throwback thursday #01

The good old 70's... when the Philippines was under Martial Law
and photographs taken with actual film looked like filtered digital Instagram photos.
My older sister looks so adorably cute (she's always been the prettier one
as you can see), and I, as with almost all photos up to this day, look drunk.

empty chairs & empty tables

Death was some sort of a background music that threaded through my weekend.

It started on Friday morning when a friend and I had a psychological discussion about his fear of dying.  I have known about this for some time now but it was only during our talk that I understood how painfully consuming it could be for him.

Later that day I received the horrible news about the death of a friend back in Manila.  A gunman killed him outside his home.  It was painful and difficult to accept that I will never see him again.  I am still processing his death, crestfallen for the beautiful wife he left behind.

How can someone be so petrified of dying when it’s the death of people you love and care for that seems to be more frightening and agonizing?

My friend Mar and I saw Les Miserables on Saturday night.  I’ve read the book, seen 2 movie versions and experienced the musicale 3 times.  I know the story, the characters and Cameron Macintosh’s lyrics.  Almost everyone dies in the end.  No surprise there.

But when Eponine, the universal symbol of unrequited love, dies in Marius’ arms and in her last breath manages to utter that she is finally happy, sleeping in his arms at last.. How sad is that?  Is death a better alternative to a life of misery and despair? 

On Sunday night on Downton Abbey, Lady Sybil dies due to childbirth complications. I did not see that coming.  (Apologies for the spoiler to readers who have not started Season 3.) Why Downton creator Julian Fellows opted to kill off this beautiful character whose heart is full of love and kindness is a mystery to me.  And because I ridiculously involve myself with tv characters and plots, I grieved for her poor mother.

I was in 5^th grade when I was diagnosed with first stage Leukemia.  True story.  While my parents made heroic efforts to hide this from me, it was my sister, who casually told me while eating a bag of potato chips, that I was sick and was going to die soon. A normal 10 year old would most likely burst in tears and panic. I, however, did not get scared.  

I went to my room and I picked out my favorite dress. A lacey number with flowery prints.  I put it on, combed my hair and positioned myself on top of my bed.  I put my hands together over my belly and closed my eyes.  I pretended I was in a coffin and practiced being dead.

It seems macabre for a 10 year old.  I don’t know why I reacted the way I did.  I remember it with fondness, though, like a Wes Anderson movie.  But it is how I feel about death even to this day.  I am not terrified of it.  Maybe because deep down I believe in afterlife and I get to be the daughter of Remington Steele in my next life, the way I daydreamed as a kid every time I witnessed my parents fight.  Maybe death in my head was the portal to peace and happiness. Or  maybe because when I die I honestly think I’ll be able to fly, be a ghost and scare all those people who were mean to me.

Perhaps the way I am with relationships and airports is the same way I am with my own life.  I would rather be the one leaving.

Bones

The wonder car I learned how to drive stick with.  The beetle that carried wonderful memories from my highschool and university years. My joy. My life. My youth.  

Rest in peace, Bones.




     

used to be

I read from a blog (whose author is fast becoming one of my favorite persons in the world) how much a cliché it is for anybody with fingers, access to a computer and half of an idea to start a blog and unleash verbal diarrhea on anybody who cares enough to listen.  What I find, though, is a lot of “bloggers”’ main focus is creating interesting content with the intent of increasing followers,  resulting to amassed traffic,  and thus giving them leverage to sell ad space.  It’s all about business, isn’t it? Nothing wrong with that, really.  But that is not my intention here.

I used to be a moderately good writer.  In highschool, my bestfriend Goo and I were very much into new wave and punk music, while everyone else had Wham and Rick Springfield on their Walkman.  How we thought of ourselves as cool non-conformists! We created this imaginary awesome band where I was the lead singer and she played the keyboards.  The main heart of this highschool fantasy was a fictitious magazine with brilliant articles we both wrote, about our band’s music, our personal fabulous lives and relationships.  We had no intention of having it published let alone be read by anybody but ourselves. It was a unique  and comical form of artistic expression which we are both still very proud of to this day. (We did successfully put up our band in our Senior year, wrote original songs, performed in school and then branded as Satanists by the nuns.)

Goo and I at Fred's Revolucion
Manila, March 2012

This writing exercise turned into amusing letter exchanges when we took different paths after highschool and went to different universities.  Communication was so much different back then.  Each snail mail was carefully handwritten, beautifully composed sans syntax and spelling errors, detailing our adventures and misadventures of what we regarded as real adult life.

As we went through different phases of our lives, meeting more interesting people, our letters got fewer and farther in between, until it eventually came to an end.  My writing since then was limited to essays as academic requirements, corporate reports & correspondences and journal entries when I had time and the occasional inspiration.

My mother has always told me that I am a talented writer. That I am a gifted storyteller.  This is not true.  It is her God-given responsibility as a mother to encourage me and magnify a tiny piece of my skill she may have chanced upon in the past.  I love her for it, but at the same time it annoys me to death.

This blog is my attempt to bring back my lost love for writing.  It is a self imposed exercise to improve what I thought years ago I was fairly good at.  Just like the magazine I co-produced in highschool, I have no intention of anybody reading this blog and therefore nothing I write here will be for the purpose of feeding my ego nor impressing anyone I know or detest.  I ‘d be lucky if somebody stumbles upon this and understands my objective.

~~~

I just saw David Letterman telling Justin Bieber how he should not go crazy with his tattoos by putting a mural on his chest like the Sistine Chapel.  He responds, “I’m not going for the Sixteenth Chapel.”  What the fuck.