Mama Don't Preach

If there’s something I want to change in my life, it is my not being serious towards everything I do. You may find me a family rebel slash occasional family yes-man or even a sleazy boy slash seldom dutiful boy who knows a lot about cooking but pigs out all food in the refrigirator by his self, the heaven I care. I’m into anything under the hot, scorching sun. I am a maestro specializing in the art of sleeping, but I dunno how to smoothen out the gazillion convolutions and creases my bed cover has. I let my room become a Petri dish for multifaceted organisms and lifeforms to breed. I’m appreciative to the aesthetic effect the drooping gossamers have done to the cornice of my room’s ceiling. I half open the windows in my room to orchestrate the moisture so that mildews, molds and extraterrestrial toadstools would sprout healthily on every nook and cranny in my room. (Now God will be proud of me for sharing my sacrosanct pigsty to some of his other creations.) Am I really that eccentric, eh? On weekday mornings, I swear to God that I really don’t know what a comb is. Or what in the whole wide world a mirror is. I only know hair wax- which I use it to dishevel more my very disheveled hair, and perfume, you know, to add sweet, saccharine smell to my not-so-sweet aura. Call me unwell-groomed, and I’ll take it as a million-dollar compliment.

As I go out school-bound to ride a jeep, I’ll have to trudge about 359 paces going to the main road to remember that I forget something. It’s perfunctory that I’ll journey back homeward to get either my allowance, my hanky, my school ID, my water tumbler, or my hair wax, which I use to dishevel more my very disheveled hair. Nonetheless, I’m a tad boy with not-so-tad ambitions. I can perfect quizzes (please insert a round of applause or a hook punch swoop cue here) and flunk the morrow quizzes. I am your average student who yawns widely in front of the lecturing professor as he kindles more of the collective tedium in the classroom; I impulsively pick my nose as mad as a hatter while jotting down stenographic notes, and sleep while simulating how fishes doze off without their having to close their eyes.

So, I said I have not-so-tad ambitions. Yep, just like anyone else. Those ambitions, I must say, were formulated without being mulled over seriously. Now they are stashed in some uncharted stead inside my gray matter, waiting to be dispatched or to be rehashed for future references. For now, I am a sitting duck. My stance is vulnerable to extraneous influences and a helluva deviltry, perhaps because I did not give ample seriousness to the minutiae of my existential being, or to the discombobulating enigma of life. Oh life. Or it is just an upshot of my being an ungrateful brat who never says grace before and after meals?

I am just a curious creature with much obscure questions to ask. I know you smart-Aleck kid would precociously reply that it is natural for we, as humans, are rational beings. But sometimes I am irrational, kiddo. At times, I easily believe in things that I read, hear and see. Tell me that Richard Dawkins will apologetically recant his blasphemous creator-smashing philosophies, and I will cheerfully spread the loving news to my little sister, to my little sister’s friends, to the friends of my little sister’s friends, and to the friends of the friends of my little sister’s friends with vim and vigor. Persuade me more to read and reread and overdose myself with Conrado de Quiros’ almost-Machiavellian rants, and in no time, I’ll become a die-hard and true-blue PGMA destructive critic.

I once questioned my purpose, my life, and all those itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny things that happen here and there. What if the Creation Theory is just a figment of someone’s imagination and fart combined? What if reincarnation is true, and then you find yourself reincarnated on an inanimate object, say, a toilet paper? Then holy baloney, the unsolicited law of karma will take center stage. All the shit you heaped upon everyone in your mundane days will backfire, and you know next that you’re a dead meat. Thence, the literal shit will be literally wiped on your literally whole fibrous fabric, it’s your just punishment, and all you can do is curse and ululate “you asShole, ya’ll pay for this!!!’ sans the vocal cords, to that rotten, befouled fundament who tainted you.

Honestly, I want to have a normal outlook and mindset in life. I’m tired of intrusive thoughts, soul-searching, contemplation and incessant whining about Pluto’s miserable eviction as a planet in the Solar System. I just want to do unique things, experience new things, and efface some of my unpleasant behaviors. I want to be kind all the time, like trying to flash my pearly-white smile to everyone I will come across, even if I don’t know anyone of them. In due respect to my moral principles I edified some years ago, I will never scribble again phallic symbols drawn side by side a stylized, diamond-shaped linear vulva on the school’s drafting tables as I brim with overweening machismo assertion (you fool, it is not vandalism, it is art.) I will never shout again muted expletives and invectives against my professors, my parents, my friends and to the priests back home who say mass for two hours. I will never ever surf the net again at home at ungodly hours just to find some softcore, dulcet-moaning Ozawa vid clips just to end up waking my nosy mother in the adjacent room. I will never blow my nose again in front of or near a church even if it can’t be helped (blame the god-damned polluted air) and et cetera.

As I cogitate for a fitting closing salvo, I became a doubting Thomas; I doubted my self, my one and only ally in times of doubled trouble, “what if I only play a minor role in the significance of the universe?” My spastic fingers and strained eyes, too, questioned my consciousness and my enervated synapses, “Hey, are you on illegal drugs? Why are you typing this kind of bosh and sappy things? ” “Nah ah,” I said. “So, you are really going to take life seriously? It’s quite a big leap.” “Not really,” I retorted, “I’ll just do it as some teenybopper named Jordin Sparks sings it— one step a time. Oh, I almost forget, there’s no need to rush.”

Parallel Universe

What if there really is a parallel universe out there, a macrocosm wherein a version of you and me exists? If that is probable, they might be more intimate than bosom friends, treading any path together only centimeters apart, more affectionate than eager lovers, with hands glued together. There could be a vast field where they always frolic under the sun, carefree all the time, because of a sinewy emotional bond that ties them together. They could also think of nothing else but each other, doing nothing but kill time and banter while saying sweet nothings, telling each other how much love has engulfed them. In that parallel universe, they will never run out of time, there will be no roadblocks, no hassles, and no impasse. But all of that are big ifs. What if that parallel world is a coincidental one? It will only conclude that the idea of us being together is preposterous. We will still remain the same immobile acquaintances, used to exchanging his and hellos under a cloudy and somber day.

Sugarcoated

In just a split second, an intense fixation of someone could morph instantly into a deep-seated abomination. One might end up cursing a long-revered friend, or end up entreating an atrocious saboteur. As the clichéd cliché goes-- people do change.