Like Parasites, We Feed

Let's face it. We always have intentions. We do some things because deep in us, we want to get out something from it. We read for some reasons. We eat because we need to have nourishment. We go to school to learn, or some reasons otherwise... We roam the streets to hunt or be the prey...

We use social networking sites because we have our intentions. We like to link or communicate to others. We also like to hunt potential victims or be the sacrificial lambs for others so for them to learn that evil exists even in the virtual world.

Was it some months ago when it was reported on national TV that a girl was being blackmailed? Her nude photo was published on the web by her irate boyfriend. There were some who got raped. There were untold stories. And, there are stories to be told...

The accidental billionaire, the facebook creator, designed his social networking site to know the status of the girls in his campus so that he would know whom to be with for future copulation. The story is now immortalized into film with the so-called artistic license being used by the filmmakers. But you think that those who are into these sites don't give a fig on its history. They just feed on narcissism and lick their insecurities to the point that freedom of expression would sometimes cut across the norms.

You like to think. For you, it's like breathing. Sometimes, you like to think out loud and you like your thoughts to be translated into words. Others would accuse you of being a show-off. But whom are you showing-off? Inside your place are boxes of notebooks with your thoughts for two and a half decades... Nobody is reading them...

But there are things that you need to write. It's like an itch that you need to scratch. But your intention is like that of others. You need to feed. Thinking aloud could be your food. Writing could be the nectar that would nourish you for you to be able to fly. Others could have their purpose of making you as their hapless victim but it would be OK. Life is like that.

In the end, we would all be cadavers others would dress-up for our funerals. We will then be remembered, then become a distant memory...

Now don't hang on
Nothin' lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away
And all your money won't another minute buy

Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
- Kansas

(art: GaneDev.net)

Crypt dweller

On top of the tombs, the flowers wilted and the candles melted. The living who paid their one year guilt of forgetting, left the dead for the earth...Life has to go on for them. So with the dead, death has to go on - some would be cherished and others would be just fertilizers to the dandelions...er, in these parts of the world, lemongrass.

Why is it that the epitaphs here don't tell stories? You see, you had an activity with your boss long before when he told you to write your own. But would that tablet synthesize one's existence? Or simply a poetic justice of his mishaps and failures?

"Here lies a man who lived a life full of fun - booze, sex and drugs. He is well-loved by his friends who think of him as THE GUY." This would raise eyebrows and could make grimaces out from the faces of the conservative flock.

"Here are the remains of a person who devoted his time, treasures and talents for the well-being of others..." This could be superficial too. It might create a stir to others who would pass as crabs in the vicinity.

You then think of such things: we are so busy acquiring things and performing activities that could be considered as funny and rubbish once we imprint them on our epitaphs. You would then worry about your sanity for you oftentimes envy those who "live their lives well". But then, what is "living well"? Whose definition must be followed?

Still, the dead must not worry about the status of the words on their tombs. Who would care about the grammar, the sense and the impact of the words? Who would care when the man inside the crypt is rotting with the maggots infesting his skin (dabbed with gallons of soap and moisturizers before) and flesh?

You could just be with those who celebrate life on top of the faithful departed 's tombs during All Souls' Day and tell others to cut the crap when they'd throw comments about the drinking binges which could sometimes lead to stabbing incidents at the cemetery. They are always equipped with reasons like: It's the only time we could spend with our loved ones! Forgetting that it's their own selfish intentions they're bloating.

Life is filled with mysteries...

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget...

-(Christina Rossetti - Song)

Castles in the Air

It's funny how we act on situations where power is involved. We like to be up there so that we would belong to a social class where parties, gatherings and fake smiles are projected.

We like to be elected into office for we fancy the title Honorable... Yet, could we indeed tag honor to our names when we do things against the word itself? Who would honor us, the people whom we bought for around eighty pesos or a bar of soap? Could we demand being honored?

You won't linger on a lot of questions. Your teacher in English (who was knighted in England for his prose and poetry) told you to avoid a lot of questions in your copy since it would confuse a reader. But, you could not help yourself but to ask such questions for you might have a headache if you'll contain them all inside your mind...

But then again, you like these characters in your ecosystem. For whom would you perform some sort of a dichotomy if they're not around? You knew long before how they are disgusted with you. They would even curse your existence, and would be happy when some sort of a malady would strike you...

But you like to study their kind too. Mark Gordon could not have the dough without those criminals. Stephen King could not create characters that would give Kathy Bates (Misery), Jack Nicholson(The Shining) and Morgan Freeman (The Shawshank Redemption) critical acclaim for acting... Freud, Jung and other scientist of the mind could have been unheard of.

You are a demon too. You are guilty of a lot of things but you try to be aware of what are these so that you could co-exist. That could be different from plotting things that would lift you to a higher social strata where there are lots of people who struggle to say things which they don't even understand!

Was this the set of thoughts by Thoreau when he decided to stay in Walden Pond? Was that some kind of an escape from a society that was slowly eating his sanity? Was the decision a sort of defeat for him that he could not do anything to correct his observed societal ills? Are there cases of paranoia and messianic thoughts inside you due to such thoughts?

Ah, more questions... Your professor is turning in his grave right now...

Still, like those self-professed honorary persons, you have the right to think what you think. You have the right to believe what to believe and you could choose to be mad if your capacities to hold on to your sanity won't be enough when the voices you hear inside your head would be unbearable...

Anyway, everything would be excusable when people tag you INSANE.

If you have built castles in the air
Your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.
Now, put the foundations under them...

However mean your life is, meet it and live it;
Do not shun it and call it hard names...
- Henry David Thoreau (Walden)

(Photo: F.Cos)

(Postlude: I was struck with the question: What thoughts would I think when I live here? It was so quiet and " away". The place was so serene I was afraid to listen to stillness... But when I saw the eyes of a local, I could sense his contentment... At a distance my students were taking their shots for their photojournalism session...)

Towards the Abyss

There are times when you have to confront the inner you: your fears, anxieties and even the pain that persists inside your heart. This is the time when you have to extract yourself from the noise of the people around and consider the inner silence...

These turmoils are part of your existence, you knew this fact long before. But why is it that there are persons who could not take such darkness that they succumb to the eternal abyss of death? They would curtail the future blossoms of hope by resorting to the embrace of the rope on their necks, the searing whispers of the sharp razors on their wrists or the toxic promises of those pills...

We are all insane. This sentence alarmed you when you came over a book from an academic. According to him, our only difference from those mumblers is our ability to control our individual sanity... But when would be the yielding point of such control? What is the breaking point of our iron will so not to scream and shout obscenities to the man on the moon?

Exhale! That's what that soul diva told you via her songs. These emotions bottling up inside could be released by looking at the horizon. The vastness and immeasurable space must overwhelm you. The tight feeling inside your chest is but fleeting...There are arms around you, hold them...There are shoulders at reach, cry on them...There are people who love you, love them back...

Still, the process of grieving and hurting must be savored for you could not proceed to the next level without that stage. Emptying yourself is not possible if denial is there...this could lead to the aforementioned abysmal darkness of surrender...

Is there a room for existential angst these days? It seems that all moments are being distracted by electronic glitches and technological claws. We could not pause for a moment without our cellphones' ring tone cajoling us to read texts. We could not concentrate on our R&R since we need to plant something on the virtual farm. We don't need to communicate with real persons in the Internet cafe for we have virtual friends... We could also malfunction when there is a brownout... We feel sad, irritated and forget about the sky, the stars and even the poems written by Rossetti...

Yes, we need to slow down. We must not fail to examine ourselves for we might not know what level of insanity are we into these time...

"Because I could not stop for death
He kindly stopped for me
The carriage held but just ourselves
And immortality..."
- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

(photo: f.cos)

She-Wolf, He-Wolf, You-Wolf, We're Wolves

She's a sheep in wolf's clothing. You heard him whisper as his younger brother told him that his former girlfriend is flirting with him. The younger brother, more good-looking than the older one, kept his quiet. Probably, he likes the wolf a lot and the older one is still in love with the canine...

Wolves fascinate me. I could remember how I got fascinated with werewolves to the point that I viewed New Moon (to the disgust of my friend Helga) for the wolves in the flick are more graceful than the those from the old movies. And who would say that Wolverine is cold soup especially with Hugh Jackman playing the role?

I find sheep boring. They bleat too! They would live to be slaughtered later for their meat and fur. I remembered how Clarice Sterling divulged her nightmares to Hannibal Lecter and how she wanted to save even one sheep when they were brought to the slaughter area... so goes the genius of Thomas Harris via Silence of the Lambs...

I also remembered some of the world-class designers being booed and drenched with red paint during runway shows with their fur collection. There was also an ad campaign of those supermodels stripped to their baby skin with the caption : I'd rather go naked than wear fur. Then, the vegetarian trend surged and animal rights activists arrived in the scene telling us to stop patronizing meat. (Then Lady Gaga tipped the equilibrium again when she wore meat-like dress in the recent MTV awards, it made me have a sick smile.)

But going back to those wolves wearing sheep's fur... We could point some persons right? But we must also realize that in our closets, we could find sheep's clothing that we sometimes wear especially when the wolf in us would try to come out of the surface... The times when we put up a face even if we did something hideous like seducing a child to have sex in exchange for a mobile phone (17 is still a child). When go to cities an cheat on our wives and dismiss the one-night-stand as a normal thing "for the boys". when we get too drunk and blurt out painful words then have the liquor as the excuse of being tactless...

And we dislike facing such realities. We don't want to talk about similar topics. We dislike to have trysts in the dark to confront realities but we like secret trysts that would reveal the wolf's basic instinct in us - to devour, to kill, to mate, to feel powerful... We'd rather wear sheep's clothing than exposing the fatal fangs in our mouths.

But we really need some kind of an anchorage. That self-assessing person in us who would tell us when not to be a wolf who will devour the peace of others and the cosmos. We need the shepherd in us to use the staff in driving away the wolf; in beating the sheep who try to get astray and to tell us to keep quite when we consistently give our annoying bleats when we complain a lot.

Yet, the same with what I felt during the 80's when it was first released, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" still gives me that peculiar orgasmic feeling when he will be transformed into a wolf... and a certain calm occurs in the end part of the song when someone would narrate:

...for no mortal could resist, the EVIL of the Thriller..."

then,

MWA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!


(art: kitchaiz.blogspot.com)

Anyone for Maria Callas?

It was chilling... When Agent Hotchner asked the Ripper-copycat why kill? He said in a very calm voice: It seems a normal thing to do... it's like eating.

Your face could twist in dismay on such insanity yet such evil exists in our midst. You then remembered that scene in Hostel 2 which was presented by Quentin Tarantino where a lunatic was offered an "unfinished" victim yet he declined for he was able to consume just one leg of that victim who was screaming and squirming while strapped on a table. He was having an enjoying meal complete with silver cutlery and napkins while Maria Callas sang her arias on the background.

You are not going to linger on the criminal mind again since your friends would always get revolted when you do so. What you'd like to ponder on is this: Is there a relationship with insanity and classical music? You see, you would always have that urge to bang your head and cover your ears when the likes of Sarah Brightman and Pavarotti would start with their, excuse us cultured people, caterwauling.

It is always mentioned in urban legends that dogs could sense something at night, that's the reason why they give that ear-splitting and goosebump-stimulating yowls. That's a similar feeling that would grip you when something from La Traviata would be delivered from any source.

You were so polite when your cousin Mario exposed you to the world of classical theater. You were even showing an expression of interest when he told you how those dignitaries and famous people dress up for things like Le nozze di Figaro with music from Mozart. Then, he played Maria Callas via Beethoven's Fidelio. You literally cried and your cousin gesticulated: How intelligent are you my cousin, really! You were able to internalize her pathos!

You remembered how desperately you wanted to flee. He failed to realize you cried because it was so intense in your head you wanted to smash something on the wall!! It was a feeling so intense you could not point something to it - anger? Your anguish would be triggered by an aria? You still don't know.

Until now, you would shy away from such genre and would keep quiet when some of your friends who are trained classically (since it is a requirement when you come from a rich family) would volunteer to deliver a cantata of sorts in front of you and your friends as the audience. You would then try to find something solid to hold and try to think about Brazil and half-naked beachcombers.

When Tom Hanks did his soliloquy in "Philadelphia", the taint of the background on the flick turned red and a sound track filled with classical notes and vocals, you turned red and insane. It was too much for you that you could not give a sensible comment when he grabbed an Oscar for Best Actor for that. Probably, the judges turned insane also? Just a thought...

For now, you have Brightman's album dubbed "Classics". It was a gift from, of course, your cousin Mario. But you fear to play that album although your friends say Sarah Brightman has an ethereal voice.

Angelic or demonic, you still have to find out the outcome when someone would grab the mic and air an aria next time when you will be with Batman's friends from the Arkham Asylum.

(photo: patriciasilva.wordpress.com)

That Green-Eyed Monster

You looked hungry. The people around seemed to be nourished and sated. Yet, your stomach was complaining and your soul needed something to quench a certain thirst. Was it because of the betrayal a loved one has done? Or was it something else?

A flash of memory fleetingly visited your conscious mind: Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ". When Jim Caviezel mimicked Jesus in saying: I thirst! Also, that androgynous character of evil carrying a baby on his/her arms while the pain escalated on Jesus...

But you digressed. You needed to devour something. A certain longing was created you wondered if you were still capable of existential angst. You knew that this was caused by something but you were not able to point it out. This might be stress-related but you were able to immerse yourself in more strenuous activities before...

Then it dawned on you when you realized that you were denying on the issue of your loneliness. You feared that you would be left behind by the person you were investing a lot of time, treasure and talent. She's leaving you! She found someone who could be considered as better than you.

You got afraid since you have a history of violence. You were sent to a shrink when you mother got alarmed when she saw your room filled with decapitated parts of dolls you stole from your sisters and your neighbors.You liked the idea of sawing them to pieces using that small yet effective iron saw.

Now, you need to cry some without the presence of others. You must create a facade of strength but you must transfer this pain to the culprit or her subject of affection. The guy should be punished for him to realize he is bumping into something more powerful than him. After all the clothes, phones, food, perfume and money you gifted her, another would benefit her love and affection?

Someone must pay.

Machismo: Exaggerated pride in masculinity, perceived as power, often coupled with a minimal sense of responsibility and disregard of consequences. Caudillos (military dictators), prominent in the history of Latin America, have typified machismo with their bold and authoritarian approach to government and their willingness to employ violence to achieve their ends. -Britannica.com