STRING 08: Urgently Needed: Spontaneity in Speaking

Just when I thought Mathew Brady and Edward Curtis had served as great creatures in the history of mankind, Prof DP opened up my eyes to reality on the first day that I attended my Photojournalism class. Let me not forget to commend the reporters for painstakingly delving deeper into their topics that they had just recited everything that’s in Wikipedia. (Wikipedia Forever!)

We had a talent show in DevComm and the classroom looked like a comedy bar the entire period. Groups were called in randomly to perform in front of the ruthless class. And so I felt it my duty to write down the assessment.
1. A girl sang Journey (not the band, but rather …what a journey it has been and the end is not in sight).
2. Four girls sang different songs so good I forgot their titles, while constantly flipping their hair.
3. Some gentleman *blecch* sang some old song, which lyrics I knew better than he did. That’s excusable, poor memory comes with age anyway.
4. The King of Pop graced the show with his signature moves. Magnificent! I nearly asked for a rerun.
5. The Master of Seduction did a song-and-dance number. The class wanted more but FC got in the way.
6. Aiming too HIGH! (Aylabyu Gu Jun Pyo!)
7. A group of girls rendered a heart-warming Christmas medley. Oh, I almost forgot that it’s almost Christmas. (Patawaaaad!)
8. The finale was brought to us by The Shit Series. Save the best for last, as they say. Whatevs.

The reporting in Psychology had finally started; expect me to be looking forward to it every Tuesdays and Fridays. Reporting thrills me to the bones like hell. Yes, like hell. (Translation: Find out what irony is.) The reporters were awful, as always. It’s not that I concentrate on their flaws, but what could I do so as not to notice them? Close my eyes and sleep? Might as well, but the house rules forbid me to. Miss Perpekta might put me in detention.Good thing some girl aired my complaint to the reporter, she asked out loud: Aren't you tackling the differences of Psychology from other sciences? Because it seems like you're just relating those sciences to Psychology. Had I not known better, I would have thought that girl just wanted attention. The same reporter's penchant for using the word 'somehow' made him all the more like pretentiously talking nonsense.

Then came the greatest show on earth. In Argumentation and Debate class, we had an extemporaneous speaking activity. How come no one told me about it beforehand? Huh? Huh?

Boy, whatever happened to spontaneity?
-
Overheard conversation at the blockbuster-hit 2012 train; presumably referring to gay guys who had just alighted.

Man1: Dumarami pa sila, di na mapigil ang pagdami.
Man2: Onga e, di naman nag-aanak, dumarame.
Man1: Nagkakainggitan lang yan, paano ang daming talent.
Man2: Anong talent? Magpedicure, manicure….

HUH?
I turned to move away; bigotry is a fast-spreading contagion.

STRING 07: Daily Caffeine Fix Fixation

I made it a point to wake up earlier than usual, unlike most of the days when I thought of school as a jeepney ride away from home, to attend to the things that had to be accomplished for today. I dropped by a nearby computer shop to have my grades printed the second time, for the first one had been ruined by the spilt cologne in my bag.

Prof FC hadn’t been around by the time I arrived at the classroom and Miss President (And now that she’s been mentioned, I thought she’d step out of presidency?) was in charge of the table and of some paperwork he had left for the class to do. I wasn’t in the mood to do anything at the moment, three reasons I could think of were: 1. some misguided fucker had been sitting in my armchair and told me, rather nicely, to have my ass seated elsewhere, 2. my eyes hurt badly, and 3. I hadn’t ingested even a drop of coffee, which is terribly necessary for me to function well for at least five hours in school. Under these circumstances, how would I be able to make it to the President’s List? Oh well, the hell I care.

In lieu of bugging myself to do things that are supposed to matter but would mean nothing to me given that I am not in the mood, apparently because of the third aforementioned reason, I idled time away by cracking open F. Sionil Jose’s Mass. Though concentration in reading inside the classroom was next to impossible, putting the blame on my eyes that seem to ache perpetually and to the Shit Series strutting their stuff stupidly in front of everyone, I therefore conclude that Mass is, in a way, a good read.

Most in the class left school after enduring hours in suspended animation. Seb and I followed minutes later. When we parted ways at Pureza, a girl with retainers and considerably decent morals approached me as I guzzled my cappuccino shake. She mentioned about some organization yada yada whilst I wondered if she has some hidden agenda in the innermost recesses of her mind. I knew it. The whole talk was really leading into a mild form of extortion or donation yada yada (as she prefer it to be called) but at least she wasn’t like those who hitch in the jeepney and give effusive lectures that it’s better to give than to receive. At the end, I found myself groping for coins inside the front pocket of my pants, while saying, “Hala ate, hino-hold-up mo ‘ko” for I cannot afford the three-dimensional cards with the images of the Virgin Mary/Jesus Christ and verses on the verso that she's offering me.

Now I wonder if I do look like a prey. The girl in retainers looked less like a predator, anyway.

STRING 06: DUH Week

Ten days have passed since the day I came back to school after the so-called semestral break. Seven days since I got a form for the Dean’s List. Five days since Seb and I traipsed the streets of The Walled City. Four days since I dropped by Shakespeare’s university for a book delivery. Two days since my G-TEC 0.3 pen betrayed me for the second time in history. One day since the 2012 movie premiere. All of these – a poor attempt at triggering my poor memory of the days gone by.

It appeared like November 9 was the official opening of the second term. I arrived late and wasn’t even half-surprised to see Prof FC inside the room, (I just went like, ‘yeah right, whatever’) in our Feature and Magazine Writing class, though I would have absolutely preferred somebody else to handle us if given the chance to choose. In Humanities, the class met a new face in the persona of Prof Jose HaringLupa BangkangPandigma (pretty nice name, isn't it?). It turned out that he's the husband of the college theater group adviser.

The next day, Prof FC once again, for the Development Communication class, and a spinster (I suppose) for General Psychology class. I really don't understand why she evaded a classmate's question regarding her age. Why, age doesn't matter anyway. Then came Prof MKG for our Argumentation and Debate class. A very interesting woman in her early twenties, perhaps.

The following days went pretty much the same as the previous ones. Boy, am I not bored.

STRING 05: Sunny-side up

It is an indisputable fact of life that no matter how the parents try to put a leash on their child's neck (and have it changed every other week), there will come a time that that the child will grow his fangs and bite, even the hand that feeds him. No I am not referring to myself, but to my brother. It's always been the same case. Breakfast had been sort of spoiled, for both of my parents, that is. Had it been me in the collision, I wouldn't have eaten, which would probably be tragic since I am always in the mood for good food especially upon waking up. I engaged in munching on my hotdog-filled-Spanish bread with catsup and mayo. Not bad at all.

STRING 04: Tick-tocks. Tactics.

Haven't surfed the net, not even touched a computer, for days, until now. Downright deadly, it is, yet I managed to survive. Looking back at the days long past, the very idea of it is unimaginable, yet I continued to abstain. The horror of feeling disconnected from the only place I've had the confidence to air my angst was unbearable, yet I came out alive. So am here, just to post an update.

Wala kang choice e. Kahit isinusuka mo na ang mundong ginagalawan mo, kung wala kang mapagpipilian, matututo kang mag-cope. Survival. Hindi ko alam. Kung andyan ako, baka hindi ako ganto magsalita at mag-isip ngayon. Hindi ko masabi.

-- My take on Shakespeare's idea of me studying in the same university he's in, and how he learned to love the people he used to sort-of despise.

In the strike of a new day, Shakespeare and I talked about random things over texting, told stories of our college lives and love lives. Funny how our thoughts coincide; we end up knowing what's on each other's minds without personal contact. Mental telepathy, I daresay.

This is just another post that leads nowhere. I really don't know when I will force myself back to writing sensibly. Pathetic, yes.

Often, we are bothered by the most unexpected questions, only to have them answered by the most unexpected persons in the most unexpected situations.

STRING 03: Letting go, moving on, and being plain dumb

Seeing him again had made me realize how matters were going for my loving self. I never really cared him more than I do as a friend. I’ve come to my senses and everything seemed to fit in their proper places in the puzzle. I also realized how I’ve been pathetically stupid back then, clinging to memories, wallowing in nostalgia, griping how hard it was for me – having breached that thin line between love and friendship.

Individually, things now are going well for me and for him, though not that much for he hasn’t moved on with his high school love, it seems. As for the two of us as a unit, we’re happy together and as long as there’s that flimsy thread connecting our thoughts, we’ll always have each other. Cheesy, but it’s true.

I still am sad. But he’s out of it, and definitely being loveless is out of it. Most of my sadness is comprised of my expectations, disappointments, and frustrations in aspects of self-satisfaction. The Marionette is amid a thread-like bridge of hope; critical, precarious, vague future (am thanking Seth again, for this one, though I know I could come up with the translation by myself).

Schooling resumes in a few days. Hopefully, the writing-nerve comes back by that time after a week-long trip six feet under the stars*. In the meantime, I’ve got to ingest more books, more words, more knowledge. Someone’s arsenal must take charge.

*apologies to All Time Low

STRING 02: On a rigma-roll

Since online writing had been scarce lately, only now do I bring you the obligatory blog post for the semestral break that comes in handy as a reference and/or remnant of the days long past.

I. Hell hath no fury than a Marionette scorned

It was eleven-thirty in the evening, and the answers in the Ethics final exam were due in thirty minutes. Everything’s a blur; I didn’t know what the right thing to do then, my mind in an irrational haze. I heard something from an acquaintance in the blogosphere (who will be now called The Arrogant One) that was too much of a blow my immature-slash-touchy self had readily taken offense. Admittedly, I wept, hard, with fury and self-pity. Something I had not done in the few months. Had I not been in constant physical and emotional stress at that moment, I would have been stronger enough to handle it. But, hell no, the cosmos seemed to have conspired against me, and struck just when my baggage was just so full I would have tripped off in an instant. The venting helped nonetheless, I felt better afterward.

I told that incident to some friends, not only because I wanted to, but also because I had to hear their take. Seb mostly felt the way I did. Lennox just laughed it off, dredging up age-old memories of me with The Arrogant One saying that the latter couldn’t have been that serious with it. And Shakespeare… I don’t remember him comment about it, not that I forgot him saying any. I suppose he’d rather not hear yet another of my babbling about The Arrogant One. Shakespeare didn’t like him in the first place. An irrational animosity, you tell me. Sometimes it’s kind of easing to think that he’s simply jealous of The Arrogant One. HAHAHA.

II. And now for something really CHEESY

So I learned that Shakespeare has switched to another network. We had an exchange of messages, and after sometime it went something like this:

SHAKESPEARE: May bf ka na? Hehe

MARION: Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Duh. Anong klaseng tanong ‘yan?

SHAKESPEARE: May nanliligaw na ba sa’yo?

MARION: *cringe* Manliligaw? Eewk. Grabe din ah, para akong nasa showbiz talkshow.

SHAKESPEARE: *said something I couldn’t recall, then added*…nga pala, basted ‘ata ako.

So I was like, DUH. WHEN HAS HE LEARNED ASKING ME THOSE KIND OF PERSONAL QUESTIONS? And I might as well ask why he brought up that BASTED thing out of the blue? Was it just my wishful thinking or did we get the same impression, dear reader? (Assuming there’s any.)

So if you don’t mind my sharing, Shakespeare is one of the fortunate few from high school who knows me better than I do, he’s The Best Friend… and The First (and Unrequited) Love. I suppose you don’t want to get me started with the long story I never wanted to be told, so suffice it to say that I was downright unnerved when I thought I knew what he meant by asking those questions. I wasn’t quite sure how to react on that and silently thanked him for ending the conversation by saying that he’d better sleep.

Two nights later, we caught up with each other again through texting. The ever-coward me surfaced and I decided not to let him anywhere near my affections. Love is fatal, and I am not ready to die yet. So I pushed him away through my little means of intimidation and arrogance, and voila. He hates me now with a passion. Just like the old days. A bit confused, I consulted some Seth Faustine, the authority when it comes to matters of the heart, about it, and he said:

“…may mga bagay talagang kahit ilang beses nating itanggi ay babalik at babalik para ipaalalang nag-eexist sila… kahit naman kasi itulak natin yung taong, let’s say, crazy-over-you e babalik pa rin yan, if what he feels is real. Tsaka dapat we provide chances. Who knows diba? Ayun pala ang daan patungong Quiapo.”

STRING 01: Lost in Limbo

In front of the computer, perusing the contents of my stalkee's Friendster and Blogger account, concluded that I haven't done my job well so I have to do better next time so as not to commit embarrassing mistakes. Munching on my second pack of cheese flavored crackers... Made CHEESIER! the foil pack screams.

Don't know what to do first despite the pile of schoolworks that lies ahead. Thought of writing a blog post before anything else, I have the whole night with me anyway. This is going to be another sleepless night, said my ever-nocturnal self. Until my inner GC-ness comes to the surface, no one's sure if I'll come up with the final requirements before the sun rises tomorrow. Lost in limbo.

Thursday had been a restless day - my group in PI and Campaigns had gone to Eusebio high school to help in the repacking of relief goods - and a sleepless night - I had been in online the entire evening, doing nothing. Mother and Father woke up past 4, scolded me for staying up til the wee hours of the morning, so I slept for an hour or so before going to school.