Menthol-Guy

A High School confidante, whom I had been intimate with for the past few years, had said something about my attitude towards life. It seemed to her that I am, according to her, a “happy-go-lucky hedonist who plans nothing for the next few days to come.” It appeared to me, at first comprehension, something negative to say. Probably sensing my distaste towards her foggy compliment, “you took college entrance exams as if it was the most usual thing, while I planned everything - where would I be going, what my course would be - and ended up disappointed,” she added.

“How do you manage to last a day without even planning for something?” It was a question I truly did not expect to come from her.

I don’t really have any idea of what she was about to talk to. This exchange of messages started from her misspelling valium (she spelled it as valume, and I deliberately told her that “it’s probably the meanest thing to say but I think you misspelled valium”) and then she came up telling me that I’m mean since birth; that I’m probably the lousiest, most miserable person she had met; and that I’m a goddamn hedonist who does things at gunpoint.

I don’t really mind a lot about life–it would bore me. Worse, I might end up dying after spending my entire life thinking about life–which sounds like a pointless thing to engrave on my tombstone, though someone would have decided to cremate my remains. Anyway, as I was saying, I don’t really plan my life. I have wanted my surprise-me life to bring out the thrills and the goosebumps of, well, life as how people ideally pictures it. I have not wanted my life to be a rigid and planned thing that’s especially timed and exact (maybe that’s why I hate planners and organizers) the way HBO has been simulating their movie schedules.

Though of course there were the downsides of irresponsibility, but of course I still plan! My plans, though, are personally adjusted to fit my bouts of procrastination, delaying tactics and ultimately, sloth. They’re not as timed as those MTA buses at New York City. I have wanted my life to have its humane flaws and to be imperfect.

Me: Of course I plan! I’m not just some slacker who sits on the sofa for a day watching Jeopardy and MTV! I just don’t think that my life is particularly dependent on plans, plans, plans, wherein the usual end result would be disappointment since things haven’t showed up the way you expect them to be–the way you want them to be.
Her: I guess we have different methods of living. I can’t sleep without even planning, for chrissake.
Me: Then I guess you’re a control freak.
Her: I guess so. Do you think I’ve been becoming more doubtful with my boyfriend?
Me: Is this the whole point of your criticisms, anyway?

Her way of directing conversations to mushy, love-related things amuses me.

My room’s sort-of private. I can’t get away from my room without making a single mess. I’m a real mess in my own little ways. But I can still manage to live and sleep in a messy room. After all, it’s an embodiment of my personality! :D

BARNEY. Okay, my dormmate and I once toyed the idea of making an altar for Barney, like we’re Barney worshippers or something (and we called it Barney Club back then, and we’re fighting for Barney’s right not to be mistaken as purple-colored coz he’s not!) Anyway, so there. It was the funniest gift I’ve ever had.

I think Barney’s still raping that stuffed bird which says “GO FUCK YOUR MOTHER” - srsly - whenever it detects someone walking or nearing him. He’s cute. My uncle got this for me when I was still in California, way back last summer vacation.

T-shirts folded, t-shirts hung.

This is my mini-desk - sort-of but it’s not really a desk. It’s just for picture frames and pencils and stuff I used to leave there. And it’s MESSY.

T-shirts, t-shirts, t-shirts and shorts and socks and boxers piled up and folded by some slob like me.

This is one of my bookshelf. It’s actually small. 70-something books and counting. :)

Aaaand tons of other books I got from another bookshelf. (My room’s undergoing a general cleaning when I took this shot, sry.)

And lastly, my laptop, the board game Monopoly and a pirated Sim City 4 CD.

Mess and sembreak compliment each other so much. :)

_{It’s a triiiite expression, but I used it for the sake of having a post title.}

For some reason I decided to quit shifting.

I didn’t exactly want to take BS Agricultural Economics in the future (if lucky, I’ll be majoring in Marketing) but then there’s something that tells me to just go further. Of course, the trade-off between my current course with that of a BA Creative Writing/Communication Arts course blatantly states something life-changing: it’s choosing one over the other; it’s a risk I have to take. I haven’t once felt intelligent in terms of decision-making but I think my choice is wiser, more practical and probably a result of narrower and limited options. I have to admit that this is out of my passion, that I am anti-practical*, that this hits the very antithesis of my personality. I never liked Economics before but after some time - probably after garnering first place in a college-wide Macroeconomics quiz contest (and my first trophy ever) - maybe I just have to deal with it the way numerically-allergic individuals deal with Math. I am never business-inclined or economically propelled but after rummaging over my thoughts, I can manage to convince myself to be one. It’s all in the mind, they say. It’s not really that complicated anyway. Like what my Dad used to say, “you’re studying because you want to understand the complicated, and it takes time.”

But then, my dream of being a writer is still insistent and overpowering (did I say domineering?) and I’m planning to take a writing course right after I graduated (hopefully UP Diliman or Ateneo) but maybe these are, and as always, just fragments of wishful thinking. I would always tell myself, in an atheistic viewpoint, that I only live once–might as well do everything I wanted to do before time runs out.

It’s really hard to give up dreams but it’s even more painful to insist of not dreaming about it. Conceptualizing our future is a human thing to do, and that the most human thing is to accept the reality that not all of those dreams can come true. Not all things, no matter how plausible these things are, can be achieved by simple means. Maybe TV shows have been encouraging us to dream on, as what Pinoy Dream Academy and Wish Ko Lang explicitly tells us, but there’s probably a one-to-a-hundred ratio of dreams fulfilled with those which were not. Or maybe that’s another demoralizing figure I’ve hypothesized.

“Makipaghabulan ka lang sa mga pangarap mo. Balang araw, mapapagod rin yan,” a friend once told me. It had inspired me to chase my dreams of being a professional writer with a desk bombarded with scotch-taped notes of words and concepts, with hundreds of books stationarily breathing around me. But when I decided quitting, I had then felt - for the first time within those days of career-chasing - exhaustion. I felt like I’m “sucking stones,” as how Hanif Kureishi’s anthology of love stories entitled ‘Midnight All Day’ puts it. Sucking stones is a futile attempt to find something graspable, real and encouraging when really–there isn’t. I’m probably way too optimistic to suppose that there is something waiting for me out there.

I’ve been running for that dream ever since I discovered the wonders of book-reading and writing. I’ve been running for it but now, I’m not even closer than far from it. I thought that precious dream would someday be slowing itself down, catching some breath or probably eating some snack. But it didn’t. Maybe I just have to let it slip away. Maybe all the kudos, shoulder pats and the encouragements fed this disillusionment in me that keeps on yelling something like “hey, you can be a writer since you write damn well,” but I don’t think so. My work is just the way every teenage guy might do–maybe mine’s a bit coherent, cogent, insistingly (but not admittingly, like I always say) emotional and grammatically half-correct, but that’s just it. I’m not really blaming my college friends and blogger friends for the encouragements; it’s probably the best and most flattering thing to say for a disheartened writer wannabe.

“At least I’ve dreamt of it” is, above all, the most human thing to say.

She said she’ll be coming out of her house.
Really?
She told me over the phone.

I used to phone Katrina for you, dimwit.
You told me you’re madly in love with her.
You told me that her mother knows your voice, so I have to mediate between the two of you–
sort of your messenger. I said fine without any complaints.

I used to help you to climb down from your gate.
I need to go home before 6, you said.
I motioned you to run first.
We ran away to the clubhouse and swam all day–all four of us.
We did swimming tricks and dives and floats
like it was the most natural thing to do.

We were on our way home.
I was running with you in the rain, and you told me that you can’t go out of your house the next day.
You said back then that your grandfather gives you the kind of bruise that wouldn’t heal for days.
Everything’s stringent and congested in your house
that I sometimes pity you for your lack of childhood freedom.
That day I bid you luck, hoping for your faster recuperation;
hoping that we could still play baseball tomorrow with our friends;
hoping that we could lay our sweating bodies on the rolling grasses,
throwing our gloves aside
and looking at the sky and wondering what’s in store for us in the future.
But it didn’t happened.
The next three days Katrina phoned me.
She had heard the whips of your grandfather’s cane and she was terribly worried about you.
So maybe you’re still lying on your bed.
Freezing, perhaps, from the rain and the bleeding.
Motionless, perhaps, from the wounds that scathed you–
wounds that scarred your perceptions in life.

Then your Mom forced you to join the seminary.
And you were provoking my Dad to let me go to the seminary too,
just so we could prolong our friendship,
or perhaps we could still be in touch with ourselves.
But I didn’t want to–I didn’t have the calling.
You said you didn’t have the calling too;
it was just your Mom who forced you to.
I said I can’t–there’s so much the world can offer for me
and I didn’t like missing it.
So we parted ways but without regret.
You somehow forced yourself to want priesthood, anyway.
You told me you’re just giving in to your Mom’s wishes for a while.
And soon you’ll resign your ass out of the seminary
and you’ll be free and have sex with Katrina.

The entire High School years we haven’t seen each other.

I once dreamt about you.
You came back to your house with all your luggages
and you launched this grand comeback party
and to my surprise, I was invited.
When I was eating my third helping,
you weren’t there already.
I’ve already waken myself up.

Then you’re dead.

Maybe my subconscious missed you.
Maybe I kind of regretted the fact that I wasn’t with you during those years.
There’s so much in the world for you to see,
but then you haven’t. You didn’t.
So maybe I’m greedy like that.
The asthma grew worse to tubercolosis.
Then depression that lasted for days and months–
you skipping meals and everything.
You might have asked yourself what went wrong
like you usually do
but at that time, nobody answered you.