EarShatter

JACK: You know what she needs? A nice warm bowl of Kabbalah.

WILL: It’s not a… [SIGHS] I’ll boil the water.

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I eavesdrop a lot. Oftentimes in the office, I hear people mumbling and talking to each other and I get a lot of free and classified information about them and our other officemates. Before, I thought it was wrong to listen to other people’s conversations, but I really wasn’t doing anything extra but just keeping to myself, slaving away with my work. Which boils down to two things: they talk really loudly as if they’re miles apart with no cellphones to use, or my ears are too big for a person of my built. I thought it was a curse. Now I know it’s a gift.

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Knowing truly classified office information can be both exciting and dangerous at the same time. The thrill of exclusivity kicks in as I know that I’m one of the people who know very powerful information. Better yet, I am the only person whom they think knows nothing about something but really does. So this gives me a blanket of protection if I decide to utilize this information to my advantage. The fucking dork doesn’t know anything…he’s innocent. Reconnaissance. I should be in the CIA.

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I don’t have a poker face. You can tell easily if I don’t like you. For the rest, I put on a happy face. In every new interpersonal experience that I encounter, I always give the other person the benefit of the doubt, although I know that sooner or later, one or both of us are going to fuck up the set up.

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Dogs don’t purr. They bark. So before barking at someone, make sure you don’t sound like a cat now…more so later. Waging a war with someone requires the necessary skills of indifference, confidence and tolerance. Luckily for me, I have plenty of the early two and still improving on the last one. I don’t really tolerate enemies. As a teenager back then, I really engage people into a heated verbal or sometimes physical fight when agitated. As I grow older however, God farted and I caught a wisp of his wisdom, and I thank Him for the patience. So I resorted into cold wars. I tell you, it’s better here.

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I believe in karma. I believe that all of us are made up of energy that’s being transferred from one living being to another. I dunno if it coincides with the concept of karma, but I imagine people doing bad things to others, are transferring negative energies. And as they give out this bad energy, nothing will be left of them -just an empty soul. Like the law of conservation of energy, it can neither be created nor destroyed. So, it will only circle around, transforming its nature but sooner or later it will go back to its original state and will be transferred to the one who’s given it off in the first place, this time double in amount.

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When you say “sorry” to someone, make sure you surrender all your pride, but not your contention and beliefs. This word is the most humbling expression that I know and I have used it so many times. We often say “sorry” for the trivial things that happen in our lives, like bumping to another person in a busy street, yet it is so hard to say for the bigger reasons.

Incapable of loving another person. If I say that I care about you, I just mean that in a brotherly sense of the word. I believe people have all the potential they need to become great someday and it really irritates me to see someone wasting away his/her life over nonsensical trivialities. I love singing and I recently purged my long overdue sadness in missing my late brother Julius. I am a broken soul that’s why most of the people who know me think I am a free spirit…and it’s by choice. I choose not to be sad about the things that happened in my life. Oh, which brings me: I have a knack for remembering bad things more over than good things in life. Call me calloused. Call me a scarred person- that’s how I operate. But as Kahlil Gibran said, “Your Joy is your sorrow unmasked…the more that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain”. I am who I am now because of those things in my life. I’m slowly accepting that some things simply could not be changed, and Splender reminded me of that in the song “I Think God Can Explain”. I am a transluscent person (if there’s such a description) meaning, I’m shady enough to cover true joy or sorrow regardless of the reason, yet you can see clearly the blackness of my hatred to you, if you ever get in my bad side. My favorite letter is V for vendetta and I am on a longstanding mission to outlive the crooks who had taken my childhood away from me by being passive-aggressive and curse them and their children that they will die of prostrate or cervical cancer. Then I will spit at their coffins as it is being buried. At my latest count, two died horribly and there’re three more to go. Fun fun. I can be your long-term enemy and I only accept apologies in the surface. No Mastercard, no Visa accepted. Deep inside, there is a hunger for revenge, especially if what you did was intentional. Apologies are always genuinely accepted on my terms, not when you grovel at my feet begging for one. I used to say I am a straightforward buck, but to be frank, I really am not (spot the irony). I am Mr. Sugarcoater so that’s why I don’t speak too much with people I feel I won’t get along very well. A few nods here and there, and that’s enough for me. Force me to smile, I will vomit. Quite different when I’m with friends. I can be as tough as a nail. I can be the biggest bitch with balls you may find in the world, but all the bitching comes from the heart.

It’s a rarity to chat with a really dumb yet arrogant person but I really like it a lot when it happens because somehow I know someone is worse than me at that moment. They can just talk and talk and at some points I will nod and smile and ask an inquiring question to engage them to spill out more booboos. Heaven. I feed on their ego. Ego Heaven. Hmmm…

I blame my pre-“cool” high school barkadas for always imaging people in nude and humping each other because that used to be one of our stupid past-times during class lunch breaks. Yeah, they’re not cool but they are my real friends. We were all losers. Then I was somehow included to the “cool” group in school and I somehow bridged the gap between the “cool” and the rest of the school’s social strata. I never thought I would grow pubes and now it’s a sting to the memory every time I imagine George Bagsao with pubes longer than his erect penis, or the cropped fuzz of…let’s say Miss Sulit.

It’s morning. Mum’s cooked fluffy hotcakes and a warm chocolate drink for me. Yippee! She’s just the best.

Some of the song lines that has struck a chord and impacted me on how to view life:

1. …i love you more than the sun/and the stars that i’ve taught how to shine/you are mine/and you shine for me too/I love you, yesterday and today and tomorrow i’ll say it again/and again, I love you MORE.

– More by Matthew West

2. …Lord knows/dreams are hard to follow/but don’t let anyone/tear them away…

– Hero by Mariah Carey

3. …they can say/anything they want to say/try to bring me down/but I will not allow/anyone to succeed hanging clouds over me…

– Can’t Take that Away by Mariah Carey

4. …Yes, I’ve Been Bruised/Grew Up Confused/Been Destitute/I’ve Seen Life From Many Sides/Been Stigmatized/
Been Black And White/Felt Inferior Inside/Until My Saving Grace Shined On Me

–My Saving Grace by Mariah Carey

5. …It’s alright/I’m okay/I think God can explain

-I Think God Can Explain by Splender

6. …Are You forgiver?/Of my most unknown secrets/Provider of all that I need/Could You be brother/The one who knows better/
Would You now stand in the lead

–Could You Be Messiah? by Gary Valenciano

7. …Pangarap ko’y ‘di maabot/dahil sa bawal na gamot

Bawal na Gamot by Willie Garte

8. I’ll never say goodbye/no matter how they try

–Never Ever Say Goodbye

9. …I look up to/everything you are/in my eyes you do no wrong/and I believe in you/although you never asked me to/i will remember you and what  life you put through…

–You’re Still You by Josh Groban

Music is my way to unwind but these songs and particularly these lines heal me everytime I’m feeling down. They remind me that I am not calloused after all. That I value the people around me. That I value myself. That I value God, although it seems so hard for me to follow all his will.

Music has been pretty much part of my whole life. Ever since I could remember, I would always sing or hum a tune or just sing with foreign lyrics. I love music and somehow, I know it has little affection to me.

My older brother was my biggest influence on music. Between my two brothers, (I was the youngest), my middle brother became closer to me because of it. It was our way of bonding together, well, that and the constant hitting and smacking on the head which I found very healthy. Julius Adriano was seven years older than I, and he always took care of me growing up.

He also had a great voice, very baritone and fit for a balladeer. One time, he and our cousin Gege recorded a song by Nonoy Zuñiga entitled Never Ever Say Goodbye. Little did he know that our Tita was behind him while he rendered a heartwarming version. So at the end of the song, an outburst of laughter could be heard at the recording.

That was a long time ago. Circa 90. We tried searching for the cassette tape with the recorded song but it was gone…like him. He died in a surprising circumstance. It was literally because of a nightmare or bangungot or in medical terms, Acute Pancreatic Hemorrhage. Before, I found it ironic that he sang a song entitled Never Ever Say Goodbye where in only after a few months he would be gone. But back then I didn’t recognize the impact he had on my life and my passion. He was the original Adriano who joins contests and wins. He was the original achiever (if you may consider me as one) and the biggest dreamer of all. Now I think should he be still alive, he’ll join those contests on TV.

Now I realize he was/is my music, my brother. A foolish child before thought that his brother left him to carry his burden on his own but in fact, that brother kept his promise by living in his younger brother’s every breath of tune and lyrics– pitchy or perfect.

For Khey 

I catch a waft of a promise left

Hanging in my room’s darkness.

My damp visage on the bed

forms words

As silence slices memories

Of a bus trip to Indang,

Out of my room

Out of my house

The city

And its insanity.

I remember it was

a Sunday morning,

a day when children

could run in the sun,

never minding mending

emotional wounds gaping,

her eyes like daggers on my

mind and then awakened by

the conductor three hours

passed and I thought

I could have picked up

Words falling from

Your lips

Along the dusty highway

And collect them to give to you

If I could have just brought

Uncle’s bolo, rusty but sharp

As the predicament that

I was beating a path to your door?

Heart? Soul?

Or am I traversing other fools’

Trails, either dead-end

Or looping

But hoping

That the day will come

That they will stop

And won’t have

To walk anymore.

Hopefully this will be my first entry for the New Year and as I think about it, it’s only me who’s considering 2008 as a new year, except for the Chinese of course because like real mongoloids they know how to mind and make up their own goddamn business, no pun intended.

I’ve attempted to write seemingly interesting topics before, before they all went down the bin. I couldn’t think of anything to write and like what I replied to a friend –a real person, by the way, not existing in my head- following his logic that I should just write the emotions that I feel at that moment, maybe I am already numb inside and the only thing that’s left for me to do is to research on how to make a noose and start hanging myself for no apparent reason at all. Or drink KoolAid with poison ala Jonestown.

Right now I feel like shit on every level of its definition, and I thought maybe it’s a good start for me to keep on writing this bullcrap.

For the past three days, I’ve been shitting like crazy. It started Thursday afternoon when during a bout of fever and chills while being enslaved by Big Brother, I started developing spasms and had to go to the comfort room, and the funny thing’s coming up next.

When you are shitting in the public toilet, is it considered rude when your turd stinks? You don’t have any control over where your shitsmell wafts but should you feel guilty that when an officemate –like me- enters the room then smells what’s cooking, the level of denial and civility become so great that nobody even bothers to point out how foul smelling the whole room is? I mean, you’re the source of the stink bomb, so is it actually your responsibility to apologize or even warn every single person who enters the room right before the very second their sinuses will be clogged up? My point being is that people will be less disconcerted once they enter. By simply shouting “Pasensya na po, tumatae lang…medyo mabaho” will mean a lot to people and will find you thoughtful, right? Anyway…

I had to go to the little men’s CR to take a crap and good thing nobody’s in. I picked the farthest cubicle adjacent the wall, the one designed for handicapped people and started dumping down my business. It was effortless. I wish I had a phone camera to take a snapshot of my byproduct but thought that had I had a phone camera I would’ve done it a million times and will find it boring taking a snapshot of my own shit already. It was unstoppable, it was relentless. I didn’t eat anything lunchtime earlier that day and I thought the spasms I felt were due to not having eaten anything…apparently not. So there I was and my spinchter minding our own business (seriously, it’s like my spinchter has a mind of its own and wouldn’t listen to my command) when somebody entered the john and broke our peace.

I hate it when it happens, people entering the comfort room when you’re taking a dump. More so, I hated myself for being so ashamed of what I was doing which I thought is very normal for every human being to do. That’s why I blame it to the society that is so superficial to acknowledge that farting and all the “normal” sounds and smell that come along shitting, that one thinks he should constrict his spinchter when somebody enters the room. I am victim of the same society, and we all are. I’d like to say, I don’t give a shit or fart about them, but to further my point, I’d say the opposite.

Dalawang oras palang sa bagong taon. Humupa na ang ingay ngunit mangilan-ngilan pa rin ang naririnig sa kalayuan. Sariwa pa ang bagong taon at kinailangan kong sulatin ito.

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Kanina, tahimik na ang looban. Wala nang ingay sanhi ng paputok at may mga putok kong kapit-bahay na walang ginawa kundi ang gumawa ng kahit anung tunog masabi lamang na sila’y “in” ngayong darating na taon.

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Nabubuwisit ako sa ingay na gawa ng bagong taon. Sabi ko nga sa kaibigan kong si Jo, hindi ko makita ang sense ng pagpapaputok tuwing sasapit ang bagong taon. Okay sa akin ang manood ng fireworks display pero kahit may morbid fascination ako sa mga wak-wak na kamay at paa, hindi ko pa rin masakyan ang trip ng karamihan para gumawa ng anu pa mang klase ng ingay. Kanina, habang papalabas sa sinapupunan ng panahon ang bagong taon, nakuntento na ako sa pagninilay-nilay sa lahat ng nangyari sa akin noong nakaraang mga buwan. Lahat ng masasama at mabubuti, mga tagumpay at kasawian, lahat iyon inisip ko at nagplano kung paano maging mas mabuti at epektibong tao sa susunod na taon.

Masaya kanina dito sa looban. Nagsasayawan sa daan ang mga tambay (adik, siga at sugarol). Malakas ang tugtugan, masarap ang mga pagkaing pinamahagi ng ilan at maingay ang lahat. Lahat binubugaw ang malas para hindi kumapit sa taong darating.

Dalawang oras matapos ang pagsasaya, isasara ko na sana ang computer para mamahinga (dahil wala akong nareceive na text na gagala kami ng mga barkada ko) nang biglang may narinig akong sigawan at hiyawan sa labas. Nagsasapakan ang dalawa naming kapit-bahay. Hiyawan ang mga babae, sigawan ang mga lalaki, pero tuloy pa rin sila sa pagbubugbugan.

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Kailan kaya magkakaroon ng pagbabago dito sa looban, tanong ko sa sarili. Bagong taon na nga, pero hindi bagong mga tao.