It has been quite a long time. Long time. I was trying to fixate myself on other things: had liked sports-watching, tried using a new brand of shampoo, grew my hair once more and left the old semikal undoy in the recycle bin for the meantime, learned to ride the jeepney again with the utmost ease as I executed joyrides from home to elsewhere and back again during incandescent, irreverent late nights.
It has been almost a year. And reminiscing validates my today: An impromptu promise to myself actually transpired. Sufferance in the most personal, individualist sense became me during the last dozen months.
Star-complex syndrome: I and my siblings tagged relatives as such whenever they become too engrossed with envy o deceit in the kinship webs that families have, to the point that these particular relatives try to boast of what they have, setting their immediate relatives either in shamefulness or mockery. I too have this kind of syndrome, which I delectably, subvoluntarily share and transmit among my closest, best friends. I too share this online, posting so many performances that actually does not benefit me at all.
This star-complex syndrome is not innate, it has been culled from and by an experience which happened almost a year ago. As SCS is directly proportional to egoism, that nostalgic moment a year ago is conversely proportional to selflessness. That was the first (and only time) so far that I knew that Life as it was, would never be the same anymore.
And life has not been the same anymore. After a few months, after a few little sparks, after a few little attempts of courage to renew the self, it is still at that same pub(l)ic (Cañete, 2007) spot that I am right now.
Change has never been my ally. I was corrupted, angered and lost by my non-reaction and non-willingness to accept change. The most frightful thing in the world is to have accepted that nothing can be done, and nothing can be made. In a cold, breathless night amidst a starless, smogful view of the city, you would want to kill yourself, but then, you realize that a lot of other people are still entangled and estranged in some of your other selves. And it’s not because they cling on to you nor do you cling back at them, but because it has been the norm, and love binds you to them. The family is like that. It is the only thread that holds me on to life. It is the only drop of salvation that makes me go to church and pray. I do appreciate it when I and my siblings attend the service together, but I like it even more when I go to church alone. It is freer that way. I can so many things to myself in front of that Universal who/that everybody talks to whenever they are alone.
Pub(l)ic Sel(f/ves): A lot of my time right now is engrossed with being online, being in front of an inanimate screen with animated nootic particles. I actually don’t care anymore what I write nor what I post, as long as I satisfy that carnal desire for virtual response. Cyborgish as it may seem, it is totally interdependent with the technology. But I would rather say that is just plain addiction which was afflicted by myself on myself. It has always been that root, the route, the detour and the dead end.
After a day of floating via visual culture (television, billboard, day-to-day ruckus, FX incidents-sketches) I return to a gray canvas of honesty back at home. Home is not at the place where I live right now, nor is it either at church nor at my siblings’ and friends’ company. It can never be found at the roads to the drinking spots and at those places where good memories where cherished and redeemed. It has been always with me. It is in my heart. Through blogging senseless posts of mundane things like latest news, series or other stuff, the heart has been dumped back, dumped down the grave.
The simplest questions are the hardest and worst to answer: Recessive and residual, latak is a very apt term to connotate myself now. Latak could be left-overs, spoiled food, remnants of oil dripping on the carburator and the intriguing outlines of past electoral/campaign posters smitten by stubborn gaw-gaw on public walls or lamp posts. It’s the splatter, that blotch, that most graphic designers now are using for their everyday street art. The world has lost its meaning to non-crystallization of events, of people. I do envy the elite. The elite can always have what they want. Their only hopelessness are derived from the othering of sufferings of the poor. And almost 70% of the nation’s population is poor. Therefore, it is a norm, it is not a "crystallizable", if there were such a term.
Great things happen to people who believe in themselves. And good things happen to those who tell themselves that they are good in whatever aspect of life they are focused at right now. I have no means to have other priorities, no strength to call myself as somebody who could light up others in their times of delusions and canistered egoist agonies. I have lost my light. Redemption has also been oblivious to my world. There are no redemptive strikes to be marched on by myself in the awareness of constant repression brought about by big chunks of "realities" that kill hundreds, thousands, millions of minds.
After a year, square one is still square one, with lots of shoeprints on it. The walking never stops at that same spot.
