Friday Morning Goof Fest

Someone bring me food! I'm here at Jasper's place again, trying to finish the Azta murals. It's barely lunchtime and I have a lot of whining piling up already. :-(

Standard Good News first tho. I was able to pay our PLDT phone and Internet bill this morning! I had to wake up early but I didn't mind since it was all for a good cause anyway. Besides, it all paid off as I was first in line! よかつた!

However, glad as I am that we're completely clean now from any obligations, I did not have fun ricocheting from Makati to Mandaluyong several times this morning. Granted it's mostly my fault for being such an absent-minded professor and forgetting little things... But I was counting on the good karma which the cosmos still owes me. Apparently it isn't going to pay up anytime soon. Huff.

Still hungry tho. Still want food. :D

Not Entirely A Pushover

I'm here at Jasper's place, layouting more murals for Azta's Metrowalk branch. This would have been easier to do if it weren't for the ginormous size and resolution that we have to work with. It takes ages for an image to be edited, resized, saved, and even closed. (I think I've even mastered braiding my own hair just waiting for everything to render.)

After nine hours, four walls, and several attempts at braiding, I'm barely halfway through everything and I still have five more murals to finish -- one of these almost three times the size of what is usually done, and I don't think even Jas' super computer can handle it.

I'm hungry, I'm sick, and damnit, I'm horny. Karmic reckoning better be good for me that's all I gotta say.




----------
PS: Not having Internet at home sucks, but at least I was able to read The Half-Blood Prince. I'm still not sure if I like it tho.

My Muse Is A Jealous Lover

My Muse has been punishing me for neglecting her lately. Admittedly, I have been nurturing the gods of the Internet more. Especially these past few months when lappy has been my constant companion riding the waves of cyberspace, it has been giving me worlds of comfort, so different from the high i get when I write or read or sketch -- not better, just different.

Playing the role of the jealous lover only too perfectly is my Muse. And during the rare times when I turn to her for comfort -- as I have been wont to doing during highschool and college -- she only gives me a halfhearted smile and a nod before she walks away, leaving a trail of unfinished fiction, half-baked poems, and forced metaphors in its wake.

Last night while waiting for some movies to finish downloading, I opened up a blank document and tried working on some ideas that've been percolating in my head. More than that, the demons in my head needed to be let out. It's been a while since I've done so and it seems they have been getting too many to be dealt with passively as of late.

I got into a fairly good rhythm and actually found it easy to write, in a sense that the words just flowed from my fingers to the keyboard. After a couple of hours and around one-fourth of what I wanted typed neatly in several hundred words, I stopped. I looked at my fingers poised on the keys, and after a moment of inactivity, I wondered what was wrong.

I couldn't figure it out. It was all suddenly quiet. I let my demons out to play and it's like they never came back, taking my poor little ignored Muse with them. I even tried waiting a couple heartbeats minus several hours more, but after scores of paragraphs started, edited, and deleted, still nothing.

In the end I had to give it up, turn in for the night instead, and nestle back to the lover that has always been here -- lappy.

That is, until it decides to leave me too.

Before I Disappear

Our phone line got cut off again. I'm pretty sure our Internet will follow soon. I'm now hoarding all the movies and reading material I can fit in lappy so when I fall off the face of the Earth like before, I won't be bored.

Here's to living in fiction, trusting in absolute truths, and believing in sensible lies. :-)

Don't Try To Follow Me

It's strange when people say they had weird dreams. I always thought dreams are basically weird already, so saying one had "weird dreams" would be a tad redundant right?

Nevertheless, I had a weird dream. Freud said that everything in our dreams are, in its core, just aspects of ourselves. But the weird thing in my dream is, I know that one person in my dream is from a totally different will altogether. I strongly feel that he does not originate from my mind at all, and might actually be from another (un)consciousness entirely.

I was in my highschool uniform, and I was on a jeepney ride home from school. Beside me was another student, maybe a batch or two lower than me. Hair almost shaved, skin pasty white, reasonably attractive. I wasn't paying him any mind at all. As a matter of fact, I was so taken in by the scenery rushing before me that I was oblivious to everything else.

A few moments minus eternity, he signaled for the driver to stop. And while the jeepney was slowing to a halt, he quite forcibly nudged my left leg with his right and looked at me square in the eye. "Don't try to follow me," he said, and then he got down.

My breath got caught in a sharp intake of air and I woke up. "That wasn't me," I thought. I was shivering scared and witless, the eerie feeling clinging in my mind like somebody invaded my dreams. Up to now, I still can't get that image out of my head.

Gone Beyond Recall Or Desire

I told my parents if I don't manage to get my shit together by the time I'm 25, I'll be entering priesthood instead. Of course most of it is jest, like when I say, "damn I need a boyfriend," and I think they knew I was just kidding too... but maybe there's a part of me -- a really, really small part of me -- that means it. Maybe not a Christian priest, but another Order somewhere. I'll find something.

Anyway the point is, if I don't stray from the path I'm on right now, I think it will only be a little more and I might be crossing the Rubicon already. No looking back, no more chances of making up for lost time.

Fine, I'm not getting any younger and FINE, I still don't know what I want to do with my life, but this is the road I laid out for myself and I have to deal with the consequences trailing the decisions I've made -- just as I've done many, many times before -- whether they be good or otherwise.

Remember the words of Lady Eowyn to Lord Aragorn when they were preparing to depart for Helm's Deep?

"What do you fear, my lady?" Aragorn asked her.

"A cage." One must have noticed a strange clarity in Eowyn's eyes. She goes on to say, "To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire."

Those words have haunted me since I heard them. But who knows? Maybe I have crossed the Rubicon. Maybe there is no more desire in me to stray from the path I am on.

For the sake of the people who need me, I hope I'm wrong.

Drowning Never Felt So Nice

Atsui kimochi wa C'est La Vie
Watashi ga watashi de iru kagiri
C'est La Vie, anata wo aishi tsudzuketai
Me no mae ni aru kono shunkan ga ikiru basho
Kakenukete

-- C'est La Vie, Sailor V Insert Song

Also, I finished watching all episodes of Sailor Moon Live Action this morning, plus the one-hour Special Act. If the universe plans on snuffing out my existence, now would be the perfect time when my brain is all fogged up and I'm still floundering blissfully in Senshi limbo.

Actually I'd much rather prefer it this way. With the intensity my mind is reeling, when the cosmos finally pulls the trigger, my heaven will be with Usagi and the Senshi and Mamoru and the Shitennou.

Sigh...

Living On Nothing

Nothing. That's what I've been doing for the past what -- three days? four?

Our Internet got cut off cos we've been wading knee-deep in bills right now. That's why when our connection disappeared a few days ago, my life zip-vanished quite literally with it. And having neither landline nor mobile phone to connect me to the outside world, I was left to my own devices -- lappy in its bare-bones offline minimum.

Whole day Wednesday I stayed inside my room and I couldn't be bothered to do anything at all. I was too busy reading sixteen long chapters of my favorite Sailor Moon fanfiction, Secrets by Ken Wolfe. In a nutshell, it's an alternate perspective on how Crystal Tokyo came about through events driven by Pluto's cryptic glimpses of the future and hold on the "Old Powers" as the Guardian of Time, and Mercury's knowledge on cryogenics and nanotechnology. Deceit, trust, compromise, and the blind fury of love all dealt in one mortal blow. Heavy stuff. Ken Wolfe is a genius.

I wanted to sleep Thursday off, but I couldn't help being sorely awake at mid-afternoon. So I just regretfully settled on watching some of my DVDs yet again. A Beautiful Thing, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and some porn.

Movie marathon spilled over until Friday evening when I got the Internet connection back. Upon logging on, lappy got flooded with offline messages from people I promised to help do stuff with. Most of it I can't do anymore since the expiration date for the job was already over. It honestly made me feel real bad. Here's something I can do to get my shit together, and people actually helping me do it, but I still chose to do nothing. And on top of that, here's me hating it when I let people down.

Granted I know now can live without the Internet, but in exchange, I'd have to trade off most of my life with it. Not that I'm living much to begin with, anyway. Sigh.

PS: This was supposed to be an "I'm sorry" post, but somehow I ended up being too honest with my nonchalance. My complacency... which is, to a point, what I am really feeling. Any disappointment towards me would be rightly justified now, and I truly deserve it.

But I might have to put off the guilt at another time I'm afraid. Maybe tomorrow when I'm not too sleepy anymore. In the meantime... I'm sorry.

Pink Is The New Headache

I just finished (sort of) the website for Hono'o-chan's little baby, Snippets. After spending two days ceaselessly fingering lappy, I was finally able to mix up the mish mash of pastel in one semi-sane layout.

I know this is bad, and I hope my best friend will forgive me for saying this... but I'm not responsible for the logo! I didn't make it, and I so achingly want to change it! I had a difficult time trying to have it fit in with the rest of the gang, but it's just acting too... yellow. Sigh. :-(

I know it's my job as a designer to somehow magically make everything fit in and look fantastic, but I don't have enough experience points in designing to acquire that skill yet. This is why I don't charge for the projects I do for people (at least not for now). I feel the knowledge I have aren't good enough right now for me to charge. Soon, I hope. Crossing my fingers. :-)

Now if the world will excuse me, I need to stay away from anything pink for a while.

A Heart-Shaped Bullet

I was on a high all evening. Yes, I admit. It was because after a long time, I'm going out on an EB again. And not just with anyone, but with someone I might possibly have considered thinking about becoming interested in too!

I knew enough not to think about it too much so as not to jinx it, but I wasn't able to keep myself from vibrating with excitement. I was as giddy as a twelve-year old boy who just discovered his penis. I even took my favorite shirt off of its holy place inside my months-long untouched closet and laid it out reverently just for the occasion. It smelled of Downy and old things and it did nothing to curb my excitement.

But, as high as my pulse was, at the back of my mind I knew that everything I was doing was just a strained effort, a futile attempt at preventing the inevitable. I knew that the evening was going to be an escalator to nowhere and I was already clawing my way back to the top.

Still. I was on a high and I wanted to hold on to it for all it was worth.

•••
And as the cosmos decreed, what I was expecting did happen.

He picked me up from my friend's house and then he gave me a ride home. That was it. Short and sweet and proper and cute as a button. He was pleasant throughout the ride, all the while trying to keep up the smallest of small talks.

I knew his mind was somewhere else. He could have been thinking of Europe for all I care, but the point was... maybe I was annoyed that I didn't even register. If he had a blog, I don't think I'd even qualify for a blog entry.

I caught his line of sight while he was talking and waiting for a stoplight to turn green, and I knew. At that moment, I knew all the clouds in my mind were dispelled. In that clarity, I knew that was it. This was going to be the last time our threads would cross. The universe had a heart-shaped bullet and it fired incessantly at me, exploding silently into the night.

My first rejection of the season. I'm back in the game. :-)

Put Your Feelings In A Blender

Yesterday was literally a doozy. Imagine zooming into hell and then suddenly being whiplashed into heaven. Exhilarating but very, very tiring.

I was at Divisoria the whole morning with Jade and Ly, looking for stuff Ly doesn't need. It was like one large Twilight Zone being there. The people minding the stores in Ylaya (sp?) were like androids being activated by infrared triggers on the floor. During their 'stand by' state, they're very similar to marionettes bent down and lifeless, but once you activate them, they come to life -- scary eyes and all -- saying, "Anong hanap nila?" (What are you looking for?) or "Bili na kayo dito!" (Buy here!) or "Braaaainsssss..." And once you step out of their activation zone, they suddenly keep quiet and revert to their stand by mode again. Creepy, no?

When Ly decided he has enough junk, we went to my place to watch -- tada! -- Sailor Moon Live Action! We were all dead tired, but we still managed to finish ten episodes. Again, it was insanely exhilarating and we were all high on otakuness right after, talking about the different aspects of the series, especially the attacks and the transformation sequences! I can't wait to download the next half! :D

After accompanying them to Buendia where they'll be taking a ride home, I collapsed onto my bed and tuned out right away. That was around 8 or 9 PM. I woke up at 10 this morning with a massive tubthumping in my head, failing to do some of my morning chores, and not having talked with some people I should have, but only one thing disturbed me the most...


clearly, jyoji-kun was miserable
without me last night.

I Don't Think It's Funny At All

Whenever it rains real hard where I am, our house never fails to let us know about it. We hear the rain pelting down on the roof like the end of the world is just mere seconds away. I don't know the architectural explanation of it, but the sound is always especially loud and eerie in the bathroom.

So there I was, having my evening bath and trying hard not to mind the rain even if it was creeping me out a bit. Just imagine, I've lived in this house all my life but I still get scared. Either I'm really just a mass of nerves or the house is utterly scary.

Anyway, so I was taking a bath. I bent down to lather soap on my legs, but the moment I did, out of nowhere, I saw what seemed like black hands with long claws hovering in front of my face. I have no idea how in a single breath, one manages to gasp and to curse in crisp, solid Tagalog at the same time but in that moment of sheer panic, I was able to do it.

I whipped around in a split second frenzy to face my assailant, only, there was nothing but my reflection on the mirror -- pale and eerie. And the dawning, embarrassing realization that the hands were, actually, just a few stray strands of my limp, long, wet, and wavy hair.

I swear, I need a rebond.

Where All The News Is Heavenly

I usually see horoscopes as fun, adolescent pastimes. As a matter of fact, reading it used to be a habit of mine every morning during highschool since I was always the first one to grab the newspapers. I'd separate the Funnies right away, solve the day's crossword puzzle, and, since it was already on the same page, read my horoscope too.

The habit was halted during college when my schedule became variable and doing crossword puzzles became less and less exciting. It was only recently when I was randomly surfing links of links of links that I stumbled on my horoscope for this month.

"... Now let's turn to romance, where all the news is heavenly.

Your love life will reach peak levels when Venus moves through Scorpio from September 11 to October 7. Venus teaches the value of using magnetism to reel in love, so be charming, look your best, and of course, flirt.

Your first excellent night to enjoy love will be September 13, when you get invited to an event not to be missed. Dress up, dance - have fun!

If single, a fix-up that a friend will arrange for you over the weekend of September 18 could bring a date that causes your heart to race.

Attached? On September 18 be the one to fan the fires of love and you'll be thrilled with the way your partner responds. No matter what your status, passion and humor will be a winning mix.

Finally, circle Saturday night, September 24, and all day Sunday, September 25, for a romantic episode that will hit all the right notes. The moon will be in Cancer, so you'll be in the spotlight and things will tend to move in the direction you had hoped they would. ..."

-- From AstrologyZone, by Susan Miller

And after reading what's in store for me this month... I'd say it isn't a bad start, ne? ;-)