Moses

I am sitting here in a lounge chair just outside the ICU ward where my father is currently lying in one of the beds.  It’s my second night on duty and I have been waiting for hours for the cardiologist to tell me the 2DECHO test they did to my father this morning.  It’s almost 1 am. The results are in my bag. 

Thickened mitral valve leaflet without restriction of motion; mitral annular calcification… Thickened right and non-coronary cusp without restriction of motion; aortic annular calcification… Reversed mitral inflow pattern indicative of Grade I left ventricular diastolic dysfunction… Mild mitral regurgitation… Mild tricuspid regurgitation. 

Words that form sentences and that ramble into ribbon of spells like some witch concocting a curse of some kind. I had to Google every word to understand the whole shitload of words and piece them together like some puzzle.  I have an idea already of what my father’s condition is.  I just need to talk to the damn cardiologist.  I can’t blame him – the cardio guy.  He seemed nice and straightforward with somewhat of an affable personality when he delivered the preliminary prognosis to me at 2 am yesterday.  “Your father has difficulty in breathing…  possible solution would be angioplasty… still need to run some tests… before we can wean him off of the tubes." His delivery was effortless, with just the right pinch of bedside manner.

Drinking what probably would be my fifth coffee for the day; I stare at the electric fan on the ceiling and think of its rotating blades, and wonder how many times it rotates in a second.  

My father is sick.  And I’m here in a hospital waiting room on New Year’s Eve waiting for the doctor to tell me when they can take off the tube in his mouth. All I could think about is going home with my father and tell him that he’ll outlive me and he can be the prophet he always claimed to be when my siblings and I were mere kids. 

I used to hate him, my dad.  Loathed him even.  My coming out party was on 9-11 and I punched a cabinet door just to prove a point.  He hated my gay guts. I hated his philandering gonads (at 63!).  I stormed out of the house that night, stayed with my best friend in another city and came back home after 6 months when he had a stroke. He survived a fatal one.  He was damn lucky.  I had to wipe his ass for one whole week.  

Truth be told as much as I hated my father, I love him in my own weird and dysfunctional way.  We were dysfunctional to some extent, our family. We’re a Filipino family in the ghetto with the portrait of the Marcoses in our hallways. He is Catholic by choice, I think; but his parents were Seventh Day Adventists. And every time he’d be in one of his saviour moments (those times when he would be thinking that he would be the new Moses or something), he’d make his children sit in the living room and proclaim the gospels for hours.  We’d be sitting there, me and my older siblings, looking at him standing in front of us, one hand holding a very worn out  Bible, the other hand gesticulating while he spurts out the Gospels with such gusto and bravado like those televangelists we see on TV.  He’d be in that mode for hours, thinking of salvation and rapture, while my mom would be by the kitchen door shaking her head thinking what a nut job my father was, while me and my siblings would be thinking of dinner.  Anything, but this, would do. We could eat paper with mayonnaise and we’d be ok. I’m probably not alone in this, but back then, whenever he was having his salvific moments, I was thinking or even devising of ways to avoid fire and brimstone that was about to beset the sofa where me and my brother and sisters sat.  I was thinking if I could fake shitting in my 6 year old pants and my mother would save me from Leviticus and Revelations.  My brother and sisters were prolly thinking of faking a seizure or something.   The living room sermon will all come to an abrupt end when my mother would finally announce dinner. Then we’d go scrambling to the kitchen and eat as fast as the Marcoses could say Honolulu.  That’s my father, the new Moses. 

I spent this Christmas in our house in Caloocan.  The house is different now.  The house in 4^th Avenue has lost its old charm.  It’s worn out now, despite the repairs my mother commissioned.  It pretty much looks and even feels like my father’s worn out Bible.  Me and my father, we’re tight now.  Age (both his and mine) became the catalyst of our father-son bond.  He doesn’t care that his son is a homosexual.  He prolly doesn’t remember.  But my mother tells me that he knows and he’s ok with it.  I can hug him now, I can even kiss him.  He gets teary eyed whenever I do that.  He never spurts the Gospels like a garden hose but he never fails to give his fatherly wisdom:  “You take care of yourself… Eat right… Exercise… Stop smoking…  Work hard… “I nod and say the customary yeses and uhums every time he says these things.   He walks with a make shift cane, made from some polished tree branch with like hundreds and hundreds of rubber bands on the handle so he can get a better grip of it.  From a short distance he did look like Moses to me. 

Three days later, the whole family (including my father’s siblings) agreed to confine him in the hospital.  He had a heart attack at 3 am.   I was in my box sleeping and only found out at 7 in the morning.   One of my nieces left a message on my phone telling me that Tatay was in the intensive care unit.  I closed my eyes and counted backwards.  I was thinking of the last thing I said to him last Christmas that he’d outlive me… that he’d live to be a hundred or two.  

It’s my second night at the hospital.  I told my family that I would be staying with Tatay till Sunday so I can talk to the doctors. With all the medical jargon they tell us I didn’t want my mother to have an aneurism just trying to understand what caused my father’s heart attack.  At least I have Google and some episodes of ER and House for some references.    I’ve only seen him once since yesterday.   He has this tube in his mouth which helps him breathe but it looked like it hurt.  It did, according to the doctors that’s why they gave him some sedative.   Tatay’s still lucid.  He wanted the tube taken off.  He wanted to drink and he wanted to eat.  He wanted to go home.  He prolly misses his old staff.   Like some clichéd line that was pulled out from some Emmy Award winning series, I told him that we were going home once he gets well.  That he needs to listen to the doctors and not threaten to punch the nurses (he did according to Nanay) and that he should not make Nanay worry and that he should not  write “I Want To Die” on paper.   He was still strong, I said.  He was still gonna outlive me (he waved off his hand at that remark).  I held on to his knee and said those words over and over again.  It was effortless in my part.  He gestured something, he wanted the blanket over his legs.  My sister and I put it.  I patted his knee.  My sister kissed his cheek.  I kissed his forehead.  Put the customary sign of the cross on his forehead and told him that we will be outside. 

My sister had tears when she went out.  I didn’t.  My eyes were dry. Did I want to cry?  Hell yeah.  But I couldn’t because I had to be strong for now.  I remember reading somewhere, or someone telling me or some shit that came  in a dream or something that in a room full of people crying, there’s always somebody mopping the floor. 

I remember that story in the Bible, when Moses was holding the magic staff with his arms outstretched for hours while the Isrealites were fighting of whoever they were fighting off so that they could pass the desert and go to the Promised Land and Moses was getting shit tired because his arms were outstretched for hours and hours.  There was a person helping him, supporting him (I think it was his brother Aaron or some dude named Joshua) so that the Isrealite army would go for the win.  They won.  I need to be that guy for my father right now.   I need to be his Aaron and his Joshua and his devil’s advocate for now.  I need to wait and pester the cardiologist to just lay down the cards to us and for the damn 2DECHO results to be interpreted by a person not by some search engine.  And to be honest, I need to rant and rave about mortality and the human condition and all that crap that I learned in Philosophy school.   I need to channel Nietzsche or Moses or some dead writer.  In the end after one thousand four hundred and sixty five words, I realized that I am my father’s son.   I embrace it.  

Monday morning… Quick updates…

I woke up before 5 am today {surprisingly}.  And since I woke up early,  I decided to make the most out of it by meditating, doing yoga then running.
I know I haven’t been writing a lot on this blog.   A lot has happened. Like a whole lot.  I’d like to tell everything, but I can’t. 
I miss writing to be honest.  I’m not making any promises to write regularly.  But I made it a point that I need to do something that makes me happy this year. 
Last year was not really much of a happy year for me.  It was ok but shit folks,  I guess I really am in the Coconut Republic.  
For those of you who are interested as to what has been happening in my life for the past 1.5 years, well here’s what’s been happening:

1. I’ve been in the Coconut Republic since late July of 2009.  
2. I live in a box apartment.  Literally a box apartment. 
3. I’ve got no TV {by choice}
4. I’ve got a fridge but I’m not using it
5. I was jobless for like 5 to 6 months.  Not that I didn’t look for a job… In fact I was looking and there were offers.  It’s just that…
6. The Universe had other plans for me.
7. I went to Singapore for 2 days.  Got stomach problems after eating curry in Little India.
8. Got a job in January.  I ask the Miss Universe questions.
9. Consuelo died on me. The end of an era for me
10. Friends came to visit me and got a chance to see my box.  Lela, Joseph and Davin! Thanks for visiting. 
11. Celebrated my first Chinese New Year with my housemates. 
12. Got busy with work and shit. Work here is like WORK.  You work shitloads and get measly pay.  Taxes kill you here apart from politicians, police,the military and the whole lotta them. 
13. Some of my friends got married and had children.  
14. Realized that I have like over 20 nieces and nephews.
15. I have grand nieces already.
16. Gained shitload of weight during the holiday.
17. Trying my best to lose it.
18. Got conjunctivitis the other week.  I’m blind as a bat now because I  have not been wearing any contacts since I got sore eyes.
19. Been trying to quit smoking.  {crossing my pubes now}
20. I wanna be happy here damnit!

There you go.
Wasn’t that hard.

Summer 2007

 

the memory of you

is still swimming in my head

like a sublime goldfish

in the universe that is my pond

ever present in my mind

the vision of you

coming toward my presence

with a quiet confidence

that I could almost taste in my mouth

rolls in my tongue

like bitter sweet coffee

you shake my hand

and greet me

with your mild humor

like it was the last

but for me

it was a first

...

looking for Omar…

I think I may have lost myself. It’s been over a year and I, for the most part of my life here in the Coconut Republic,  have been silent.  I haven’t written anything in more than six months.  For whatever reasons, I haven’t written anything in a very long time.  I blame myself.  My only passion and I let it go because I needed a  “career”.   It’s not as if i didn’t try writing.  Honest to God I did many times.  But I couldn’t seem to “force” it.  It’s not as if I ran out of ideas, in fact I had many.  I just couldn’t.  Like a fish out of water, I was out of my element…  I have lost myself.  I guess I’m doomed. 
I feel as if there is a need for me to regain myself.  At least pick up the bits and pieces and try to make myself somewhat of a whole again.  I need to write.  Anything.  Anything worthwhile, stupid or mundane.  Anything.  I don’t have the liberty to choose now.  I must write. 

So I have decided that for the next seven days I will write anything that comes out of my skin, my bowels, my loins, my pores. Anything.  May the cosmos help this sinner.

Technorati Tags: Omar,universe,metaphysics,writing

Me and Iago and Manila After Daylight (Part Two)

 

photo courtesy of Badudoy

PART II


My cellphone rings and vibrates in my right pocket. Talk about relief.

I was in the middle of an overpass in Recto, smoking yet another cigarette while chewing yet another menthol candy. Just a few seconds ago a balding middle-aged man approached me and asked for the time. He looked like a forty something high-school teacher or an accountant. Perhaps he worked in a bank or in an office somewhere in the city. Hell, he could be anyone. He could be a physicist or a chemist. He could be a veterinarian or a heart surgeon. He could be a father and husband of five kids and a worried wife. Or he could be a cold-blooded psychopath who preys on the people who tell him the time, cutting his victims with surgical precision while he drinks their blood in a 7-Eleven soda cup. I shivered at the thought. I hesitate. He does have that Hannibal Lectern look in him. He looks too sanitized, too prim with his crisp blue shirt. He exhibits a kind and trusting face. A face you could trust to tell your deepest and darkest secrets. A Hannibal Lectern face. My insides shiver.

I tell him my watch is broken. He stares at me and then at my watch. Three seconds. He could probably taste my hesitation, my slight fear. He probably knows that I know that he wants to cut me and drink my blood and throw my body parts in the Pasig River. Then my phone rings and vibrates in my right pocket. I fish it out and start focusing on the phone. He backs off and moves away. I am relieved. I use my peripheral vision to see if he is still there. He has vanished, engulfed by the buses and jeepneys and people traversing this busy thoroughfare. Talk about relief. Paranoia gets to you sometimes when you walk these streets during this time of night. One has to be sober and alert. It's self-preservation mostly.

It was a text message. From Iago. He's asking where I was. He wants to meet me. I smile. I check my broken watch and it says ten o' clock. I told him of my whereabouts. He replies back a few seconds later – “Be there in a few”. With a smiley face.

Barely audible for people passing by to hear, I say his name under my breath. “Iago.” If I could taste his name under my tongue it would probably be buttery and warm. I am smiling now, forgetting about my encounter with Hannibal Lectern and thinking about Iago. I am smiling for many reasons. One of them is that we met at this very place years ago.

How long has it been since I have known him? Three? Four? Five years? I do not know. All I know is that I know Iago. I know him too well. How I met Iago is irrelevant. Although it is very ironic to think that him met him online, through somewhat unusual circumstances {come to think of it, most of my long-lasting relationships sprang out from somewhat unusual circumstances}. I was going through a twenty-something phase that twenty-somethings tend to experience when they realize they are a few years short of becoming a thirty-something. In one of my sad and futile attempts to assert my humanity and individuality on the Internet, I joined a network of twenty-somethings that long for {re}connection and assurance that life is more than the office space that one occupies, the cubicles that one gets lost to, the board meetings that one loathes attending yet attends to, and the daily grind that one considers the human condition. It's no wonder why people retreat to the virtual because it's plain sugar. It made life livable for some and tolerable for others. Me? I'm just a tourist. I like watching. I like taking snapshots. Then I move on. In a virtual world where every person has a 15 second attention span, Iago was one of the few people that piqued my interest.

I would be lying if I said that I was not physically attracted to him. He was young at the time that I met him. Twenty one? Twenty two? Who knows? He could have been sixteen, but with his devilish and rugged handsome looks that would make grown heterosexual man reevaluate their heterosexuality and their Judaeo-Christian values, I could care less. He had a cult following and I wasn't in any way surprised that he had because he was easy on the eyes. One thing surprised me though, that the fascination went both ways. I figured that he was probably bored.

Did we ever do it? The thought of me and Iago having sex did cross my mind a number of times but I never acted upon it nor have I fantasized about it. I am more prudent, shall we say, in these matters. His boundaries are quite loose when it comes to these matters. He is a pansexual which makes him all the more attractive and even exotic to all the people he has slept with, men and women and the ones in between. It occurred to me from early on that many become infatuated with Iago because of this very fact. I can't say I blame them. He was attractive and sexual in so many levels that that one becomes infatuated with the Iago that was all sex. I was more fascinated at the Iago that wore flip flops and dirty laundry on a work day. Cliché but true. We almost did at some point but we both held back. I decided long ago that I would have Iago for keeps and sex would just mar the whole deal. He and I both knew that.

I could have fallen for Iago. I could have fallen for his youth and his beauty and his sensuality. I could've fallen for his dick alone. But I chose not to. Besides, we were both Scorpios and we were so much alike in many facets that a relationship was out of the question.

Another irony is that I've only met him a number of times. Three in fact. I remember the first time I met him at this very junction. I was nervous at that he would stood me up as he often does in meet ups when he finds that his prospective conquest is not to his liking. I must've smoked a pack that night. He did appear though. Five minutes late. There was no mystery, no second guesses. We drank cheap beer in a cheap watering hole and we talked like we've known each other for decades. We stayed up all night in his flat smoking pot, watching cartoons and eating his week old pasta.

We stayed in touch. He would send me an odd greeting card on my birthdays. I would do the same. We'd talk online when we happen to chance upon each other's online presence which would be a rarity for both of us. I always make it a point to see him whenever I am in the Philippines. I sent him an email about a month ago telling him that I was coming to the Manila for a visit. I never got a reply. The last time I talked with him was over six months ago and he wasn't doing well. He was dating a thirty-something prostitute who was mother of two and who had a nasty crack habit and it wasn't what he thought it would be. Iago is a sucker for relationships. He admits it as he sometimes lets his youth get the best of him. His values may be as fucked up as mine but one thing different between me and Iago is that he still processes a naiveté when it comes to relationships. I can't blame the kid and in some ways, I envy him.

I worry about the kid {he is younger than me}. Thoughts of Iago getting raped in prison ran through my head. His girlfriend probably double crossed and black mailed him to feed her crack habit. Then thoughts of some psychopath bank manager bleeding Iago to death in some crummy motel room replaced the previous one {it could have been the Hannibal Lectern accountant that was asking for the time}. Iago has had one too many shady deals. He tells me about it from time to time and as much as I find his stories exhilarating, I worry about him. If Urbania is my past, this is Iago's present.

This is one of the reasons why I am smiling at a silly text message in the middle of an overpass along Recto Avenue. Talk about relief. I will be meeting Iago tonight. Perhaps that's the reason why I am here. Perhaps. And as I listen to everything around me – to the noise of the jeepneys, cars buses running below, the the chatter of street vendors and the howling of bus barkers and the inaudible conversations of prostitutes and their Johns, I smile. I smile because I could hear the city humming and I am reminded of a Coltrane song that I haven't heard for the longest time. 

To be continued ...

Nine Days

I've always had this fondness for religious rituals. I don't love them but I am fond of them. I have this keen capacity to observe baptisms, weddings, blessings, the Mass and rites of passage of whatever faith culture. I know that its a very intrusive activity on my part that almost borders voyeurism. It is probably the closeted romantic in me that makes me fond of these ceremonies. Its not the religiosity of the ritual that appeals to me but its the significance. I have not practiced Catholicism in many years and I haven't truly participated in a Eucharistic celebration (aka the Mass), yet I am always at awe when I witness people gather to pray to celebrate life, death and the divine.



About two Saturdays ago, I had to go to another city to attend the ninth day novena for my sister's death. Filipino's call it Pasiyam which literally means “nine”. It was the novena for the dead. The Catholic Christian Tradition holds the novena as a devotion that consists of prayer said on nine successive days^Wikipedia, asking to obtain special graces and favors.  In the case of the novena for the dead, the congregation prays for the departed's soul for nine consecutive days in order for the soul to safely pass through the afterlife.



I arrived late because of the traffic. If truth be told, I could have gone earlier but I really wasn't keen on meeting distant relatives and neighbors. I could've missed the whole thing, but I had to do it for my family and my sister. So I arrived late and they already praying (in Filipino). They were all in the living room facing the makeshift altar that my mother made for my sister which was beside the door. They all saw me come in in my tank top and shorts and flip flops. I paid the necessary respects to the elders present by slightly bowing and then placing my forehead to the back of their hands. We call the act pagmamano in Filipino. I started with my parents, my uncles and aunts and the old neighbors who were attending the novena.



I never liked the custom because that meant one has to do it even if one doesn't like the person. I was told it was a sign of humility and of respect to elders. I've always held that humility had to be genuine and that respect must always be earned. The Bible says that Pride is a sin and perhaps it is. Then again, the Bible was edited and rewritten so many times by so many old men with nothing to do but intellectually masturbate everything that I would beg to differ. I think if there ever is a God, that God would tell us to value pride because pride and humility are both one and the same in smell and taste. Its like drinking milk – no matter what the carton is, its still white and it still tastes like milk.



I did it anyway. It was part of the ritual after all. And after I did my part, I placed myself in the farthest corner of the room where I can be nondescript and anonymous and I watched them. I watched each person facing the altar and I observed. All of them were intently focused on the prayer mouthing the litanies like it was their last day on earth. Even the two year olds were praying. Even my brother was praying. I looked at each of their faces and saw a certain sense of calmness as they mouthed the words. Most of them knew my sister but they never really knew her. I could actually count the people in the room who knew Carmen. Yet all of them were intently praying for her like she was their very daughter, sister and friend. I guess this is a very Filipino way of dealing with death. When somebody dies, it is not just the immediate family who grieves, but a community. I've always held that death is something really personal, that you alone will experience your own death and you can never share that experience with others. Dying, for me, is the most selfish and sacred human experience a person can ever have. For Filipinos however (and perhaps for the rest of humanity), the loss needs to be shared by the ones left behind. I've never understood the concept, but somehow it works for the many of us.



I am not a religious person and I make no apologies for being such.  However, seeing the people all huddled up in one corner of our living room in our house in Caloocan, I was moved. I wasn't moved to pray like they did. I was moved to reflect about the moment. I realized how much I appreciated these people. My family needed consolation, some sort of don't-worry-everything-will-be-alright-she's-in-a-better-place-now kind of consolation. It wasn't the fact that they were praying for her, my sister that moved me but it was the fact that they were praying with my family who was grieving for a daughter, a sister, an aunt and a mother. It's comforting to know that you are not grieving alone. Granted that some of them were there for the free lunch buffet but still, it moves me to see that my family share their grief with people. There was no crying in the room. After the novena, everybody was served with lunch. The food was great. My aunt volunteered to cook. And to think that she and my mother were mortal enemies not so many eons ago. I was catching up with my cousins and telling them how beautiful their children were. Children were playing outside. People were laughing at silly sex jokes. Everybody was catching up with each other exchanging phone numbers. The whole scene in our house in Caloocan was warm and comforting. I looked around and it was so different from the scene a few minutes before. Then I placed my vision at the corner by the door where my mother made a makeshift altar for my departed sister. My mother placed flowers by her portrait. The picture was really beautiful. She was all bitchy and all sultry in the photo.  A fitting honor for my sister.



One thing I realized is that my family's experience of the death of my sister really wasn't about her dying. It was about my family being left behind and trying to move forward. Grief is the only way for the ones left behind to manifest the phenomenon of death. For my sister, it was about dying and leaving and passing away. She died. We didn't. We can only grieve. I shall never know her experience of death and dying because it was hers and hers alone. Someday I will, hopefully not soon, but I look forward to the experience. I just hope I have a pen and paper when that happens.

Fridays and Mondays

I hate Mondays.  Okay, that's too much of a word, 'hate'. Let me rephrase that, I dislike Mondays.  Not that I find anything distasteful in Mondays or anything, in fact Mondays for most people in this world are okay-ish if not near awesomess.  A good number of the world's population would love waking up on Mondays {like for most people who work in banks}. Some people are even perky on Mondays.  I have a coworker who is a perky Monday person {then again, she is perky in all days... I wonder what drug she's taking?}.  I dislike Mondays.  Most of all, I dislike MONDAYS that fall on the 13th day of the month.  Monday the 13th are the worst Mondays of them all.  It's like the whole universe is conspiring against me on Monday the 13th.  The stars and the planets are all in a mysterious astrological alignment that any form of physical or mental or emotional endeavor would surely come to complete failure. Pursuing any form of endeavor on such a day {and I have proven this} would simply be begging the cosmos to smite me from behind with so much wrath that lubrication is a no option. I don't go out on Monday the 13th.  I stay indoors.  I don't clean my floor on Monday the 13th.  I let the dust settle as much as I hate it.  I don't cook on Monday the 13th. Well, I don't cook period.  Lets just say that I'm kosher on Monday the 13th. 

Mondays don't do anything for me. Mondays are just bleh.  I guess its just in my constitution, like I was built to not function well on Mondays.  I'm just not a Monday person.  Even the word 'Monday' is a bit off.  There's just something wrong with the word 'Monday'.  It's the word I think. I mean it's the beginning of the work week and the people who invented the modern calendar weren't even creative enough to think of a better word to start the friggen week.  I don't really care about the etymology of the friggen word but dudes, if you were gonna invent a calendar and pick a name for the beginning of the work week why the hell pick a boring name. The word 'Monday' doesn't have a lotta panache, I think.  'Wednesday' has more spunk even.  In fact, they should've put 'Wednesday' at the beginning of the work week and put friggen 'Monday' on the third day.  If that were the case {in a perfect world where there are no recessions and bills to pay and AIDS and cancer and hunger and wars and political commentaries and no tv commercials}, I think I would wake up every beginning of the work week with so much positivity and energy if it happened to be named 'Wednesday'. I honestly think that I would be a perky Wednesday-beginning-of-the-work-week person.  I'd wake up with a smile on my face while I'm scratching my left nut.  Then I'd be doing a thousand sit ups.  Then I'd do yoga.  Then I'd be singing songs in the shower.  Hell I'd prolly even eat breakfast.  Imagine this my friend,  if the week started on a Wednesday.  You might be doing the same thing. We would all be perky and happy and twiddledee twiddle dum cheery humming a Buddy Holly song while we go to work thinking that our work life isn't much of a grind after all.  All because we woke up on a WEDNESDAY. I honestly think that we could even be one step closer to world peace if the week started on a Wednesday. Damnit,  I'd even wear a pin if the week started on a Wednesday. 

Why the hell am I talking about Mondays on a FRIDAY night?!?!

Well, I do not know if it is age or if its because of my spiked up MSG levels but lately I have been feeling that Fridays are just like Mondays. I got two invites today, one for a post birthday party leftover dinner thing and one for a lets get pissed drunk and paint the town jizz red thing.  I both turned it down.  Three reasons.  One, I'm dead tired. Two, I'm kinda broke. Three, it feels like a Monday.
 
My inner Omar is telling me that its a combination of my advancing years and MSG intake.  I just can't party like I used to.  I really don't party that much to begin with.  I'm very domesticated yo {*wipes the counter top table and fixes his apron}. But really, I don't party that much to begin with.  But I do go out and get pissed drunk.

Note to self.
1. Moisturize
2. Eat less instant noodles

Being truthful now, there are times when the I find myself thinking on a Sunday evening that the highlight of my week was getting 8 hours of sleep.  I mean, how lame is that?

It dawned on me that I needed to be more productive.  Not with work but with my personal time.  It also dawned on me that I really don't have much that personal time. My only personal time is when I am out running and/or when I am in the gym.  I could hardly call that personal.  I think I need to do things.  Like actually get outta my apartment and do something, like go to museums or take crappy pictures or write crappy stuff or make up stories in my head or eat ice cream in the park or poison pigeons in the park. ANYTHING, just do something for myself.  I NEED TIME DAMNIT. 

It is so true though, the saying that time is a luxury these days.  In many cases you need a credit card to have some personal quality time. { I don't have a credit card. My debit card doesn't even have a hundred dollars in it }.  In this time and age, there is so little time which you could honestly call FREE.  I think people who are incarcerated have more free time and quality time for that matter. 

It's a fact in my life now, that my Fridays are just like my Mondays and I have to live with it. Sad but true. My only consolation in this realization is that at least the fifth day of the week is not called a 'Monday'.  Gawd, imagine if there were two days in the week named MONDAYS.  Monday the first and Monday the fifth.  I think I would slit my wrists.

nuff said.

Music Playing In My Head

I've singing this song in my head since last week {and dancing to it too}. It's from the film coffee and cigarettes. I need to see that film. So bad.