Over the course of the week, I had these realizations about happiness:
Don't be too happy that you could whine about it. (after talking with my friends about the adverse effects of someone's ultra-happiness)
Too much happiness is bad for one's sanity. (same case as previous entry)
Don't think too much about being happy. Just be happy. (random thought)
So late last night, it just came to me, this song about happiness which hit me as an echo of the principles in Milan Kundera's "Unbearable Lightness of Being". I just started singing the song while waiting for a ride home. The song's lyrics are just 7 sentences, each repeated x number of times.
I'M SO HAPPY
"I'm so happy, yeah" (x times)
"I'm so happy, yeahoooooooo" (x times)
"I'm so happy. Yahoooooooo" (x times)
"I'm so happy, yeaaooooooow" (x times)
"I'm so happy, yeaaooooooowcchhhh" (x times)
"God, I'm so happy" (x times)
"God, I'm too happy" (x times)
I think I really was too happy yesterday. I was too happy I could feel my insides burbling then boiling. Bursting in the seams with happiness! Can you imagine if a person could really explode with happiness? Like happiness was a bomb inside you and it could go off when you're too happy, killing you. And when you explode, you'll splatter bits and pieces of you on other people. I don't know if you can kill anyone if you hit them with an eyeball hurtling at top speed. Maybe.
art + culture + happenings + musings
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
New gig
I'm on a good roll these days. Things are picking up well. Tomorrow I'll be meeting with old friends and colleagues and hopefully new ones at Zabadani's to work on the next literary arts event. It's going to be the third installment of the Poetry Night series supported by the Davao Writers Guild and Young Davao Writers. But next time, we'll be pumping things up. We'll be putting some spice into the plain readings. There will be perfomances, visual presentations, and music! I hope more people will get into it in the following days. I don't think I'm anxious. Just hopeful.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
"Why do you write?"
I remember that question being thrown at me like a dry morsel during my first semester as a Creative Writing student. It's a very perplexing question that I needed to gnaw on for a long time. The question felt as existential as asking myself "Why do I exist?" I think I went on to say that cliche, unimaginative line "I write to express myself," which any CW teacher would accept as literary juvenilia and totally ignoble because they'd be more impressed if one would say "I write because I am" or "Because I want to challenge the literary canon."
Now, I think I should have said "I write because I am obliged." That would have been more practical. There were really a lot of things obliging me to write aside from being enrolled in the CW course. Outside of class, I see a lot of things and live through things that needed to be written to be understood. Growing up, I had gradually become aware of the fragility of the present and the past. Experience grows old and sometimes fades with memory. I think writing an experience is totally living it. When writing, one considers an experience like one would a photograph or a painting. One looks from afar to see the big picture and then one looks closely to see the details. And then one turns the canvas or the photograph around to see what's behind.
*****
I think this will be a never-ending essay. I will write more on this in the coming days.
Meanwhile, visit http://whywewriteseries.wordpress.com to read what drives other writers to write.
Now, I think I should have said "I write because I am obliged." That would have been more practical. There were really a lot of things obliging me to write aside from being enrolled in the CW course. Outside of class, I see a lot of things and live through things that needed to be written to be understood. Growing up, I had gradually become aware of the fragility of the present and the past. Experience grows old and sometimes fades with memory. I think writing an experience is totally living it. When writing, one considers an experience like one would a photograph or a painting. One looks from afar to see the big picture and then one looks closely to see the details. And then one turns the canvas or the photograph around to see what's behind.
*****
I think this will be a never-ending essay. I will write more on this in the coming days.
Meanwhile, visit http://whywewriteseries.wordpress.com to read what drives other writers to write.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Early Morning Notes from the Owlery
6:55 AM on my cellphone
Ilustre
My eyes hurt. I've kept them open for hours since last night when I came to Jeff's house to hang out around 6 which later rolled into a few hours spent with Andi, Marvin and Jeff (still) at Jickong's F. Torres drinking beer and smoking until 11 just so I could wear out the hours before the supposed bombing at the Fuji Xerox spot with DOOM by midnight. But Doom texted an hour before the drop-in that he was sick due to consecutive nights spent drinking. Apparently, we had to cancel our meeting.
The plan was we would meet at the spot by midnight. He'd bomb a wall at the decrepit Fuji Xerox bldg. just beside the wall previously blessed by UDON, another graff dude and Davao hometown boy who would have graced us his presence if he hadn't gone back to the States a few days ago. I really wanted to meet him because I've been spotting his tags from Bajada to Lanang a long time ago. When DOOM told me he was in town this Christmas and that they were planning to bomb a billboard along the Buhangin-Diversion Road, I prepared myself for the meet-up, video cam and all for a video-doc of their escapades and interviews. Well, unfortunately, that did not happen. But still, I kept my video cam ready for shooting DOOM's bombings, of which the Fuji Xerox would be the first planned docu target. But then, that too has yet to happen. DOOM is staying until January 7 so I hope we get to do it before he leaves for Manila.
So faced with a night of anti-climactic events (i.e. a cancelled plan + the option of going home, which I did not want to do because I did not want to spend for the fares and since most of my next day affairs would be in downtown where I was during that moment of consideration) I decided to stay awake and roam the streets of Davao City with Jeff (my willing accomplice) until daytime. I thought that not going home would save me money since I would no longer be paying for the back-and-forth fares. I thought I could wait for daybreak economically by just talking to Jeff. I was wrong.
I realized that in order to stay awake from midnight 'til daybreak, I have to have energy-boosters. And talking is not one of them. (Talking non-stop is an energy-depletor) The energy-boosters Jeff and I used for our stake-out were more than a pack of yosi (consumed at AVL), a Red Horse stallion for Jeff (consumed at MTS), a Mcdo Shake-Shake fries combo +a serving of large fries (consumed at Mcdo MTS and AVL), two cups of Dunkin Donut hot choco each (consumed on the steps of a beauty parlor beside DD Ilustre), and ultimately, an hour or more of spinning the WEB at this 24-hour Internet cafe shop in Ilustre which fortunately holds the cheapest Internet fee usage in town: a mere P5 per hour. So now, I am dangling by the last thread of my money, which is supposed to last me 'til next week. Yet despite being already broke, I am still sitting in this chair, typing away and consequently, tiring my eyes (which just defeats the purpose of my Web usage: to entertain myself so I could last till daybreak...well, I am still awake anyhow) because my mind is still reeling. Now that I think about it, it's not my eyes that is keeping me awake but my mind.
If you can see me right now, you'll see that I am not the owl with the large eyes and dilated pupils. I am a tired, chinky-eyed owl still forcing myself to stay awake so I could roll again by 8 AM. I have to meet Andi by 9AM at Ateneo High and then run several things after that before going home to Lasang hopefully by 1PM so I could get my hundred years sleep...I hope I could wake up on New Year's Eve and meet the New Year with large, bright eyes.
Oh, it's already 8 AM! Bless me.
Ilustre
My eyes hurt. I've kept them open for hours since last night when I came to Jeff's house to hang out around 6 which later rolled into a few hours spent with Andi, Marvin and Jeff (still) at Jickong's F. Torres drinking beer and smoking until 11 just so I could wear out the hours before the supposed bombing at the Fuji Xerox spot with DOOM by midnight. But Doom texted an hour before the drop-in that he was sick due to consecutive nights spent drinking. Apparently, we had to cancel our meeting.
The plan was we would meet at the spot by midnight. He'd bomb a wall at the decrepit Fuji Xerox bldg. just beside the wall previously blessed by UDON, another graff dude and Davao hometown boy who would have graced us his presence if he hadn't gone back to the States a few days ago. I really wanted to meet him because I've been spotting his tags from Bajada to Lanang a long time ago. When DOOM told me he was in town this Christmas and that they were planning to bomb a billboard along the Buhangin-Diversion Road, I prepared myself for the meet-up, video cam and all for a video-doc of their escapades and interviews. Well, unfortunately, that did not happen. But still, I kept my video cam ready for shooting DOOM's bombings, of which the Fuji Xerox would be the first planned docu target. But then, that too has yet to happen. DOOM is staying until January 7 so I hope we get to do it before he leaves for Manila.
So faced with a night of anti-climactic events (i.e. a cancelled plan + the option of going home, which I did not want to do because I did not want to spend for the fares and since most of my next day affairs would be in downtown where I was during that moment of consideration) I decided to stay awake and roam the streets of Davao City with Jeff (my willing accomplice) until daytime. I thought that not going home would save me money since I would no longer be paying for the back-and-forth fares. I thought I could wait for daybreak economically by just talking to Jeff. I was wrong.
I realized that in order to stay awake from midnight 'til daybreak, I have to have energy-boosters. And talking is not one of them. (Talking non-stop is an energy-depletor) The energy-boosters Jeff and I used for our stake-out were more than a pack of yosi (consumed at AVL), a Red Horse stallion for Jeff (consumed at MTS), a Mcdo Shake-Shake fries combo +a serving of large fries (consumed at Mcdo MTS and AVL), two cups of Dunkin Donut hot choco each (consumed on the steps of a beauty parlor beside DD Ilustre), and ultimately, an hour or more of spinning the WEB at this 24-hour Internet cafe shop in Ilustre which fortunately holds the cheapest Internet fee usage in town: a mere P5 per hour. So now, I am dangling by the last thread of my money, which is supposed to last me 'til next week. Yet despite being already broke, I am still sitting in this chair, typing away and consequently, tiring my eyes (which just defeats the purpose of my Web usage: to entertain myself so I could last till daybreak...well, I am still awake anyhow) because my mind is still reeling. Now that I think about it, it's not my eyes that is keeping me awake but my mind.
If you can see me right now, you'll see that I am not the owl with the large eyes and dilated pupils. I am a tired, chinky-eyed owl still forcing myself to stay awake so I could roll again by 8 AM. I have to meet Andi by 9AM at Ateneo High and then run several things after that before going home to Lasang hopefully by 1PM so I could get my hundred years sleep...I hope I could wake up on New Year's Eve and meet the New Year with large, bright eyes.
Oh, it's already 8 AM! Bless me.
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