dark sky

Nothing but clouds and wind and rain for the past couple of days. Terrific weather, the romantics say. But why am I feeling weird?

Must be the dark sky.

Yesterday, Sunday, I started drinking again. All by my lonesome, under the rain, the world around me an old sad black n' white photo from a thousand goodbye cards: a wet flower here, a wet animal there, unsmiling people in raincoats hurrying home from God knew where. On my diary I wrote, "It rained on God's day, so God was everywhere. I picked Him up, put Him in a bottle, drank Him. And then I felt giddy."

Giddy, but not happy.

I slept, had a nightmare, woke up a scared child. That's for three consecutive nights now.

Must be the dark sky.

the hive

My mother and I were playing with our dog, Hunter, when we noticed the honeybees. There were hundreds of them, maybe more, all zipping and zooming and dive-bombing around us like the world's tiniest scud missiles. Panic-stricken, we ran to the house, dragging a very puzzled Hunter along.

When the coast was clear we went out and scanned the trees in our backyard. Sure enough, there was a hive, dangling like a black woman's boob (mom's word) on the mango tree that gave us plenty of bounty last summer. It looked dark and gelatinous and droned with life and peril. Its vicious occupants were all over it, crawling like maggots, ready to swarm on any poor creature dumb enough to get close to it.

The entrepreneur in my mom took over. "We can sell the honey," she said. "People use it for food and medicine." I stood there musing on what kind of ill luck a man has if that thing falls, of all places, on his head. Hunter paid no attention; he was busy wrestling a toad.

Morning drifted languidly into noon, into afternoon. We had lunch, watched Wowowee, shook our heads at the sheer stupidity of some contestants, napped. When we later checked on the alien housing project in our backyard, it was . . . gone. Gone! As in poof! Not a single trace of it, not even a small splotch of honey. None! It's as if it was never there at all.

Mom, who grew up in the company of trees and wildlife, had a theory: "Something disturbed them, so they transferred. Maybe it's the birds, or the light, or the wind. Maybe they saw us gawking at them earlier. They say honeybees are sensitive and highly territorial." I was reading a creepy story by Bradbury then, and my head was full of it, so my theory was different: "Maybe it's the maligno."

Theme from The X-Files started playing in my head . . .

html

I admit, I know zip about html.

When I ask friends how they put this fascinating thing and that fascinating thing on their blogs, they tell me, "html, pare." My usual reaction is to scratch my head. My girlfriend, Charmaine, graphic designer extraordinaire, is a geek when it comes to html. She assures me it's chicken-feed, can in fact be learned through self-study. I say, Okay, and scratch my head.

I was contemplating earlier on ways to improve this blog when I decided that it needed links (blogs that I regularly read, like Jessica Zafra's and Poppy Z. Brite's). Curious as to how to do it, I started clicking things, the hell with everything. So click, click, click went the mouse, dancing over the mouse pad, dancing like a dork, while I read and experimented, read and experimented, read and experimented. More clicks later, more experimentations, some grunts, and -- boom! -- six links. Charmaine's right: it's chicken-feed, now that I think of it.

I know it's not yet the whole thing -- I still have to learn how to use the damn thing on pictures, for example -- but at least I'm starting to get the idea on how html works.

Baby steps, dude.

oompfftt!

Yesterday was a shitty day -- literally. I woke up to the sound of my belly doing a Royal Rumble. Something was in a hurry to fall, and it's not my colegiala neighbor's underwear. I climbed out of bed sweating, swearing, thinking, What in god's name brought this? The calamansi juice I gulped before sleeping? Contaminated tap water? A congressman's face on TV? Regardless, I was dashing in and out of the john the whole morning until Imodium (god bless the fucker!) took care of the problem. Funny how things you take for granted on normal days can save your neck on bad ones.

In between frantic trips to the toilet I wrote the first draft of my intended entry to the Philippine Star-National Bookstore "My Favorite Book" contest. Joining writing contests is one of my addiction these days. So far I've joined two: Philippine Star's Lifestyle Journalism Writing Contest, where I lost, dammit, and Fully Booked's Neil Gaiman Fiction Writing Contest, the result of which will be known on July 15. Anyway, for "My Favorite Book" I picked Kerouac's Desolation Angels. This is more than just my favorite book; it's actually my Bible. (Hunter S. Thompson's The Rum Diary is another, but I'm afraid I can't write a decent article on it without going ballistic on my previous employer, a certain nobody named Klink Ang. Hence, Desolation Angels.)

tale of two beds

Intimacy is not instant. This I realize while lying on the bed my mother gave me as an advanced wedding present yesterday. I spent my first night on it drifting in and out of sleep, feeling strange, disoriented, awkward. It's as if I'm in a different room in a different house in a different country.

The new bed is an elegant 54x74 Malaysian masterpiece that comes with a red Uratex foam, a cushioned headboard, and two drawers underneath. It cost my mom around 12 grand. You can call her a lot of things - conservative, old-fashioned, a Willie Revillame fan - but cheapskate isn't one of them. And since we're not really a well-to-do family, her intention is something I am very grateful of more than the actual gift. I'll be sleeping on my mother's love every night.

But I'm going to miss my old bed. It had served its purpose for 30 years, pre-dating me by three. Mom said it was the first thing she bought with her first paycheck. When I came to her life she handed it to me, and it became my cradle ever since. I don't even know what brand it is; all I know is I've been sleeping and banging away and playing and jumping up and down on it from as far as I can remember. So it was special. Sadly, however, age and abuse had turned it into a disemboweled wreck. That, plus the fact that a wife will be moving in on December, left us with no choice but to consign it to our bodega, the graveyard of forgotten things.

fried day

I awoke from a nap to the sound of my phone ringing. It was a girl, and she was asking me if I could go to Makati before 5pm today for a job interview. She said she works for a company called ESS Manufacturing or something, which holds office at the 41st floor of PBCOM Tower in Ayala Avenue. She said they are looking for a technical writer.

Jobstreet, I thought. Fuck that shit.

I looked at my watch, saw it's already 3pm, grunted. Dashing from Antipolo to Makati in two hours is a long shot, something I'm not at all prepared to take given the circumstances (the rude awakening, the thirty-something heat, the short notice). So I said, "Um, ah, um, ah . . . " like a moron. She got the idea and hung up.

Of course it occured to me to ask for a re-scheduling -- that's what a normal person would've done, especially if he's a reluctant bum for almost a year -- but I'm feeling kind of odd lately, as if I'm having an out-of-body experience. My brain cells are fried, my muscles lethargic, and nothing seems to perk me up. (I know something's wrong with me when I'm reading Tom Wolfe and can't bring myself to laugh.) All I want to do is lie down and think about nothing, perhaps reread On the Road over and over until I pass out from sheer loneliness.

So far this is my Friday. I hope yours is better.

call it karma

The rain that poured over the weekend was heavy and violent. It wasn't what I had in mind when I was dancing the rain dance last week. It was a destructive downpour, a king-hell bummer, and on Friday it caught me in a Cubao-bound jeepney, cold and wet and cursing my luck. On Saturday I nearly got stranded in Marikina because of the flood. It was hellish.

New acquisition: a Pensonic 128MB portable MP3 player. Pensonic is a no-name brand in the world of Canons and LGs and Sonys, but so what? I'm not one who gives a shit about brands anyway, and I don't dig the logic of those who are obsessed with it. For me anything's fine as long as it works, and my little Pensonic is working just fine. I road-tested it last night under the mad driving rain.

insensitive?

Sometimes I get so high singing paeans for the rain that I fail to consider the people who would freak out at the sight of dark clouds. These are the people who live in low-lying areas like Malabon and Navotas -- places where Waterworld is not an old crappy Hollywood movie but a crappy yearly reality. To them rain is as welcome as pestilence (or a Waterworld sequel).

Floods, landslides, death: These are the headlines every time the rainy season rolls in, I know. But what can I do? Rain is a woman with a beautiful face and a slender body, but wielding a scythe. In the end we are either admirers or helpless victims.

missing the rain

One thing I dislike about my freelance gig is I get to stay home during these scorching afternoons we're having these days. Today's temperature shot up to 33 degrees Celsius. I don't care what Pagasa says, but I think that's the hottest so far. At least here in Antipolo.

I miss the rain. I miss sleeping at night listening to the sound of raindrops exploding on the roof. I miss waking up to a wet morning and eating tuyo and sinangag for breakfast. I miss walking on wet streets watching trees dance in the wind. I miss the frantic voices on radio screaming about a "super typhoon." I miss dark, candle-lit nights with the wind howling outside. I miss the mystery of a rainy night.

Today is the first day of June. June is supposed to be a rainy month. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.