A Proud Raconteur Can Overshadow Silent Brilliance

Raindrops keep falling on my head...I sing these lines in preparation for a mini-concert for PanPil 17. Little did I know about Mam Salanga, or her fun yet morbid ways of treating latecomers. Oh go sue me instead...

What I think of now, I should save for when I am in a bathroom...perhaps some effort to relieve me of the stress the continuously makes my days. Of anxious minutes trying to get a ride, of dull moments listing down all those who rented lockers over the past semesters who don't seem minding text messages screaming out loud in their faces that the deadline has passed, of many things---as I say again, isn't a life of repeating cycles just a drag?

So if I see her talking to someone else in the corridor, should I be bothered? Of course not. Life is far better spent thinking of how hard you have worked and taking pity on others fixated on shallow, endless pursuits of senseless things. Sometimes, I just want to look them in the eye and give them a word or two about living. Better not, I do not dare.

For though there can be brilliance in one's words, there can also be much poignant rhetoric bound to self-destruct.

So I take a bow and type the minutes of the last General Assembly. I can't finish them, I am torn about by The End of Poverty and the economic memorandum, and then more I still am pleading to my mind to flash report. Being Secretary-General of the Student Council never really occured to me. During the campaign, I wasn't even sure I'd be satisfied with my performance, let alone my chances of winning. Hell, I thought I was no one. Perhaps votes trickling from PolSc majors, but the rest? Not a clue. I guess a lot of factors played in. Maybe Papa Bear mania clicked.

Now, to have this position...this opportunity, never dreamt possible. I was set on doing other things. Even after hearing the election results in a secluded place, in a very emotional morning, I wasn't sure what was next. Bite after bite of that burger didn't really help me. Taking on responsibilities is never an easy thing. I have the itch to take them all...but no, no, no...not this one.

I was trained in the Academics/Education Committee. Campaigns and propaganda are my deadly arts. And now this? Making the Council Office worth visiting, organizing the internal organization, keeping rules implemented to the teeth?

To my surprise, it has been an easy, fun, and productive ride. I love my job. I love the people this job gives me the chance to know more.

I never really imagined my utopian vision of the world, my authoritarian right-wing way of getting there (and please, off with the irresponsible labeling), and a tinge of OC-ness would actually make the Office a bit neater, a step forward in a sense.

What I don't like? Sir Deocariza (CWTS) making me instant reporter in class because of the mere fact that I bug him well enough in AS 101 over RA business.

Nah, I kinda like the thrill.

I met Donna (N8) a while back, said hello and moved on walking head down towards the darkness and gloomy Balara treeline. She, with friends, got on a cab and took on a trip to the nearest bus station. I sure crave for those road trips.

Tonight shall be the night I scan over bloggers galore. Much has changed in their lives, not much in writing styles, much in drama. I try to find ways to make myself as straightforward and entertaining as some people like Dom or Viktor or carry much emotion as Grai. I'd like to see things from different perspectives, perhaps through Ma'am Carlos' "the hell with what everyone thinks, the military will soon be obsolete" strength, or perhaps beat down mellowdrama down the readers' throats.

However, this exercise of finding what to say and cramp all that has been in one writing has been an experience resemblant to squeezing an answer to some Math 17 exam items. What to say? What to do next?

After I graduate, God willing, what is next? Do I take on the hallowed halls of law? Do I become the next trench-coat wearing, sharp-looking ambassador? Do I become someone else? Or do I become the raconteur of nothing a lot of graduates have become once power won over their wits.

If there's any assurance that I am getting somewhere, I find that in one Robin Pettyfer. The dude's an amazing journalist, or at least he projects himself to be one. When he sets his eyes on the prize, he never lets go. Kind of like someone I know and am dying to speak with, but is pretty busy with his fraternity and APSM. Robin's passion is bridging the gap over distances and linking Luzon to Mindanao via video conference technology. This, to produce a working peace project to be sponsored and with linkages maintained for a longer goal---a television show with a dialogue format. Sure, to some that's UNICEF crap. My response: Sure, that's how far you'll get smarty pants.

When you have a dream, don't let go. But the dictates of my personal principles and that of my dogma tell me, if it's going to result into something wrong, it's not God's will, it's not good for you. Sure, if pursuing something means destroying everything else, that's not good. Makes sense.

So I am more than glad that he's on board this great project. I wish organizations could be all they could be and aim for things like this. After all, academic is not synonymous to stagnant, or unproductive, or socializing and interaction.

My faith in our batch has swelled so much, I think we can make the difference. I just feel something special in my batch, in our Political Science 2007. Tell me am just biased here, but no, I can feel, I believe (and that's a declaration I admit is built around HUMAN emotion), I perceive (your empirical hush push) that this batch in this time can do great things. It's like the Millenium Development Goals, only that you can feel it and it is far closer to you...

I recall the movie "Contact", starring Jodie Foster and Matthew MaCona...something...at the end of her apparent journey to outer space and encounters with advanced life forms...she goes on to tell the story and gets refuted. It's a dose of a scientist's medicine...her theory being beaten down by a panel of skeptics. Science is the art of doubt. Science has been that way for better of worse.

I'm sick and tired of proving myself to an audience of few. Times when I want to talk about something else but end up being asked the same damn questions. QUestions like "How are you?" (types not really meant), or when my mom blunders "Toothbrushyyy time!" Sounds cute. Come to think of it, I can live with that.

I'm sick and tired of gazes at me as if saying, "You owe me one." OR "It's your fault." OR "I got my eyes on you." OR "Huh, that's what you think." DAMN!!!

Who are you trying to fool??? That's why I don't like debating. That's one arena where aura can mean a lot but adds less to the substance. I'd rather get a broadsword and have a duel. Just call me the reticulated python.

Damn...

The damnation of me is when I get over the hump only to fall down again. But I guess we just have to pick ourselves up. There's much to do, much to be proud of, much worth fighting for.

When the dust clears, I see myself anew. I would pay much to see old friends again. Call this burn out. Call it what you want. I am not mourning over something or someone lost. I am not in the mood to toil over repetitive debates with people who have made up minds and have the balls to lord over their proposition in your face... The point of the matter is...I don't know what to think, or who to blame, or what to do about it...

But I guess that's being the raconteur I so greatly fear...the irritative being that is not only boring, but is also pointless...

One of my unfulfilled dreams is to accomplish my very own four-book saga. I have a plot and some twists in mind. I only made up twenty chapters of book one. Then our PC crashed. A blessing in disguise it was for me since I could re-do the draft and make it sound more mature, smoother, and more thought-provocative.

Just like my 199 I suppose. A lot of details are hazy and fuzzy to me. A new book gives me something else to talk about. It's a matter of being sure about yourself and what you want to do. A lot like love ei? Hehe. How conspicuous the places I shelve my ideas in...

The only consolation is that these moments take up only a nano-fraction of my day...and it just so happened it attacked me right now...hence, this blog...

I'd rather let God overshadow me. In that knowledge, I know some form of peace and happiness will win the day...

Note to self: Grab a copy of Yellowcab CD. Just like Switchfoot, it's good head-smashing, sententious paranoia...

"...But all she saw was trouble in my eyes...let her go..."

Aspire for the Spire

...Hope dangles on a string, like slow spinning redemption...

I open my eyes to a dark June evening, tired and distraught by the pleasantries and negativities of the long registration process that dominated the week's itenerary. There is some warmth kissing my cheeks, and memories from some distant past. It might as well all I have in mind. Poverty in thought strikes those who are wealthy in action.

Hail once, hail twice and not until the eighth time in thirty minutes do I get a taxi ride. I pretend to look back and take note of the plate numbers of vacant cabs who did nothing but look at me and ignore my plea. I plea for sanctuary. I plea for reclusion. I get inside, my head bumps the ledge a bit and makes a thug. I give out the instructions and gives the driver a smile. The kind of smile you give when you have nothing else to say. A standard smile and a shrug to make the man sure you're not trying to do anything funny, nor proposing something stupid. The taxi moves along the lighted Katipunan commercial district. I am disattached to the frenzy, the commotion, the mayhem of Friday evenings.

I would like to call it exhaustion, exasperation...it has a lot of forms. However, it is not much that I am tired. Truth be told, I love my job and have no regrets whatsoever in taking this path of service. The hesitance that enveloped me during the campaign no longer exists, and has instead been replaced by much hope. Hope that dangles on a string, slow spinning redemption...as the song goes.

Aspire for the spire.

How do you deal with fixated angst and sadness on one person? How can you be angry at someone you do not want to let go of? I tell myself that it has to be so. I tell myself that it only hurts in the beginning. There is too much at stake. "Shame on you Paolo, shame on you. You do not risk further that you have invested so much in?" But I have to let go. I can not have everything. Sure, tell that to yourself you cliche-lover. I stare at the horizon, the eastern metropolitan skyline as we car goes through the fly-over. At the landing, there is uneasiness and a depressing feeling as well. I ask myself if I will I ever fall in love the same way again. I ask myself if in that time, that person would love me back for all I am, the nothingness of me.

I do not take pride in what I am. I am a bouncing boy of fat. Immature, struggling to make himself feel better. Or is he not?

I could only hope for a day I could be that someone to my someone. For now, it is complicated. No, complicated is a term used by those who could not see the challenge or accept the task at hand.

So I say, you go on the pursuit of academic excellence. I crawl for excellence in the service. Temperamence doesn't come easy now, now that stress is looming at the next turn. Thesis, economics, council work...bah! I pray for the strength to think of other nobler things than personal realization. I pray for the perspective to see things as beautiful instead of what they are.

Funny how man can talk of the same thing over and over again. Has he not moved on? I think not. Life is a cycle that bends and leaps forward. It is slow spinning. It demands redemption. For as the Punisher would say, if it is not vengeance, it has to be punishment.

I am glad yet I lack something. My friends would tell me to put my faith in God. I do. Some of my friends think God does not exist, or that reason has won the battle over dogma. Times like these, I find the existence of God to be as real as anything else. For just as the taxi meter ticks, time ticks, God moves and leads to His overall plan. Call it unfair. Call it what you want. But isn't breathing a privilege more than a curse. Even postmodernists would say that it is a matter of perspective. Then in a world of so many views, how can there be order? I say we do not go for compromise, we choose one and perhaps another to take us to our destination.

This is the fallback of the faithful. God works in mysterious ways. Everything has a purpose. Call it self-serving, I find power in such thinking. For if man does not find meaning and purpose, he is nothing. If man thinks he shall be dust after he dies and nothing else, then he is doomed to being so.

Idealism should not be quelled, it should be harnessed and used. The world needs dreamers. The world needs less of pale staring moments in a taxi.

So to those who may believe I have not learned my lessons and moved on, I beg you to think otherwise.

There is much to be had in this world. I am determined to have them.