Thursday, September 13

Dark place.

Stuff:
  • Years ago, Kuya ID at the registrar's office (then located in that huge evacuation center near Math Building) asked me if I was a freshman. I was 22. Suppose I did look young(er); 7-Eleven cashiers would ask for age before handing Marlboros.* That was before. Earlier, went to get my ID again, first time in grad school. No such question. But my head, I found out, tilted slightly to the right. Explained a lot of things: lopsided glasses, lack of balance, right shoe never fitting, etc.
  • MA, once enthusiastic outlet of Things, now in ruin.** (Though possibly temporary or MA just surrogate of / scapegoat for Other Things in Disarray.)
  • To cheer self up, have been meeting up with people. Last night, dinner with Alan then beer and movie with Om. Earlier, dinner with Melane. Three more this weekend. Preoccupation. Production. Also, bought books from UP Press (though one purchase, by long-admired author, proving to be mighty disappointment in predictable same-tricks-over-and-over variety). Food of the world, watch out.
  • Creeping realization of late: mediocrity.*** And obsolescence of borrower's card in library transactions.
  • Haven't written anything in weeks. August and September delivering a one-two punch, as they always do. Comfort to attribute discord to misaligned stars and planets or similar, and expect cloud to move / break apart once October sets in. Hope so. But as arrived at in poetry lecture to college kids in St. Scho few days ago, thing with waiting, with passing time, they change people. They are never the same again.****
  • On that note, have started this blog!
* Could be load of bull.
** OK, slight exaggeration, but all vigor now lost in light of advice from former professor. Buoyed, too, by frustration in paperwork/bureacratic snakes-and-ladders due to long-ago oversight.
*** Of being tiny trout, meaningless.
**** Highlight of week. Was invited by CEGP. Vaguely remembered why checked Secondary Education in UPCAT form, culprit, in the first place, in all these, i.e., Kung Paano Tayo Umabot sa Ganito.

Saturday, September 1

Delusions.

This morning, memories of high school, when, after a quiz or exam, teacher would call the roll and class would need to shout grade one by one. How stupid: imagining the 14-, 15-year-old's holding their breaths for Diaz, top of class and typically highest, when they were obviously not, not remotely. A legend in own mind. A veritable clown, more like. A clown with a big bag of jokes that ricochet as quickly as they emerge, into nowhere else, into no one else's backyard, back.