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On My Way

In a town that stands still

The weather is always the same

Half-smiles on people’s faces

Nighttimes feel like pavement

In a town that stands still

They use a special kind of kindling

To bring life into a heart

To keep its veins from freezing

Two lips meet and bottles sparkle

The lights blinker in the distance

Another story over dinner

for however long they linger

What’s the use of a beating heart

or a worthy cause to fight for

Another death inside a condo

Another film to cry me sore

I looked at the sunrise and felt nothing

As I began to understand why

People would trade this world for the one after

or get there faster than everyone

So I’m filling up my first bike

Bringing only the essentials

Healing what I took for granted

As I take a last look back

In a town the stands still

People clone themselves small

It makes them feel like they’re something

when they’re nothing at all

I’ll reach the sky and burn right through

You should see it, it’s truly something

A stroke of genius or a mad fool

On his way to some place cool

Truths Learned at 24.

If we broadcast what we think of people, nobody would like us. We all have a dark side to our personality. That’s what this age feels like. The dark side to my life. It has brought me some harsh truths and many things worth remembering.

In every company I’ve worked at, I’m always the youngest person in there. I took this as a sign of achievement. I thought I achieved what other people did at 26 when I was 20. It felt good at the time but like all good things, it started to fade away.

Truth is, there is no set path to living life right. You can see people climbing mountains and going on expensive vacations online, but you don’t see their everyday life. It’s chaotic. They’re out looking for purpose. It’s the same as me, and the same as you.

I learned people can be one of two things in your life. They can be cautionary tales or living examples. Let me show you what I mean.

My friend Emmanuel is a living example. He’s past 20 but he doesn’t have a job yet. He lives a simple, Christ-filled life helping his father run their laundry shop in Purple St., Marikina City. He’s easy-going, self-assured, and unhurried about his life.

He’s not living for himself. He’s living for a higher cause. He’s faithful, productive, and purposeful. He doesn’t try to become a leader or beat out the competition. Opportunities are naturally thrust upon him when people notice what he can do.

He has genuine friends and people who love him, and he’s open-hearted to them. This September, he got a big job at a major company overseas. He’s going to make triple of what I do, but that won’t change him. At least I hope.

My friend K is a cautionary tale. Notice how I’ve excluded his whole name.

K goes to work at a job that wasn’t his passion or his love. He laughs with the people there, cries with the people there, but in the end, he’s ultimately lonely. He’s just doing it for the sensation of having friends. He goes to work for the sensation of being busy.

K doesn’t have a hobby, only passing interests. Sometimes it’s art, sometimes it’s movies. He travels from time to time and spares no expense on coffee. He doesn’t even like coffee. Take the creamer out and he won’t be able to drink it.

When it’s time to go home, he effectively stares at a wall for hours until he watches porn and falls asleep. This staring at a wall can be a myriad of activities from video games to movie reruns--something lonely and unproductive, indulging no one but himself.

K has never had any dreams. He never had any passions. His life is blown like tumbleweed from one interest to the next and he has stopped believing in passions long ago. K has settled for security. He doesn’t even try and frankly, I think it’s too late.

It’s easy to notice the difference between Emmanuel and K. Em has doors and windows open in his heart so that light can shine in and he can be a light to others. His mission is to be the salt of the earth, whatever happens to him extra, is just a bonus.

K's world is dark and self-centered. He’s scared of letting go and holding on. He’s scared of risk and reward. He’s scared of victory and disappointments. By playing it safe, he has effectively edited out life out of his life. I’ve never seen such a thing. His existence is centered around consumption--whether it’s brand-name jeans, ties, mugs, bags, niche porn and bespoke staycations. He’s always all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Over the course of a year, I’ve experienced friendships with many people like Em and K, and I believe I will turn out like one of them over the course of my life. My girlfriend is an Em-type; my sister, too. Most people in my Christian community apart from those who make ministry their full-time job is an Em-type I can identify with.

Many people here in secular society are K-types. Don’t get me wrong, there are people in the fundamentalist circles, too. But this is why people who travel alone for leisure never impress me, along with people who make politics an online sport. I know behind their strong words and personas are just bored, small people who want purpose but don’t know how to look for it.

That said, 24 is the last year to be goofing around in life. When you’re 25, the excuse that you’re young no longer works. People expect things from you at that age, like a steady income, a fully-formed identity, and a plan for the future. So, this is mine.

Here are things most important to me.

I need to provide a future for my potential family. That means a house, a car and some health and education plans.

I need to be with genuine friends. Friends who don’t need me to play a character. Friends to whose lives I can contribute to in a positive way.

I need to have a career I love. At the end of the day, work is work, but I need to find something that resonates with who I am. No more jobs that I simply tolerate.

If possible, I would love to see the world and experience different cultures.

If possible, I would like to have the things I’ve dreamed of when I was a child.

If possible, I would like to make things right with my family by contributing to them in a major way.

Every day, you can move close to who you want to be or you can indulge in the illusion that you are staying the same. Nobody stays the same in the grand scheme of things. You are either improving or declining. This decline is what we call zero days in the motivational community.

Zero days are days when you do zero things to become closer to the person you want to be. It doesn’t have to be big. You can work out, read an article to improve your knowledge, do something small to improve your standing at work--just something. Em’s life is a product of small, incremental improvements throughout his life. K’s life is a big zero day. I wonder what he’ll be like at the end of it.

So I’ll be saying hello to 25 in a month, and goodbye to zero days.

Goodbye to my Intronaut. You have taught me many things. It’s been fun.

Dealing with Someone Suicidal

I was first introduced to suicide in high school. The emo movement was big back then. There were edgelords of all walks and colors, stripping the skin off their wrists like it would fix their problems. A few years later, they deleted all their bloodied forearms from Friendster and asked themselves the question, “Is this something I want the world to see?”

I, too, thought of suicide back then, but in the span of a few years I knew how ridiculous I was acting. My problems back then were minuscule compared to the problems I have now, and that’s always been part of my philosophy.

Life will only get tougher and tougher, no matter who you are, as long as you get older. It will not give you lighter problems, easier people to deal with, or less complex situations to fix. Like in video games, the more you level up, the tougher the challenges will get and there are many bosses.

If you find life tough at the novice level, well, wait ‘till you get to the professional stage. If you find your breakup with your 4-year girlfriend irreconcilable with living, wait until you are divorced, or your kid is born with a congenital heart disease. Problems will only get harder and harder and there is no way out.

Over the years, I found myself close to the brokenhearted and weak. There must be something in me that makes these guys flock to me. I can’t explain it. It seems like I’m always giving life advice and tactics on love and relationships when I myself have no idea what I am doing in these arenas.

Dealing with someone suicidal has somewhat become the norm for me. Though I am not a qualified expert by any means, these have always been my go-to approaches for getting someone’s head out of their ass and into the real world.

Always make them feel like they can approach you. There is a workmate who I’m not going to to name. He took benzodiazepine and attempted to take alcohol. Luckily, there was a liquor ban where he’s living at the time and he wasn’t able to buy any. It’s almost impossible to OD on benzo but it’s lethal when mixed with alcohol.

When he confessed these things to me, there were a million things I could’ve said. But instead of going for the heart or the throat, I just said, “Look, I went through the same stuff. You can always talk to me when you need it.”

When he said that people being there for him made him feel guilty that he can’t get some feelings out, I said, “That’s not on you. I choose to be here. You don’t owe me anything, like I don’t owe you anything.” I guess many suicidal people feel that other people are there for them because they’re suicidal, like someone sick in a hospital bed, just walking around city. What they need is a friend, not a caretaker.

Do not make it about you. This same friend confessed to a mutual friend about what he did and this friend flared up in front us. She started talking about how she would like him to be part of her future, how sad she would feel without him and what she thought about the situation. What escaped her vision was, it wasn’t about her.

Naturally, her response didn’t help. Maybe it added up to his guilt at the time.

With suicidal people, it’s always 50/50. There must not be an overreach on your part or an overreach on his. Just let them know that you are always there for them when they need it, but you’re going to need some free coffee before you start listening to all that shit.

Don’t butter them up. Sad people can always tell when you’re just saying something to make them feel better, and I’m always in situations where there’s one suicidal person and two friends to be witness to the crime. Normally, this other friend is shocked by the things I say, and I too am a little astounded in hindsight.

I just have no tolerance for emotional sap. This habit of people where they wallow in unearned self-pity and self-doubt, it makes me sick. Unfortunately, other people fall for this and try to build up a suicidal’s person’s self-esteem.

What they need to know is self-esteem is a lie. People are suicidal because they haven’t done much good in their life and therefore not getting the esteem they feel they deserve. While this varies on a case-to-case basis, this has happened enough to become a general rule for me.

Always be realistic with them. Truth is, when they die, not much will change. Their family will grieve but in a handful of years, they’ll move on. The world will keep on turning. They will fade in the memories of their friends. In less than five years, someone would have said their name for the last time and they will be forgotten.

They are not special. I am not special. No one is. If they take their lives, that’s it. Don’t try to make it into a romantic thing. This is not a syndicated show where the characters save one another in a world that just doesn’t understand them. This is real life. When you kill yourself, goodbye.

A lot of suicidal people take themselves (and their feelings) too seriously. I know people who grew up in heroin-addicted households, dragging their dads off the street at the age of 15, in a foreign land where they don’t know anyone, to a home where there’s no heat or love or care. I know people who have been sexually abused by the people they trusted the most--especially this deaf kid.

He was sexually abused by the priest in the parish church where he lived and served. The priest specifically targeted him and other deaf kids, because he knew they couldn’t speak and tell their parents. It was a living horror story just hearing his childhood laid out. He struggled with many forms of addiction his entire life. But he made it.

Now if that kid made it through, what more will these fucking millennials and 90′s kids whose problems range from “What I feel,” to “What’s for dinner?”

Emotional sap. It’s when a television drama has nothing happening so they choose to tug at the heartstrings over and over again instead of offering something real. Never shower these people with compliments, like you are beautiful, you are needed, you are special and one of a kind.

These are not true and they know. So many people commit suicide in the world that when they blow their faces all over the bathroom wall, the paramedics’ heart rates won’t even change when they wipe their gray matter off the ceiling.

Never butter them up. It’s not good for them and not good for you.

Always assure them it will be alright as long as they reach out to someone. This world is chaotic and suicidal people normally have no one to reach out too. Many of them don’t realize that this requires an active effort on their part.

You ever have one of those friends who wonder why they don’t get invited to parties or hangouts, when they’ve never invited anyone themselves? A lot of suicidal people are like that. Always remind them that reaching out is always a real option, if not to you, then to a mental health professional (although to me, they’re just overpriced pill dispensers.)

Cynicism aside, that maybe just what they need.

Marikina Horror Story

It’s going to be Halloween very soon, and variety shows on TV are already looking for horror stories. I thought that I’d chime in with one of mine.

It was late September about two years ago. Me and my friends were going home from an afternoon of drinking in Marikina Riverpark. It’s this plot of land that goes from Montalban, San Mateo, all the way across Marikina from one side to the other.

There was a place near Riverpark that Typhoon Ondoy destroyed. It’s called Tumana, and it has the lowest standard of living among all the places in Marikina. Many houses there were made from wood and light materials so almost nothing was left standing after the typhoon. It also suffered the greatest casualties.

There was a shortcut from the Riverpark to the main highway connecting to the town proper, and that was Tumana. Walking through there gave us an eerie vibe, not just because of its history with the typhoon but because of its high crime rate. Drinkers and topless tambays of all stripes were outside that night. It was that kind of holiday.

There was a part of Tumana where the street lights tapered off into nothing. It’s a place where the homes weren’t reconstructed and it was just left a wasteland. It was the shortest way to the main road.

There were one or two strays passing through, but even as we passed them they paid us no mind. They had this empty look on their face like they were hollowed inside. Their faces were half-down, like they were mulling over something troubling.

A minute or two of walking and we already felt like we were walking down a provincial road. The street lights faded farther and farther behind until we can only see a twinkling of them. The people became fewer and fewer until we found ourselves alone. We passed through a forest-like part of the town, with trees that have branches hanging down like people, right in front of the road where cars would hit them if only they passed by. There were things that we thought were people until we hit them with the flashlight on our phones and realized we were just scaring ourselves.

But there was something that happened, and up until today I can not forget it.

After about ten minutes of walking without street lights, my friend Jeff stopped and said he’s seeing something in front of us. Off into the distance, about 40 meters or so, there was a man. Or at least it looked like a man. He stood there perfectly still, staring blankly upward.

I thought, what the hell, this would make a perfect opening to an anime about vampires. Teens getting infected and all, trying to hide it from their school and their parents. It’s going to sell in Japan! I was making myself laugh out of this oddity. At least I thought so.

We paused a little bit and tried to compose ourselves. It’s probably just another object that our brains are interpreting as a man. That’s what happens when you put yourself in scary situations, your brain convinces you that what you think is happening is real. It’s a defense mechanism and a damn good one.

I convinced them all to wander closer, and if it was indeed a lunatic, then we could just scram. We walked closer, and closer, and closer--and as if in a blink of an eye, we saw its head rapidly turn toward us.

I almost had a heart attack. Its body didn’t move. It was like one quick inhuman motion. Its arms were raised upward, like running from a disaster, and I can’t help the feeling of dread and hopelessness to fall upon my being.

All of a sudden, I wondered “What are we doing here?” I wanted to be at home with my kids. Then I stopped myself, because I knew I didn’t have kids. I wondered how I could think that.

We walked closer, and closer, and closer. Our hairs raising every minute we get nearer, until finally, we can light it up with our flashlights. One glance, and we already knew what it was.

It was a mud pile that didn’t even resemble a man up close (though it sure did from a distance.) It was three piles, actually. A big one in the front that formed the torso and head, one at the back that formed the arms, and one further back that formed the legs and the mouth.

You see, it seemed like half the mouth was disconnected from top half. From afar, it almost looked like it was screaming with its mouth agape.

We gave ourselves a laugh and made some coarse jokes about who’s a pussy, who’s a BIGGER pussy and who’s the MAIN-BITCH pussy of that mudman among us. But then we pressed on walking.

We were walking farther down the road and we saw the clouds parting. The moon lit up a part of the stretch we were walking on. We thought, thank goodness. At least some of the creepiness can rub off this town. We really couldn’t take anymore.

A few more minutes of this and we just fell silent. We just wanted to get out of this road and into my place, where there was coffee and pancit canton and unlimited horror movies. My place was like a safehouse for strays that don’t have anything to do on holidays.

I kept thinking why I thought I had a family. I can picture the faces of my kids, they were so clear. It was as if I could go home and find them waiting. But the home I had imagined was different. It was a shanty, wooden, tarpaulin on the windows hitting against the rain... when suddenly, I was woken up by these forceful pushes from Connie, one of the people I was with.

She had this pale, stone-faced demeanor. She was trying to say something.

“Dave, wait. Dave--look, wait--”

I tried to make sense of it.

“Look at what? What are you saying?”

“The man--BEHIND!”

Immediately, my head swung behind her, and I can see what looked like the mudman only significantly CLOSER. It was like 10 steps from where she was.

For the amount of time we walked, it should have been long out of sight. I felt this sinking feeling in my chest. I felt like there was impending doom.

Connie was nearly in tears and I consoled her. The rest of the group stopped and looked at the brown effigy with barefaced disbelief. How could it have gotten here without us seeing it? We couldn’t have passed another mud pile or we would know. There was something Connie said that struck a chord with me.

“I have to go home to my kids.”

We thought she referred to her cousins that she was taking care of at the time.

We walked a little further on and made a deal that one of us must keep eyes on the mudman at all times. First it was Connie, then Jeff, then Sai, then me. I took the first shift because Connie was still shaken up. It still looked like mud and stone, in a configuration that made our brains trip up. It got farther and farther until it was Jeff’s turn, and then Sai, and then Connie.

A little further down the road, it was Sai’s turn again, and slowly, she started screaming.

“Hey, hey, HEY, look at it--LOOK AT IT!”

In the distance, we saw the mudman, and I’ll never forget it.

Out of the shadow the cloud, we saw it emerge, and it was running toward us. We heard its footsteps colliding with the dirt road. And I remember this horrific shriek coming toward us in the distance. It was like a man unhinged, like he was burning.

I also remember smelling something foul during that time. Like a pig getting burned alive. I looked around and there was that feeling again. Impending doom. Like I’m about to die.

Jeff started to run and so did we. We ran so frantically toward the main road that we began dropping things.

When we reached the main road, people were looking at us funny, like they didn’t want to talk to us for some reason. I came to a table in front of a sari-sari store where there were people drinking and I said,

“Hinahabol kami! Merong baliw don!”

But they just looked at us suspiciously, and said,

“Balot kayo ng putik.”

And they were right. I had mud all over my shoes and pants. How did I get it? The road was dirt but it wasn’t wet!

Then the tambays told us,

“Wag kayong dadaan d’yan pag dis-oras ng gabi. Nananaginip ang mga patay.”

I asked them, what does that mean?

They said,

“Akala ng mga patay buhay pa sila, kaya sinusubukan nilang umuwi sa mga mahal nila.”

I said,

“Bakit nila kami gustong habulin?”

They said,

“Nakakalimot na sila. Kumakapit lang sila sa lahat ng buhay para makaraos. Sa ngayon d’yan muna sila sa kalsadang ‘yan, pero kinabukasan, lalo na para sa mga kinukuha na ng ibaba, alam nilang wala nang oras.

Naghahanap lang sila ng kasama.”

And that was it. Me and Jeff spoke about that night in our school but no one seemed to believe us. Just a short while later, we were convinced that it didn’t happen and chalked it up to our imagination.

But some nights, I still hear the laughter of children in my dreams and then I smell the stench of mud. A lot of Marikenos have traumatic dreams about what happened in Ondoy but most of us just keep it in the past.

Jeff once told me that he woke up to a bump downstairs when we were in fourth year, and it smelled like there was something burning in the room. Strangely, he found traces of dried earth outside his windowsill the next morning. It was like someone had stepped there with a shoe.

Here’s Lean on Pete in David’s Words.

Lean on Pete is a much-raved-about movie on Rottentomatoes with a 92% overall score. Now I know dramas with that score are mostly boring, pseudointellectual affairs but I decided to give it a try because it’s set in the American South and I was told it was a road trip movie. Those are my two favorite elements for non-action movies.

The film starts with Charley doing mundane things around the house and going for a run. He finds a horse racing strip around a mile from his house and gets a job there. He meets Del who introduces him to horses, one of whom was Lean On Pete, a soon-to-be-retired race horse. He starts a friendship with the animal and escapes with it when he learns it was about to be slaughtered. The rest is history.

Now was there anything interesting about the things you’ve just read? Are you wondering, “Who’s Del?” or “Why is Pete about to be slaughtered?” Well, me neither.

The movie is a forgettable snoozefest that’s best reserved to the mile-high intellects of the Sundance crowd to enjoy, because they can see things in movies we can’t.

There was nothing noteworthy happening on screen much of the time. There was a part where Charley stands up for himself and whacks a homeless guy for taking his money, but apart from that, it’s just a guy with a horse he’s never been on wandering the dessert until they reach Wisconsin.

Charley is a likeable character. He’s golden, given the situation he’s in. His dad’s an asshole and they’re this close to living in a trailer park. His resiliency is interesting but only for a moment. He travels the frontier lands and learns to steal. He was homeless for a time. He hung out with sketchy characters.

But bereft of even slightly dramatic background music or anything clever in the script, we’re left wondering why we’re still watching him on screen.

Many people are saying that it’s good because it avoids sentimentality or many other usual routes that drama films take to deliver a gut punch to the audience. I say, Fruitvale Station did that an infinitude of times better. This thing here, would probably make you feel like you’ve walked through an empty dessert by the time it’s done.

Lean On Pete gets a 2/5.

Here’s Goyo: Ang Batang Heneral in David’s words.

All throughout the film is lackluster. It’s not a disaster, but it courts that territory. You spend so much time just waiting for something to happen and when it does, it’s instantly nullified.

The characters are boring. Goyo’s friends whose names I can’t even remember just hang around without any significance to the plot. A possible exception might be his brother but he’s only used for two things: One, to demonstrate the nepotism in the Filipino military which led to its demise; and two, to showcase a contrast between Goyo’s status and his fading satisfaction with himself.

The movie plays around with the theme of bayan o sarili but in a much less heroic way. It’s slower, softer, and less cinematic. This might be what Heneral Luna is like if he was raised on Facebook with OFW parents who gave him everything he ever wanted since birth.

Goyo just sort of loiters around from town to town, womanizing and enjoying the festivities held in his name. He fell in love but nothing really came of it. He fought in a battle that was featured for all of 30 seconds, and was sparsely called back to in the film. Whenever his role as a general is reprised, he flees or fails spectacularly. Not to fault the guy, he was only 23 years-old. I’m 24 and I have no idea what to do with even an office job.

But the movie is not an action movie at all, it’s a drama with a personal journey. It showed Goyo’s development from unworthy general to full-blooded patriot, all on the inside. This results in a movie about people with guns dying before they even had a chance to shoot, towns being run over before they even had a chance to defend themselves, and just relentless defeat at the hands of the Americans.

Speaking of the Americans, the movie really doesn’t give any reason for us to hate them. They’re boastful, yes, but that’s not enough reason to go to war with them. It didn’t fully show why fighting for freedom is important. On the contrary, Goyo and his underlings all just fought for survival. In fact, my girlfriend and I were discussing after the movie, “What if we just let the Americans annex us? What would our lives be like today?” and I don’t think we’re alone in that thought. A lot of Filipinos would trade in our current state of affairs for Spain or America, or even Japan in spite of the things they’ve done.

Now I sound like I’m nitpicking this movie to death but I just didn’t get the entertainment value from it. Heneral Luna was a hit because it balanced a civics lesson with fun and action and this just went the opposite way.

I give Goyo a 3/5 stars.

There is so much on my mind that I can’t articulate. This is why I fell in love with writing.

When I watch TV shows and movies, I always have the subtitles on because aside from great direction and casting, what I’m after is the writing. It’s the backbone of everything. It makes the characters believable, makes their journey worth taking, and imbibes their world with tragedy or romance.

I believe--and I am no expert on the human soul--but I believe that when somebody writes, they’re letting their inner man breathe. It doesn’t matter whether it’s an adage, a long prose or a pretentious haiku. When somebody stops expressing themselves, their soul has effectively died.

Now I’m as much a fan of masculinity as every man in this feminized generation, but I think this is a component that has to be kept. It has the power to change people’s minds. It makes even the most unlikeable villain seem likeable and a faultless hero seem sly. It can convey the motive behind every action and the weight behind a seemingly small decision.

With words people laugh or cry, or sometimes go insane. When did anyone have that reaction to an oil painting?

This is why communication is so important. With it, you tell your story to the world either consciously and subconsciously, and what are we people but evolving stories? No matter how fake you are on Instagram or how real you are off the grid, you will tell your story, and it can be to resounding applause or awkward stares from on-lookers.

What a crazy day this was.

I woke up 6 pm, a full two hours before I have to. It’s crazy because I slept at 1 o’clock and that was 2 hours before I got enough rest. It’s not a good routine. My body has gotten used to just sleeping 5 hours when I have the opportunity to do at least 8. I have to change that.

I got up and found that I was alone in the house. Thoughts of Hereditary were still swirling around my head so I wanted to get outside. Soon enough, and without taking a shower, I decided to go.

There is a place in my mind for buried memories. I don’t open it often because the memories would lose their impact, and without the remembrance of how they make me feel--how they shaped who I am, I would lose my identity. But that’s what I’ve come to now. Nostalgia. I live in an age of boredom. Everything is routine. There is nothing I do that I’m not supposed to, and I’ll wake up tomorrow to do them again. It’s a waking nightmare sometimes.

I went around on my dad’s bike. It’s a Honda Click 150i. The wheels are a little thin for the carriage but it’s got good feel. Eastwood, then Pasig, then Taguig.

I ended up at a strange place that really scared me. It was a part of Taguig where the roads were cracked and flooded. I don’t even recall it raining. Some puddles reached the height of my femur. I inched the past a truck and I ended up in a ditch. Good thing I escaped with the motorcycle unharmed.

It’s Taguig that’s reminiscent of the city’s unmentionables. It looked like South Africa. It was a warehouse town with a shantytown on the edge. I drove through that part all the way to C-6, which I found out was the opposite direction from my workplace where I’m required to show up for my Friday shift.

I allotted some time to get lost in Pasig because I’ve never been. But the rain started, and it beat down. Pretty soon I was hurtling from cover to cover, trying to muster the strength to still ride it out. First I was in a no-name gas station called Gazz or something, then Flying V, and then I just decided to brave it.

Driving out of Pasig at 10 pm with the rain pouring isn’t kosher. My helmet was fogging and my hands went numb from the cold. I was going shoulder to shoulder with 12-wheelers on roads that needed repair. But past Legazpi bridge, I knew where to go. Turned left on the flood way and pretty soon I was at C5.

When I arrived at work, I was wet down to my underwear. I didn’t prepare for rains that strong, so I thought I could dry off with my clothes on. But fate wasn’t on my side.

I had to take off the protective pieces of my jacket to dry it in the hand dryer, and then my socks, and then my muddied shoes. Walking back to the production floor, I was wondering how I could sit in my chair with my pants wet to the inside. I thought about my blanket (for the nap room), wrapping it around my waist, and drying my pants off, too. I thanked God for my resourcefulness and proceeded to do it.

Some co-workers caught me in my makeshift drawers. Having no sane explanation for the night I had, I played it off. “Bagong-tuli,” I said. It worked like a charm.

I realized that these nights are becoming more and more common. It’s like I’m living a double life. If I’m not cleaning blood off our patio, setting up things for my church which is totally out-of-character, or ending up in a pastor’s meeting in Malabon, I’m mostly out doing obscure stuff.

I was about to take the motorcycle out of parking because the meter resets at midnight, when I realized that I had no one to share this to. I was just truly alone, and it’s the start of the season. The world has moved on. It has moved on from many of us.

But, well, that’s life. It’s meant to be chaotic. Guess I’ll have to write here about these crazy experiences before I find them totally normal. Hope you all are having a saner night than I.

I’m Afraid To Be That Person

I’m afraid to be that person who has resigned to a mediocre life. I’m at the age of thirty, sitting in my work-a-day job. The best thing to happen in my life is if I could get that corner office, that pay raise I don’t really need and more responsibilities just thrust upon my way. I’m a passenger in life, not a driver.

I’m afraid to be that person who’s scared to commit. My hobbies come and go. One season, I’m into fitness, the other I’m into food. One season, I’m into a girl, the next I’m into someone new. Years pass by and I still have no one to marry. I’m an expert in nothing. A log floating in an ocean. Aimless.

I’m afraid to be that person who never turns out to be anything. You see family pictures of your friends and their families. Their children’s medals hanging on the wall and their passions coming true, and I just sit there in my fear of life. There are no safe spaces in life. Other people have crossed the street and traveled the world, and I’m just skirting along the sidewalks afraid to get hurt.

I’m afraid to be that person who lets fear control him. I know that’s a paradox. I don’t want to be that person who gave up on their dreams and didn’t even try. I don’t want to be that sheltered cat who’s capable of nothing, who’s future is nothing, who’s existence is nothing.

I’m afraid to be that person who’s reason for breathing is to survive. I work to survive, I go out to feel happy for a while--after a while, it gets old but I have to keep doing it because that’s how normal people live: Working for the paycheck, loving for the thrills, and going to the gym to stay fuckable.

I’m afraid to be that person who’s not a real person. I know someone who has 3 million followers on Instagram. She doesn’t even show her face. Her feed is filled with fashion, motivational quotes, traveling and ass. That’s 3 million people who have no idea who she is. What does her voice sound like? What’s her job? What’s her personality? That’s a fake existence.

I’m afraid to be that person who acted too late. You know when it’s too late in someone’s life. I don’t even want to have friends like that. Their life is sunsetting, and they’re just there like dumb onlookers.

Most of all, I’m afraid to be that person who only has me to make me happy. A chap once told me that you are responsible for your own happiness, and to an extent that’s true. But he believed he could make happiness out of thin air. A lot of souls are lost in this idea.

When you only have you to make you happy, why would you need anyone else? Why would you go anywhere else, experience anything, set goals or make plans? Why would you even get up in the morning? Maybe that’s why depressed people sleep more than 12 hours a day.

I almost told this person, because as you can infer, he lives a loveless existence--he was ranting to me about this lover that’s giving him a lot uncertainty, but he’s happy. He loves himself, you see.

I almost said, if you didn’t love you, who would?

Actually, Far Cry 5‘s Ending is Bad

This is a response article to Gamecrate’s comical justification of why Far Cry 5′s ending is “Actually... good.”

Every man is entitled to his own opinion. You can like The Room if you want to. You can even say it’s better than The Disaster Artist. But then people won’t take you seriously, will they?

Far Cry 5 is a good game. It’s flaw? Writing.

We are stuck with caricatures of characters that are bereft of reasoning, charisma and relatability. One of them is a literal drug lord who walks around in a Sunday dress in her nuclear bunker. Is she a hardened criminal with street smarts and gun skills? Is she a mafioso with a coy smile and a ruthless mind?

Nope.

She is literally a girl in her twenties with a short dress and a corn-fed smile. How are we supposed to believe that she’s running a drug operation? Who would take her seriously among men twice her size, weight and tactical ability?

It’s revealed in the end that she was just used by the main villain after being abused and blackmailed. So what, why are we even supposed to kill this girl? Unbelievable.

The issue of writing comes full circle with the ending, and by that I mean the Good Ending: The one where all your friends die in a nuclear explosion.

There is an Easter egg ending where, at the beginning of the game, you can choose not to arrest the main antagonist and simply walk away from the abuse and violence they are causing Montana’s people. This leads to a rather funny game time of almost ten minutes, and then you see the credits roll.

The Gamecrate article uses this as a crucial statement where you can “avoid kicking off the violent action of the game.” So what, are we just going to skip the fact that cult members were already crucifying civilians, putting ram skulls on their heads, and etching “sinner” across their bellies? Are we just going to ignore that the motto a secondary protagonist is “cull the herd?” (And oh, the “herd” stands for people. In case anyone’s wondering.)

Another ending is, after meeting the main antagonist in his home island, he gives you a chance to walk away, and you do, but then a song on the car radio comes on which is kind of a trigger-song for you to kill everybody (if this all sounds very confusing, it wasn’t explained in the game either.) You kill everyone. Game’s done, fade to black, and scene.

Gamecube and I agree this is a bad ending.

The good ending is, after a goofy final battle where you shoot your friends until they’re incapacitated (and you revive them, so they’re on your side now), you arrest the main antagonist. As you start to haul him away, a nuclear explosion goes off in the distance. Antagonist says, “It is finished, child.” Something to that effect.

You get him in your truck along with most of your friends and drive to a bunker dodging falling trees and abandoned cars along the way. Right before you reach it, the game pulls a final gut punch. A tree falls onto your car which somehow knocks out everyone except the antagonist and he carries you to the bunker like in the Lovely Bones. You wake up and you’re tied up, and he gives you a whispery speech about him being right and how he’s your father. It’s all very gross.

Apart from being defeated by a shirtless dude with a man-bun, what really takes the cake is how the game sets you up with heavily upgradable weapons, friends, and survival equipment only for it to be of no use in the end. It even has a topical sense of humor for its descriptions of the fish and game you’ve caught (you can do that for money.)

Anybody with a basic investment in the game would describe this as a catastrophic failure in storytelling but Gamecube actually describes it as a feature! Moreover, it says that we just aren’t prepared for Far Cry 5 and we’ve become entitled to the sugar rush of victory when completing a game.

We just aren’t in their alternative intellectual headspace. We’re so used to these dumbed-down shooters offering incentives to win when we should expect steaming piles of radioactive shit! Skill and perseverance? Get out of here with that crap. Nothing means anything! Get out of my room, ma! I don’t care about the smell!

What’s even funnier is how they’ve disassociated Joseph (the main antagonist) from the explosion.

Sure, it was an untimed, purely coincidental event that happened right at his arrest and right at his zip code. No connection at all to make there. It’s not like he’s the source of apocalyptic sentiment in the game, and he describes the final seal of the apocalypse being broken as you arrest him. No, not him.

Every civilian nuclear bunker in Hope was just there by coincidence. They did not hear about the cult causing a collapse through nuclear means. John, Jacob, and Faith all didn’t have nuclear bunkers because they knew Joseph would do something this stupid. It was all a yuuuuge coincidence.

What’s wrong with saying that is that it makes you a villain and you’ve been duped by the story into becoming an active participant. The talk about international tension was so few and far between that I forgot it even existed. In the next Far Cry game, we’d all be wondering if we’re really supposed to fight for whatever universe they’re going to trap us in next because we can’t trust the story.

Bottom line: Far Cry 5, 5/10.

Dreams

I’ve written so much about my dreams, because right now, there’s really nothing I can do but sit and talk about it. I’m working on going out there and doing, which is what the next chapter of my life will be all about.

I think a lot of people can relate to my struggles. Most of us are born in middle to lower-income class families with grand ambitions of our own and no way to make them work. Over the years, those ambitions have been carved down to realistic ones, but always with that same spirit of celebration for every accomplishment and a hopefulness toward the next milestone.

The bottom line is, we have our dreams, and we have work to do. Those are the two things in life we’re mindful of in the grand scheme of things.

My dreams are simple. I want a house in Tagaytay to take my kids on vacation, and a house in Manila where no one can kick us out. I want a car, and a fund for my children’s education. I want some investments in long-term stocks paying off when I reach retirement age. You can sense the underlying theme in all of these dreams which is money.

I’ve long struggled in my spiritual life about what does this all mean. Am I evil for wanting to be financially independent? Am I shirking my call to the ministry, and am I not trusting God when I put my life in my hands?

So much has been said about the rich finding it harder to enter heaven than a camel through a needle, and not being able to serve God and mammon. I can only convince myself that what I’m doing is right. In my religion, if you don’t trust God in a game of chance about absolutely everything, you will miss His will and your life will be miserable.

It’s said to me almost like a promise by my mom, but here’s the problem.

My mom and dad are both godly people. They tossed all caution to the wind and served God for the majority of their lives. But they don’t have retirement plans, no home or property to their name, and no insurance policy to cover the future. They don’t even have a happy marriage.

I love my parents as much as anyone, but they’ve dug a hole for three. How am I supposed to live my own life when I have them to consider? Is it selfish to even dream of a life for myself?

Am I selfish for having dreams of a having place where, for once in my life, I have no one to evict me? Am I selfish for wanting my kids to have an education where I don’t threaten them to quit because I work like a horse for public school tuition fees? Am I selfish for even envisioning to have kids in the future?

This is the product of the extreme anti-materialistic worldview in the Christian community. I once heard my dad say in a prayer, that all we must ask of God is our basic needs and He will take care of the rest.

I say, God has given you two hands, two feet, and a mind to set goals so you don’t leave it to the cosmic tides of the universe to bring you fortune. God is sovereign over the rich and poor, but he doesn’t predestine them, otherwise He wouldn’t be just in saying the rich have a harder time entering heaven than a camel through a needle, when He was the one who caused his wealth.

My goal is not to be wealthy anyway, but to live a life liberated from the worries of money. I don’t want to be a Donald Trump or a Bill Gates, I just want to have enough so my wife doesn’t form wrinkles from budgeting and my kids grow up in a non-hostile environment where their interests are developed along with their potential.

I don’t want to be liberated from God, and He has certainly taken His time to correct my heart of this wrong attitude. I thought that being well-off means hoarding your wealth all to yourself, and that was wrong. I thought it was taking whatever job possible to pursue wealth, and that was wrong. We were all brought here for a purpose, and in fulfilling that purpose, we must obliquely reach financial independence.

I will use my wealth, no matter how big or small it is, in dedication to God and how He has blessed me.

So, here we are. These are my dreams, and as I close this blog, I hope to look toward a brighter future. Thank you for being with me on this journey, through all my phases and weird quirks.

I hope God blesses all of us for the future, and it’s been a nice time blogging my life here.

Goodbye, Intronaut

When I first started this Tumblr, I really didn’t know what it was about. I just felt like I needed an outlet for feelings, thoughts, and creativity, and this was the place to do it. It was the early 2010s, so blogging was still cool.

The only kids who were doing Tumblr were the cool kids. This was a very different website from what it is today. There were barely any Facebook users among my friends, and the ones that were, were usually pretty hush about it. So was the case with Tumblr.

This was a website full of streaming Flickr pictures with deep quotes and blog posts about the happenings in our lives. It was like an online diary, suitable for viewing by everyone, from everyone. It contained our favorite shows, movies, and many writings about the people we loved.

Blogging wasn’t such artifice back then. Online likes had no value even though Reddit upvotes were a thing (I guess, I wasn’t on Reddit yet.) People would just write stuff that streaked across their minds and it was like talking to a best friend.

But lately, I’ve noticed that place has turned into a graveyard. It’s just a place I use to watch .gifs of unusual porn, occasionally read stuff that my friends have written 5 years ago (that they haven’t deleted yet) and perchance, when I’m in the mood, actually write something I’m feeling or a thought that’s been bugging me for a few days, and with such vague metaphors that it’s almost impossible to know what I’m really talking about.

I could write about bad weather and fake friends, but it’s really it about my job and how dissatisfied I am. I can write about the transience of things and the passage of time, when it’s really just my boring life that’s worrying me.

This blog isn’t what it was anymore. It didn’t have the confrontation, sincerity and fire it once had. But that’s a good thing.

Everyone has moved on to better things, and I’m supposed to do the same. I can’t keep revisiting old memories in the hopes of finding who I am. Who I am is not the past, it’s in the present and the future. I have been shaped by many experiences but I have to face the new day ahead. I can’t keep heading indoors and turning on the blinds, hoping that my friends would come back to a party that’s long over.

So this is the end for Intronaut.

For the next few weeks, I will be writing about stuff that I’ve been holding back on writing for years. You’ll read things that you normally wouldn’t hear from me, all in a straight, matter-of-fact style.

So many things have been written on this blog. So many changes and so many lives I have lived while going back here. But like all good things in life, it has to come to an end. Here’s an advanced goodbye to all the times we had, and a cheer for all the times ahead.

Beyond My Reach

There is a version of ourselves we want to be, and a version of ourselves that we are. But for me, there is a version of myself I want to come back to.

I woke up to the moonlight last night, peeking at my window. It was so bright that it illuminated my room like a fluorescent bulb. Again, I realized that I am a creature of the night, living, breathing, and thinking like the daytime is a thing of the past.

I have spent four years in the cover of darkness, never really knowing where I’m going or who I’m with. Last night, I was with a stranger. He talked about his problems, and his music, and what not. I forgot about 90% of the things he said. Because that’s what we do now: We make noise with our mouths, we no longer talk.

There is no longer any connection that exists between our souls. We’re trapped in our online world, and then in the real one, and we expect to live real lives. Online, I see vibrant pictures of friends meeting in public places, in hole-in-the-wall restaurants, toasting to trendy food. But do you know what I really see? Appearances.

These friends go on out of town trips to escape the monotony of their daily lives, and then return with the same heart. They’re going to fill their void for a couple of weeks, and then it’s back to the same old grind.

Don’t get me started on people who like to “travel alone.” I mean, I get what being an introvert is, but travelling to neighboring country alone? You’re escaping something, and you’re not going to find your solace there.

This is the version of me I’m trying to escape. One that’s been poisoned by social media to look poised and collected while chaos bubbles underneath. I used to take pride in my chameleon-like ability to fake a smile or being enthused when inside, I feel more hollow than I’ve ever been.

Aimless, directionless, and lifeless. These are the defining qualities of an adult today, and I’m not willing to watch myself grow old that way. Maybe it’s pride or maybe it’s God’s voice, but I don’t care. This is not where I belong. I have never been so low in my life that I’ve denied even the most basic realities of my existence.

That I awake every night to watch paint dry, and then I return to my cot every morning to do it all again.

I thought this was the time for adventure; the time to make mistakes. But I guess that was my first mistake, to settle for something safe instead of something real. I’ve never felt so old and out of touch with the world. I used to burn with passion and ideas, walking in the world like I was the biggest thing in it. Now, I’ve been reduced to the size of an ant, typing away in a four-by-four cubicle, which will be the same when I leave it as it was when I first touched it.

If I walked out of this place next month, never to return, hardly anyone would notice I was gone, and hardly anyone would care. For some people, this miserable state of life has become an accepted reality, but in the back of their minds they know that this isn’t how it should be, and that’s front of mind for me.

Which brings us to the version of ourselves that we want to be. What does anyone really want in life? A strong family, a strong church, and strong friendships. But that question is self-defeating, because to have strong friendships, you almost always have to be raised in a strong family, with a strong church, and strong mentors to guide you along the way.

Fame and fortune is secondary. If you really dig down in the psychology of people who pursue these superficial things, you could always draw some basic human component that they are lacking: The recognition of their fathers, the approval of their moms, and the support of their community. These three are the pillars of human life, and without them we are all drifting in an ocean, celebrating any semblance of rootedness that come our way.

It’s useless to blame the past for the way that we are now. But we can change ourselves today, and that’s exactly what I’m doing.

Every four years or so, I turn into a version of myself who feels sorry for the past version I evolved out of. When I was in college, I felt sorry for who I was in high school. When I was employed, I felt sorry for who I was in college. I guess that’s just part of how people grow.

Whenever my friends meet me, they always have a hard time recognizing me on the inside (as well as on the outside now that I’ve slimmed down.) When I was in high school, I was a shy introvert with no one to share the world. I’d be lucky to talk to three people in my class per day, and that’s just on especially good days.

When I was in college, I was a full-blown extrovert. There is hardly anyone in in my course who didn’t know who I am. I joined a pageant and got zero stage fright as I walked up in front of hundreds. I formed my wit and my sense of humor. I stayed up late with friends, drinking liquor under the sprawling sky, and there was not a worry on my mind.

When I first started working, I became a full-on serious Sam. I only talk to people who I need to talk to, impressed the people I need to impress, so on and so forth...

But now it dawned on me that I’ve stayed in the same place for too long. I’m always out for something beyond my reach, and it made me look inside. The thing I’m missing isn’t somewhere out there in the great ether of money, girls, and parties. It was in my past.

The version of myself I want to come back to is one so prehistoric, I didn’t even have a working memory when I got out. It was me when I was a child.

I know it’s a little bit early to chase my childhood but Jesus said, whoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a child, will never enter it, and narrow is the gate that leads to life.

Life. That’s what I’m after. I’m not after fair-weather friends with whom I have nothing in common with. I’m after friends--real people I can laugh and cry with. I’m not after another girlfriend with slim legs and big boobs, I’m after someone with substance, who can understand me as I am and know how we’re both imperfect, and we’ll still make it work.

I’m not after another escape from my meaningless work. I’m after work I don’t need to escape from. I’m not searching for light in a sea of unbelief because I’ve already found it.

It’s not as glamorous as my friends post on Instagram, but it is real, and I’m sticking with it. I’ve always known to chase these values in the back of my mind but something hindered me: Be it heartbreak, ambition, you name it--I’ve felt it. But now I see things clearly. There is the world that looks good in pictures without an ounce of happiness when inhabited, and there is a world with imperfect people who can hurt you and make other mistakes, but you can love with all your heart.

This year, I will be leaving my work here in a credit agency, not because I mastered it but because it mastered me. I’m going to stay with my current girlfriend because she’s modest and intelligent, and she doesn’t need to flash legs to be pretty. And I’m going to make peace with my family, the toughest task of all. But God is with me, to the ends of the earth.