Bye Bye Facebook

I have finally decided to delete my Facebook account. Facebook was probably the only thread I had left that was weakly connecting me to the social world, and I had mercilessly cut it off with a sadistic clicking of the "delete my account" button.

Facebook sucks. But apparently, I suck more because I was on it.

I refuse to suck any longer.

I spent Friday watching Sex and Submission videos and shockingly, there was only one thing of relevance that I learned - Asking and Begging are not one and the same.

I admit I had never been reliable with household chores.

When I was a kid, my mother often had to do the things that she originally asked me to do, by herself, because I was often busy reading a book, or writing something I never let anyone read, or studying the movie schedules on HBO. I'm sure there were times when I had reasonably caused my mother great exasperation and was definitely a constant stress generator - then (let me just add that part). I used to find it odd how a lot of times I got away with being such a slacker.

But I don't anymore.

I don't find my mother's lax parenting odd anymore.

These days at six in the morning I make a habit of sleep-walking out of my bed with my camera and jumping on my bike. Often before I pedal out of earshot, I would hear my father ask, "Tikain dadama it hiya?" (Where is she going this time?)

And then my mother's free-and-easy response would always come, "Ti-picture hit mga dampog." (She's off to take pictures of the clouds.)

Now I understand that my mother's long-suffering patience with me when I was a kid was deliberate and not an error in her judgment. As young as I was then, she already knew that her ten year old had her head in the clouds, and decided that it was alright.

I'm an airhead, and my mom says it's okay. 

My Father's Daughter

So I was talking to Tatay about how I thought it was high time that I learned how to drive something else besides Leonardo (my bicycle).

He got all serious, like he always does when people start talking about cars. He told me that we could both save up for it. I often need specifics on monetary issues so I asked him exactly how we were going to split  it up and how much I would be expected to contribute.

"Ah, pag half-half kita."

"Oh, okay."

"Half-half. 20 it akon, 80 it imo."

I am now certain that I am not adopted. I finally know where I got my crazy Math skills from.

I think that social networking websites induce cowardice.

Instead of going out into the world and actually making friends, or putting on your boxing gloves and confronting our enemies in the flesh, we hide behind the comfort of our computer screens, made up names, Photoshop-ed pictures and stupid smiley faces.

For example, I am currently checking how many likes my Facebook status has landed so far, instead of rushing over to the next-door neighbor's house to inform them that, yes, in fact, their little brat's screaming is disturbing my peaceful life, and would they do something about it, or should I be doing the parenting for them.

An intense family meeting had me wondering why I don't practice Roman Catholicism anymore.

Now I have it all figured out.

I do not live for any god.

I live for myself.

And the joys and tribulations following this decision, will be all my own.

So I was very hungover this morning and was kneeling by the toilet bowl, looking at my small pond of sick and thinking about how guessing what a person had for dinner by their puke contents could actually make a great game, when I received a text from my father saying he and my mother were on the way to my apartment.

So I washed my face, flushed the toilet, and started cleaning and cooking up a storm. Things I rarely do when in my normal, sober state. Things I never do drunk.

Forget Aspirin. Your parents dropping by for a surprise visit is the best hangover cure.

Be still my beating heart.

Is what I have been telling my heart the past twelve hours.

I just had five bottles of light beer last night but dammit, this hangover is telling an entirely different story.

The morning afters are getting worse.

I'm getting too old.

Herring

Quite unfortunate, the thing about centipedes.

I mean, every time I see one and provided that it has not crept up in a really surprising way like that time a really big one walked across my arm while I was on a bus, my killer instincts would go on overdrive and I would always find a way to have a sharp object on hand faster than you can say "Bob" and I'd just start chopping the little thing up.

I know what centipedes are capable of.

When I was nine, I was roused from sleep by an agonizing pain in my hand. I knew a centipede was the culprit as I saw it dashing about the blankets probably figuring out that I had woken up and might be starving for revenge. The pain was so terrible that I had to knock at my parent's room. I remember knocking softly and trying to stifle my sobs so I wouldn't wake up anyone else. I remember my mother putting some kind of ointment on the bite wound and singing me to sleep. I remember spending the night in their room. I remember the pain.

Still, I don't always feel like it's fair to invoke death penalty on a possibly innocent centipede that just happened to pass by at the wrong place and the wrong time simply because we have found it guilty by association. If a harsh judgment is handed out even before any fault is done, where then, is the justice in that?

Then I think about how terrible the justice system already is for us people, and that is when I realize that centipedes never really had a chance.

Quite unfortunate, the thing about centipedes.

"Teacher Ariane"

"Do you have a god?"

Was the first thing my eight year old client asked me last Wednesday. He was wondering if I believed in a god because he had observed that I was the only teacher who never prayed before sessions.

I'm not sensitive about discussing religion, but such discussions usually take place after three bottles of beer and five shots of tequila; never at three in the afternoon, never at work, and never with the kids. Needless to say, I was caught speechless.

I didn't think it would have mattered to him if I told him that I'm not really "that" kind of teacher (the kind who teaches Calculus at school and whom no one listens to because everyone knows people don't really graph functions in real life), nor did I think it would have mattered if I explained to him that praying is to a Catholic school as an alma mater hymn is to a regular school.

Instead, I just asked him, "What kind of god do you think is there?"

There was an unforgettable confidence about him when he answered, "Oh you know, the old god. He can't walk so he just stays in the skies. And when people don't pray, he gets sad."

He looked at me with this cute, critical look of his and asked, "Do you know how to pray, Teacher Ariane?"

I remember giving him a sort of nod and a sort of shrug answer. This caused quite a confusion which lead to his declaring, "Here, I'll teach you."

So that was how our Wednesday session turned out, with the "Teacher" getting schooled on practicing a religion.

As for the original, provocative question of whether I had a god, I decided to go about it the way I did last Christmas when he was blabbing about Santa Claus and I had disclosed his North Pole address.

I wish he'd never have to grow up.

I was glueing the outer sides of my midsoles when I accidentally glued my finger to my left shoe. Guess I will forever be a part of that shoe, and the shoe will forever be a part of me.

Just like true love.

Impossible is nothing.

at the movies

Sometimes in my jealousy driven rememberings, I think of how my contemporaries are working long days and long weeks to afford the newest gadgets, or cars, or trips or tickets to the most talked-about shows or concerts in town and I haughtily tell myself that I am lucky I am not as worldly. But that's not true.

For example, if I just had an outrageous amount of money and could afford this:

I'd definitely get it.

Feelin' Like P. Diddy

I woke up with a terrible hangover and started the day cursing at the bastard who invented beer. I decided to go back to bed and satiate my need for the spinning to stop. But before going back to sleep, I thought I needed to at least have a glass of cold milk, just because milk is awesome. Such is the immense power of milk to transform however, that after finishing my drink I decided it had been quite a while since I bathed my soprano recorder in my saliva and I wanted to continue the tradition. Also, I've never done a piece before so I thought, why the hell not. More importantly, in my years of self-medication, I have found that the best way to get rid of the throbbing pain in my head is to share it. And share it with my neighbors I did. I forced them to listen to my insistent, torturous, fit inducing attempts at music.

I love being nasty.

For Tatay

I drew this for Father's Day. I hope my father gets a kick out of this. After all, we share an awesome albeit sick sense of humor.

oh, boy

I was washing the dishes, when my mother crept up behind me and asked, "Are you going back to school soon?"

I told her no, I wasn't.

My mother does that sometimes. She fires these questions indiscriminately at opportune times when I am completely unsuspecting and all my guards are down. It's not her fault. I guess like all mothers, she just wants to get a glimpse of whatever it is that goes on in her child's messed-up mind. I guess she just wants the reassurance that I have plans. She wants me to have plans. That's not her fault either.

There's always this tiny bit of guilt that I feel though. Every time she wonders about what my next move in life is, or when it will be, I can't help but feel guilty that I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do. She asks me, always in this sincere and caring motherly way of hers, and as much as I want to comfort her with concrete and definite plans, I can't. Because I don't have plans. And because I would hate to lie to her.

It's not an enviable position, not knowing what you want to do next when everyone else around you is getting their masters, starting their own families, becoming doctors and lawyers, stepping up and just going places.

Compared with some of my peers, I am lost. To tell my own mother that, would not be reassuring. But it would be true.

Right now however, what I really want to tell her is that- I may not know where I am going, but I have a funny feeling I'll get there.

I would tell her not to worry. I know she still would, because she's programmed to worry about her kids.

I'll tell her I'll be fine. Who knows, maybe I will be fine. And if after everything, I do end up alright and in one piece, planning will lose its overbearing importance, because I would have had kicked its ass.

gaiety

I just had someone come up to me and say he initially thought I was gay because I was hanging out with so many gay people.

He was a gay bartender. And it was funny how unabashedly stereotypical he proved himself to be.

I get that a lot though, being thought of as gay. Could be because of the way I dress. Could be because I'm so mouthy. Could be because I once had a girlfriend, which is a lie I sometimes think of telling people who care so much about finding out my sexuality.

I'm not gay, and that definitely makes me less interesting.

Yes, I have a lot of gay friends (my last count tells me I have at least five) and I love hanging out with every single one of them.

It always seemed to me a bit pointless to disapprove of homosexuality.

It's like disapproving of the rain. - Francis Maude

one of those days

I have a dilemma.

I'm at this point in my life where I absolutely don't know what to do.

On one hand there is contentment, a rather uninspired satisfaction that anchors me to where I am. I am certain that if I died now, I would be fine. I would not come back to haunt people. I would leave quietly, trying not to trip on anyone along the way.

But on the other hand, I want to feel something more than uninspired satisfaction. I want to see more of what makes life beautiful. I want to hear more. I want to taste more. Touch more. Feel more. Be more. More. More. More.

But I understand that this intensity is terrifying. This aching for more from life will make me want to hold on to it harder. It would make it difficult to let go when the time comes for me to do so.

That is my dilemma.

And also I don't know what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow.

of quiet desperation

Written on writer Raymond Carver's tombstone:

LATE FRAGMENT

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

out there

I want to live in a cabin in the woods.

Grow a beard.

Learn to play a single piece on the recorder.

Finish a story.

Get high.

Learn how to blend oil pastel colors.

Look out my window and catch leaves fall to the ground.

Write people long letters and tell them I love them.

Wake up one morning with absolutely no hatred in my heart.

I want to live in a cabin in the woods.