current music: Tattooed on My Mind - Sitti

Again, I wonder if anybody reads this. Hmm. Well, it's here, so I'll update. If anybody does read this, kindly send some kind of sign. At least so I know I'm not wasting priceless minutes typing. Hehe.

Well. What's new?

1.) I have a new car! Well, it's not really MY new car. They just sold the big green "school bus ng block E" Starex for a sleek black Chevy Optra, automatic with a nicer stereo. I was half-hoping Dad would pick up the Mazda3 or the Mazda6, but that's out of our budget. Tsk.

I like my car! I just have to share it with my sister and brother. AND I have to deal with the fact that my parents still insist I be chauffered around by Ragma everywhere I go. So every RARE moment I do get to drive, I feel my driving skill dull. And I'm still unaccustomed to my new set of rear-view mirrors. Hmph.

I miss they way my old car smelled.

2.) I am now learning how to be a bassist.

Yep. No joke.

Y'see, Dad made a whole new set of friends who, in their idle parties, break out with this big drum set, a whole bunch of guitars and other musical instruments and just jam. Even if they don't know how to play! Enjoy, so they say. And for this reason, Mom bought Dad a bass guitar.

Now, I've been wanting to play SOMETHING since high school, and Roel DID try teaching me guitar, and that didn't work out. But when I picked up that bass and played... well. It's not so hard when Roel teaches me; he just tells me what notes to hit, and I just rock away. He even writes the tabs for me, so I pretty much just "Do what he says". Although, I am already trying my hand in "kapa", or figuring out how to play songs by ear (Charles Wright's "Express Yourself" as an example). He'll play the song in guitar, and I provide bass. And it sounds okay, except for my "newbie errors" like slipping fingers and lost rhythm here and there.

I now know the basslines for these songs:
- Freshmen - The Verve Pipe
- Kung Wala Ka - Hale
- Sleep All Day - Jason Mraz
- Crash Into Me - Dave Matthews Band
- Iris - Goo Goo Dolls

and there's one more. But I can't remember, nor do I really practice that song 'cause I'm not too fond of it. It's got this lyric: "I'm gonna be lonely for the rest of my life" in the chorus. Hmm.

Oh. You know what's the kicker? Right now, it's Tuesday evening. I only started learning last Friday night. :)

3.) Law school? Well...

Don't look now...

But despite the days like today where I'd do anything to let out some stress, or where I wish I were employed or where I could do away with the disgust the Socratic Method brings...

I think I'm actually starting to really REALLY want this law business for myself. Really.

I just hope I won't dig myself into something I can't get out of, nor want to be in.

4.) I had a talk with Cy last Saturday. I had a chat with Patch this evening. Then there was Rio too. And May too, a few days ago. Pretty much, all these confidants of mine, each of differing levels of "access" to my life's adventures caught up with me this week. Interesting how they all had their own trials, adversities and lost opportunities each. And how one person's story enriches what I have to say to the other person.

Wise? Me? Naah. I just live.

Truth be told, I started digging into LJ posts of people I found on the Friends pages of my LJ friends, or start using stories about other confidants, or things I saw in my Law casebooks, just to drive home the points I wanted to get to them, each one a different story. They all had their own thing to settle. It was intensely rewarding to just talk, never mind if I'm already way behind schedule with my readings.

I really ought to start tape-recording the things I tell them. Note: what I tell them, not what they say to me.

Because I feel sometimes like I need to hear from somebody else what I tell other people.

5.) Haha. Ninang Clar, don't ever worry. I'll never date smokers. :p

6.)

Well now. Athena Cage's "You" still says it best.

current music: the Samurai X soundtrack song "1/3".

Yep. Pessimist Raph is checking in once more.

I have a very sinking feeling (now that I'm sick again) that I really won't last very long on this planet. Which isn't so bad. I just wish that I could finish that book before it all wraps up.

It's kinda simple. There's this character (a guy, for my initial draft) who passes away. And he leaves, in his will, a whole buttload of letters that need to be delivered to different people, all who are not really connected to each other. They all only have one thing in common: dead guy knew all of them, at one point or another in his life. It's anybody - the girl he first had sex with, the classmate who beat him up once, the woman he never quite forgave for breaking his heart, that best friend who was always there, the person who he never quite liked but left him some great insight, anybody. His parents get letters too. And people don't get just one; some are special and get several. And each letter is sort of "time-released", like, you couldn't open your second letter until after 2 years you read the first. Like, he was still pulling strings even when he was gone.

And so my story goes. The story will be shown by nothing but the letters he left, and in those passages you see what dead guy was like. In my drafts, many of those letters were based (and addressed) to real people I met, from different points of my existence.

And ironically that I'm writing this 'novel' as I myself contemplate how short life is and all that. But I dunno. I don't really feel it'll be a hit or whatever. The point will be that people will read it, but un nga, maybe when I'm already gone. That'll be years from now, hopefully. And that 'novel' will be my farewell to the people I wouldn't quite get to say goodbye to.

I dunno. The stinking part of my situation is how Law School chews up a lot of my free time. If it's not by directly diverting my time, it's how the pressure makes it harder to be creative, or honest in my writing. Right now, I'm typing this and this is actually as 'naked' as I get personally, in my blogs. I'm not like this in my LJ or my Multiply, if only because I think fewer people read this one.

And that's the thing. I secretly dream that somehow, people I love read this. Because I've no other way.

I know you're family. I love you.

But I can't stand hypocrites. I really hate that. And I hate how you flat-out refuse to listen to me when you make such decicions, such acts. How you'd tell me to behave one way (like, um, "Iiving within our means"??) and how you do the exact opposite (like today - lavishing things on yourselves, and hold back when your children ask for, ya gotta admit, so little).

It's not about the money. We're above that as a family. I think. I hope, for you anyway.

It's about the PRINCIPLE. Like, when you, decades ago, were two of many people of your time fighting against a tyrant who worked hard and made the country richer, BUT wasted it all on worthless junk, shoes, useless buildings, etc.

Now I feel trapped in my own house, with rules that keep me down, while you go on mirror the above example (albeit in a much smaller scale).

It's awful. It's contemptuous and disgusting, but I can't do anything because you're my folks and I'm supposed to shut up about it, and drop it.

(Of course I won't drop it. You want me to be a lawyer with principle? Watch me; I'll remember this shit, and others just like it.)