With Egg
Friday, June 29, 2007
I will do actual blogging one of these days. For now, however, allow me to tread other realms of exploitation.
posted by marguerite @ 12:01 AM
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Ajax
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Whammy, Ninong Poy, and I spent the afternoon taking photos and viddy at the ruins of the Ajax building along Shaw Blvd. Lived near it all my life and never knew the place was such a prime location for kibbutzing. The weather made for really shoddy lighting, though. If the sun had been better, the place would’ve been glorious. It was fun all the same. Crappy shots, crappy editing (done in an hour with me flat on the bed, watching Louis Theroux in another window), crappy crappy crappy, but I was at least able to snap Diego, my viddycam, out of a two-year-long stupor.
posted by marguerite @ 11:39 PM
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Tgsk
Sunday, June 17, 2007
So I was lying in bed, laptop on tummy, mulling over which episode of Brittas Empire to re-re-re-watch online, when—
Pubey Boy: may ginagawa ka ba?
Milkmaid: wala. bakwet?
Pubey Boy: samahan mo naman ako o
Pubey Boy: i just need to go to this event
Pubey Boy: magpapakita lang ako
Milkmaid: now? where is this?
Pubey Boy: the event is in world trade center
Pubey Boy: it's a "rave"
Pubey Boy: i really really really don't wanna go
Milkmaid: then why go?
Pubey Boy: but i just need to tell my boss that i went
Pubey Boy: i just need my name crossed off their guestlist
Pubey Boy: we'll just go in and then out
Milkmaid: fine.
Milkmaid: but we're only going to show up and then leave.
Pubey Boy: YES
Pubey Boy: for the love of God
And thus, I found myself on my way to my first—and last—rave. In fact, I wasn’t even exposed to the real deal since Pubey kept his promise, limiting the experience to a mere twenty minutes. We also got there early, so the place wasn’t packed yet, and just a smattering of people was starting to do that bopping motion they consider dancing. (And only a fraction wielded glow sticks, harumph.). But I suppose I witnessed the most basic elements of this particular phenomenon of the Upper Society Saturday Night, at the very least. Allow me to do a checklist.
[×] girls in flimsy halters, hot pants, I-will-puncture-the-earth-with-each-step-I-take heels, body glitter, and too much foundation (Happy Foundation Day!!!)
[×] guys in tight polos, mirrored shades, gold chains, and who basically spent more time grooming themselves that night than I had ever spent in the past 21 years
[×] VIP platforms with couches, makeshift bars, fat rich guys, and the cream of the skank crop for the previous to fuck later on at dawn
[×] everyone sizing everyone else up, sporting that “I’m the hot shit and you are sooooo not” look
[×] one endless tgsk tgsk tgsk tgsk tgsk tgsk tgsk beat c/o Mister Dee-Jay
[×] thick, criss-crossing laser light
[×] a sense of impending debauchery
We left before the chaos, before the pills started making the rounds, before that fraction of Manila society morphed into the not-so-elegantly wasted, bopping throng I see in films like Go. But it was worth it to have seen the warm-up. And Pubey was an excellent tour guide, explaining the spectacles with the somberness of a National Geographic voice-over (if you look behind you, you shall see a gaggle of “putachings” priming themselves for a drug-addled spell of intercourse with the herd of corpulent “dee-oh-ehms” grunting in the background *oooooh* *aaaaah* *click* *click*).
Being in that sparkly, sinister bubble, however briefly, was a fascinating experience, but no matter how infectious the whole brouhaha tried to will itself to be, I won’t ever be able to take it seriously. Pubey even asked me on the way home if there was a chance I could be the type to frequent these things, had my past been altered a bit a few years ago. I told him, with great certainty, that there still wasn’t, that I’d be inherently allergic to them. That, and I’d look like a moron in hot pants.
posted by marguerite @ 1:16 AM
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Race
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
I am not a rah-rah animal activist. I am not an animal activist. I am not an activist. Although politics do fascinate me, I’m afraid I lack the conviction to take actual action for whatever cause I agree with. My dream last night, however, proved that tucked somewhere in the pleats of my subconscious is the desire to uphold the rights of native Australian faunae. Or not.
The first half of my dream had something to do with sketching cartoon figurines or cartoon cels onto large pieces of paper. I think I was intimidated by the change in scale, so I was really anxious about doing the grids right. Anyway. That segment slipped into me lurching down the Amazon river in one of those rickety boats with the gargantuan fans at the back, accompanied by English-speaking koalas, kangaroos, and some other creatures I no longer remember. Apparently, we were on the tail end of a river race, and the other teams were composed completely of humans. The koalas made this big speech about how humans should stop antagonizing them, and that we were definitely going to win the race against those bastards because the kangaroos had an extra-special ability.
The Amazon river was marked every once in a while with a pink and blue MMDA pedestrian bridge. As our boat sped on, the kangaroos would suddenly latch onto the edge of these bridges with those heavy-duty metal measuring tapes (the ones construction workers use, with the metal coils rolled up into small plastic cubes; the ones that retract with frightening, I-will-slice-your-fingers-off speed at the push of a button). Then, they would swoop way over to the opponent’s boat, Tarzan-style, and then repeat the process at the next bridge. Sometimes, if the boats were near each other, the kangaroos would hop instead, but that didn’t look nearly as cool as the measuring tape maneuver, of course.
Most of the dream’s details have naturally dissolved since I got up, but that much I could remember. I’m not exactly sure why we would win if the kangaroos got to the finish line ahead, considering it was a boat race, and what the koalas meant by their being antagonized, but the fuck I care. The dream seemed tinged with propaganda, animal-related or not. All I know is that it had something to do with something fighting the something rights of something something. And that I woke up this morning wondering what the hell brought all that up.
Then again, I have been watching The Maxx like a fiend recently, and the Outback (okay, so it's the Outback in another, weird creature-laden dimension of Maxx's subconscious, but it's still a huge dusty plain) is one of its main settings. And I made myself sit through Madagascar a few days ago. And I saw this episode of Jeopardy yesterday that had a category on the Amazon. And the tiny stuffed koala that the octopus gave me has always been in my room, staring. There may be an explanation for everything.
posted by marguerite @ 1:18 PM
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Istap It
Saturday, June 09, 2007
The 7th Ateneo National Writer’s Workshop: Call for Submissions, Baybeh
+++
Earlier today, I started to fear that I had reverted to the sad sap of a state I was in when I was a college sophomore—a life vacuumed of worth, days consisting mostly of pondering over what very, very little I thought I had.
But I have to remember that, compared to three years ago, I am in a much better place. I have proven myself to be a capable person since then, in many respects. And there is no possible way I can go back to that time when crying in bed hysterically from feeling so immobile was my way of filling out the days. I have made myself concrete since. Others know I exist and, in a few incredible instances, have valued that fact. I have to remember that, because the only option is to continue the good that I’ve started, and to be certain that I am not as alone as I was.
+++
When they say that your life flashes before your eyes right before you die, I realized that the term “flash” may not necessarily mean that split-second montage that films have accustomed us to believe. Maybe the moment is stretched out much, much longer, and the patches of your past emerge between longer intervals of normalcy. Technically, your life still flashes before your eyes that way, and it still is “right before you die,” if you have a slightly more generous perception of time.
I got the idea this evening as I was walking down EDSA Central. In the 15 minutes it took me to get to the MRT, aural and visual reminders of the past two decades surfaced. A song. A friend’s car. A familiar snippet of conversation. My father (yes, we walked past each other in the hallway, and he stared all the while, incredulous). Another song. A T-shirt design. A toy. A fast food meal. Another song.
It was an uncanny series. I know everything reminds us of everything, but this evening’s little slideshow was a tad too menacing for me, a bit too comprehensive for such short a time. But the reminders did sputter out by the time I got to the station, and I would like to think that I’m still part of the living. It was just a thought.
posted by marguerite @ 1:49 AM
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Mandatory Post-First Job Traumarama Entry
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
I left my job. In classic, fresh graduate pondering over Life as she sits bemused in her little office corner fashion. I don’t think I wasted any of my time, though, because it is crucial to try things out first, to get a more concrete sense of both what I want and am willing to do. And going home six nights a week drained, strained, and altogether miserable means that I am just not cut out for a steady stint writing copy. Especially in an agency where the projects are life-sappers in themselves (realestaterealestaterealestate), the workload is inhumane, and inter-office communication is shoddy. It felt ridiculously wrong to be so exhausted from piecing together sappy brochure text for land developments that I could only wring out a sentence or two of fiction each night. That is, if I hadn’t passed out on my bed by then. I did learn a lot about corporate communication, and while learning is always a good thing, I was unhappy. It didn’t feel right. Work shouldn’t have to get me all ecstatic, but neither should it suck all the cheer out of me.
This is all hackneyed first job introspection, obviously. But I’m not upset about it. If anything, I’m glad to have gone through the motions. I told myself a few years ago that as long as my job involved the written word, film, or radio and didn’t keep me from writing stories, I would be okay. But I wouldn’t have known which exact job did or didn’t fall under that, of course, so this whole cliché of a blog entry isn’t too revolting for me. Although it probably is for whoever else is reading this.
So I figured out through hands-on traumarama that I can’t do Creatives, Corporate-Style. It is just not my bag. Alright, then. Bow. I thank you.
posted by marguerite @ 6:00 PM
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