Wherein poverty justifies theft.

No real post for now.

I only want to say: I finally found a spot in the house where I can steal internet from the neighbors.  It’s an incredibly weak signal, but it miraculously works from right next to my bed.  How ironic. I’ve been hunting for signal in different spots from the house, but I didn’t think there’d be one right next to my bedroom window!

Things have settled somewhat, that I can finally drag the camera out of the mess that is my life still half-unpacked.  I’ll take pictures of this house in progress tomorrow, and will hopefully be able to update the blog as well.  Here’s hoping that this nummy net connection will still be around then.

Put a peephole in my brain

Micko and I spend a lot of time making faces at each other, I realize.

Because we’re so mature that way.

Dress my friends up just for show
See them as they really are
Put a peephole in my brain
Two New Pence to have a go
I'd like to be a gallery
Put you all inside my show

- "Andy Warhol", David Bowie (Hunky Dory)

Biting the Bullet

Guess who’s moving out?

I have no idea of knowing if this is a permanent thing.  But for at least two months, JA, Matthew and I will be moving into a small and cozy townhouse that has absolutely no furniture in it.  We’ll be moving in Feb 1.  JA’s face lights up every time he talks about the house.  I think mine does too.

Matthew: OHEMGEE WE’RE MOVING IN!

I have only one photo of JA on my Cam, and it wasn’t taken by me. Hmm.

I also need to mention that I’m not earning a lot right now.  I only have one part time job that I can really depend on for cash, and that’s not a lot.  I’m still working my cute butt off on getting regular clients for Lundag Kuneho, but for the time being, we’re not completely off the ground yet.

So why am I moving out?  Even though I’m not sure that I can be able to afford rent, electricity, water, AND things like, oh I don’t know…conditioner for my hair.  I’m pretty sure I can (barely) afford the first three, but I’m going to have to start giving up on things like…coffee.  Yeah.  So why am I doing this?

Because I’m 26, and it’s damn time I bit down on the bullet and forced myself out of my comfort zone.  Matthew and I have been talking about moving in together for the longest time, and just a week ago he was talking about how ready he is to take the next step as a couple, and how important he thinks it is that we should have our own personal space. (I think I almost died from the toothache on that one).  We then had vague hopes of moving out together before the end of the year.

And suddenly JA shows up and says, “I found a place!”

I’ve also learned how to survive Php100 a day on my previous job while living in a boarding house in Makati.  So I might be able to pull this one off.  At the very least, it’s going to be an awesome experience.

Photo of me taken by Micko

My mom is being absolutely infuriating and hilarious about the whole thing.  Last November, she was practically kicking me out of  the house.  When I told her the news over text the other day (yes yes, I told my mother I was moving out over text.  It’s a self-defense plan, I swear to god.  My mother is from Cavite, which means she has the lungs of a banshee).

Anyway, when I told her over text, she simply replied with, “You can live in with your boyfriend…BUT YOU CAN’T TAKE THE CAR. I NEED THE CAR.”

I told her that was not a problem, because I wasn’t planning on taking the damn thing with me anyway.  I’m not foolish enough to think I can afford that kind of overrated luxury once I move out.

The next day at lunch my mom asked me how I’m going to do my laundry.

“I’m going to come here on Sundays and use your washing machine, Ma.”

“WHAT?  You’re COMING HOME every WEEK?”

“What? You don’t want to see your daughter?”

“No!  We’ll see each other once a week.  Outside.  I’ll treat my poor daughter to coffee.  But you can’t come home to do your laundry!”

“Okay, fine!”

“This is just an experience for you.  Just so you’ll know how hard it really is to pay the bills on time.  When you come home, crying and begging for my forgiveness, I’ll be here with open arms, and will take you back in!”

And she said that, while really flinging her arms wide, a spoon in one hand and a fork in the other.  The moment she did that, I could feel the stubborn goat of my zodiac sign kick in.  The kind that will do anything to prove someone wrong just because my pride won’t allow otherwise.

There it is: that Capricorn goat rearing its stubborn head.

When I first worked for TPC, and my mom found out about the abysmal pay and that I’d have to commute to Makati she said: “You won’t last 3 months.”.  I stayed for more than a year.  When I first worked at a call center, my mother said, “You won’t last 1 month on the night shift.”  I lasted for a year.

When I was THIRTEEN my mom reveled in the fact that me getting braces would mean that I wouldn’t be able to eat properly for a month.  The very day I got my braces, I tore into every single bit of solid and difficult food I could find.  My teeth and gums were screaming in agony, and I wanted to curl up in a ball and die from the pain, but it didn’t matter.  I just had to prove her wrong.

And now, I wonder, if I’ll really be able to pull of this one?

JA and Me at Kari’s 80s Birthday Party at 11/07, when we first “officially” met.

and the stars look very different today

This month, I’m turning twenty six.  It’s silly to hope that the ambiguity of the quarter life crisis will suddenly evaporate on the eve of my twenty sixth birthday.  And yet, I can’t help but hope that 2009 and my twenty sixth year will hold better things for me.

Which is why (among many other things), I finally got my first tattoo as a birthday gift for myself.  My mother and Matthew helped pay for it, and I got it done at Joe‘s.  It was an amazing experience.  It was two and a half hours of vague pain, while singing along to David Bowie under my breath.  (And now it suddenly occurs to me…2.5 hours of pain…25 years old…but I may just be reading too much into it).

Because I’m sure people will ask, yes, it did hurt.  But not as badly as anyone makes it to sound like.  The moment the needle lifts off your skin, there’s no aftermath of pain whatsoever.  When I’d remind myself to physically relax (and melt unto the chair like a puddle), it actually would stop hurting at all.  I had a worst time going to a dermatologist years ago than I did having the tattoo done.  I’m sure it has something to do with the adrenalin and whatnot kicking in.  I walked out of the tattoo place feeling like I had been through some sort of coming of age ritual.  I think I know what they mean when they say that the pain is an essential part of the experience.  I can’t wait to get the next tattoo done, sometime next year.

The following photos were taken a little more than 4 hours after I got them, so the tattoo was already starting to heal (hence the puffy redness), and was still sticky with ointment.  I promise better photos in a week or so, when its completely healed.  For now:

The text reads: “and i’m Floating in the most Peculiar way and the Stars look very different Today“.  My brother suggested I have the words strung across my upper chest like a necklace.  I designed the star in the middle, and it acts like a pendant in between the lines.  Joe suggested I get it in color (it was just supposed to be all black originally), so I redesigned it to be in dark purple and red.

So yes, the lines are lyrics from David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”.  It’s the first song on his first successful album in 1969.  It tells the story of Major Tom, an astronaut who goes into space and is confronted with the magnitude and the mystery of the universe.  In the course of the song, he eventually takes his spaceship, and leaves behind Earth to travel into the frighteningly large and beautiful universe out there.  (And I think my spaceship knows which way to go; Tell my wife I love her very much, she knows)

I chose that particular phrase because it was the exact moment Major Tom emerges from his capsule, and first realizes how powerless he is against the vast unknown universe.  It’s one of the lines in the song that always gets to me, every time I hear it.

Having it tattooed on my body, serves as a reminder for the rest of my life.  That no matter how big my problems may seem, how I may feel like the world is crashing around me, I will always remember that these are trivial things.  That I am but a small and tiny part of an amazing universe, that there is so much more waiting for me out there.  That we are part of something heartbreakingly beautiful, beyond our everyday understanding.

So now, whenever I look at myself in the mirror, I know that I’m capable of touching stars and making them my own. There’s a light that shines in me, that’s just as bright. And I’ll find a way towards it, someday.

And in a way that is completely poetic and perfect, Joe finished the tattoo exactly when “Space Oddity” came unto the playlist: Tell my wife I love her very much, she knows.

Happy Birthday to me 🙂

One of my favorite performances of Bowie singing “Space Oddity”.  It’s from 1997 on his (gasp!) 50th birthday:

Shadows

It feels like I’m losing sight of you.  I’m keeping my eyes on you, but the sun shifts and colors you in shadow.  I’m walking through a gray area, keeping my eyes on you as they water painfully from the effort.  You’re changing and I’m changing with you, but I have no idea what we’ll look like at the end of the tunnel.  I won’t know what will happen when the gray gives in and washes away in the light of this emotional hangover.

I want to stay still, allow my eyes to close and to not be afraid of the dark when it comes.

We’re only drifting in the shadows, and my tongue is heavy with the thousand words I cannot tell you.

Hallo Spaceboy, you’re sleepy now
Your silhouette is so stationary
You’re released but your custody calls
And I want to be free

This chaos is killing me

So bye bye love
Yeah bye bye love
Bye bye love
Yeah bye bye love

– David Bowie, “Hallo Spaceboy” (1.Outside)

Trusting in Mercury

I find myself sinking deep into the mystery and inevitability of mercury’s retrograde.  Despite being a reader of Tarot and a student of the universe, I find myself unable to completely believe that my path is governed almost strictly by the ellipses, shifts, and journeys of the planets.

At the same time, it’s hard to deny how the new moon left me feeling like I woke up with half of my mojo missing, and that communications have been garbled since Mercury did its double take.

I feel like this limbo is working to steal from me my usual obsession with plans, itineraries, and solid goals.  In terms of my career, I have absolutely no real clue as to what I want to do next.  Normally, the thought would terrify me and send me on another unwelcome freak out and rant.  Instead, I’m just shrugging my shoulders and smiling.  I have somehow, without knowing exactly how, developed an unwavering faith in the universe.  It took away the job I loved so I could see that I wasn’t being fair to myself, or my abilities.  It brought me closer to people I can no longer imagine myself living without.

I’ve always been a happy and cheerful person.  But I woke up the other day with a bad gut cramp, because I spent a good portion of the previously day laughing so hard that I didn’t think I’d recover.  The part of me groomed by society is saying in a small voice You should be freaking about unemployed right now, and get your act together.

But the larger part of me keeps on smiling, because I know there’s a lesson I’ve yet to learn.  There are opportunities to be mapped, talents to be assessed.  There are friends to laugh with, and love to be shared.  I can’t remember the last time I was this happy with the state of things, even if they’ve never greatly differed from what life was like before this.

I don’t think I’ve ever let go like this.  I don’t think I’ve ever trusted in the universe so much.

I think I’m starting to finally set a solid foot on faith.  And really, I just can’t stop smiling.   So for now, I’ve got one foot in reality, and the other is dipping into mercury’s strange orbit.

The following photos were taken the day after the gang drank ourselves into happy oblivion.  We’re tired but happy people.

A beautifully glowing and absolutely serious pammu

For a guy with less than 4 hours of sleep, Micko looks well rested.

This is Matthew channeling Elvis Costello. And snark.

I did say that Pammu and I had a bond.

My Affair with Ziggy / Misplaced Music Child

“Ziggy, particularly, was created out of a certain arrogance. But, remember, at that time I was young and I was full of life, and that seemed like a very positive artistic statement.

I thought that was a beautiful piece of art, I really did. I thought that was a grand kitsch painting. The whole guy. Then that fucker would not leave me alone for years. That was when it all started to sour. And it soured so quickly you wouldn’t believe it. And it took me an awful time to level out. My whole personality was affected. Again I brought that upon myself.

I can’t say I’m sorry when I look back, because it provoked such an extraordinary set of circumstances in my life. I thought I might as well take Ziggy to interviews as well. Why leave him on stage? Looking back it was completely absurd. It became very dangerous. I really did have doubts about my sanity. I can’t deny that the experience affected me in a very exaggerated and marked manner.

I think I put myself very dangerously near the line. Not in physical sense but definitively in mental sense. I played mental games with myself to such an extent that I’m very relieved and happy to be back in Europe and feeling very well. But, then, you see I was always the lucky one.”

David Bowie (1977)

I’ve always wondered at the identity issues between David and Ziggy. I love the album, there isn’t a single song that doesn’t make something deep inside of me react. Which is strange to say now, because years ago, I couldn’t stand any of the songs. I absolutely didn’t understand what the hype was about. But nowadays, I literally can’t get enough of it.

And as much as I love it, and I love David Bowie, I really can’t say that The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is really a bowie album. It sounds absolutely nothing like him, that strange baritone that usually occupies his throat is completely gone, the pure sex, the croon, the swagger. But there are things that are still David, the aahs, the oohs, the exclamations and musical grunts. But it’s a David that doesn’t exist in any of his other albums or performances. It’s a wild and young and dangerous Ziggy, the most glamorous and craziest sum of the 70s.

I also love how he continually refers to Ziggy as a character much like Newton from The Man Who Fell to Earth. But Ziggy the album definitely is a story entirely it’s own. I really don’t know why a musical hasn’t come along yet.

At any rate, in the end, it’s this. Ziggy feels like the guy I cheated with when David left me alone one too many nights, and I wandered into a dark and sleazy bar. I found Ziggy sitting on the side of the stage, pulling on his red high heeled boots, blowing the hair off of his face. That’s what this album feels like to me.

***

It can’t be helped. I connect more easily to the rock of the 70s, the pop of the 80s, even to the early rumblings and swing of the 60s. The 90’s leave a guilty bad acrid bruising taste in my mouth, and I absolutely cannot wrap my head around the music of NOW. Oh, there are exemptions of course, Smashing Pumpkins, The Wintersounds, Shiina Ringo, yes there’s good music out there but it’s never on the radio, is it? And everyone around me sings along to the worst kind of crap and I find myself forced to smile and bop along to it, even though I’d rather run into a quiet room and roll back my eyes as David croons into my ear. And I have to admit, if it weren’t for Matthew and his music-whoring ways, I wouldn’t come across any good music at all, really.

And I wonder what it would have been like, a concert child in the 70s, biting down on the quarter life crisis in the 80s. When people remembered that you could sing about something other than love, yeah? Oh, I’m in love with the idea of love as much as the next person, but there’s only so much I can take, this sentimental garbage that wouldn’t know love if it slapped it in the face.

I wonder what it would have been like, wandering down Croydon Road on August 16 of 1969. To find the rest of us searching for Satori, spying Bowie’s crooked smile, watching the sun come down on top of us.

the sun machine is coming down, and we’re going to have a party.