SAD GRIT

Traffic clogs the early morning streets of Baguio like hair in a drain. Only, when a sink is stuck with fragrant follicles and the accumulated, worthless collection of chin hair sprinkled randomly around the porcelain a tip of the tap will unleash water to go do what water does best -- disperse the flotsam of our lives with a forceful, almost gleeful blast of pure intent. Into the pipes, out of our physical lives, another morning ritual done, forgotten, after the piss and before the tie is tied. The gurgle of the bright green mouthwash acts as an interlude between the shave and the familiar, almost comforting sound of our own piss spraying the toilet.

No such mechanism of ordered division exists on the roads of our lives. The pavement that pushes us along. The yellow and white lines we obediently follow this way and that way, left to right, pass here, not there. These divisions are supposed to make things work. But the chrome of cars tucked all too tight into stationary positions of fumes and withheld mechanical fury, the augmented anger that inevitably arises from within the pit of one's stomach and the hood of one's car. Not the rage of a man learning his lover has left him for a smarter, but lesser, man. No, this is the percolating, daily drip of rage that somehow shoots upwards from within, out of one's stomach, detouring around the heart and egging its way into your throat and out of your prim, pursed lips after day one hundred and four of the constant inch, creep and crawl of machines in motion, as fast as an old woman with her walker doing her best. (And only seven miles to go!)

Something about the exhaust sickens these souls as they head towards work that will weaken them more. Black, brown, grey soot belches outwards from the backs of these cars like farts from an ox. There must be no regulations on these jeepneys and Frankenstein shitboxes. They barrel past the sign that claims this town as 'the cleanest city in the Philippines', belching their smoke as the ephemeral equivalent of a proverbial poke-in-the-ribs that counters the sign's claim with a visceral 'who are they kidding?'

No one.

I run by like a thief from the scene of his most ingenious new crime, bobbing and weaving between the gap between bumpers of cars that are still, avoiding eyes through the windshields that will, I know, glare with sad grit.

SUNDAY MORNING

A couple of chickens mindlessly clucked in greeting as I walked outside of the house in the early morning heat, their beaks pecking the indifferent pavement. (Are birds our original zombies?) Even with cut-off heads, I imagined that the birds would still chirp through the spray of blood that jetted from their former bodies and splattered the earth on which their skulls still rested. Sometimes the stupidest among us are the friendliest. And sometimes the friendliest of us are the wisest. Running through the streets, I am greeted by a "Good morning, sir" from another jogger struggling through a body's stubborn rebellion on a Sunday morning. Why am I being dubbed 'sir' by someone whose age is older than mine? Politeness to a foreigner seems decidedly odd, almost condescending, but no -- it is a form of welcome, a statement that declares that this country and its road are as welcome to me as to a native-born son. (This is the interpretation I choose.) Further along the road, past the hotel whose name I always (willingly?) forget, a horse is tied to a post while its owner eats at a tiny eatery with the humble sign of 'Samson's Cafe'. That such a tiny roadside chow shop, little more than an outside shack, deems strong enough, vital enough, to bear the name of Samson is a thought worth laughing about while simultaneously giving respect towards the bravado of its owner's ambition. Why not live large? And whose is the horse? In this area, there are horse rides given to anyone willing to hop on board and bear the bumpy ride. Something inside of me thinks up a secret plan. I will slowly sneak up the horse's side, unleash the rope, set the animal free. It will ride riderless through Baguio's hills. I will become a hidden hero to the animal kingdom. Instead I take note of the blue and yellow saddle that lies across its back, wondering what that number means, and if the horse misses home. On my own way home, I run by a young girl muttering to herself as she plucks petals off of a flower, leaving behind soft white traces of her tracks on the sidewalk, as if she were going on a long trip into the forest and wanted to remember how she got there, and how she would return.

ONLY ASKING TO BE SEEN

Aren't the most prominent nightly news anchors and the sleaziest porn stars pretty much in the same position at this point in our warped media world? Turn on any American national newscast, morning or evening, and the female anchors seem to look exactly like any other triple-x starlet leering at you from a million and one 'illicit' websites. They both want you to tune in and shut down that part of your brain that responds to actual, complicated stimulation. Better to watch pretty people talking, no matter what it is that they are actually saying.

Who becomes a porn star? Who becomes a news anchor?

The former position, at least, has the novelty of what was once considered risque and is now deemed mainly mainstream. Performing that most intimate of acts, with strangers, for money, while being filmed, in order to be watched by other strangers. There are levels to this endeavor that form scaffolding within our psyches that wobbles whenever we try to walk across the various logistical explanations that come into play. More than money is at stake. One's soul, one's sense of self, one's relation to one's body -- all of these factors form the psychological backdrop to the face-in-ecstasy that is being faked for our pleasure. The danger involved may be fake, as artificial as the green grass on the fields within the steel domes of that other favorite American pastime, baseball, but danger is relative. The possibility of being exposed as a porn star tramp by one's own grandmother back in the generic gentility of midwestern America surely has a whiff of danger and excess that proves titillating for the most bored of transplanted California twentysomethings.

A newsanchor's job is, on the surface, bland and inoffensive. A pretty person reads the news. Who would aspire to such a position? Granted, we live in a world that does not exist outside of a screen. If you are not on it, you are not in it. The world has been reduced to that which we can flick and change at a moment's notice. Reality moves and grooves to the blunt touch of our index fingers. To be on that screen is to own a little slice of reality, no matter how fluid and impermanent such a position might be. Securing a nightly position in that world is akin to a queen sitting on her throne while her subjects listen obediently to every word.

One can never adequately enter into someone else's head, but think of the psychology of such an ambition: I want to have other people watch me talk about the news. How bizarre! To be a producer, to shape a story, to write it up and send it out -- this goal I can understand. Perhaps most CNN anchors do this nitty-gritty dirtywork as well? But to be an anchorperson, alone.

Even more interesting is the national characteristics inherent behind each pretty (or not-so-pretty-face) that smiles daily at us behind their plastic screen. In Canada, the women are usually pretty, but not gorgeous. On the BBC, the women seem as if they could be found at your local library, behind the desk, reminding you not to be late with your returns. Japanese TV personalities, I was told, often have exceptionally large ears, because that is deemed 'cute'. American anchors most often seem to have stepped off of a nudie film or the nearest plastic surgery clinic and into the comfy chair that holds their butt while they fulfill their life's ambition of being watched reporting on earthquakes and plane crashes before switching to stories about cute abandoned puppies finally having found a foam. A malleable personality bobs and weaves from tragedy to comedy with the turn of the head, the flick of the hair, the widening abyss of her smile.

In Grade 3 a teacher informed me that she could see me hosting the evening news one day. Even then, the notion baffled and perplexed me. Why would she think I would like such a role? I wanted to write, to be a motorcycle cop, to make movies. Was my true destiny to read the news?

Of course, even now, perhaps, somebody has randomly found this blog and is sitting reading these words and wondering why I think what I have to say is so desperately important that it must be read by strangers. I find that I can't answer that imaginary inquiry. All ambitions have roots in our psyche that our too tangled to unravel. YouTube channels are filled with videos of people giving comments on every imaginable topics, with insight far more substantial than these meager words.

Doubt creeps into my conscience. Who am I to scorn the dreams of others? I suddenly realize that both the anchorwoman and the adult actress are looking into cameras only asking to be seen. On a grander scale than most of us, but the intent is identical to our own daily wishes, and my own attempts at immortality: Look at me and I will know that I am alive. A face unseen is a face left dead. A shout without an echo is the saddest sound of all.

COINS IN THE AIR

Consider a coin being tossed. One person has guessed heads. His opponent, having little choice, waits for tails. The penny or nickel, dime or quarter does its erratic dance. It rises up in an erratic, almost enigmatic arc. All eyes are waiting for its fall. Which each step as it descends, time not only seems to slow down but also fall down, as if fortune itself seemed destined to tweak time's pace and render it moot. The coin would fall at its own sweet rate, outcome be damned. The people are mere players in the object's own plan. When one's moral fortune rides on the end of a bet, theories of relativity gain force with their weight.

Between two, such a bet is a mere divergence. Imagine a flip simultaneously taking place all over the planet. Two sides (multiplied by three billion) facing each other and raising their eyes upwards. The end result will decide a bet; settle a wager; allow one to start while the other must wait?

How much money would this be, soaring through the same sky? Add up the currency and you have the concentrated input of a multitude of half-starved dreams. Who gets the ultimate balance of such hopes and desires? Which accounts will swell with the unearned pride of luck, chance's kindred soul, if not identical twin?

Shall we watch the coins fall slowly to earth? Some part of me recoils at the sight, as if they were beautiful birds whose wings' bring colours had faded and whose fate was sealed. If one can imagine all the coins in all the countries landing on all the hands stretched out to catch them, then what else can one conceive? A coin that can't stop flipping, I suppose. A coin that sways from head to tails and back again with a tempo that tempts the harshest of hearts. This luck shall be spread, such hijinks suggest. For if a coin cannot be coerced into choosing one side or the other, then perhaps time itself can be tempted to ignore its more outrageous demands.

A series of coins tossed end upon end, with observers on hand to watch and to wait. Billions of us, waiting it out. And waiting. And waiting. Perhaps it is best for the coins to hold sway. If the coins do not land, then luck has no domain or dominion. If the game cannot start, the game cannot end. If we watch and we wait and refuse to buy in, then who is to say whose coin shall be best?

LIFE AS A PARADE

A convoy of light blue cars, Cadillac in tone, glide through the streets. The drivers are impartial, blank-faced functionaries wearing dark black suits and plastic smiles. Seated on top of the back seats are older men and younger women, the men bald, the women with flowing blonde hair, middle-aged in texture, turning to gray even as this day bumps forward. Everyone is smiling the smile of the bored and the glum. Glumness is squeezed out of this forced joviality like toothpaste from a tube, bit by bit. Strutting beside the cars as they inch along the roads of the tow are dozens of gleeful, almost anorexic teenage girls, confident in their newfound, safe-for-consumption sluttiness, blonder by far than their mothers and aunts who sit in the cars beside them. Metal batons are twirled and caught. Then twirled. Then caught. Everything is repeated and nothing is forced. A natural, almost magnetic flow can be detected in the force field that surrounds this annual ritual, a shared understanding of roles and duties that binds and attracts as inwardly it repels and even disgusts. The high school marching band brings up the rear while its members watch the rears of the cheerleaders in front of them, thinking of what could poossibly arrive later on tonight, once the trumpets are shelved and the pom-poms are all arranged neatly in rows on the shelves of changing rooms that stink of sweat and farts and underarm deoderant smeared with human guck.

On the sidelines, the grown-ups take pictures while the children secretly wonder what this fuss is really all for. Does the brassy bold sound of the band's blatant boom, rising and falling with predictable oomph, make up for a day absent of games? Probably not. The older children's eyes, from age eight and up, stray from the scene and stare at the sky. Ice cream is eaten by overweight mothers who wish they were young. Their husbands stare at their families and wonder why the tushes of schoolgirls intrigue them so much.

The parade keeps moving on while all stand so still. Everyone expects a grand finale, a final push, an end to the march that will elevate their energies into something grander than middle-class pride. Instead the local furniture store has a float that breaks down with the burst of an overburdened tire. A boy and his sister sit on a couch and roll their eyes at their sudden misfortune. A punctured wheel has made them the sad spectacle of their friends and their foes. The rest of the parade can't help but move on, while they wait on a sofa, picking their noses and holding in burps, watching cotton candy sticks and half-eaten cones casually fall to the ground with heartbreaking splats.

DANGEROUS GAMES OF GIVE AND TAKE

Why are we constantly at war with our bodies? Or, if such daily skirmishes are not out-and-out battles, there is still enough of a remnant of mental shrapnel lodged within our fragile psyches to make us believe that a firefight has gone on somewhere between our brains and our limbs.

This morning I awoke at what I thought was my usual time, my correct time, one that operated according to is own reliable rhythms since my alarm clock fell to the floor a few days and thus was rendered, as the Greeks say, kaput. After my run I realized, while flipping on the TV: It's an hour later. I've lost an hour. An hour has been stolen from me, by myself.

For a moment or two I felt a sense of acute violation, if not actual betrayal, the way a wife must feel when coming across an unfamiliar scent on the collar of her husband's shirt. I've always relied upon my body to wake itself when necessary; I can't remember the last time it's failed me. (This 'it' referring to a strange and squishy conglomeration of blood and cells, neurons and veins that, apparently, from what I'm told from television, makes up the sum and total of 'me'.)

Not that my day has been rendered completely moot. Nothing much has changed. True, for the first time in four months I took a train that was later than my normal departure time; the faces of the people across from me were uniform in their sleepy, reluctant gazes. My legs felt slightly sore from my early jog, and my throat thirsted for chocolate milk. These are familiar, almost welcome sensations.

But a wonderful, wicked sense of bitterness crept out of my soul and into the world. I almost wanted to punish my body for failing my pride. Not sitting down would wound my limbs. Refusing to drink would inflame the ego of my thirst. Perhaps I could teach my cheeky body a lesson, punish it for sleeping in that extra hour. Within me the spirit wants to play a dangerous game of give and take with the flesh that houses its essence.

WEAKER IN TEXTURE, FRAILER IN TONE

Perhaps heat is not the antithesis of cold but rather its antagonist. Imagine, if you will, life as an element -- a brazen force of nature that emerges from an existence unknown to even itself. Alternating its state as a less-than-sentient-being with a powerful, driving extremity that precisely, almost diligently slaughters all in its path like a laser run amok. Heat and cold, light and dark, wind and snow: all arbiters of our own daily temperments. We enter into their extremes not against our will but rather against our better judgement. A sane person would do everything in his power to exist in a realm where conflict is minimized. Instead, we step out into that darker world only to hurtle down jagged slopes with hunks of wood strapped to our legs. We swim into filthy water to rise above it on equally fragile chunks of timber. Nothing stops us from pursuing our own entry point into ego and the bottomless desires of our rather bland consciousness, where 'fun' and 'folly' coexist as equal partners in our endless quest for the novel that is new without being disturbing. Is it any wonder that I wonder about nature's fiercest forces doing battle with each other while we frolic amidst their raging skirmishes, as if the elements themselves were mere obstructions to our own eventual, inevitable, entitlement?

Put another way: the rain looking at an umbrella. Would the rain, if consciousness were contained within the DNA of each and every drop, tremble in senseless fear at such a device, or would its individual droplets of laughter reach such a hysterical level of uncontrollable mirth that the collective sound of a billion raindrops laughing in unison shake our sense of nature itself? Think of it! A storm execretes its forceful, prideful burst of water. We attach a flimsy barricade supported by metal (or plastic! ) as a kind of cone which will keep us dry so as not to stain or soil our precious leggings. The same rain that falls on the top of Mount Everest and eventually sinks to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, where it floats around inside of sunken ships where wartime skeletons lay so still, also must bounce off of the top of a Japanese schoolgirl as she rushes to meet her friends at McDonald's. Can we blame rain and wind, air and snow for getting bored with the frivolity of our lives! Even the elements need some lusty sexual thrust to their existence on this earth.

Which I is why I see such natural, ostensibly benign forces turning against each other -- heat resenting cold, snow sneering at sleet. Each imagining the other to be weaker in texture and frailer in tone. One can glimpse daily battles in the sky, the ground, the ocean, the field. Where apples fallen from trees have not fallen, but been pushed. (Bland brown bark fiercely jealous of the shiny red that glows so bright.)

I fear that a certain apocalypse is arriving on a daily basis. (Or perhaps it has been here since the first ray of sun angrily forced its way through the most stubborn of clouds?) One that humans, in all our useless egos, will not even suspect, let alone detect. We watch the night ram the sun into submission and think: Of course -- such is the way of life. Fall sucking summer's sweet nectar dry makes us mourn our own lost weekends, but what of summer itself? Who mourns for its complete eradication? When the wind whistles at my window tonight, I will wonder if it is taunting or pleading.