Slip of the Pen

Subtitled: This Year’s Birthday Post


You’re aboard your car or some public transport, and you’re on your way to somewhere fearsome, something momentous.

You know the drill.

Your chest feels like it’s getting drilled. You gulp down inordinate amounts of saliva, and it feels as if a swarm of pupae hitched a ride down into your stomach where they would metamorphose into the proverbial butterflies. You try to distract your edgy self by staring at the world whizzing past the window, but your mind always recoils and fixates on one question. Will I fail the exams? Will Tito survive the operation? Will I impress the boss? Will She accept my flowers?

I’m not spared from these oh-God-let’s-just-get-this-over-with days. The nervous days in my life are as rife as the nerve endings of my body. How-I-Can-Change-the-Philippines elocution contests, ABS-CBN tapings, puppy love Valentine’s Days, thesis presentations, writers’ workshops.

And I’ve always got the most adrenalin-inducing, aorta-pumping start to this kind of days.

The moment I step out of our quinquagenarian apartment (read: fifty years, I just wanted you to hear the hoof beats in that word), I already feel like a soon-to-be-tested warrior. The swirling dust of Cordillera Street is the dust of the battlefield, and the overhead sun coaxes the sweat from my tense skin. (Of course, this poetic image is washed down when it’s the stormy season, but hey, the sleek curtain of raindrops more than makes up for it theatrically.) The noise and the blur of vehicles in front of me add to the atmosphere, making me hear war drums and making me see charging knights and scurrying squires.

I then flag down my stallion (or should I say, pony?) – one of the hundreds of tricycles plying Galas. “Boss, Quezon Av,” I thunder.

With that command, my warhorse (quinquagenarian-quinquagenarian-quinquagenarian) kicks into action, sometimes with a proud BROOOOOOM!, and sometimes with a meek brukdukdukdukdukduk. Especially when the stallion’s quite robust, I cling to the seat or the metal frame in the same way I would cling to my mount’s reins, and I imagine myself carrying a waxed, glinting lance into battle. Unfortunately, the lance is but my dirty shoulder bag.

A few gallops and I pass by Doña Aurora Elementary School, and the sight of the children adds to my anxiety. Not because I fear their being collateral damage in the battle I’m going to, but because they resurrect a lot of nervous moments from my having-to-wear-a-uniform years, such as my flag ceremony role of reciting the Panatang Makabayan (Patriotic Oath) from memory in grade school and my ‘fabulous pretty boy moment’ as the Helen-snatching Paris in the annual Iliad play in PSHS. Remembering past nervous moments in a current nervous moment is akin to beating your brain like an egg.

To make matters worse for my nerves, right across Doña Aurora is our parish church, and like a dutiful crusader I make the Sign of the Cross. I say my prayers, ask for His blessing, ask for Jesus’ guidance, and ask for the Holy Spirit to give me courage. In truth, like a dutiful crusader willing to charge headfirst into death, I’m just making peace with my God while struggling to make peace with my guts.

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Subtitled: The Birthday I Won’t Celebrate

22. This is the first day I’m wearing this age. Double two, accompanied by a double whammy just like the year before. And like the first one-two combination, this pair is again cause for much disorientation.

First, it doesn’t help that May 10 is hemmed in by April 23, the day I decided to follow my bliss, and May 17, the day I took the first step to follow that bliss. I’ve already written about the (self-)fuss over April 23, so it’s May 17’s turn to unabashedly bask in the spotlight.

On that day, Ia and I got our first jobs (as work-from-home Web Project Managers for Toronto-based Enthropia Inc.), a few hours removed from a lengthy semi-corporate job interview somewhere in Quezon City. The recruitment was sudden —

Friend: We’re looking for a team of two writers/webmasters for a slew of new domains. Up for it?
Me/Ia: What’s the pay?
Friend: **** dollars per month, split between you two.
Me/Ia: DANG!

(Not the original online chat transcript, of course.)

— too sudden that the next morning, I woke up whispering to myself in disbelief, “And I had wanted to be a bum for six months!”

Since then, I’ve never looked back. Freelance writing evolved into professional blogging, and working from home allowed me to spend time on the Art-side of writing. Now, while musing over the struggles of my first year of mixing Work and Art together, I’m also pondering upon my future. It boils down to one question:

Should I lessen Work to make more room for Art?

It’s never easy to jump from writing about search engine optimization to Tagalog poetry, for example. While I’m happy with my current situation, to put it bluntly, I’m not satisfied with my literary productivity for the past year. Some of it has to do with personal discipline and time management, but most of the blame lies with work.

Because I’m itching to spend more time on Art, I’ve been caring less and less for my monthly income, even if I’m not exactly well-off (I have trouble budgeting for family bills). I guess my mentality in a nutshell would be:

Glory first, gold later.

I know it’s a bigoted statement in a country where millions of people are desperate for mere coins. It’s also an insult to my family that needs my salaries. Hence, I have been in deep thought in the past few days. Not deep enough to drown me in misery, but enough to make me drown myself in video games and scientific magazines, which are the alcohol to wash away my sobriety.

That’s the first wham. It’s pretty much trivial compared to the second.

Last May 7, one of my uncles on my father’s side passed away. It was an untimely and unexpected event for our whole clan.

(more…)

Amidst the flurry of literary contests and omnipresent work, I’m glad I was able to pin down this day — April 23 — as a day important enough to be written about.

It helped that the world dropped me not-so-subtle hints for the past weeks. Towards the end of March, the marching music emanating from the public elementary school a block away from our house was the first clue. The TV adverts with toga-wearing teens were the second. The sunflowers tirelessly waving hi (or f*ck-you, depending on your world view) and lining UP Diliman’s University Avenue were another. Just two days ago, the last hint beeped me into complete awareness — an SMS message from a dear UP friend and classmate, inviting me to his grad dinner.

Yes, you got it right — last year, April 23, 2006, I graduated from college, from childhood, and from a life guided in part by exam grades and semestral marks, all in one fell swoop. It was like emerging anew from the womb, where all men begin their lives enjoying warmth, comfort, and security in its confines. Yet, the womb is a place that confines.

So, how was my first year of being an out-of-school youth? (Oops, wrong wording.) To put it in three analogies:

1. The feeling a Catholic gets when he confesses his sins to a priest after ten years of self-confession (or worse, non-confession).
2. The feeling a child gets when he hits the “teen” years, which are nothing more than fancy kilometer signs down the road.
3. The feeling a man gets when he slips off the condom and does It without it for the first time after countless sensation-less nights.

The three analogies in three words:

1. I
2. am
3. happy.

Not perfectly happy; humans find all sorts of ways to destroy their own happiness, as is the case with me. The past year could’ve been better; still, I’m mightily pleased with it.

All because I chose to do what I wanted to do, to heck with the fact that almost all of my batch mates entered multinational companies, sported job titles that befit a UP Computer Science graduate, got assured of benefits a freelancer like me can only dream of, and even earned numerous trips abroad while I never left the house.

I chose to do what I wanted to do — write.

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Just as I was looking for something to blog about this weekend…!

My piece, Learning Early, won this week’s If My Life Were a Book essay writing contest held by National Book Store, The Philippine Star, and Globe Telecom. You can read it at today’s Sunday Lifestyle section (1st of 6 sections, page 2).

It was a pleasant surprise, because I just submitted then forgot about it (as I’ve been engrossed in balancing my time between work and Tagalog poetry, which I’m beefing up for several upcoming contests).

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A piece I wrote on December 25, 2006 but was unable to post here due to this blog’s migration.

Yesterday E. Rodriguez Avenue was strewn with dismembered cats. Ortigas wasn’t better off either — the road was strewn with little kids waiting to be dismembered.

Cats squashed by speeding cars in a desperate dash towards the other side of the road — new garbage pickings might await, why not go for it? Beggar kids run over by wayward trucks in a desperate pitch for a few coins — those coins are the greener pasture, why not go for it?

Our streets are filled with dead cats and near-dead children. Near-dead, in many facets of the word.

On any other day they would’ve been an ordinary sight in the metropolis. They blend in so perfectly with all the debauchery in the surroundings, from the eyesore billboards to the disheartening headlines of peddled tabloids, from the speeding, swerving, law-intolerant buses to the million little pieces of trash mesmerizingly dancing with the cars’ exhaust, from tarpaulins graced with the dishonorable faces honorable feces of our politicians to the kotong cops with “Satan” sewn on their name patches. (Not to mention the smog that pitifully attempts to hide this grisly theater behind a black curtain that, by the way, also tries to smother the audience during the show.)

But to see dead cats and near-dead kids on Christmas day?

It is a not-so-gentle reminder to myself and to whoever is reading this that we are mightily fortunate, whatever our daily ‘troubles’ are.

I’m guessing you don’t want to hear cliché pontifications such as “You’ve probably eaten a full meal at least once this day”, or “Just by understanding this text written in a foreign tongue, you’re already enjoying a luxury”. Me neither. But I hope you’d give me a bit of understanding when I (must) say this:

This is your Christmas, Philippines. I hope you’re not being too merry about it.

Every person has his set of favorite words. Yes, everybody — for all we know, your simpleton of a neighbor adores the word obfuscate, while that refined, glib-tongued politician gets a kick out of croc. Of the dozens of words I revere, only several come to mind right now — corsair, amaranth, coruscant, quintessence, sex. (You read that right.)

Oh and yes, double whammy. Recently it’s become a favorite not because of its elegance (sex is elegant — speak it out loud in a public place and you’ll get awed reactions, trust me), but because it applies to my life right here, right now.

In less than a month, I’ve received a double whammy of sorts. Last April 23, I finished the first half of the Race — my life as a student. It was a glorious twenty years. True, there were countless heartbreaks, lachrymose moments, and bouts of depression, but the triumphs and lessons learned along the way more than offset the failures. After three years of infancy, two years at St. James Child Care Center, seven at Lourdes School of Quezon City, four at Philippine Science High School, and four at the University of the Philippines Diliman, I can say I’m happy — nay, exultant — over how things turned out. (There goes the depressed facade!)

Modesty aside, the roll of years has awarded me a few choice descriptions — achiever, visionary, performer — along with a handful of titles, such as actor, game reviewer, programmer, journalist, scholar, editor, and tenuously, a writer. (You can also add in crybaby, delinquent, sinner, young troubled man, and sana cum laude, but cut me some slack just for this day.) It was a hectic and exciting twenty years, no doubt, and I’m proud to have lived through it.

But suddenly, there’s a void.

There lies the first whammy. I have left school, and I am in limbo*.

Unemployment? No, that’s not the problem. There have been offers from big companies, all of which I rejected. I’ve a weak spot for small companies that I can ‘guide’ to prominence (parallel to my experience with school organizations). It’s either them or I do freelance work. My real problem is Where do I go? What path do I take? Will I entirely discard my strong background in computer science and write my way to fame? Will I abandon all sense of family responsibility and pursue my dreams in archaeology and history, dreams that I found within grasp in the University?

To these questions, I can offer no answer. And for someone who’s used to finding answers with mechanical, scientific methods, that is so frustrating.

The second whammy’s quite terse. It doesn’t need much explaining. It’s May 10 today — my 21st birthday (now you know why I asked you to cut me some slack). Today I am officially, semantically, undoubtedly adult.

It’s quite a shock to wake up one day and realize that you need to minimize stop the baby talk. Adios to the freewheeling days of perpetual computer gaming and Net surfing. No free lunches from your parents anymore, just free pieces of advice.

Oh, why do these whammies come in pairs? Happy birthday to me. I never thought hitting twenty-one was cause for much disorientation.


*Credit goes to Ia. We’re stuck in the same situation, and she coined the term.
**What did I write when Corsarius hit XX last year? Read.

Thirty shirts and polos, five pairs of pants. They’re stashed unceremoniously into big plastic bags, to be taken by dad to the province, over the sea and the mountains, aboard the wind, soaring over birds and clouds alike.

Seems like a grand journey for little things disposed of without compassion, taken from my cabinet to be given to province folk. The moment the poor things were removed from their dark confines and tried on for the last time, only to be cast into the lot of undesirables, is a moment they could have exclaimed, “Oh, the injustice!”

Certainly, they have a case against me. For they were the clothes which people knew me for, the cover by which people judged the book. These were the clothes which absorbed the essence of their master and friend without a protest, even their fresh-from-the-store scent gave way to the odor of sweat, smog, and grime.

Some of them would be more vocal in crying foul than the others. They would be the two trusty pairs of cargo pants (my high school staples), the boastful ‘elephant’ pants of early college, and the humble olive-green polo I wore on my first day in the University.

For this felony I’ve committed, I can imagine hearing a few cries of joy, a few sighs of relief, coming from clothes who found themselves safely back within the cabinet — the faded, shrunken red pants I took to ABS-CBN for tapings and workshops, the innocent grade school intramurals shirt (which miraculously still fits me after eight years!), and, oddly enough, the orange-beige polo shirt I wore on the day my fairy tale with Her ended, a shirt I have no intention of wearing again.

Now, as I stare at the cabinet (slightly more roomy, bereft of a few years of life), I can picture other people gaily trying on the clothes, some branded, many bought from discount stores. Without doubt, the trusty cargo pants, boastful ‘elephants’, faded shirts, and rarely-used polos will be absorbing new essences, recording new memories, writing new histories.

Somehow, for a reason I can’t really fathom, I feel a little pang of loss. Not material, but of another form.

But then, c’est la vie — rediscover the old, dispose of the years, live the new.

Hell no, this is not a programming post.

Prof. Paolo Manalo, our teacher in CW 198 (Online Writing) is to blame for this gem of an idea. How many of you are aware of the ‘Book of Answers’? A waste of good paper, I say, but still useful for the utterly bored and/or the utterly listless people. You know the drill — concentrate until you feel you are the nexus of the universe’s astral energies, ask a deep question extremely relevant to your life, then flip open the book. What you read first is what you get; question answered.

Prof. Manalo told the class that this ‘activity’ can actually give birth to a written piece (count the un-literary ones), so I gave it a shot. My Book of Answers: Concepts of Programming Languages, by R. Sebesta. My question (whispered to me by my astral alter ego): What is this blog? More specifically, what are the words which best describe my blog?

With a pompous jerk of my hands, I flipped opened the book. Ta da! The divine answer:

Parameterized Abstract Data Type.

Divine answer all right, straight from the geek gods. If the phrase sounds Greek to you, then take comfort in the knowledge that I, a programmer, was confounded, dumbfounded, and humiliated by the answer. What the hell does that mean?

Life poses many mysteries, and answers can only be found by delving deep into our subconscious and, yes, daydreams. And finally, after much rumination (10 minutes is lengthy prison time for the wandering mind), I have broken down the answer and arrived at the conclusion that this blog, Slip of the Pen, is indeed a parameterized abstract data type.

Parameterized. Everything is bounded, restricted, chained to some rule. Even the free wolf can only roam where there is prey. The corsair can only sail seas where the law doesn’t hold; the cutlass can only remain unscratched when sheathed. Same goes for this blog. What I write here has limitations — you haven’t seen the worst of me, nor the best. You have seen the bad and the good, but not all. Knowing me only in person won’t work either. I’m a writer, so part of me lives in the pedestrian world and another in the pen-world. Know both, know me all.

Abstract. Writers, insert knowing laugh here. Many artists proclaim their work as abstract, and love to hear others comprehend and imbue mystical meanings to their art. I guess the same goes for me (even though I write in relatively concrete images). This blog is an abstraction of its author — it presents to you the Corsarius through a mishmash of vignettes which, oddly enough, have something in common.

Data type. What is a data type? According to E.P. Quiwa, it’s the kind of data a variable may take on in a programming language. Examples are integers (9 and 23), characters (i and x), Boolean values (true and false). To put it more bluntly — it’s a category. And without trepidation, I can say that this blog is a category of its own. Why, every blog is! Each blog has that x-factor, that intangible something which renders it inimitable. My blog and your blog might have similarities, but they are not the same. Don’t be misled by web directories which order you to “kindly place your blog under the most relevant category, e.g. literary, technology, showbiz, etcetera”. They’re only there to give some semblance of homogeneity amongst blogs. Use them, but don’t let them dictate what your blog is all about.

So, there you go, my friends. Parameterized abstract data type. In short, Slip of the Pen.

I gave the Book of Answers a shot. Try it, too. Let me know what profound answer you get, so I can share with your delight (or misery).


(You might be asking: why this blog-centric post? Admittedly, I’m excited about this month. December marks the birth of this blog and my blog-life. 29 is the special day.)

Stuck in traffic, I stare outside the car window and into the lightning show illuminating the night sky. Oddly enough, the lightning bolts possess a certain golden hue, something I’ve never seen before. It has always been neon white and neon indigo, never neon green nor neon red, and certainly not neon gold. Even as I count the seconds for the complementary thunder to arrive, I see another golden bolt streak down to earth.

So, it’s real after all. My eyes aren’t deceiving me.

Gold lightning.

Actually, I can’t care less if it’s a freak of science, nature gone mad, or simply a portent of a coming storm. The only thing I care about right now – the thing eating up my thought and patience – is the 300-pound gorilla sitting right next to me inside the FX Megataxi. He arrogantly enforces the authority given – no, mandated – by his extreme obesity to take up every inch of seating space and crush a 130-pound runt against the car door. The runt, of course, is me. When I give him a side-glance, he drools saliva even while wide awake. He plumbs the depth of his nose with a big, fat finger with reckless bravery that puts Indiana Jones to shame. He clears his throat with such ruckus that you’ll think the taxi seat was his throne.

No bad blood between me and obese people, but this human being is as inconsiderate as one can get – his legs as huge as baobab trunks, he spreads them open at a ridiculous angle (yes, 180 degrees!), costing the FX driver two more seats worth of passengers, a flat tire (sooner than later), and a seething, disgruntled customer. The latter, of course, is me.

With every bump on the road, every bump of my head on the car roof, and every bump of my seatmate’s mammoth knee against mine, I can feel it building up inside me – that wonderful sensation which obscures my sight with a miasma of bloody red and causes my clenched fist to inexplicably quiver and shake and just plain look menacing.

The human beside me is sick; he makes me sick. He makes me mad. He makes me bad. And so did my scowling seatmate earlier on the jeepney ride. And so did the bus passengers looking down scornfully on the waiting commuters on the street, jeering at pretty boys and whistling at pretty girls. And so did him, and so did her, and so did everybody around me.

The crimson haze gets redder, and the clenched fist starts to drip imaginary blood.

The taxi screeches to a halt. Red light. A street vendor, a guy barely out of his teens, hastily approaches the FX driver’s window and peddles his rags. I can’t hear what he’s mouthing; the driver doesn’t roll down the window, looking straight ahead at the cars in front, fingers doing the counting of worn paper bills. The vendor continues to mouth something.

Suddenly, the driver rolls down the window with furious jerks of his arm. “What did you say?” he shouts to the face of the vendor. “You were going to wipe my face with your rags?!”

The boy vendor shakes his head in response, a little smirk imprinted on his face.

“You son of b*tch!” The driver motions to open the door even as he spews out some more cusswords. “Gago ka!” The vendor scurries away and disappears amongst the maze of cars, leaving the driver red-faced and short of breath.

I pause in my thoughts; my mind goes blank. I take a deep breath, so deep I end up gasping for air. Staring at the back of the irate driver’s head, I try to think of something, to justify anything, to vilify everything. But there is nothing.

Car horns blare. Green light. The driver composes himself, and the taxi lurches forward.

My eyes wander to the swaying crucifix hanging from the rearview mirror. Its motion oscillates with the vehicle’s mood – one second, the crucifix threatens to subdue my senses with its gentle, hypnotizing motion; the next moment, the crucifix violently jerks from left to right, a frenzied dance for a frenzied night.

After a while, whether from strain or shame (or both), I shift my view from the crucifix to the dark, roiling skies outside the car window.

Watching the jagged, aurulent bolts strike down from the heavens, and hearing the Olympian rumblings which follow, it finally dawns upon me.

This world has too much thunder and lightning.

[No, this isn't a Halloween post. Or Grim Fandango, for that matter.]

Writing is not at all dissimilar to courting a girl. You groom yourself with gusto, you bring out the flowers and sweets, and you arm yourself with the best words you can muster. But of course you can also end up downtrodden, you can curse the sun and earth, you can spew out the vilest of invectives. You try to make the right choices, but here and there you commit a few missteps — sometimes many — and end up back at square one.

Such is the intertwined fate of writer and suitor. They both learn to dance with life, to flow with its twists and turns, to value its nuances. They both learn to tap into the deepest alcoves of the soul, and dance with whatever they may harness from within. They can tango with anger, cha-cha with love, waltz with hope, swing with despair, jig with frustration, glide with joy.

If the physical dance — the one we see actualized everyday through sweating bodies and gyrating motions — is the dance of the body, then it’s not at all ridiculous to call writing the dance of the soul. Poetry and prose are how the inner spirit tries to express itself, be it through flamboyant weaving of words or no-frills use of language. The same holds true for music and the visual arts, and to a certain extent, the courting of a girl (especially if one claims to have a beloved girl as his very soul).

But of course, before one can easily flow into the motions of the dance, he or she must first learn its steps. Like the corporeal boogie, there are an infinite number of steps which one can take to master the groove. And so with writing. Every person to his own approach; after all, no two souls are alike. Maybe akin, but not identical. As long as it works for you, and after pursuing the steps your soul gets all fired up and restless to burn the midnight candle, then you’d have already mastered the dance of your soul.

One of Hemingway’s steps was to sharpen twelve pencils (I think). In all probability there exists a poet who needs to make torrid love with his wife before being able to rhyme, and maybe a fictionist who eats a whole large-sized bar of white Toblerone before penning a short story. For my part, because I’m just a simple writer with no acclaim to my name, my steps are terse and quick to perform. And because the same style holds true for my exploits in love — which are unfortunately unfortunate — I shan’t be able to resist the temptation to compare the two.

First and foremost before writing any piece, I turn on the PC, plop down onto my monobloc chair, and reflect for a moment, just as I would plop down on the bed and flick on the switch within my brain which reads “Courting 101”. Second, I’d read other works, be it a chapter from a Tolkien book, or a poem by Jose Garcia Villa, or even one of my previous attempts at literature. It’s not at all dissimilar to my getting inspired by my friends’ dazzling feats in love, or xeroxing my own patented ‘da moves’ which always fail to, well, succeed.

Having done that, I’d open a word processor, preferably MS Word, OpenOffice, or Notepad (my illegible handwriting is hardly conducive to my attitude of perpetual revising and self-doubt) and start fiddling with the margins, font style and size, and other minutiae, me being some sort of an obsessive-compulsive git. This resembles my fidgeting with my clothes, hairdo and perfume before making a grand salvo on a damsel.

Last, and of course ‘but not the least’, I write — rather, type — the first of my thoughts, which would hopefully be the birth of a good piece. This is the courting process itself, replete with the stammerings and sweatings, the furrowing of the brows, the puckerings of the mouth, the horrible speechless seconds, and of course the occasional heartbreaks. Alas for me, there is no ‘Undo’ option (ah yes, the omnipotent ‘Ctrl-Z’) in love.

You see, that’s a mere four steps in learning how to dance with your soul. Not guaranteed to produce the best results, or even have results at all, but hey, it works for me — these little shuffles I do before I get into the groove.