Thirty years and weak arms

Thirty years into the future, it is April 16, 2039. I am forty-eight years old. I have written three non-fiction books: one is about Sophocles’ Oedipus and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the second is a book that manages to launch the minority of atheists and agnostics in the nation into unifying to criticize the faults of religion and the Philippine church and the last one is an anthology containing essays, fragments and blog entries on various subjects such as psychology, philosophy and literature. I have also come up with three successful novels: a book chronicling the conflicts revolving around my workaholic mother (perhaps the postmodern version of D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers), another about a child, who once saw Christ’s face on the fog in a window but eventually grows up to be a god that attacks heaven and the last one about the obscure journal of an alcoholic writer. One night, as I am drunk, a man loaded on cocaine stabs me and I die unable to decide whether to say “Einmal ist keinmal”* or “Es muss seine!”** (It is pointless, since there is no one else in the alley.) I ask for my ashes to be made into a champagne supernova in the sky.

Thirty years back into the present, it is April 16, 2009. I am eighteen years old. My mother enters my room and loudly asks the maid what happened to the installation of the TV cables. They exit, and her angry voice and the maid’s weak replies are muffled by music. The dog is under my desk, beside my feet, where he is safe from the banal absurdity of my mother’s daily squabbles. Without warning, she comes in again. I look back and greet her from my seat, but she only looks at the ceiling lamp and takes the radio from my room. (Yesterday, she was complaining about how I didn’t greet her anymore.)

I pause, out of things to write. I sigh.

Earlier today, I was at an internet cafe, and I finally manage to update my blog once more. I ask my usual readers to give my new entry a read. One of my friends told me that she commented on the story I posted, and I saw that it was, once again, positive feedback. She later tells me that she likes reading my entries because they’re insightful.

Minutes before, two fortuities (opening my e-mail and seeing an old friend’s invite) direct me to go back to Gaia Online. I first came to that place as a starry-eyed, conservative Christian. I stop visiting when a pro-life post of my mine is gutted by several pro-choice activists. I come back a sceptical, ultra-liberal agnostic.

About fifteen minutes later, I think of advertising my blog on Gaia through my forum signature. I fear that some bored intellectual would click it, and it, brimming with my new, unconventional beliefs, would still be gutted, not because of starry-eyed, conservative bull-kitsch^ but because of horrible form.

Now, I consider that it might be highly unlikely that it would happen as such.

I’m beckoned to dinner. I finished quickly, and my dad asked me why I finished so soon. (He asked because we ate burgers together this afternoon and because he was still eating when I was about to return to my room.) I answer him that I hurried because I was writing when they called me.

I return to my desk, and suddenly, I find myself unable to write. I close my eyes and I see the little me in my mind trying to grab my fleeting thoughts—some are flying, some are running and some are sinking. I feel my bones getting weaker and weaker. In one imagination, I kneel; gazing into the light shining from above and turning my dead palms to the illumination, I turn into stone. In another, I turn into an infant, and on my face is an expression of seriousness and worry—a look that only an adult can assume.

“Write, write,” I tell myself. “Write, write,” I tell myself.

There is a familiar rigor in my arms, and I don’t know exactly why I go like this from time to time. It is like being in a pool of tar, with my fingertips and my face free from it. Above me is a plume and I know if I take it, it shall take me away from the mud, but there is the chance that even though I’m out of it, some might still remain on my shoulders. It is also like being a puppet on strings for a giant shadow of me.

From below the depths of the tar, an ominous and terrifying voice does a deep laugh and tells me “Many times, I have made your writing inconsistent or horrible.” It seems that the plume is giggling at me, but it does not emit a feel of terror, but that of strange reassurance.

I do not dance, and I know I shouldn’t, but the giant shadow makes me do so. At first, it feels awkward and forced, but eventually it feels refreshing and liberating. I look at the giant spotlight that casts itself on me, as I wilfully take that bow of unique irony.

Thirty years into the future, it is April 16, 2039. I am forty-eight years old. I have written three non-fiction books and three novels. Most of these stop making sense at some point, because my arms begin to feel weak, because it becomes inconsistent or horrible because of a living abyss of tar or a giant shadow of me or because I turn into stone or into an infant with a worried expression. The examination of Oedipus and Hamlet becomes a surreal tale of two kindred souls, with hands entwined, dancing into the white nothingness. The critique of Philippine religion becomes a story of how a mischievous yet intelligent adult teases and plays with a naive, spoiled child dressed in a bishop’s outfit. The anthology of essays spirals into an anthology of whimsy. The manuscript of the novel about the workaholic mother ends up slammed into a garbage can, and upon close examination, the last page contains scratches from my nails. The one about the child who saw Christ’s face on the fog in the window concludes with the god and God doing a high five and drinking beer together. One day, an alcoholic writer, already drunk, goes onto the top floor of a thirty story building with his material in hand. He dances and prances and leaps into the air, as he falls, he gleefully watches the pages of his writing gently floating. He has no last words. With the living abyss of tar, the floating plume and the giant shadow of him, he laughs at the thought that a stone man with dead palms facing upward will end up shattered on the ground or that an infant’s face will no longer exude worrying.

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* Einmal ist keinmal – A phrase used many times in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It’s a German phrase that means whatever happens once might as well not have happened at all.

** Es muss seine! – Also appears recurrently in the same book. It’s a famous line from a composition by Beethoven. It means “It must be!”

^ Kitsch – Kundera says it’s “the absolute denial of shit, in both and literal and figurative senses of the word; [it] excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.” According to Microsoft Word’s thesaurus, it means tasteless, brash or outlandish (which is probably why he also said that “repeated use... has obliterated its original metaphysical meaning.”)