time to prepare for the worst.

it’s taking me a while to process.

yes there are bits and pieces of hope and a thing that we have to look forward to.

but I don’t now have time to talk about what happened, or to draw the lines back into recent history, living history, given that my parents and I are still around and they had me in literally the last years of Martial Law. living history. the ones who were lucky enough to survive are now unlucky enough to be looking it in the face again.

I think I have been through it in the last few days. I have only started to start living again in the last day or so. and I hope that tells you how I feel in the here and now.

no I’m not okay. but that’s the luxury I cannot afford. dark days are coming. gotta be alive to get through them somehow. I don’t have faith, but I can try to keep going for everything else and everyone else.

what a light stick can do

Full disclosure: Yes, I’m in that MV. I was part of the group of K-pop fans dancing and waving our fandom light sticks.

Light sticks as in — the light that breaks through the darkness — that’s the full meaning of the title of the song, and that’s the main idea of the performance and of the video. (I think that’s why we were asked to join, too.)

Shine a light, be the light. It isn’t a passive thing, as the lyrics go.

Shout it into the wind! Stand up and be / the light that breaks through the darkness! / Sing the new and brave new song / YOU are the light that breaks through the darkness!

My freeform translation of the song’s chorus, with a little emphasis on the “you” because this is an exhortation, this is a call to arms, this is a rallying cry. That was the whole point of the song when it was written, but now it’s far more urgent than that, and that’s part of why I’ve been off the posts for a bit. This campaign season’s been all over the place and now we have two weeks.

Two weeks to decide a future, isn’t it? I can only keep hoping and I can only keep working in my own small way. I can vote. I can work.

I hope for a good outcome. (And I have to prepare for the worst, too.)

things I said, things I keep saying

And it wouldn’t be the first time for me to say, too, that some of the things that I’m gonna put down here are things that I have been saying for maybe ten years now, and I have had many moments of feeling like: I know I’m trying to say something that makes sense here, but does no one just want to listen?

I am sorry, younger millennials and younger generations. We failed you. We should have started teaching you the stories of Dekada ’70 and the things that happened around it, and the things that happened in the 1980s and 1990s. We should have fought to keep the history subjects. You should know exactly what has brought us to the mess of the here and now, and that asshole son of a lying murdering thief and his plundering wife trying to grab the highest post in the land.

If we all make the wrong choices in May, you better believe that no one you love will be coming here any time soon. I’ve said it here, I’ve said it in other places, I’ve kept trying to make noise about it. The family in Malacanang in the ’70s tried to lure the actual motherfucking Beatles to some nefarious event of theirs. The family in Malacanang wanted to treat them like nothing more than dancing puppets. And clearly the Beatles got away, but you better believe that it wasn’t without peril to their persons. There’s something wrong with a family that wants to treat artists of that caliber as playthings, and there’s something wrong with a family that will treat any artist as only a garnishing to their own pompous bullshit. (And yes, before you ask, the family threw a collective tantrum that they didn’t get what they wanted, which was a Beatles command performance or two or three or whatever sick fucking thing they wanted at the time.) Please google that. Please look at the primary sources.

I ran into this one earlier and it leads into my major point, but I’m just — I’m so angry about all these idiots running around on social media and pretending to be “influencers” and they’re all actually trying to be evil, or at the very least in the passive service of greater evil. Mouthing disinformation just for views and clout and advertising dollars. There’s a word for that: lying. It must be so nice to make money to talk about false things and make them up to be true. It is so fucking dangerous and I abhor every second of it.

And yeah. I find it so, so incredibly ironic today that the election might as well be a war waged on social media. Not the least because the previous election was also a war waged on social media and look where the fuck that got us. No one wants to understand why it’s so much more critical this time. I’ve been saying this for years: you’re using social media to get that idiot son and that murderer daughter elected, and what do you think will happen if heaven forfend they do get those positions? I have six fucking letters for you: ABS-CBN. That idiot son will go after every media outlet that speaks against him, because it came from his asshole father’s playbook, and he’ll do the exact same thing because he hasn’t got an original idea in his head. He doesn’t even have any brain cells between his ears! You’re trumpeting his alleged virtues on the very same social media that you will lose access to if the bastard does get elected! Why doesn’t anyone want to connect those two families to what happened to the media in 2020, and to what happened to the media in the 1970s?

I want to — shake the hell out of people. Out of the kids. Out of the adults and the parents and the older generations who just bought into that nonsense of: it didn’t hurt us so it didn’t hurt anyone. People go around shouting “check your privilege”, people go around yammering “move on”, and — oh man, I want to wring every last neck of every last enabler. Yes, I don’t care what age the enablers happen to be. I want to call meteor strikes down onto every last one of their heads. Whatever they think they’ll get out of this — it’s just gonna be horror after horror. I can’t want it. I refuse to want it.

I’m repeating myself, aren’t I?

Is anyone going to try to do the research and read the history this time?

Is anyone willing to think about things that are going wrong, and things that could go very wrong? Or is it easier to — lie? (More materially rewarding. That goes without saying, fuck.)

so you know who I’m with, and you know what I’m up to

That’s me with my BTS light stick ver. 3 in that photo, taken near the close of the Quezon City proclamation rally for Leni Robredo, Kiko Pangilinan, and their slate of senatorial candidates. (Next to me is someone holding another BTS light stick — that would be the special edition released for the Map of the Soul tour that was canceled by the pandemic.)

Yes I wore pink. Yes I joined an entire bunch of k-pop people who wanted to support Leni and Kiko. Yes we waved those light sticks like we were at a concert! That’s the point of having these things!

I want to go to a night-time event next time, so I can turn the light stick on, set it to pink, and wave it around like a beacon. The song to keep in mind there is probably “Liwanag sa Dilim (literally, “Light in the Darkness”).

I’m gonna keep on working on these campaign things until May. These are important — dare I say critical — elections to be working towards. If the wrong people get elected to national and local positions, no one is ever coming back to the Philippines to host concerts again. You mark my words.

And the selca I uploaded from that day. What a lovely sky that was. What a wonderful way to spend a morning.

dear mister next door neighbor

I wish I could be brave enough to like, just say it out loud and actually identify you. I guess you made the mistake of telling me your last name and your … rank. Nonexistent as it should be if my ballpark figuring of your age is any good.

Which, really, that’s where this angry letter starts. How, how can you be twice as old as I am and still be so goddamn stupid? Oh, I actually have answers to that question, but let me get this bit out of my system first. I mean. I’ll be 40 this year. I was born in the nearly last years of Martial Law. The 1986 People Power Revolution happens before I turn five, but the aftermath of both Martial Law and People Power go on for quite some time. (I wasn’t even ten when — trying to return to Metro Manila from Baguio, our family and our friends were stopped by armed soldiers at a checkpoint in Pampanga or somewhere like that. We couldn’t get back home. We were ordered to turn back to Baguio. There was a coup d’etat going on in the capital and soldiers were shooting each other in the streets. — Were you even there, you old idiot?)

If you’re twice as old as I am, then you lived in the Martial Law years. You were in the ranks in the Martial Law years. And I repeat. You’re still an old washed-up idiot now. Do you want to know why you are fucked in the head and an old clapped-out idiot? Because you wear t-shirts for that idiot liar and thief and asshole.

You lived through that idiot’s father’s regime. A regime that was proven to have murdered thousands of people, that was proven to have impoverished this entire goddamn nation for generations to come, that is still influencing this entire goddamn nation! You lived through all of that and you maybe know some of the things that had to have happened right in front of your thick fucking face! Then why, why, WHY THE FUCK, OLD MAN? What the hell do you stand to gain from more years of a dictatorship? What the hell do you think you’re doing, throwing your country back to the dogs — when you have a family and descendants who will suffer because of those same fucking dogs?

Oh, please, I know that the answers will fall into two broad-ish categories.

One: you didn’t know. You never saw the rot. You never saw the blood. You never saw the dead. Therefore you are innocent, and you can happily support the son of that dictator, because hey, the son’s different right? Wrong. I won’t go into all the reasons why you’re wrong, if this is why you’re wearing that fucking shirt. I won’t go into all the reasons because there are almost forty fucking years of research on the subject. Fucking educate yourself. Fucking talk to someone outside your fucking bubble of fucking geriatric shitheads, and fucking boomer juniors. Fucking know what kind of history and suffering has been going on out there, caused by that regime, and that will be caused by the same son that you support because guess what! That son wants to put that regime right back in power! He wants to be the asshole at the top this time! He thinks his parents had it good and he wants it all back, he thinks he’s entitled to it!

Two: and this is worse, I think, because two is, YOU FUCKING KNOW. You were there and you saw the evil and you didn’t do anything about it. Or you were there and you saw the evil and you were a fucking part of it. You were there, and you thought you were able to get your hands clean over the years, and then you put on that shirt and I know for certain that your hands will never ever be fucking clean. Again, I refuse to be the person who educates you on your bloodied hands. In this scenario: you know what you did. I refuse to know what you did. Whatever it is that you got out of that regime, out of that scenario, I hope you made the most of it. I hope you sleep well at night and I hope you can look your descendants in the eyes and tell them with all your heart that you are a good person, because I know the truth, and maybe I should just hope that they do, too, eventually. You’re not a good person. Not if you knew. Not if you knew and did nothing, and not if you knew and you were complicit.

And oh, by the way, how’s that working out for you? If you lived through those years. If you got something out of it. What are you doing in this apartment building? Where’s your spoils of your war against your own country? Where’s your trophies of your violence against your fellow citizens? How did you even get in here, damn. Why are you here in a middle-class apartment like me, when you got rich and fat off the blood of dead Filipinos? You love that old regime and you want it back — and you’re no more than a pauper to that son whose face you wear on your t-shirt. You’re no more than the mud on the soles of his shoes — which, hey, he don’t like mud and that must mean he don’t like you. Do you know that he hates you? That man is only ever looking for people to make fools out of. That man believes in a delusion and thanks to old fucking idiots like you the delusion goes on and gets stronger!

Boomers and the so-called Greatest Generation — the ones that are still doddering and hanging around — they’re out to kill us all, honestly. You’re one of them, mister next door neighbor. You want us all dead, and you also want to be the ones to tell us, gleefully, that it’s our own damn fault that we’re getting dead. Hell, I even think that you’re part of the reason we’re never getting out of this panini republic.

Sincerely, your pissed-off millennial neighbor.

places I don’t know yet

….I hope this isn’t going to turn out to be a list of places I’ll never get to. I’m turning 40. I’m still holding out hope for a world that can still allow people to travel, even after all of these years of the virus.

The two important destinations that I really want to get to: Kyoto and Barcelona. I’m dreaming of specific places in those cities, too: I want to make it to the Pontocho district in Kyoto, so that I can observe the comings and goings of the geiko and the maiko and the townspeople who make their livelihood possible. I hope that this pandemic won’t completely kill off the flower and willow world. (I should look into what’s going on there in these past couple of years.) And in Barcelona is the only place of worship that I want to actually attend as such: Sagrada Família. I know that church is nearing its completion; I would like to get there somehow no matter its state.

Other places I’d like to properly see, having never been there thus: Vienna, even if one of the places that I would like to visit there is a place of morbid cold thoughts. I’ve been fascinated by the story of Empress Elisabeth of Austria for a while and I would like to pay my respects to her, where she’s been laid to rest. Seoul is on my list of course. Maybe I’ll be able to speak the language correctly by then, or at least sound like a tourist who made the effort.

I still want to go back to Singapore, but now it’s less because of the places that I want to visit, and it’s more because of the food that I want to eat, the people I want to see, and then putting those two ideas together. It kind of hurts that I haven’t been able to go out and eat with friends as often as I’d like, and this will soon have been going on for three years. I won’t risk them or myself as quickly; and right now with this whole omicron variant even the idea of eating with others al fresco doesn’t sit right with me. So I’ve scotched all plans for that again.

On the list of places that I would have liked to see again was Hong Kong — but that doesn’t seem like a smart idea now. I’d only be angered and saddened, maybe. I went there just before the handover to China and I had always wanted to see it as the democratic territory it still was at that time, but that’s kind of in the past now. I bitterly regret that I never had a chance to go back.

Of course I also want to travel within my own country: but again, I don’t think I should be bringing the bad stuff over. So for now, my thoughts of revisiting Baguio and Cebu will have to remain only nebulous. The same goes for places that I’ve never seen before, like La Union and the Batanes islands. I sort of wish I’d known that all of this was coming and then I would have probably thrown all my resources at traveling to these places, at least, if I couldn’t still have gone abroad at the time.

I can dream, I think, and I can keep working so that I can get to these places, but — again, all that will have to wait until we’ve all come to our senses and put this pandemic down for good.

I don’t honestly know when that’s gonna be.

words and music to live by

“Life isn’t speed but direction.” — Kim Namjoon, gentlest tree and kind philosopher, 20220122

I still want to find a place to hide

And that’s all I can care to say about that, since I’ve already elaborated on it elsewhere, at length, multiple times.

This is year three of the pandemic. I live in a country that will probably suffer from this nonsense for a while yet. FML.

that dark time

I mean, I understand, okay? I know about wanting to see friends and family again, and we’d been doing so well, collectively, just at the start of December. I think. Everyone had been trying to make the best of a holiday season that kinda felt like a holiday season. I think that’s the kindest way of looking at it.

And it’s not easy to be kind right now because the very fucking immediate consequence of that holiday season is this. It’s a huge surge. It’s that case count suddenly skyrocketing. What happened? I have entire piles of friends who have just reported themselves positive for the virus. I just watched my workplace nearly empty out over the past week or so. I don’t want to leave my house even if I really do need to go and get the groceries.

We’re here. It’s the crush. It’s the worst surge possible.

And god, I feel like giving up on everything. I want to hide somewhere small and dark and deep. I feel caught in a bad place and I don’t know if it’s still a consolation that I live alone — does it matter? I have neighbors and some of them don’t really give a damn about keeping everyone else safe. They don’t even give a damn about keeping themselves safe — why would they care about all the rest of us? Why would they stop to think about collateral damage?

See, that’s the depth I’m in right now. I’m miserable, and I can’t make myself see any kind of good, and the fear that lives coiled around my neck tightens with every minute.

Not a good time to be alive right now, is it.

(And yes, because I anticipated it, of course this stupid useless idiot baseline JACKSHIT national govt won’t declare any kind of limitation of public movement because they don’t want to have to give out any kind of material or cash assistance. Greedy fucking pigs. Running on to three years of them getting rich and fat and sated and taking away the resources that rightfully belong to the citizens. FUCK THEM. VOTE THE MOTHERFUCKERS OUT. AND DON’T LET NEW ONES INTO POSITIONS EITHER!)

careful with that next page

I didn’t really do a whole lot of things over the change from 2021 to 2022? Maybe I’m wary of this whole thing because — what have the last two years been but nonstop being tired and being angry and being hopeless and being cooped up? But I did make pasta and I did put my offline playlist on, to see what kind of shuffle I would get in the ticking over of the clock.

And that shuffle came up as Epilogue: Young Forever — My Universe — Sea, and I thought, Huh. Well. There is certainly a message there. There’s the idea of having hope and having affection or love or something of the sort, balanced with the idea of “Wherever there’s hope, there’s a trial.”

That does sound a lot like me, after all. That looks like a look inside my head.

Today, New Year’s Day: I find out that Kim Namjoon started keeping a journal again, and has been doing what he can to write regular entries in it, especially to note the daily small successes, and that makes me think of my own journals.

On the advice of an art friend I had decided that I would try to keep a daily journal again, and specifically for that first year my self-made goal was to at least write one good thing that happened on each page. And it was a lovely journal, so inviting to write in, but in 2019 I had no real hope or determination to actually fill the thing up, 1 January to 31 December.

Well, here I am, on the first day of 2022 and already anticipating what I’ll write on the first page of the new journal. I’ve somehow managed to keep the habit going. And yes, maybe some of the pages aren’t filled with good things, because it’s me, because I have an Eeyore nature, but still. Most of the things I write in my journals are things I want to remember, whether they were good or bad to begin with, because I have this odd small off-chance of finding hope or a narrative or an eventual good result, some kind of good thread from the past to the present/future?

I wonder if I’ll ever get the chance to let Namjoon know that the year I started keeping that daily journal again was the year I met him and BTS properly. Eventually the stuff they did and accomplished made its way into my pages, too. I wouldn’t be the first one to say that they help/ed keep me going, but I have proof of it in my journals, is the thing.