Catholiprism

two thousand years of culture forces you behind those bars
and you fidget on which to hide first amongst your bruises and your scars
you refuse to cope much further, keeping your faith against what's real
hoping someday you won't find out about the wounds that wouldn't heal

you're despising all that's different, hating all that the world denies
you conform to narrow your anger till they’re down to muffled sighs
searching for the perfect answers that your prayers couldn't give
parting from the killing sorrow that your conscience has retrieved

you have dignified the people who plead clean and who plead right
scuffled to achieve those morals and those values in one night
on your walls you have your angels spitting songs of how you've been
each impalement buries deeper along with every line they sing

clouded gravely by your thinking, consumed intently by your belief
every road that leads to nowhere breaks you down to fake relief
what's the certainty of living when every part of you has died?
have you considered if the life you embellished was maybe too good to survive?

if your gods could offer heaven then your hell must not exist
you're at the mercy of a wisdom brought about by chronic bliss
in submission to the indecency of the holiness you've made
you've delivered yourself to the nothingness of a soul you've just betrayed

Burden or Bliss

I think, I think too much. It's not a positive thing. There are times (gazillions of times) when I just wish that my brain is controlled by a switch that I can turn on and off every time I need a good night's sleep or need to do something more productive than to lurk in a gloomy corner and emote on every thought that my mind attaches itself to.

I quiver when people ask me, "What are you thinking?" Are you kidding me? I mean, really… a couple hundred lifetimes ain't enough for me to declare my thoughts at one specific moment. Anyone who can do that is a paramecium. I try to refrain from responding "nothing" because it's a total insult upon oneself. You got a brain that processes nothing, might as well just sell it.

I am searching for the perfect cure for uber analysis, steadfast rationalization, and subconscious picturesque capturing, so far there's none. I'm thinking about giving up on the close-to-impossible mission, but I'm still on the process of thinking about thinking of giving up on thinking about it at this time.

On the sidebar of all these, but my precedence for now, I am also dealing with being constantly hounded by the past and unswervingly being daunted by the future. I am an anxious person who's nostalgic. I am anxiotalgic.

There's this conjectural line from Mr. Ripley that goes something like, "Don't you wish you could put your past in a suitcase, put it in the basement, lock the door, and lose the key?" Yeh, a multitude of people have probably tried that, it doesn't eternally work. Unless the door on that basement is made of imperishable material, there would always be a means of knocking that door down and unleashing all that's hidden behind it. Or that conventional thing that everyone struggles to do yet only those with pragmatic heads come out as victors, "moving on" and uhm... "letting go". Take it from Magnolia, there's just no way that the past would ever be done with you. That friggin' past doesn't forget, there would always be this whirlwind that would twisterize you back to square one no matter how far along in that puzzle board you already are.

Pothead has some thoughts about the future, after I asked her if it is proper to give up on something in the present just because you fear that it would not work the way you want it to in the future. She said, "You're bullshit!! You're so fucking full of bullshit!!" Then she stood in the way of a raging truck and got herself shattered into pieces. I stood there wide-eyed with my mouth open, and then I approached her dismantled body parts slowly and asked, "Are you okay?"

No, here's what really happened.

I asked her that. Then she replied… with a question. "Why are you gonna base your decisions on something that you have no idea about?"

"Well, maybe I do have an idea… sort of… kinda…"

"Still," she interjected,"it's stupid to give up on something now just because you're afraid of what's gonna happen in the future. It's not right. It wouldn't feel right."

For someone who dutifully does the wrong things for the right reasons, I incessantly need a reminder of that.

"Is that why you still haven't given up on --"

"Yes." She said with conviction. "The future is composed of the consequences of the choices you've made in the present."

Relinquishing something because you fear that in the future you wouldn't have it any longer is plain balderdash. That's contriving your own shortcut to the future.

"We should learn to bask in the moment", Pothead continued. "Live it one day at a time."

No rushing? Taking pleasure in the details? Anything less surreal?

"Yeh, like for now this is all we need," I took a puff on my cig. "A couple of smokes, a couple of scrambles. You and me and Manuel L. Quezon."

"We both should just stop thinking, really, that's all we need for now."

If only it is possible. A momentary shortage in the brain would definitely be appreciated. To have that second, make it a minute or two, of not thinking. Not having to go through the tedious process of scrutinizing every random goddamned thought that crosses the head. A fleeting instance of being blank. How heavenly it must be to be an imbecile.

Is it really wrong to rationalize on things? Should everything be accepted as the bare bullshit that the world present these things to be?

There is no solution to all these. If it requires thinking and thinking again about the possible ways out, the putrid thinking process just would never end. This is a total rip-off – "I have to accept this. This is my gift, my curse. If only it could also make me climb walls and swing from one building to another."

Most of us didn't really ask for a brain that we ourselves cannot control and maneuver. It is ungrateful to actually condemn acquiring a working one. Yet sometimes I wish it isn't much to ask to own one that doesn't toil overtime. The burden of wit or the bliss of ignorance? Those with the most answers are also those with the most questions. No wonder I still don't have an answer as to why I am paining to experience the latter.

The Music Played

Aling Mary, An Urban Legend (03-25-07)
by Audrey De Castro on Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 11:33am

I just got rid of my stupid ring back tone, Boom Tarat Tarat, last week. I had to call Globe to know how to do it. Now I know why my load decreases for no good reason every now and then, it was because of that annoying ring back crap. It was my sister’s doing, she received that message from 2331 saying that those ring back tunes can be downloaded for free and so anything with the word FREE seemed appealing to us. I don’t know why we chose to download Boom Tarat Tarat amongst all the other less crappy tunes, maybe the whole idea is to be dumbest when the situation asks it.

Novelty songs just keep on coming, don’t they? I thought the horror ended when the Sex Bomb Girls left Eat Bulaga but no, they just kept on swarming everywhere. I guess the life span of such songs don’t rely on who’s doing the dimwitted choreography. Somebody kill Lito Camo… puhleassse…

I remember this anecdote by my brother’s friend, Bato (no, he’s not into drugs), about his mother who seemed to be so attached to that Boom Tarat Tarat jingle. Only she has her own version. It goes like PUNG! TARARARARAT! PUNG! TARARARARAT! TARARARARAT! TARARARARAT! PUNG! PUNG! PUNG! I see the deal with those dump songs is that they register in your head, but not completely. Like there was this one time when I was unconsciously singing a Sponge Cola song and I was like, “Wag kang bibitiw, bakla. Wag kang bibitiw, bakla…” and I realized that the song doesn’t really go that way. The Curse of the Subconscious. Even if you hate a certain song with all your soul and being, there’s this anomalous way of you tending to get them absorbed even faster than the songs that you like.

So back to Bato’s mother, Aling Mary, she probably watches Wowowee every single goddamned day of her adult life that the jingle comes out of her mouth as normal as her breathing does. Bato said that no matter what his mother is doing she’s always either humming or singing that song out loud. She came with her own ring back tone. Like when she’s doing the dishes, “Pung! Tararararat!”, feeding the love birds, “Pung! Tararararat!”, or just calling their dog, “Spaaarkyyy! Pung! Tararararat!” It was alarming, reckons Bato. I think he’s actually glad that he no longer has a father, because they all sleep in the same room and times could get horny.

Then one night, my sister and I were watching Supernatural on Studio 23, a series about two brothers fighting evil in all its form and weirdness, and the “enemy” that the characters needed to battle in that episode was Bloody Mary. Urban Legend has it that if you say her name three times in front of a mirror, she would come out of that mirror and scratch your eyes off. I haven’t really tried it because I’m so much of a chickenshit. And I turned to my sister, who also knows about Aling Mary’s Wowowee jingle fixation, and thought instead of saying Bloody Mary why don’t we try saying Aling Mary’s name for three times in front of the mirror.

My sister cringed, “Ayoko nga baka patayin nya tayo kakakanta nya ng Pung Tararararat.”
And I thought, “Hell yeh, that is practically scarier than getting your eyes ripped off.”

Anyway, there’s no point to this story, I just wanted to share. He-he.