, automatically becomes a farmer. This shift, much to my disillusionment, becomes inevitable.

This leads me to think that, perhaps, what I need is another hunter. This sounds ideal. But then the skeptic in me would say that, knowing the person that I am, the setup might just lead to a clash of egos. I am better off alone, really.

I have been arguing with myself a lot lately. But as they say, it is not always about finding the answers, but learning to enjoy the questions.

So with this, I guess you would remain to be a question. Your name, your age, your job, everything. And I would enjoy spending the following Saturdays trying to imagine how you'd look without your square framed glasses or how that boyish grin of yours would always disarm me and how you have absolutely no idea about it. Expect me as well to replay the only conversation I had with you which lasted for about 40 seconds. Or that amusing moment when you were about to go out of the room then all of a sudden you turned around,  reminded me of a paper that needs to be submitted the following week and strode off. I stood there, dumbfounded. I went down the stairs with this retarded smile on my face, I tell you.

And then yesterday, I scanned the room hoping to find you. You were not there. I sank back at my chair, disappointed. I felt like a stupid adolescent in her mid-twenties. I listened to the two-hour lecture with your absence at the back of my head. You were gone, just like that. Just like when you strode off after reminding me of that paper.

Was I in love then? No, I don't think so. If I were, you would be virtually stalked by now. I just love the idea of you being a phantom. It somehow fulfills this desire to be deprived of something I think I would like to have. My thirst for challenge. The thrill of the chase. Whatever you would like to call it.

I am thinking now that perhaps I was right not to have asked for your name. Unmasking you would have diminished this desire altogether. Remember that there are some things that are meant to be admired only from afar.

I see us  aboard a train one of these days. And I am certain, you would be the man staring at me from the other side.

At Random

I lack sleep. And this is making me forgetful. Or more forgetful than I already am, to be exact. I have dark circles around my eyes and my weight is ever diminishing. I am unhealthy and I know that. My friends bug me to eat more than I can take every damn time and they never fail to remind me just how malnourished I look these days. They even went as far as turning my weight issues into their personal project: the operation make chang gain weight. I am so touched, really. 

Work eats up most of my time. Because of this, I consciously make time for things that would pluck me out of robot mode. I went to a bar with friends two nights ago and had the time of my life. A bartender tried to hit on me and I just had to mentally laugh. I just celebrated my first successful month as a single, unattached yet totally happy lady. Clearly, these people don't know what they're getting at. 

I would like to ramble some more but sleep is luring me to its den. Good night, folks!

Free as a Flightless Bird

I like the title. It's so cool I want to say don't read this entry, which is mostly just a pile of shit, and just stare at the title.

Don't say you weren't warned.

I dropped the bomb. And this is more literal than figurative. I say this because when someone breaks your heart, it's reminiscent of the American bombing in Hiroshima. It's like something just exploded inside you. The only difference is that the damage is cunning, because the explosion is silent and everybody thinks you're what you say you are. "Fine."

Having said that, a broken heart seems like a good way to die. That is until YOU actually break a heart.

Everybody thinks breaking someone's heart is like scraping some leftovers for your dog to eat. Like hell it is. You want to know what's worse than suffering? Guilt.

Guilt is a parasite. It crawls inside your head and gnaws at your brain. It feeds on the horror that you have been the source of another person's unhappiness. You are the bad guy. Or girl, in my case. The one everybody loves to hate because you've ruined someone's life, regardless of how fast he bounces back. At every bite, guilt grows rapidly into a fat two-fanged monster and it makes you feel heavy inside. Nobody understands that. They don't know how a half-hearted laugh sounds like. Because the worst thing about guilt is the thought that because of what you did, you don't deserve to be happy.

I told my friends that if I could turn it all upside down, I'd do it. I'd rather be the one who gets hurt, because then I'd have every right to move on, be happy and show that motherfucker what he had just lost. But no, I was that motherfucker. So how do you move on from that?

That afternoon, when I broke up with my boyfriend, I could not even cry. I was just...calm. And I hated it. I was worse that Iron Man, because at least there was a person inside that suit. In my case, there was a machine inside this body. Heartless. I didn't cry. I felt sad. And that was worse. I realized that sadness is a war that the soul wages, the way pain is a battle that the body must overcome. I didn't shed any tear at all. But my soul...It was shattered.

It was my choice. If I could play it back I still would've done the same thing. I am now free as a bird. This is what I wanted. Single again after what seems to be ages. I finally got to breathe some fresh air.

I Need Space

I have this fascination with city lights.

Perhaps solitary beings are naturally drawn to serene backdrops that make the world look much gentler than it actually is. This might also be the reason my mind works better at night. Darkness tends to be too overwhelming for some people. Or too intimidating. But there's a distinct sense of quiet that clings to it, like damp air on a humid night, more soothing than it is daunting.

 I love the sun, but I hate daylight. It exposes the filth in the surroundings. It reminds me of how my dentist uses her gloved hands to open my mouth wide in the most unflattering way while her two interns take turns to scrutinize. I am not ashamed of my tartar. It's just that reality, once magnified, is just too harsh.

In the movie Just Like Heaven, Reese Witherspoon's character lives in this apartment with huge glass-stained windows that give one a breath-taking view of city lights. I never forgot that movie, and it's not because of the romance. It's because I swore to myself that someday I'm going to find an identical apartment and live there, all by myself. That's one of my ultimate dreams.

For now I'm stuck in my room which I consider as temporary paradise. But I know and feel that someday, I'll find my real place, the one that's exactly in my head.