Urbanized Dolphin

My cousin, a couple of years my junior, approached me the other night and asked if I can go with him to my artist and have his first tattoo done. Trying to sound and look mature to my young kin I told him that being inked for the first time is like a rite of passage… … a sign of readiness to handle the severity of something permanently being marked on you. Having two tattoos myself makes me a bit passionate on this subject.

So I asked him why he wanted to be inked. His reply saddened me.... He wanted to look cool while playing basketball and that he finds the guys on the cable show Miami Ink "way wicked". To his dismay I denied his request. I told him that I wont accompany someone to be inked just to have a cool accessory that one can flaunt.

I made the poor boy sit still and forced him to listen to my preachy ramblings about being inked. Tattoos are not accessories. It’s something intimately permanent. A commitment that should be treated with respect for it is considered to be the highest form of visual art.

Tattoos are symbols of one's journey through life. It has to have meaning and purpose. It is intimate and should be a very personal rite of passage. One's tattoos should have history.

I explained to him that my two tattoos have their history, meaning and purpose.

My first one, located just inches below my nape and at the center of my back is a two color concept design that I created and was interpreted and developed by the tattoo artist. At the center is a couple of fish swimming around a whirlpool resembling the oriental Yin and Yang Symbol, around it is a splash of water/wave and has extended tribal vines coming out of its edges. This tattoo symbolizes my "growing up" years. I got it a couple months after graduation. The yin-yang swimming fish duo stands for my parents divorce, that whatever they do they can’t seem to see each other eye to eye. It also stands for my lifestyle; fish are individuals who have infinite freedom and rot when they are caught. The yin yang whirlpool where they swim stands for the good and evil aspects of my character. It represents how I balance my personal demons and my life's successes. The splash of water means that life has a way of replenishing and washing away any painful memories and moral mistakes that I have done in the past. The spikes basically mean that I'm still growing as a person. There's more room to experience everything that life has to offer.

My second tattoo, on my right arm, is a unique design created by my mentor Direk Ipe and me. I had it done a couple of months after breaking up with my ex-fiancée. It's an inter-lapping symbol using the three letters of my nick, LUI. The inter-lapping letters U and I form a devil's pitchfork. It stands for my personal demons, my poisons and reminds me that people have the capacity to be evil. And that evil is always waiting to pop out and consume me. The inter-lapping L and I resemble a cross with an extended right segment pointing upwards. It stands for the goodness in me, that I too have some good values and only Him, the one upstairs has the sole right to judge my actions and decisions in this life. This tattoo symbolizes both the bad and the good things about me makes me who I am and what I do in life.

Being inked is not a fad. ... It's a lifestyle.

It is a way of life for the selected few. Individuals who defy conformity. Those who rebels at life’s hypocrisy and twisted moral outlooks.

My tattoos are marks made for my soul.

It marks the things that I have gone through.

Being inked is mapping out, on your mundane physicality the things and events that shape you in journey towards the mystery of what happens next after dying...

Stress can make you way uptight. Humor is its prescribed medication.

Humor is the only thing that makes us sane in our crazy assed and unmerciful plane of existence. Humor fills out what we lack in life. It makes us smile even if were dirt poor. It makes us laugh even if were a paraplegic eating out of a tube.It makes life easier to bear. I cannot emphasize on how much we owe our life’s temporal contentment with humor, comedy, laughter, wit. I mentioned temporal contentment, well we are just humans. We are cursed beings that have insatiable appetites. Nobody is really content in what they have; those who say that they are just know how to lie (convincingly) to themselves.

Comedy is the air that prolongs our temporal contentment. Humor is the filler between our temporal happiness. It links the gap. Why the hell am I talking about this?

Yesterday I had a written tussle with a couple, both friends of mine that goes way back during high school. It was a pretty heated debate, so heated up; I got IM’s from batch mates and friends whose either agreeing with me or trying to pacify the involved parties.It started when my guy friend posted (on our alumni email group) that our dear high school Alma Mater has yet another fund raising project, probably another worthy cause but should be inquisitively questioned, and that they need the support of the alumni’s by buying tickets to some raffle event or something resembling that idea.The post clearly stated that if you’re really concern then read on BUT if you have nothing relevant and no helpful comments then don’t bother to reply).

Well he didn’t exactly write that word by word but that’s basically the gist of what he was trying to say or something to that effect.The rebel slash joker that I am, wit overcame me, forced me to jokingly reply “can I swipe it?” pertaining on buying tickets with a credit card. I meant it as a joke. But my guy friend retaliated sarcastically and what I perceived as with malicious intent, that some people, educated people who graduated college just don’t understand simple instructions. He got furious at my comment… But he didn’t have the balls to say it directly. He made a general sarcastic remark.

I found it funny… at first.

But then it hit me. Was he judging me and questioning my academic integrity and achievement? So what if I’m a college graduate that commented with a joke that he obviously didn’t get? Does it lessen my intellect? Was I less intelligent for having said that? Or is he saying that I’m not worth my college degree because I made fun on a “mighty” cause that deserves the highest respects and should be taken with insurmountable level of seriousness that no one should even dare make fun or get humor from it?I confronted him in writing. I asked him if he was angry and if he was just say so. I didn’t get any reply from him. But I did get a couple of emails from his better half. This female friend defended her partner. She pointed out that if I have nothing good to say then I shouldn’t have even bothered saying anything. If I’m not a help for the cause then I shouldn’t be commenting on the subject was her firm words. In a series of exchanged emails, my witty comment about “swiping it” (which I assure everyone that it’s not malicious and meant to be delivered in a tasteful and humorous manner) became a big obstruction for their fund raising cause.

It became a big deal. Wow… I said to myself. These guys are uptight. I know the logic that what may be funny to you may be offensive to others. But for god’s sake, it was a one liner punch line, a remark that points out to no one specifically. It only meant to play on the idea if they were accepting credit cards to the tickets that they are selling (how cool is that if they do! Lolz).I asked them this… How sure are they that the cause that they are willing to be stressed out for and makes them transforms into winded uptight individuals is really worth all the hassle?

What I’m trying to say is, my most obvious point, IT WAS JUST A JOKE. Everything in Life is subjected comedy. Everything is, can and will be the source of humor and laughter. Nothing is divine in comedy, even God Himself, but most of all our own self. In order to make fun of something and someone, one must be willing to make fun of themselves.

Guys… Lighten up… Seriously uptight persons won’t sell any tickets. They probably will but that’s because it’s out of pity.

Peace….. And I do hope that every single day, at least once, laugh and make fun of something.

I wrote this piece years ago, during my college years. It was during the “formative” years of my writing. I hope it still applies, I really didn’t do any revisions to it. I wanted to retain the concreteness of what I felt when i first wrote this. Open for comments…..

Pinoy Odyssey

“Oh..My…God!” Those were the only words that I could mumble out from my awe-stricken mouth. I was oblivious to the fact that my terrified body was being trampled by, what seems to be, a brigade of red shirts that lost all their sense of humanity and compassion. And these muddled souls were not a bunch of college coeds going insane on a wild frat party. I was being crushed by thousands of Catholic devotees to the Black Nazarene. I found my overwhelmed soul being stupefied by the pandemonium that is happening in front of me. A tremendous surge of mixed emotions dashed through my spine, as if suddenly a series of intense strikes of electric discharge traumatized my cerebral cells.

All I could do was catch my breath and be confused on what is happening to me.

It was the Ninth of January, feast day of Quiapo’s patron saint, when I felt the sudden urge to make up for not practicing my religion, spiritual indulgence was my goal. I expected the worse knowing that the Black Nazarene procession would be rowdy and wild, at the least. But as I found out, all my expectations failed me, for no of level mental and physical preparation can get me ready to what I have been sucked into (that’s probably an overstatement but it was one hell of a sight). I felt that I was to be drowned by the sea of red clothed devotees, which, without exaggeration, stretched from the corner of Isetann Mall up to the last spaces of historic Plaza Miranda. All I could see were waves of bodies, of which every single soul is either, with admirable determination, trying to grab hold of the 500 meter long, thick and callused causing nylon rope (which pulls the “Nazareno’s” carriage). Or desperately trying to reach the carriage itself just to wipe a piece of clothe to the statue. Now I know how Kabayan Noli de Castro must have felt when I watched him being crushed on national television. But at least it was all worth it, heck, it brought him to senate right? (He’s now the Vice President)

The whole procession was in utter chaos, I can’t help comparing it to a riotous mosh pit of a punk rock band in the height of a gig. At the middle of all that confusion, I found myself asking if it is really necessary to do all this just to prove the sincerity of one’s devotion… perhaps. Or if not, this “chaos-fest” just proves that we Filipino’s just loves to get physical on almost anything. That’s probably the rationale of the incredible rush that I felt while going for the rope, which everyone is struggling to grab hold of. Ten minutes of battling a million elbows I finally laid my hands on that rope and I found myself, shamefully I must admit, screaming profanity at the top of my lungs (oh well, nobody even noticed…. ). Touching it made me fulfilled, I don’t know why, but for that split second I felt, eerily, happy and content. But the feeling of bliss was short lived, for my basketball skill of boxing out was overrun by dark skinned brutes with white bandannas on their heads. It was hard to believe that they were on the spiritual side.

Accepting defeat, I mean they seemed to be a bunch of Magdalo rejects trying to hold a military junta (less the high powered guns and red arm bands), I opted to fall back from the mob and just enjoy the surreal feeling of witnessing countless hands trying to achieve a single goal at a safer location. I then realized that I was pushed and shoved at and ended up at the corner of Arlegui, this forced me to look for higher grounds. For my sneakers and toes has had enough of all that stumping. What I saw stunned me once again. It was amazing. A picture of myriad souls; of diverse social backgrounds, of various dialects, of contrasting influences, of different generations trying sincerely to show their sense of religious zeal at the risk of seriously getting hurt. As if the bittersweet sensation of being a part of something so chaotic is reasonable, knowing that being a part of the divinity of the Nazarene tradition helps to intensify one’s faith. Hoping that all this will eventually make life a little less depressing. The Quiapo procession may seem to be an extravagant sideshow of sheer disorder. But to those Nazarene devotees it is only during that stampede-like procession that they can prove their utmost and heartfelt fondness to their faith.

Fondness? I should say that devotion is the politically correct term, but I cannot help myself on questioning if getting hurt and having a stampede justifies an act of devotion towards Christ. That day, the stretch of Magsaysay Boulevard overflowed with an insane number of different kinds of devotees. The purist, the non-practicing, the BKL (binyag, kasal, libing church attendees) and of course the scoundrels of Recto of which they either want to earn a few buck or get a few bucks, all of them moved by the enchanting choreograph of the Nazarene’s dance. And for a split second there were no divisions. A million strangers doing a frenzied ballet in the tune of “Lord please hear our prayers”.

But whatever a person’s reason for joining the procession, it leads only to a simple and unified belief, that the grace of the Nazarene be upon to those who believe. This only shows that Filipinos are still preserving its culture, beliefs and principles (especially in terms of religion). Even if waves of secular modernization and the materialistic concept of globalization is upon us.

Hmmm…. The irony here is what if the reason for attending the traditional procession is just to ask for something in return. When I got home I realized that the Nazarene odyssey only mirrors the reality of what is really happening to the Filipino’s as a race, which in turn mirrors our political environment…. That we are in chaos, unruly, selfish and greedy, that we have lost the sense of care to one another and yet all of us wants the same thing… to grab hold of a piece of dream, a piece of heaven and be satisfied enough to sustain it. Like the piece of dream of cleansing the AFP of corruption which Lt. (s.g) Trillanes and company is arrogantly fighting for. Like the piece of dream of the National Recovery Program being a reality that Senator Gringo Honasan seemed to think worth hiding for. Like the piece of dream to have a strong republic and a stronger sense of national security which President GMA is working hard to attain at the expense of berating the media only to woo them again.

For me, as like to anything else that crosses my journey on finding the purpose to my existence…. This Nazarene odyssey is yet another experience.

fucked monday

another Monday morning….

i hate Mondays… to the highest level of stereo typical hatred of Mondays.

why do i hate it? coz its another working week. it’s a start of another five days of being caught sleeping at the office and having long sleepless nights drinking so i can…. well get sleepy. It’s another start…. it’s hard to start again and again…. again and again.

i woke up so early that i didn’t realized i only slept for a couple of hours. hhmm… must be the beer i intoxicated myself to sleep.

it’s gonna be a hell of a week. i know for sure… didn’t have rice for breakfast….
that’s a sure way that things might seriously be fucked up.

and well it is….

i didn’t mean it… but i accidentally farted the most hideous fart that i have ever made inside the FX…. the whole car stank like sauced up brocolli with bagoong. all i can do was smile and say sorry….

why didn’t i deny it?….

it was so fucking loud that the driver suddenly pulled over and checked that tires…. embarrassing yes…. but it’s a little bit fulfilling… in a very morbid and nickelodeon-isque kind of way.

going through my first three hours of shift… my teammate tapped my work station. i have no fucking idea that the whole row near, and even at the back of my desk was hearing my snore…. and to think that they where wearing headphones listening to music…. how loud can you snore while at the office?

i think i just broke that record.

well the good thing is my office task for today is all done and taken care off…. early enough to write a concept format presentation for our solar project. but they will always be a b-side to every good thing….

the b-side is… i have no idea what i would write….. blocked man…. completely blocked man!

well gtg…. I’m expecting the day to be lot worse when i get home….

i hate mondays man…. p*ta in*ng i hate mondays