when i think of coffee

When I think of coffee
I think of you

Of the warmth that swells from inside
when I take you

When I drink in the sweetness
that wraps itself round my senses
with each tight embrace

Of the softness of your hands, your cheeks
like the cream that traces your lips

And the sprinkling of smile in your eyes
flashing above the mist around your cup

Of the flavor, the aroma
the rich heartwarming sincerity
that draws and holds me eager and awake
to discover what promise the night holds

I think of beautiful things shared
under warm orange lights
and in private;

Of the cold sweat that forms and trickles down
the glasses of water standing silent on the table
amidst crumpled napkins and half-eaten cake

Of long, meaningful dialogues
of sips of bitterness sweetened by reassuring words
and comforting hugs that swallow me in one gulp


Or when the evening breeze beckons
us out to our wide open spaces
we cast our eyes up
into the night sky and let dreams take flight

While our lips lock
and keep us bound to earth
to each other

And as the night grows old
the coffee grows cold
it’s your warmth that I begin to yearn for

Is it the coffee that sweetens your lips?
or is it your taste that lingers
in this shared cup?

When I think of coffee
i think of you

of how something so seemingly bitter
brings forth in me
the sweetest of smiles

-o.O-

16th of December 2008

like newborn fire

Like newborn fire
that flares and rages
from which you step back
your moth eyes drawn,
My words burned bright
and etched themselves
unto the walls of your heart.


The strange knots in my chest unfurled,
bursting into ribbons of color
wrapping me round and round,
In your arms,
my words found new release
in pondering your mystery
and in promises that set your fires alight.


But the words you say grew stale,
died out;
and led to naught but traps
lined with shards of promises
that failed to fill the dent in your chest
where your heart used to be


My words would only light up your eyes
like comets do the sky -
Few, fleeting, and futile


‘tis not so because I no longer thread ribbons,
In my chest, no less brighter do the colors burn,
No less drawn am I to your mystery
nor mesmerized by your silence,
though I have learned to fear and respect it
like scorching fire, still
is my heart a moth-spark in your blaze


I know now the secret to your fire,
your passion, your longing.
I cannot fuel you like as I did before, no,
Not with loud flashes of flame
And bright fleeting sparks,
Or the raw fires that ravaged once pristine forests
and scarred our plains.


But with the steady glow of a candle
flickering, but ever true,
dancing in your waltzing gusts of wind;
With the determined resolve of coal and ember,
that burns long and warm - and slow,
Fire that gives itself


Wholly,
until nothing remains but ash and wasted wax,
So I burn for you now.


But summon me again, at your mere touch,
i will rise to consume you with words like before,
like newborn fire.


For Cheska
14th of February 2009

on things weak and foolish...

"the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. for ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called, but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things which are."

" may the right prevail."

this passage comes right out of one of my favorite childrens' books by Madeleine L'Engle, which is A Wrinkle in Time. i',m not sure if it has a sciptural basis, though. but if it does, i'd appreciate someone telling me.

just a few thoughts to keep my feet on the ground (and my heart and my mind in the right places) this holy week.

************************

no, i can't write warm and fuzzy right now. i miss her too damn bad. and a lot has happened over the past few weeks that i can't even begin to think about how and where to start. how does one write about being born anew?

OST - January

Recently I told someone very dear to me that writing was a good way of cheating time and making moments last forever (well, sort of). A single beautiful day, with all its color, wonder, and promise, can be revisited again and again and made to last a lifetime through a twiddling of the imagination and some pencil on paper. Of course now we use blogs, and so we can actually share such moments (as well as the crazy/beautiful thoughts we have while we’re in them) with other people who have nothing better to do than look us up. Never mind if words are too feeble and fail to convey how intense the emotions are/were. Language, to use her words, will always be at best a mere approximation and hence imperfect. She went on to write a critically acclaimed blog entry that disproved several assumptions about the indescribability of feelings. I guess it’s the time we take to relive those fleeting snippets of life in our heads - and the care with which we cast them in words and images – that gives them that stamp of permanence. And if we ever do forget, what we write down affords us, again in her words, the joy of remembering.

The thing with not having time to write – aggravated by the fact that I’m a closet illiterate – is that such moments pass me by without my getting even as much as a single word down. Someone once told me that I could tell stories, that I had a knack for turning ordinary mundane events into literary moments – because I could spot the conflict, the dilemma, and the mind-blowing in the ordinary. I never worry about forgetting important moments or details or life-changing episodes. What I do have a problem with is writing about them. It took humankind countless hundred millennia to work its way from cave paintings and grunts at the tribal gathering to get to Shakespeare and the New York Times Best-selling List. In my case, evolution seems to have taken a permanent vacation. Jason, uncultured Cro-Magnon. Add that to my resume.

For the life of me, I’ve never really been able to write anything that can do justice to all the crazy/beautiful stuff that life has thrown my way. So if I had to write something to tell the world about the past few weeks of my life – no matter how bad I want to – it would be a lost cause from the beginning. Like asking a screeching baboon to sing in on Rent.

What I do find myself doing is attaching/channeling memories and moments unto songs. It’s not much, but it helps me get by. Even the best writers have been known at times to lift/quote from their more learned counterparts and predecessors to describe the moment. In my case, I quote from rock stars, balladeers, and the occasional poseur. The same principle of borrowing from wordsmiths of better caliber applies, save that we also deal in bass lines, riffs, and drum beats. Yeah, there’s a fallacy in there somewhere, but whose blog is it anyway?

The past few weeks have been, in a word, immense… Like I’ve been taken out of my neat little cocoon-like scheme of things and made to see the world – through this person – in a whole new way through a series of supervening events and pleasant surprises. It’s like every waking second has been imbued with more color and feeling, and the laws of space and time have been (in a disturbingly familiar but exciting fashion) distorted beyond reckoning. I’ve woken up each past day to mornings that bear a hint of promise, and slept each night with the knowledge that the day was (no matter how unplanned) well spent. It’s like I’ve lost myself only to find that I’m still the same person, standing on the same spot on the board, but the rules of the game have suddenly changed. It’s like realizing that your life has been nothing more than a prelude and a preparation for something bigger and beyond you – a quest, adventure, or an opportunity to discover the truth behind one of life’s greatest mysteries – and that this could be it. Each moment after precious now-or-never moment seems to bring me that much closer to the one thing that could give real meaning to my life – or render it meaningless beyond saving. It’s scary how it seems familiar and new at the same time. No, scratch that. The fact that it feels more alien and new makes it a hell of a lot scarier.

Like I said, it’s all gibberish when it’s me talking. Whatever the past few weeks have been, they seem an awful lot like a story someone else wrote for somebody else’s life. Things like these just don’t happen to me in the ordinary course of things, I guess. But I’m taking them just the same, and taking heart in the fact that I shared them with her – because I couldn’t imagine it any other way.

I really can’t put into words what it’s been like. But I guess if someone were to make a movie out of it, I have a pretty good idea of songs that would make a good soundtrack. For some strange reason, I’ve found myself gravitating towards these songs more than the others, and so these are the songs that have been overplayed on my mp3 player for the past few weeks. Enter the wannabe Rolling Stone columnist.

This is what it felt and sounded like to me. This is lying down in a wide-open space while looking at the stars. This is walking under the streetlights hand in hand. This is vertigo while talking over the phone on a third floor ledge. This is spacing out and looking at her over our classmates’ shoulders from back in my seat. This is me getting to know the mystery that is her better.

Kwentuhan is a Sugarfree gem about that thrill you get when you find someone that you can actually talk to. Sometimes it’s a complete stranger that fate allows to stray and walk along your path, or it could be someone who’s always been around but you somehow failed to notice. In both cases there’s that giddy feeling of discovering that person for the first time. Time flies without either of you caring or noticing, and the conversations – about everything and nothing – continue and become more and more… immense. You’re overwhelmed as she opens herself up to you and gamely shows you a side of her she’s never shown to others before. You hang on to every word she says, storing each quotable quote, digesting every idea, and breathing in her every peal of laughter. And then all of a sudden you find that even her silence mesmerizes you. At dun na nagsisimula ang panibagong kwento.

So Impossible is one of the least known (but in my opinion, the best-written) Dashboard Confessional songs available through net piracy. In this acoustic number, Chris Carraba’s whiny toothache voice unravels the intricacies of two people getting to know each other. There’s something about how the little questions and conversations lead to you wanting to really know a person better, and how you jump at every chance to spend time with that person outside the classroom. There’s that promise of possibility and the sense of wonder and surprise you get when you find out about this person’s quirks and likes and dislikes, how much of them you share, and how you *might* actually fit the bill. It’s like standing before a tapestry hanging on a wall and having a light breeze come in and ruffle it up a bit. You suddenly notice a detail o two you missed at first glance – as well as a glimpse of that something wonderful hidden underneath it.

Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down is a relatively new punk/emo rock song that I can’t help but sing along to, notwithstanding the fact that Fall Out Boy vocalist’s drawls incomprehensibly. I saw the video once and couldn’t get over how cute it was. The story was about this hapless guy who had antlers on his head – honest to goodness reindeer antlers – who had feelings for this girl. Since he was like the village freak or something, the girl’s father hated his guts a little more than usual and detested the idea of his little princess going out with him. The girl sort of likes him, though, and always tries to make things work out between them. In the end, reindeer boy eventually wins dad’s favor (and the dad’s unreasonable hatred for his is finally explained) and everything ends on a happy note. And he didn’t even have to cut his antlers off. The lyrics might prove me wrong, but this song (to me) signs of those situations when you’re way in over your head but just (because you must) fight on anyway. The devil may care and tongue-in-cheek attitude helps, but what really makes it worthwhile is the plucky and headstrong chick who won’t let you give up and cheers at you to keep on swingin’.

Sick of Myself is an old Matthew Sweet song that combines tow otherwise irreconcilable emotions – exhilaration and self-loathing –as if they were meant to go together. And with me, they almost always do. It’s like hugging and allowing yourself to be hugged. There’s exhilaration in knowing that this person trusts you enough to allow you into her personal space, and in realizing that this person was brave enough to bridge the gap and let herself into yours. And then, paradoxically, the self-loathing comes in. faced with such goodness and beauty, you suddenly shrink and feel ashamed of yourself and want to start ‘tearing at your own skin.’ Like the storybook ogre who caught the wounded fairy in his hands, you feel drawn to her radiance even as it hurts your eyes. And you want nothing more than to hold on to her and not let go – but you’re scared of crushing her or scaring her to death. Sick of Myself serves as a call to try – impossible as it may seem – to make yourself worthy of the precious thing you’ve been entrusted to hold in your arms.

Panaginip is a groovy song; the kind you wish you could perform on stage yourself. I can’t explain, but P.O.T. somehow succeeds in hiding the essentially sad nature of this song. It speaks of that dysfunctional male point-of-view that unbelievably good and wonderful things (like her) only happen in dreams, and the unfortunate willingness to content one’s self with keeping on dreaming. A lot of times we entertain possibilities – and even see them close enough on our horizons to grasp – but we never truly explore them. Partly because we think we’re not good enough o because we’re afraid of being disappointed by how the real falls short of the ideal. In either case I’ve come to learn that it’s always better to wake up and make things real than to fool yourself into keeping on dreaming.

At My Most Beautiful is just a plain old mushy song that served as R.E.M.’s contribution to the Never Been Kissed soundtrack. There’s just something charming and endearing about the song that just gets to me – even if it does lull me to sleep. Maybe it’s how Michael Stipe keeps on crooning about how he ‘found a way to make her smile’ like it’s the greatest thing in the world. Because yeah, I think it is. If there’s nothing else in this world I’m good for, if there’s nothing else I can do for her, I would at least want to be able to always give her a reason to smile.

Just Like a Splendid Love Song, if I remember correctly, was the first Orange n’ Lemons song that ever came out on the radio. It was back during their indie band days and before they sold their souls to ABS-CBN and Pinoy Big Brother. It’s a shamelessly happy song (right up there with humming tralalalala and Happy Birthday) that I think was written precisely for those moments when you walk together hand-in-hand under the moonlight or the early afternoon drizzle. It’s just so warm and fuzzy that you can’t not hum along to it, pseudo-Britrock flavor notwithstanding. I’ve come to realize, however, that the song’s use of ‘color’ as a device is really overstated. Color is only something you see. But what really matters – what makes things more splendid and vivid – is what you feel. You can take away the colors and close your eyes and still be happy just the same by feeling the moment.

Takeoffs and Landings is an Ataris song I used to like a lot, but which I eventually outgrew. I vaguely recall attaching it to memories I had with someone else, but I recently heard the song again and it felt like I was hearing it for the first time (funny, that’s how it seems like with all the other songs too). Now, every time I hear it. I get images of cold January nights and wide-open spaces like airport runways and grassy fields, and of looking at the night sky and waving like kids at the planes that fly by. There’s also her voice telling me in a schoolteacher-like way about time and space being relative, and of a stubborn feeling of not wanting to be anywhere else other than with her.

Laging Labsong Na Lang is just a funny song. It’s an anti-love song that I would love to see somebody sing on those reality TV idol singing contests. Leave it to indie filmmaker Khavn Dela Cruz to come up with a song about loving to hate love songs. But now I really can’t say I still dislike love songs. I don’t know, maybe it’s the weather or something. Also, while I used to roll my eyes and resent couples who hug and cuddle in public (how dare they make the rest of us look alone and lonely!), I now know better.

It’s Oh So Quiet is just infectious. It’s like a scene out of a Broadway musical where the hero/ine sings to himself / herself while In the midst of a crowd of people going about their own business -and then the chorus kicks in and everybody just bursts into song. I finally saw the video recently it turns out that was pretty much the idea, with singer Bjork hopping around with people spinning their multicolored umbrellas and mailboxes dancing and coming to life. It’s like staying in the library and joining the herd in the silence, only to get these sudden bursts of giddiness that make you want to jump across the tables and sing at the top of your voice. It’s like feeling so indescribably happy to the point that you just have to let it out and share it with the world before you explode into pieces. I haven’t done anything crazy in the library so far, but I’m going to have to really watch myself from now on.

Happy in the Meantime is a morose song that plays with the theme of realizing that happy moments are just that – happy moments. Lit brings to light the tension between really losing one’s self in the moment and coming to grips with the truth that it will eventually have to end. The way I’ve come to see it, however, is that the tension is more imagined than real maybe what really makes those moments happy and precious is the fact that they’re fleeting and ephemeral, like shooting stars and fireworks that light up the night sky but disappear once you blink. And just because the moment has to come to an end doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the next one that comes along.

Narda is a song about THAT popular Pinay superheroine. I suspect it’s an offshoot of the UP College of Fine Art’s (from whence the band Kamikazee hails from) penchant for using Pinoy pop culture icons as a starting point for analyzing the Filipino everyman’s psyche. In this case, the song looks into the quintessential schoolboy crush we develop towards that girl who is always, in every conceivable way, too good for us. Because she means so much to everyone as an inspiration and an example, and because she carries the world’s hopes and aspirations on her oh-so-exquisite shoulders, it seems like a crime to even dare to dream that she would take the time to come down for some hapless Pedro’s whining and shameless yearning. However, while it’s the superheroines (the Darnas) we idolize and pine after, it’s the real persons – the Nardas – who amount to so much more. Because she’s the real person, she’s the one who can actually be there to save you in the end, and who can in turn make you feel needed and important for a change.

Biyernes is a dreamy, jangly, feel-good, space-out song from Ateneo-based band Narda. It captures the essence of that Friday/end of the week daze when things finally start winding down and you’re all set for a weekend respite but there’s something wrong or missing from the picture to cap the week off. At first you think it’s just that restlessness you get when you’re left with nothing to do, but it probably stems more from being stuck all alone in that laid-back empty moment with nobody to share it with. Your life can be painfully monotonous at times, and there’s no better remedy than having someone to share the monotony with. There’s also something amazing about Fridays. Magical things just have a way of happening on Fridays (although Thursdays have been known to bring their fair share of now-or-never moments too).

Heaven Help is pretty much self-explanatory, and I’ve discussed it in a previous post. I guess all I can say is that this song (God help me) has started to mean something for me once more. And yeah, Paolo Santos still sucks.

Almost is so juvenile and sagely at the same time that I just can’t help but love it. Bowling for Soup takes what I consider to be the most painful word in the English language – ‘almost’ – and takes it to absurdity. The song shows how we make futile attempts to rationalize away all the ‘what ifs’ and failed opportunities of our lives and how, at the end of it all, we can only ‘almost‘ forget and get over it. One of the greatest gospel truths to have come out of her fine lips is that it’s better to regret something you did than something you didn’t. I say amen, and this song exists as an ironic reminder of what shouldn’t be – and a call to make the ‘almost’ actual.

Buwan is an Itchyworms favorite that sings of missing someone badly. It never goes on to say why the other person isn’t around or if she will come back, and I guess that’s because it’s beside the point. It’s the whole ‘being apart’ from the person that really kills us, and everything else is just irrelevant detail. What I find really cute about the song is how the Worms, like they always do, manage to make missing someone seem almost fun. Now I know there’s really something special about looking at the moon together. It’s something you’ll most certainly miss if ever fate decides to intervene and tear the two of you apart. I know I would.

Save Me was the opening song from Smallville, that TV show about the growing pains of Clark Kent, the boy who would be Superman. This song reminds me of how deep inside, even the best of us are reduced to scared little boys and girls screaming out to be saved by someone – anyone. Superman draws strength from knowing that someone worries about him. Somehow, in some strange way, I do too – and it makes me want to be a hero in return.

I’m not really sure if Live’s Dance With You is a song or if it’s a poem with instruments accompanying it, but it’s something I love spacing out to. Since it first came out when I was in high school (a musical gem in the barren dust of the Limp Bizkit and Korn era), it’s always held a certain sway over me, and I’d want nothing more than to be that person in the song. I’d love to sit on the shores of some Fijian beach and watch the sun set and give way to the moon and stars, with only the breaking waves and the night breeze breaking the silence. Dance with You is essentially a song of love, and to me it speaks of shadows on the Carillon bell tower, of the hole-in the-wall, and of hushed whispers and clasped hands, and all those inexplicable things we still keep secret and unspoken.

The Story So Far is a misnamed song. Its title seems to be about all the things that have led to a certain point in time, only to eschew everything in the end and say that nothing really matters except the here and now. What gets me is that it’s pretty rare for a band like New Found Glory to come up with a song with even a semblance of such depth. It will always rock to look back at how far along you’ve gotten since the first nervous attempts at conversation or that fated moment when you first laid eyes on each other. But what really matters is the here and now, because that’s where the real story is: not in the past or in the future, but on the current page you’re writing on. I guess I don’t really care how it began or how it will lend (to that, she holds the answer). All I know is that I will never be able to look at the sky the same way again, and that this is a really, really, really happy time in my life.

I have shared some of these songs before with somebody else in the past. But they held a different meaning for me back then, and I can say that (like a lot of things in life) I hear them now in ways that I’ve never heard before – just as I feel certain now about some things I couldn’t bring myself to believe then. This is a new chapter and a new story, and I’d be damned if I’ll make the same mistakes again. Because if I do, then I really don’t deserve her and what she’s done for me.

If YOU’RE reading this, if you actually took the time to cut through all my convoluted prose, then I’d like to say thanks for being an audience, but you really should’ve just spent the time studying instead. :p If it sucked, well, I don’t know, I really can’t apologize since it all came from there, and like you said, that’s all that matters. What I do regret is that it turned out more like an album review that a post about this. Well, I did warn you that I’m illiterate.

But if even remotely, I made you smile and believe what I told you I feel for you, then I’m glad. It really all is too immense for me at this point. But I know it’s real, and I’ll take the chance to prove that it’s also right. I’d like you to know that you’re more than someone I write about (who am I kidding? Me, dare to write about you?), because you’re sort of a co-author to this post - it being mostly about what I’ve learned about life and about you during the short time we’ve gotten to know each other.

Blame it on the moment you picked your name out of my hat.

Bleh. :p

high school, kakulangan sa tulog, at tawag ng tadhana

sa lahat ng mga naging post ko ito na siguro ang pinaka-pointless. lasing, puyat, at walang magawa sa internet cafe. 4:30 ng umaga. nagsusunog ng oras habang naglalaro ng dota all-stars ang mga kasama ko. syet. buti pa sila may kalaro at kaulayaw na ibang tao. ako nagta-type lang at nakikinig sa aking bestfriend na mp3 player ko.

iba pa rin talaga pag kasama mo yung mga kaibigan mo galing high school. minsan na lang kayo magkita sa isang taon, at pare-pareho na lang ang pinag-uusapan niyo (what else but the golden past?) pero ang sarap pa rin ng tawanan ninyo. isang buong gabing walang tulugan lang kayo magkasama, preo sapat na yun para mapanatili yung tibay ng samahan niyo kahit di kayo nagkikita or nag-uusap. iba talaga siguro pag sila ang humubog sa pagkatao mo nung isang mahalagang panahon sa buhay mo. malaking bagay din yung pare-pareho kayong wala pa ring girlfriend.

sa gitna ng lahat ng ingay ni layno sa paglalaro ng dota, may bagay pa rin na di matanggal-tanggal sa isip ko.

yung nangyari sakin around 5 days ago nung nag-iimpake ako para sa aking brief las pinas getaway. dahil nag-aayos/nagtatapon din ako ng gamit, hinalukay ko yung mga archaeological relics sa bedside drawer ko. nakuha ko yung isang lumang organizer ko na huli kng ginamit nung undergrad pa. sa loob ng isa sa mga bulsa nito ay may nadukot akong maliit na pirasong papel na nakasara ng sticker at may jade seal (yung chinese character ng 'jason' na pinagawa ko sa dumalaw na chinese craftsman sa AS dati) ko. sa pagtataka ko, binuksan ko yun. ang laman? sulat ko. ang mga salitang "i will become a lawyer, but i will remain true to who i am." tapos may date - 6/20/03 - at pirma ko. sinulat at itinago ko yun para mabasa ko sa hinaharap (na siya ngayong kasalukuyan).

naalala ko noon yung panahon na may nagbanta ng malpractice suit sa nanay ko. sa sobrang sama ng loo ko dahil nakikita kong balisa at nabagabag yung nanay ko, nangako ako sa sarili ko non na magiging abogado ako, pero hindi ko kakalimutan yung mga totoong saloobin ko - halimbawa, na ayoko sa mga abogado. nung lumipas yung problema, nakalimutan ko rin yung sinulat kong nun. mabuti na rin siguro. pero di ko akalain na noon palang pala ay inisip ko na yung posibilidad ng pagiging abogado. akala ko ngayon-ngayon ko lang naisip yun at hindi ko kailanman seseryosohin to. haha. anak ng petot talaga o.

syempre kasabay nung pagbasa ko dun sa papel tumugtog sa radyo yung kantang 'gifts and curses' ng yellowcard. hindi siya sikat na kanta, pero gusto ko siya. galing siya sa soundtrack ng spider-man 2 (ang pelikulang tumapos sa isa rin sa mga maliligayang panahon ng buhay ko). yung lyrics, tono, at dating ng kanta ay tungkol sa pagtanggap sa pinapasan na responsibilidad at pagbitaw sa mga bagay na nais mo sanang makamit ngunit hindi maaari dahil sa mabigat na tungkuling nakapataw sa iyo. para sakin siya yung pinaka-theme ng spider man 2, at isa rin sa mga pinakapaborito kong kanta. lagi ko yung tinutugtog pag seryoso akong tapusin yung kung anuman ang ginagawa ko. may kahulugan kaya ang pagtugtog nun sa eksaktong sandali na binasa ko yung pangakong ginawa ko sa sarili ko noon?

ma-drama, at kakila-kilabot, pero totoo. ipinapahiwatig ba ng mga pangyayaring ito na dapat kong ipagpatuloy ito? o aksidente lang ang lahat at pilit ko lang nilalagyan ng kahulugan sa matinding pangangailangan kong makita ang kahulugan ng mga nangyayari sa buhay ko? putcha. kailangan ko lang sigurong manood muna ng porn. masyado na akong maraming iniisip.

isang makabuluhang bagong taon sa lahat.

lucid intervals on what lawyers do

when i decided to revive this blog from the nether regions of memory i had relegated it to, i changed the title to 'lucid intervals.' it's one of my favorite legal phrases. it's from Article 12, par. 1 of the Revised Penal Code. in a nutshell, it says that insane people are always exempt from criminal liability, except when they acted during a lucid interval. a lucid interval apparently is some sort of moment of clarity when one is able to cut through the haze (self-induced or otherwise) clouding one's thoughts and be truly conscious of one's doing - hence the responsibility imputed on you for your actions. why'd i use that for a blog title? i really don't know. i don't have lucid intervals that often. it just sounds catchy. i guess one can say that the entire point of writing a blog is to attempt (or hope) to reach that stage. at any rate, it definitely sounds better than 'tender years presumption' or 'last chance doctrine.'

the long silence can be attributed to my becoming a law student - sorry, working law student - since june of this year. the increasing dullness of my recent posts can also be attributed to same phenomenon (my blockmates all claim to have suffered similar losses in their creativity. you can almost hear it being sucked out of you during those long study breaks). like everyone else, i'm still in the process of trying to figure everything out. what is this so-called law profession? and what the hell am i doing with my life?

we now arrive at the best possible explanation for the drastic renaming. the blogger wishes to change this blog into a channel by which he can understand this new stage in his life.

haha. it just occurred to me. if i end up quitting law school and decide on working to be a chef instead, what then will i call this blog? 'secret recipe'? eeew.

yeah, i haven't written anything even remotely law or law school-related at all, and that's a shame. just goes to show how little thought i actually give to the things i enter into. (insert close friends nodding their heads - jason, thinking abuot the things he does? tch. that'll be the day.)

this semester we're taking up law 120 (the legal profession). it's a required subject that's supposed to give us a crash course on ethics and an overview of -what else? - the legal profession. the course's thrust is more on ethics though, it being a bar subject. i was hoping it would be more about the legal profession instead. like a sesame street segment on 'what lawyers do' to the tune of 'who are the people in your neighborhood?' god knows us clueless losers need to get an idea of what it is we're getting into...

after a semester and a half of law school, i've encountered several diffrent conceptions of what lawyers are and what it is they do. one professor told us that lawyering is as close as you can get to knighthood, that it's like an order of esteemed individuals committed to excellence and the pursuit of justice and striking own evil whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head. same professor also failed about a third of our batch in legal history on some undisclosed grading basis. so much for that 'knight of justice.'

others are less romantic about it. lawyers are 'glorified puppets' paid to recite and repeat the law and do what their clients want. the best one we got from jj disini. lawyers aren't worth anything without the fiction that is the law. in a life or death situation, what can a lawyer do? determine who's liable? his trade doesn't really enable him to make people happy. when civilization and society breaks down, there will be plenty of work for doctors and chefs and even artists and poets. the lawyer? he'll be like a high priest for a religion that doesn't exist.

and what do i have to contribute to this particular topic? what would justify my freezing my ass off in some remote internet cafe to make this post? i dunno. but i do know that my semester-and-a-half of studying law did pay off las t christmas day. how? when i was tasked to play banker in my little cousins' monopoly game..

see, the funny thing with the law is that it's all written down. in words. in text. some of it's perfectly clear, but a greater part of it wouldn't make sense until after the third or fourth time you've read the provision - and only after then after you've read the entire chapter or title. and yet those letters and commas - 'the language of the law,' as they call it, indeterminate and vague as they are, regulate a significant portion of our day-to-day lives. it's like the 'code' in the matrix. yeah, sure, you decide what to wear today or what to eat for lunch, but what do you think determines what clothing brands actually get into the philippines or how money actually travels in this world? economics? politics? maybe. but how do you think those twin sisters actually affect lives at the societal level? it's the law. the law on sales. private and public international law. the law on family relations. constitutional and political law. but wait, aren't laws perfectly capable of being broken? yeah. but hello, criminal law. and what, oh what, keeps the admittedly inequitable, restrictive, and oppressive philipine socio-economic structure in place? it's not super glue, that's for sure.

take for example the vague text on the chance 'real estate tax' card. it says that you pay $25 for each house and $100 for each hotel you own. enter overzealous parent 1, who claims that player 2, who has built a hotel each on baltic and mediteranean, must pay not $200- as would be the common-sense interpretation, but $800- which includes the maount for the hotels as well as the anount for the four houses player 2 constructed as a requirement for building the hotel. the $600 difference would spell the difference between survival and bankruptcy in a late monopoly game with houses on the pacific and boardwalk block. already overzealous parents 2 and 3 are arguing the point with overzealous parent 1. (it's right out of national geographic, i tell you. 'uncles and aunts in action') the kids are too busy laughing at each other's farting sound imitations to care.

the title deed card offers no aid for interpretation. it just says 'houses cost $50 each, hotels, $50 each plus four houses.' so what exactly happens to the houses when you build the hotel? are they demolished and deemed nonexistent? or do they still exist and therefore require payment of the $25 tax? how can i, the banker, restore order and possibly save player 2's (who also happens to be my little sister) prospects?

my first instinct would've been to argue the point or just laugh it off. but law school makes you think differently. before i used to start out with an idea, and argue for its acceptance based on how desirable, logical, or neceaasry it would be (i used to be good at it too). but that wouldn't be enough for law school, no sir. you'd have to have that ever-elusive 'legal basis' to make yours a valid legal assertion. if it isn't written in the law, it ain't worth squat. so we then turn to the rules.

the rules on hotels say that the player 'returns the houses' to the bank when s/he builds a hotel on his/her property. that word - 'returns' was all i needed to find order in the disorder of disguised sibling rivalry (that's all it was, really - my uncles and aunts channelling pent-up childhood monopoly grudges and using their kids as pawns). 'return' connotes a loss of possession and ownership. player 2 therefore cant be required to pay for houses that are no longer there or no longer hers. so speaketh the banker. and when you're the only one in the family with even the slightest semblance of familiarity with law and legal mumbo-jumbo, you get away with a lot of what you say. my little sister eventually won the game, but i maintain that my interference had little to do with it. glad i could help though. hehe.

i think a similar situation happened before in a previous game, during which my grandfather (the overzealous parents' parent) put his foot down and said the exact same thing i did. we all could've relied on precedent, but i think figuring it out on my own was pretty nifty in itself.

i have a dim idea that lawyers are supposed to use their specialized (and grossly overpriced and overhyped) knowledge to help people from all walks of life navigate the legal world and look after their interests and life-realities under the legal system at any given time. said lawyer dude can do cutthroat corporate work in the concrete jungles of makati, or he can get paid in fruit and livestock while representing farmers and peasants in a david vs. goliath land struggle. whatever he may end up doing, i think it's the representation and adversarial quality of legal proceedings that really sets him apart. no matter whose interests you're representing - in court, in some barangay proceeding, or in some boardroom meeting - you're duty-bound to do your best for that person (besides, if you win, you get more money - if you go for that kind of thing). it's a challenge and a privilege at the same time. fortunes rise and fall and lives change for the better or worse with each lawyerly act you do. i may be romanticizing a bit (okay, a lot), but there have been cases where a single comma or vague phrase can invalidate or negate a contract and lead to a major money-drain.

i wrote this down in an ethics journal assignment for the law 120 subject: what i find darkly exciting about the idea of practicing law is that it offers an opportunity to affect real change at the societal level even as it challenges one to continuously improve one's self. yeah, that, i believe, is what makes it close to knighthood. i find myself disinclined to talk about justice or such things, because in the end (one ofthe first thigs i learned in law school), there hardly is any 'justice' in the law. only lawyers who are willing to commit themselves to the struggle to secure just outcomes.

great. now we're making some progress. we can now talk about law and law school without feeling all corny and dopey about it. we can actually use 'law' and 'i' in the same sentence now! we've also formed our own elementary (and hoplessly naive) idea of what lawyers do. we now know what we're getting ourselves into... i think.

it's a start. now all i need to figure out is what i'm staying in law school for. or better, 'who'...

"the ultimate question"

to drive home the point of how pathetic my life has just gotten, here i am again, reduced to quoting movie lines and pasing them off as blog entries. ah well. such is life.

i finally got to watch the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy yesterday, and it pretty much blew me away. i was laughing all the time (even as i was slowly being overwhelmed by a sense of wonder and amazement in typical quasi-philosophical/existentialist hollywood magic mode). if you haven't watched it, i pity you. earth could be demolished tomorrow for all you know, and you're still blissfully ignorant. no wonder the dolphins think we suck. better hurry up and watch it. theere's bound to be copy at your friendly neighborhood pirated dvd retailer. don't leave thios plane of existence without watching it. o.O

H2G2 pretty much earned its way into my list of all-time favorite movies (right up there with fight club, punch-drunk love, and casablanca, inter alia), but it's this little bit of dialogue that just makes me want to give douglas adams a posthumous oscar award for giving everyone (loveless sci-fi geeks and stuck-up movie critics alike) THE question.

so what's the ultimate question, about life, the universe, and everythiing? the movie starts out with the premise that the answer is '42.' it's the question that has the hapless heroes scrambling form one end of the universe to another. and when the villains threaten to forciby extract arthur dent's (typical everyman hero figure) brain in order to arrive athe ultimate question, he comes up with this gem of a monologue:

"just wait a sodding minute! you want a question that goes with the answer 42? well, what about what's 6 x 7? or... um, uh... how many vogons does it take to change a light bulb?! here's one: how many roads must a man walk down..?

fine, fine... take it. 'cause my hand is filed with questions and i can assure you that no answer to any one of them has ever brought me one iota of happiness...

except for one. THE one. teh only question i've ever wanted an answer to:

is she the one?

the answer bloody well isn't 42, it's yes... undoubtedly, unequivocally, unabashedly, yes...

and for one week, on week in my sad little... blip of an existence... it made me happy..."

cheesy? yeah. but it'll get to you more if you actually watch the movie. some people might think of it as a major letdown. you start with a premise that promises to answer the 'ultimate question' only to finmd out that it's a love story. but it's actually more than that. ah, i dunno. this ain't a film review column. i just really, realy, really, liked the movie. probably becasue a large part of me does think that THAT question is the ultimate question.

...just goes to show how pathetic life gets on christmas vacation...

**********************

"I didn't do anything. I'm a nice man, I mind my own business.
So you tell me "that's that"before I beat the hell from you.
I have so much strength in me you have no idea.
I have a love in my life, it makes me stronger than anything you can imagine."

~Adam Sandler, Punch-drunk Love

"our deepest fear..."

gaano ka-pathetic ang buhay ko so far? ngayon ko lang napanood yung coach carter. lumabas siya nung june-july and i promised myself that i would watch it, come hell or high water. but no... tinamaan ba naman ng magaling, kinain ng persons and family relations ang oras ko. hindi ko siya napanood. ni H2G2 di ko namalayan na showing na pala...

coach carter was an ok film. it was a tad predictable, save for the unstorybook-like ending which i think drove home the point perfectly. what's the best thing that can happen to a bunch of ballplayers who thought life only revolve around the streets and playing ball? have them lose the championship but realize that there's a future for them in college. but what made the movie stand out was this bit of dialogue:

what's your deepest fear?

our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,
our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
it is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
your playing small does not serve the world,
there is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that others won't feel insecure around you.

we are all meant to shine as children do.
it is not just in some of us, it's in everyone.
and as we loet our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
and as we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.

this poem? proverb? passage? was recited by the token latino guy on the team just as samuel l. jackson was about to 'quit' coaching them. i scanned the credits in the hope of finding an author i can attribute the passage to, but there wasn't any. i guess it was just some overzealous sciprwriter taking liberties with ken carter's lifestory. or maybe it was something ken carter wrote himself and wanted published. whatever it was, it did reach out to me and flick a switch on inside me. another one of those awe-inspiring hollywood poetic license moments. (the last one i had was with the live-action peter pan film)

all my life i've always been averse to taking responsibility. the phrase 'playing small' captures my modus operandi quite aptly. 'why bother going to all that trouble when only this much would be good enough?' and, 'no, i'm not doing this because i'm really into it, ayoko lang mapahiya ako/tayo.' are some of my most familiar quotable quotes. of course, some of my more perceptive friends have been quick to point out that it's all a farce i maintain so as to keep up my 'aimless loser/idiot-genius' cred, and at some level (though hell will probably freeze over before i admit it out loud) they're right. jason, self-righteous poseur. add that to my resume.

part of it is probably vanity: we downplay ourselves and what we can do in order to extract praise and reassurances from other people that we do rock and don't suck that bad. another reason, although less self-serving, is just as lame: we don't want others to think less of themselves when they compare themselves to us.

since it's christmas, and during christmas you tell the truth, i'm going to come clean and admit to both counts of playing small. yeah, hear me well, say thankya and cry your pardon. i played small when i deliberately ditched the auditions for the high school one-act play contests. i played small when i kept whining about how dissatisfied i was with the way our college student council ran things, only to keep quiet when asked what i proposed should be done. i played small all the time i was with friends whose GWAs were lower than me when i kept chalking up my good grades to our beloved lord of tsamba (there is a difference between acknowledging your indebtednesss to friends and refusing to own up to their sincere praise). i played small when i let others muddle their way through tasks i would've been perfectly capable of helping them with - just because i don't want to take on aditional responsibility or 'complicate' my life anymore than it already is. i play small with every voluntary recit i pass up even though i know the answer. i play small with every time i keep my mouth shut or refuse to give a second thought to a problem or cause i know i can help with. for a big guy whose friends are counting on him to succeed and make a mark for others, i ain't doing so hot.

in perfect hollywod world, this is the part whee i say to myself, 'no more playing small... blah blah blah' and begin to turn my life around. but this is the jason show, or the tragicomedy known as my life, and i know it's never that easy. the best i can hope for is a gradual, one-good-deed-one-day-at-a-time kind of change. and that's probably all i can promise to myself and the world. besides, i already owned up to being a self-righteous poseur. cut me some slack, now...

we don't really help anyone (least of all ourselves) by fooling ourselves with some false sense of security brought about by a narrow and limited image of our place in this world. i think it was an economics professor (bless those crazies at the SE) who told us that the problem with Filipinos is that they limit themselves and never dream big. maybe we're frightened of the possibility of failing. maybe we're bothered or even scared to death of what others might think about us when we go that ambitious extra step. i know i usually am. but i think here would be the proper instance to throw back the immortal Filipino replies: 'bahala na!' and 'anong pake nila?'

yeah, maybe it's time to really shoot for the stars. at least that way, if i come up short, i'll still end up landing on the moon. and i i do, i'll have a nice view of all those who'll come after me and do make it.