I felt the heat of the flames touching my lips and the tip of my tongue. So I threw myself away on the pavement and I started stepping and stumping on the remaining ashes like a fucker slapping a whore on the ass, screaming, “BAD THING! YOU’RE A BAD THING! BAD THING!” and then we started laughing. We walked around to no particular direction. I was laughing and singing in my really bad voice, not minding the annoyed pedestrians. I felt like I was in total control of myself, like I am the master of my own body. So we just kept walking, not minding the time or the weather, because we were in a trance, stepping away from reality one step at a time. It felt like the nerves in my brain were dancing but everything else was burning. But I felt no pain, because I was in a trance.

I was a prolific writer in high school. I was a campus journalist and I was always assigned in the literary and features section of our campus newspaper. Some people used to say I was good. But things change. Now, whenever I read my writings and articles and unpublished short stories that I wrote a few years ago, I’d hate them. I think they’re not good enough.

That is probably why I still don’t know what I want to do with my life. I am dissatisfied with things, as an effect, I become unhappy, bored, desolated, and chagrined. A few decades from now, I will be dead and I don’t wanna die without the sense of fulfillment, without the thought that I have done something in my life that put me in unending high spirits. It’s probably one of the reasons why I fear the coming of death, why I immediately dismiss my suicidal thoughts a few months ago when I was on the verge of failing Math 215 (I got a 2.75, thank God!)—because I cannot do it just like how those teenagers in the 2002 Japanese movie Suicide Club did it. Out of the blue, they just thought of killing themselves and then the next scene is they’re jumping from the rooftop of their school building for no apparent reason whatsoever. Just like that. They killed themselves just like that.

I feel like Robert Frost, stuck in front of two roads in a yellow wood, and I’m feeling sorry I could not travel both. I am not contented with what is served in front of me, and I have the irrevocable urge to taste more of what’s in the menu. Should I seize the day and follow John Keating’s, the English teacher in the 1989 movie Dead Poets Society, advice of making our lives extraordinary? Or should I just be pragmatic like Vicky in Woody Allen’s 2008 movie, Vicky Cristina Barcelona? I don’t usually answer questions like these but I think John Keating is right.

Pity me for my Eyebags!

My first year in college was a roller coaster ride. It was so hard. Architecture is so damn hard, I was deprived of so much sleep I almost forgot my name. And we have this math, one of our two maths last semester, it’s called Math215 aka Solid Mensuration. It was so motherfreaking difficult, I shat bricks.

It’s actually about looking for measurements of certain shapes. It sounds easy at first but when you get to actually solve for a problem, all you will be given is the radius and you have to find everything, like, the chord length, arc length, the central angle, the area of this shaded region, etc. It looks impossible but when the professor solves it in the board, all you will get is a confused face and a white board in front full of complex solutions. But thank goodness, I passed that freaking subject. I was considering to commit suicide during “the great depression” phase in my life which occurred  for a few days, thinking about my Math215 grade. And then I saw my Math215 grade this morning and I nearly cried because I did not really expect that it’s going to be that high. I mean, I’m not saying that it’s high like high-high. Based on my performance, one would not actually think of me receiving that grade.

The other math is Trigonometry. It was so easy like yeah. I just didn’t know what happened to me in high school, I almost failed it.

——

I do not usually plan things. I’m the type of person who likes surprises. But since I want my summer to be, at least, productive, I will force myself to follow this plan:

• Read books.
• Watch shitloads of movies.
• Review at least one movie.
• Keep this blog updated.

Sounds fun? Pshaw. I don’t really consider going to the beach and travelling, but I’d love to. They just seem so impossible to happen since I’m so broke and all. My friends are actually planning to go to Pangasinan cos one of my friends owns a beach there. I just don’t know if my parents will allow me to go and swim and enjoy my summer and give me money.

But I know this will be a happy summer because I’m so positive that I’ll pass my course’s cut-off.

The car travels in a constant speed creating a cumulus cloud of smoke behind. From inside the speedy vehicle, you can see nothing outside but distorted lights painted on a black canvass. I do not mind it at all, until it starts to accelerate and speed up into an amount that is almost like the speed of light. I am traveling very fast and I cannot help but to feel very scared. So I take my hands off the steering wheel and grasp my seatbelt very tightly. But my legs are shaking and sweating so I lift them up from the pedals and take my knees up on my face. I sit in that position for a few minutes until I realize that no one’s controlling the car anymore and it is no longer driving very fast. I open my eyes and saw that everything is still distorted outside except for the bright moon that is clearly seen from the windshield. It is growing bigger and bigger. No, I am going closer to it. I am being pulled by the moon like the tide. And then I realize that life is full of stupid metaphors and I should stop over-analyzing things.

A few weeks before summer vacation. I do not know where my life is going to lead me.

You see, I have been blogging lesser since college, by the name of “BS Architecture”, devoured all my time and my social life (oh for fuckssake, I don’t even have a social life but then, my chances of actually living one through orgs and stuff have diminished to ashes). And so what happened was the internet hated me for not blogging anymore and for posting NSFW stuff in Tumblr, so it shut down my blog and gave it a permanent amnesia.

Even my reading frenzy died because of the deadly acads. After watching The Lord Of The Rings movies for a hunded times over, I finally got my hands on the books a few months ago. I started reading The Fellowship Of The Ring during Christmas time while I was in Batangas. And until now, I haven’t reached the part where Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pipin landed in Rivendell to establish the Fellowship. And my relationship with the outside world was also killed and now I only stay awake inside my own  universe.

In fact, my family just recently had a trip to the north just for the sake of it. They went to Vigan, to Pagudpud, to the windmills, to Cagayan…but I was unfortunately left at home, finishing my major plate. My love for travel and going to places understands the situation since I need to optimize my tuition fee by not screwing up at school and by making it a point that I am always present in every class, although I am guilty of a few cases of cutting classes but you see, I only did them for the greater good…or not. Just like the time when I cut Design-1 class just to go to some book fair in Mall of Asia…heeeheeeheee. But other than that, to tell you the truth, whenever I cut classes, I’d be in the drafting room of the library, finishing my plates. I’m still a good student, believe it or not.

And speaking of traveling, all these academic shiznits make me want to enjoy my summer by travelling and going to places other than Manila, Pasig, and Batangas. But the problem is, I’m broke, I can’t journey to distant places without money. It suddenly reminds me of Alexander Supertramp, the guy in Into The Wild. He traveled to distant places without money. But no, I don’t wanna travel penniless, hunt for some wild pigs, and eat some poisonous herbs and die in an abandoned bus in the middle of nowhere. Thinking of traveling and going to really far places makes me feel like a kid—a careless kid who chases his kite.

When I was a kid, my career plans were more exciting. I used to dream of being an ice cream man, and then when I get shitloads of money, I’d buy a car and be taxi driver. I also thought of being a firefighter and a garbage collector. Some not-so-deep psychological analysis tells that I really wanna go to places. The ice cream man goes to kids who’d buy ice cream, the taxi driver goes to the place his costumer wants to go, the firefighter goes to where there is fire, and the garbage collector goes to where there’s trash. But where do I wanna go?

Well, I haven’t figured that out since I have been thinking of sustainable architecture and my Design-2 third major plate in the past few days. But I will try to keep up with this blog as much as I can.