These fucking guys...

Candidate A: You just really need to stop. You squandered your mandate monstrously, and, frankly, your lack of remorse and any sense of self-awareness is frightening. Every time you contribute to prevailing political discourse, it feels as if something bright and small dies inside all of us. Just stop. Retire with all the spoils you bled out of the country. (Tragically for us,) you have your pointless sons to carry out your legacy of iniquity and misery anyway.

Candidate B: I'm certain you're the president this country needs. But, your chances are slim to none. I'll probably still vote for you though (a recent development).

Candidate C: The only redeeming thing about you is that you have an actual chance of winning this election. And, in the miserable race of serious contenders, you're easily the lesser evil. This country really shouldn't have to settle for that.

Candidate D: I really don't know anything about you.

Candidate E: Just... no.

Candidate F: We know you're a decent guy, and I believe that in a country with sound democratic institutions, you would do reasonably well as president. But, the moral vacuum that comprises Philippine politics will ruin you. (Get out while you still can!) And, you know what, your political motivations? Nebulous at best. Your ostensible loyalties? Disastrous. So, yeah.

Candidate G: You are incredibly shady, and that your political existence rests so closely to the presidency makes me want to weep and gnash my teeth. Out of all the candidates, you have the most to gain. Your tremendous political and economic capital (and the way you ruthlessly amassed both) ensure that you are in the best position to plunder and pillage what's left of this weary and heartsick country. And, that some people acquiesce to that, in exchange for the small scraps you're obligated to throw their way, speaks of a citizenry that's given up on itself.

Candidate H: Nope.

Candidate I: You've made some sound proposals, and you've had your share of successes. But, something about you feels too narrow, too limited.

sold my red horse for a venture home

A YouTube comment posted re: a live performance of Lump Sum by Bon Iver:

I am not sure if I am happy as a little child or sad and alone when I am listening to this song..I feel like all the people are one big family and there is nobody unhappy, but at the same moment I am so alone deep in myself and anybody can't [sic] understand me..it is so fascinating song [sic] I cannot describe..

Yeah, that about covers it. I kind of want to crawl inside his music and sleep.

Our cook makes the best gravy ever. I am not even kidding. I don't know how Minea does it. It's so incredibly rich and earthy, so savory it makes me want to weep and make a tabernacle out of my plate. I want to make babies with it. Obviously any offspring to stem from this unnatural (but, delicious!) union would be morbidly obese and short-lived (by way of cardiac arrest, probably), but they would have such happy lives. Minea is probably the principal factor contributing to my inability to revert to my pre-Canada weight. But, I love her. There are, obviously, other factors. One of them: alcohol. Another: general sloth. Whatever.

Not gonna lie, Star Trek is probably my favorite 2009 film (of this generation, of this decade). I even made my dad get me the original DVD. And, in a country like the Philippines, where bootleg copies constitute the status quo of film appreciation, that's kind of a big deal. I've seen it several times, and I never get tired of it. Part of it is all the eye candy involved. (John Cho! Chris Pine, ravaged skin and all! Zachary Quinto! Eric Bana! Chris Hemsworth! Zachary Quinto!) Oddly enough, I only find Zachary Quinto appealing with the Spock paraphernalia. Otherwise, he's just a character on that shitty show I never cared for. Another part of it is the nostalgia. I grew up watching Star Trek with my dad. It was mostly Next Generation stuff (Jean-Luc Picard was like a second father to me, no joke), but he threw a few movies in. The best was probably the one where James Kirk, by some tremendous galactic phenomenon, became trapped in the same time warp as Picard, and they had to defeat Glenn Close to set things to rights. I'm getting that wrong, I'm pretty sure. I have no time to fact-check, because I want to get to how DATA WAS SO FUCKING CREEPY. He was like an android pedophile, the type who lives in a basement and used to decapitate domesticated animals as a child. I liked the blind guy with the visor though. I used to play him, but I used a head band to cover my eyes. That was kind of dangerous. Anyway, this was my childhood.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I was supposed to write about the time my dad and I took a drive down south (Laguna and Tagaytay -- several months ago). But, I got distracted.

I might actually go watch Star Trek again.

You know what I did catch on cable a few hours ago? The cinematic masterpiece Kokey starring L.A. Lopez and Cherry Pie Picache. These are their real names. O, the humanity. L.A. Lopez, I certainly hope you've managed to live a fulfilling life. Because your childhood? It was kind of embarrassing. Even by the esteemed standards of Philippine showbiz.

Yeah, I really might go watch Star Trek again.

Quite the hiatus

Honestly? I haven't been writing much because in some ways, my life has been unbearable. And I just didn't know if I could trust myself with that. I want so much for this to just work. Maybe I've spent too much time trying to justify my circumstances, when, really, all I've needed to do was just live them out.

Moving back here was the product of a dubious epiphany, one that I shouldn't have trusted so blithely. (Never go with a hippie to a second location.) I'm not going to say that I've come to regret my decision, because (1) I really don't, and (2) sometimes I do, and I'm never quite sure how to deal with it.

It's this sickly sweet regression that I can't stand. This gradual willingness to conform to behaviors and ideals I once recoiled from. The things I've grown to care about, the things I thought I would champion and see to essential fruition, the things I've lost and let slip through my futile fingers. Some days I forget that I'm no longer 18 years old. I forget that I've spent more than 5 years living a different life, a life undeniably tied to the one I've come back to, the one I'm currently trying to carve out and vindicate. I forget that I no longer need certain things, and that I no longer have to prove certain others. I forget a lot of things.

So maybe my life hasn't been unbearable after all. It's been bearable -- viciously so. And, maybe, finally, I can no longer endure it.




Which kind of sounds like I'm about to slit my wrists. I am not. For all my whining, my heckling, my morose pondering... I kind of love life. My own is no great shakes, but it's... something. And that's all I need to start with.

at long last, have you no decency?

I feel like the gum beneath your shoe, the turd scraped unevenly across a sidewalk, a bloody shard of broken glass left unseen beneath a bar. I suppose my life could be worse. Maybe if I'd been raped by a horse, or if I had willingly raped one. But, these probable scenarios prove to be cold comfort against this mammoth of sadness and dejection lodged into the major arteries of my shrivelled heart. Like butter. Or bacon fat. Only sad.

Full disclosure: I bailed on friends' birthday festivities to chat with my ex-boyfriend. For five hours. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. Especially if, within minutes of your playful banter, your ex-boyfriend happily volunteers the information that he is dating someone else. This shouldn't have surprised me, really. That we'd ended things was unequivocal. No gray areas, nothing left unsaid that could feed into some godforsaken delusion that we could pick up where we left off. It helps that our geographical circumstances are just as unambiguous. The gulf between Ottawa and Metro Manila isn't really the stuff of enduring romance. But, whatever.


It kind of all boils down to certain things that I've done my utmost best to avoid since I moved back to the Philippines. This struggle to find things familiar, this deliberate struggle to find place. It isn't working out very well. I've had two options, really. Either (1) find a new place, a clean slate with which to start over; or (2) reinhabit the hole I had left behind and, over time, chip away at the grooves and cavities that no longer fit.

What's slowly becoming clear is this: that if I'd found all this so unbearable five years ago, that I'd decided (haphazardly, superciliously) to leave, then it's only gotten worse.

So little has changed. Sure, people are more upwardly mobile, more attuned to some overarching transnational sense of community (and the socio-cultural and -economic aspirations thereof). Things have also changed cosmetically: more commercial developments, more public infrastructure (if these new bridges and shit actually constitute improvements is another story), more green spaces (highly contested, but at least the effort's there). But, the heart of it is the same. The deep-seated class prejudice, the remorseless sexism (that allows men to justify the physical abuse of women as a logical response to infidelity, and the sexual exploitation of women as a logical manifestation of masculinity), the homophobia (seriously, the homophobia), the stifling religiosity that pervades and continually shapes all acceptable notions of right and wrong. I hate this shit. Add to this that thick, viscous sense of hopelessness that government leaders bring about, and Vancouver is looking incredibly cushy. Incredibly cushy. And, add to this the fact that my mother's moved back here, and I find myself habitually checking the impulse to look for cheap flights out of dodge.

Whenever I'm stuck in traffic, suffering the grievous injury of getting cut off by shit-for-brains motorists and bus drivers (EDSA bus drivers should be castrated), I always find myself stewing in my car and reciting in my head everything I hate about the Philippines. (But, seriously, I don't understand how people think it's acceptable to add an extra lane to a 3-lane road. And, when that road narrows, because there's no fucking way it won't, everyone cuts everyone off, and I'm left cursing at the heavens, like a heart attack on a stick.)

But, I gave the decision to move back home more thought and care than I'd given to the decision to leave it. It was a conscious and deliberate decision, one that I made after a disgusting amount of soul-searching. (Although, I realize now that the prurient romance of wandering about Central & Eastern Europe certainly colored things.) A part of me (that part that isn't heartsick and tired of all this shit) would like to see this through.

But, another part of me (that part that I've come to like) is currently in Amsterdam, biking alongside a canal, dreaming of pannenkoeken and nice fat spliffs, and thinking of grandiose ideas meant to save humanity, but are, in reality, too obscure to do much of anything.

And, maybe, just to counter all this negative mojo, I should take the time to think about all the things I love about the Philippines and about being home. Maybe.

And, now, I should probably go home and apologize to my father, before my mom convinces him to disown me. It's what I deserve to be sure, but I'd rather that he won't all the same.

(Baby steps, Lia. Baby steps. The future will be there regardless.)

snow flurries, london fog

Weekend: over. Not too shabby, not too shabby. Started off with a friend’s farewell party at my place. The theme was sushi-and-bad-movies. (I wanted a sushi-and-hideous-sweater theme, but I was grievously out-voted.) We didn’t really do the sushi part: the guy in charge of the seaweed didn’t get here until 11, and by then we were more interested in the vodka he brought. Instead we made do with California chirashi bowls (i.e. seafood salad on sushi rice… it was kind of disgusting). And, we didn’t really do the bad-movie part either. In theory, I suppose watching Repo! The Genetic Opera seemed like a good idea. But, the reality of its atrocity was immediately overwhelming. (We watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall on cable instead.) So, Friday night’s lessons were: (1) drunken sushi-making is never a good idea, and (2) true friends always throw out the garbage for you.

Saturday morning (and afternoon, fine) I spent in recovery. Then had dinner with my mom and brother, took them out for some Mexican (mmm, chile relleno). Ended up at the Blarney Stone afterwards—haven’t been there in ages, so it was nice to see that its unique flavour of broken glass, sticky floors, and smelly-feet miasma hasn’t changed much. The music was great though. The band was kind of meh at first (I’m not cool enough to dance Irish jigs ironically), but I have to admit their rendition of U2’s Where the streets have no name was kind of mesmerizing. I did not appreciate the Lady Gaga and the Pussycat Dolls though. Seriously. Crawled to my mom’s place at around 4 (didn’t have enough cab money to get home), and just crashed. Today was a little more chill: barely made it in time to RB, and then had to meet my sister for dinner.

Might be going to Seattle this weekend. Should be interesting.