Monday, December 4, 2006

On Atty. T’s Pedantry, the social web and cannibalism

I just don’t know what happened today. It’s just queer finding myself infront of many people looking very stupid, very, very stupid; as if I’m the only one who doesn’t know what’s happening. As if I’m in front of learned people-inquiring about what happened, which I totally forgot in broad daylight.

The moment I stood up my body is in terminal trepidation. As if I am very much frozen in the arctic chill of Agnus. I don’t know if someone or something poked me insisting that I will never answer the question correctly. I grabbed my book leafed through the pages quickly, looking to the provisions in wanderlust. I wandered in wonder. The teacher recited all that happened: “blah, blah, blah. . ..” She was there ignoring all portents that foretell of a sudden mishap. She was there sitting on the royal chair assuming power or kingdomship in an ephemeral space. She gazed imposingly at me to kneel down before her majesty. She gloated at every yes, at every no. She sounded blabber in my thought. Does this pedantic woman remember anything about the social web? That strictness would result to perversion?

She kept me standing there for the whole period; taking charge of the flip-flop drama flick of the night. She manipulated all of the consequences and the laughs and the curses. “Disorientation prevents me from your arrogant assertion.” That it is easy to know if Art. 1357 and Art. 1358 will apply when you already mastered what is a valid contract and what is an unenforceable contract. She always mutters that with a devilish grin intruding up to the recesses of your soul and the privacy of your consciousness. “Here, all is prone to being eaten alive. We are all cannibals in our own simple way.”

Trail-walking Sagada


It took us six hours and a half of convoluting trails to reach a dreamy and solitary place. In between miles, a constant yearning arouses in my mind a distant and moribund thought. The unending visions of a sad and gloomy memory take me back to a commune which had complicitly made this return trip part of a piece in a resultant and conspiring circle.

My travel companion woke up to ask in curiosity if the trip would be for eternity as the bus slowed down to submit and traverse a sharp curve. The whispering wind would tell us later on that this trip was indeed for eternity.

The bus parked beside a lonesome inn devoid of any soul and spirit. I knew that beneath those yearning souls lie buried in the earth forgotten memories of tranquility and comfort. A friend once told that the feeling could never be explained because it will always be forbidden. And indeed as we walked, passed tombs and epitaphs that remind corporeal beings how life recedes into whitewashed graves, a tender feeling gently harps into the unaffecting heart which would inevitably allow a person to ask to himself if the moment would endure.

Yes, the moment would endure. . . forever. It clings steadfastly among barren worlds like mine reverberating the height of the experience into one soulful and nostalgic dance.

In Etretat

Days are old like a withering tree whose leaves are gradually blown by the wind into the barren earth.

I tried to hold on for the past few days in search for a better resolution to the predicaments that seem to last forever. I stride along the road looking at every footstep I take and at the dust thrown by the soles of my black rugged shoes.

I went by as far as I could, not minding where would my sanity want me to take. I came across an old man carrying a can of white paint. He drooped as if his backbone would break; as if he was carrying tons of load on his shoulders.

The old man was not conscious that the paint was being emptied by the hole under the can. I overtook the man and signaled to him the long white line he has created along the road. He looked back and scratched his head. “That doesn’t matter anymore. I am nearing my destination.”

I didn’t understand what the old man said. I stopped and stood for a while to think as the man walked away leaving white marks along the road that would surely remain for a while unless rain would pour down continuously for the next few days. . .