Before I Smoked Reds

 

Disclaimer: Misleading title. If you are disappointed that this is, yet again, another chapter of my breakup banters, and expected something a little more yosi related, here’s a good read: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/cigarettes

(Get it? Good reads? Hehe. NO.)

ANYWAY.

I spent my Friday night stuck inside the mind-numbing walls of DBM, encoding national budget to accomplish my JEEP requirements. I felt like the center agents I frequently see in Eastwood, rushing out in their corporate attires eager to have a smoke. I ran to the nearest convenience store just to lose my mind and enforce my long standing theory that I am, indeed, an unlucky mofo who seems to have captured the liking of Lemony Snicket. In short, they were out of reds.

It’s been almost four months since I’ve last bought myself a pack of menthol lights. This is my first time since, since, since, since everything was right.

For my first puff I expected nothing more than that menthol throat torture that red smokers usually get. But I surprised myself with my own set of thoughts.

“This tastes like the past.”

(Shet. Ang drama)

Because it did, it does. Suddenly I was back in my porch at 4:30 am cramming a paper—and you were there beside me. Your attention was bound towards your laptop screen, browsing for updates on Kobe’s new injury, or perhaps trying to understand mathematic formulas or something. And I’d secretly be matter-loading for your English 12 paper just to surprise you with very important data that might actually fuel up or turn your research around. Suddenly I was half-drunk with you in Metrowalk pooling in what’s left of our baon to buy DVDs to marathon. For you, I set my weak heart on alert mode every single time I had to endure a horror movie. I always hated horror but for you I did. Suddenly I was down the park watching you give my brother a crash course on basketball, math and picking up girls. Suddenly it was five am and we were on my roof, having pseudo political discussions on why your peninsula of origin devolved into two ideologically contrasting nations. You were a citizen and I was a polsci student; our contributions synergized a surprisingly fruitful discourse. Suddenly we were at a Sushi bar with my dad and my brother, and I didn’t know if it was the food or the fact that I was surrounded by the three men I loved the most, but I just knew at that time I was at my happiest. Everything happened with a pack of menthol lights.

It took me to a time before everything fell apart. To the time before you first screwed up, And then I screwed up. And then we kept screwing up so bad forgiveness became inconceivable. We both screwed up so much that we could no longer find it in our hearts to be together. Sometimes I still miss you. Sometimes I miss you so much that I feel its illegal. There’s no way I could’ve screwed up so bad and still be allowed to miss you without going to jail for it. And vice versa—mostly vice versa, actually.

All is different now. Now we smoke reds. Now we’re far apart. It’s been three months so if you’re the type to play by the dating rule books, you’d probably know that it’s, uhm, okay (if not, encouraged) for you to date now. Sometimes I wonder where you are. Or who you’re with. Or what you’re doing. Or who you’re doing. Or if you knew that a Guidon photographer accidentally photographed you in a restaurant with a girl who looked like me from behind? I wonder if she really looked like me. Is she nicer than me? Prettier? Smarter? Skinnier? Better? Or is she just new? She’s probably just new. Novelty can take you to places. But once it fades you realize… I dunno. It was never really that great? Retrospect skews up even the best of memories.

Please don’t play by the game. Or if you do, this may sound a little (or a whole lot) selfish but please, just please, don’t let me know. I am weaker than you. But if there’s anything I’m sure of, it’s that I think of you less and less everyday now.

I will not frequent this cigarette. The last thing I want is to familiarize myself with the taste and associate it with experiences of the present. This cigarette, I guess, is the closest I have to a time machine. I will preserve it. Or maybe it’s because you were a bad memory and I just really hate menthols now.

And for a little dramatic effect:

Five things about Manila that creep me out

This is not a political critique

Nor is it a policy analysis or anything to be taken seriously.

These are just my two cents on Isko Moreno’s babysitting struggles.   

I am extremely bias and NOT CRITICAL.

It’s only been a few months after Manila has fallen into the crazy hands of the Ejercito-Moreno tandem and it hasn’t taken them long to, uhm, turn the city into one giant… joke.

I think… I’m afraid… that I might actually like it.

1.     Before anything else, I WAS proud that someone is finally going all Margaret Tatcher in terms of policy implementation (Case in point, all this Iron-fist-I-will-not-allow-provincial-busses-to-enter-Manila-roads-action) But that was until I found out that there is a chance this could all be one massive money making scheme.

What media doesn’t really expose: Provincial buses will be allowed to enter Manila roads ONLY if they pay a dashing 80-120 peso fee. He he he. Genius.

 Any abusive bureaucrat would grasp the chance to milk out this whole traffic issue; the prospect for money making is now hidden behind the façade of ratifying a law with principal urgency.

So much for Tatchering our country out.

2.     I do not know how to feel about this, again. Apparently Ejercito met up with the bus owners, hoping that gracing them with his presence will strike enough fear to once and for all, stop their endless lobbying against this new city ordinance. And of course, as theatrical and action star-like our Manila mayor has always been, he showed up in full military combat gear. ANGAS.

Really now. Really. Really. Really now?? REALLY? Is this a joke?

Atty. Ferdinand Topacio to Mayor Ejercito (non verbatim):

Pasensya na po Pangulong Mayor. Hindi na po kami gagawa ng kahit ano upang kailanganin ninyong magsuot muli ng combat attire.

Not sure if respect or farce but anyway, that leads me to my next thought…

3.     How and when did people start addressing Ejercito as Pangulong Mayor…? What the hell is that about? No amount of explanation could ever rationalize this in my head.

4.     Newly crowned Manila traffic czar Vice Mayor Isko Moreno, has been spotted in the streets of Manila doing some on-hand MMDA work.

 

-You are the most beautiful man in the whole Philippine Government.

-My partial pretentious critic self refuses to acknowledge any as

pect as a Vice Mayor you may ever fall short on.

-I actually feel bad for you. It must be difficult baby sitting our aging Mayor. I am 99.9% sure he isn’t doing anything useful and that you are now the sole CEO of Manila.

5.     Why does Ejercito always sound drunk?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56S8SrPWtzc

Boring Crap

How do you simplify without reducing?

When something is so complicated and complex, we simplify things and reduce them to certain, uhm, models? or systems? for us to more easily understand.

But with reduction comes subtraction of important features and aspects that, although contribute to the complexity that we are trying to do away with, still make up that rare wholeness that drew us in, that very uniqueness enough to earn it our attention.

And those little details that we subtract, those features and aspects that perplex us, they’re all intertwined in this giant web of confusion. And then boom, we’re back to square one.

Things are so complicated. My solution has always been to compartmentalize. But it seems so unfair to compartmentalize people.

What do I do with you?

Zesto Clocks and Lame Metaphors

I’ve been depriving myself of my much needed blog therapy for months now. My old one is too haunted by the residues of…. Bianca, I just want to commend you for your genius idea of compiling all those episodes of stupid tears and insanity. Good job. Are you proud of yourself?

I’m not even sure if I’m sarcastic. Sometimes it gets too foggy up there with all those crazy neurons and hormones partying everyday the chambers of my brain are too clogged with smoke I can’t even…

Anyway.

Yes. In fact. I am.

Two months and eight days. I didn’t expect. There is life after death. Remnants of who you used to be—gather, compile, mold into something new. Like those reprocessed products consumers don’t really like …you know, those clocks made out of zesto packs. I used to hold some juice, but now I am a clock. I am so cool. Different. But still the same.

And perhaps I am as lame as my analogy… I told you, it gets foggy up there. I don’t understand.

Anyway.

Yes. There is life after death. Why am I even shocked? The tiniest bit of my astonishment still perplexes me, seeing how I have died so many times in life. When life sodomizes you with a cactus a little more than the quota for insanity, you just can’t help but ask how the living crap am I still happy?

Doesn’t matter though. Because I am. Maybe it’s the perpetual party going on in my brain that saves me. Good enough. Now to study.