only a dead mole is a good mole

The Presidential Security Guard closest to the woman with a mole ignored the immediate screams and angry flashes of cameras around him. Not one of the three PSG's cordoning the tiny woman was able to break her fall. She had taken six steps after descending the low stairs coming out of the hotel's entrance when a thud was heard. It was not a bullet's sound, but that of her small torso hitting pavement.

The PSG leader's screams as he ran to the immediately thick crowd could be heard crisply over the clicks of cameras and oooohs of reporters who had leaned in and over the body, shielding it like an umbrella, effectively blocking, in the few seconds after the President's head blew up like a watermelon, the PSG's line of vision. No one had managed to approximate where the bullet came from. Orders to secure the area were heard.

The media wasted no time serializing the authorities' efforts to catch a phantom who was not a hero. No one seriously wanted the President dead. No one cared enough to take the needed steps to kill her. But then everyone knew that no one wanted her alive either. It was not relief that people watching the live feed from the Oakwood's front entrance felt. The tiny woman was not a dictator in the terrifying sense that Marcos had been. It was not victory that the Opposition party, who were at the scene, felt when the mob of reporters and bystanders rushed to lean in and crowd around the President's pavement. Because now, the Opposition would need someone else to negotiate with.

It might have been a scene where a pedestrian got run over by a bus on a boring afternoon. Except that this one pedestrian annoyed the nation. Had she been a celebrity, the people may have panicked, yelled for someone to call an ambulance. But no, the crowd continued to stare at the torso without a head. It was a scene no one wanted to ruin by calling for help, or showing signs of wanting to help. She's dead? Hindi nga. Tomorrow is another day.

kemmon, talk to me

So, I say, talking to you, who obviously went here to read something. How do you, I begin, looking away, sighing, and glancing back at you before I look down; how do you recharge your fount? You know--regain the life, the enthusiasm, the wonder, the itch, the secret giggle, whatever. 

You lean back on your chair and sigh. You're about to confess uselessness in a mumble but I stop you with a raised palm.  

Say you're all worn out from thinking through a project--not just thinking of--thinking through: you came up with it, it was promising, you pulled off two-thirds, you're half-dead, and it's not yet perfect, but your boss wants more, ahh, refinements...and there is another project slated after this one. What do you do? So you won't get fired, so you'd keep the image of a go-getter creative. 

You're not answering. 

I don't need stares. 

I need ideas. 

I'm drying up here. 

bottles of beer on the wall

Saw Ricci go online a while ago. I immediately waved a hand. Told her I wasn't enrolled in the program [creative writing program], for a year now, come to think of it. So much raket writing that I haven't been able to breathe. Ricci is not enrolled, too; she told me. "Life and all that," she said. I miss our alcohol chatting sessions. We used to meet online and, beer with me and wine with her, we'd chat away on and about just whatever avenue of such we fancy.

When the alcohol sets in we'd notice we'd miss hitting the right keys, and the drinks take their revenge on our spelling. Too many exclamation marks. Laugh out louds. She loves poetry. I like the absurd. She'd post a link to an online sound file of a Neruda poetry reading. I'd touché with, maybe some tall tales I'd been practicing when I'm alone.

Sometimes I wonder if she and I tiptoe on the same soft soil.

Next time, she said, inuman na talaga.

Yeah. That's my cue: I'd definitely have to get back to the program.

moody, schmoody

I think I did. I think I told my wife that, at the rate I'm coughing out articles for my night job, I won't be able to write decent shit by the end of the year. Yeah. I think I did. I was whining then. I am whining now. The small window for working on and turning in those bursts of paragraphs, about four to five per article, and fifteen a night, has led me to devise ways of staying awake, and of talking care of that which allows me to write decent stuff--my mood.

Saw this study in some psychology website, a site filled with advice on just about anything; anyway, the study said that one has a finite fount for working on something, and then when the fount is empty shit comes out. Non-quality work. If you look at a donkey in the face, that's not it; you have turn the donkey around and look at its ass, that's the work I produce when I am not in the mood. So I sleep. Eat heaps of chocolate cookies. Drink Mountain Dew and coffee. Read blogs of people I don't know. Follow threads of stories I started to write and then dropped, due to emotional exhaustion. And I recount small victories in my writing life.

Like last week, just this Friday. I turned in six sudden fiction--500 to 700 words--to this upcoming flash fiction anthology. I am hoping that at least one of those I sent will make it. The deadline has since been moved to July 15, I think, and if I find strength by that time, I might polish a rough story and turn that in as well.

So, where were we? My mood. It's a constant battle to stay in the mood to be amused, to be whimsical, to be playful. Because the moment work becomes sour to the feel, it's definitely work. And I don't like to work. I like to be playful, and get paid for it. Good thing this job allows me room to write those small bursts of paragraphs with some wit. At least while my mood lasts.

Sleeping, of course, is part of the job. How else does one recharge the fount?

This, by the way, is just a blog, not a psychology website. There is no Freud, no dreams, no self-realization, no emotions to untangle. Just whining.

same shark, different day

Abalone diver Muriel Sanguinnia felt his chest squeezed in the dark. His left shouldered punctured and pinned between serrated teeth, his calm never left him. The shark spasmed and released--in a split-second--Muriel's 32-year old body, so as to better haul him in, to snugly fit his torso inside the Great White's mouth.

Muriel's chest heaved, quickly drew in more air from his respirator, and saw in a blink the corrals dimly lit by what noon sunlight was prismed underwater. He was just picking up abalone; he was just doing his job, picking off the undersea ecology to sell that rare delicacy to Pauly's Beached Up Front Restaurant near the shoreline. He knew, and he had no gripes about it, that the Great White snapping its jaws at his shoulders was doing its job.

Another spasm and a great deal more pain. His respirator's line flung out, and he lost feeling in his left shoulder. Can't reach for his knife sheath on his right leg. Some ribs broken. His years of diving told him he had maybe fifteen seconds more to live, assuming the shark forgot to chew and just let him wriggle in its mouth.

Right arm can still move. Gills. Feel for them outside the mouth. Nothing. Blacking out. Grab up, further up. A ball of jelly. Membrane. Dig in, claw it up, squeeze hard. Muriel felt the tunnel he was inside shake a bit, and then flung him out. Corrals, schools of small fish, bubble rising from... his respirator. He grabbed it and inhaled, scissoring to spin himself in the clear blue sea murked by blood that was his own, to see where the shark was.

There. Gliding in a circle with him as the center. Can't feel left shoulder, left arm won't move. There's my spear gun snagged on the sandy bottom. Grab it, scissor to spin, face the shark... where's the... was that a shrug? Do sharks shrug?

A second later and Muriel kicked against the sandy bottom and ascended calmly above water. Limping to shore, he leaned on a surfer who came to help. Murmurs from the thick crowd. Crashing waves behind him. His right hand tight on his spear gun.

What happened? Fred, the life guard asked. Muriel's diving suit was punctured, but the suit's dark color hid the shark bites. To all appearances, he just staggered in pain from a dislocated shoulder, except that he was bleeding.

Oh, you know, Fred. Once a month, on a quiet Thursday, he said.

Muriel sat down on the sand and Fred helped him take his diving suit off. The life guard saw the bite punctures on Muriel's hairy torso. Fred reckoned from size of the arc of teeth, it was the same one.

Can't be that many Great Whites who just want to gobble you up whole, ey, Murry?

Muriel grunted.

So why don't you ever spear him, do him in, end the misery? Fred said, signaling to the surfer to get help.

He looses interest after spitting me out.

Hmmm. Gills or eye?

Eye, this time. If I kill him, someone less forgiving might take over.

Right, right.

Same shark, different day.

film review: next

Chris (Nicolas Cage) can see and hear and feel events two minutes into the future, but only if it involves him. He makes a living as a magician in Las Vegas, pretending to trick his audience that he can read minds; something that preps up the common sleight of hand tricks he does on stage. To augment his living, his gambles in calculated proportions--gambles against slot machines and on card tables, preferring to win small so as not to be noticed. Until the night the casino security notices his conservative but consistent winning streak.

Liz (Jessica Biel) is a part-time teacher in an Indian reservation. Chris could only see two minutes into the future, until his reach extended so that he saw her walking into a diner at a precise time every morning, on an uncertain day. He has been waiting for her to come into that diner ever since. The day it happened, Chris "projected" various scenarios, several two minute shows, until he hit one wherein he buys into woman's sympathies. The next morning, waking up in her arms in a motel, he found out that any future occurrences involving her in his life magnified his clairvoyance. Projecting probably some two hours into the future, without leaving her embrace, he realized he made a mistake in his attempt to help the FBI track a nuclear bomb explosion before it happened. In that two hour projection, though Jessica survived and most of the terrorists killed, the bomb still went off.

Next is a film that plays on the premise of a what-if that I love. Guy has powers, wants a normal life, uses it to earn a depressed but hedonistic life, he thought he was ok until a girl came into the picture. It could use some more character development, but then the pace would be affected, and the pace is either two minutes or two hours into the future--tic tock. Chris' voice over narration plays with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: the thing about seeing into the future is that once you peek, it changes, because you peeked.

Asteeg sya. I loved it. I am so mababaw. I should be complaining of not enough narrative devices used and so on, but I liked the action and the premise. So Hollywoodishly simple, but not so gross as to be stereotypical. Just good enough for pop corn and small talk, not epic enough to be debated over lunch. (Never a bad thing for an action movie with a cool premise to explore to end quickly.)

Agent Ferris (Julianne Moore) is the FBI agent who gets wind of Chris' statistically improbable reasoning behind his actions, and has somehow channeled FBI resources to tracking down a magician. Never mind how she got clearance for that. Whatever saves democratic America, one guesses, be it a two-minute fortune teller, or a web slinger. Geeze.

But back to the film. Never mind the incessant talks about do you believe in destiny crap, it only lasts for a few minutes. And then you get to see Chris saving his SWAT-uniformed FBI crew while guiding them through sniper fire and booby traps. Cool.

He can see into the future enough to be mud hole and dirty puddle filthy rich and he chooses to have a normal life, awwww, nobility complex anyone? And promises his girl he'll be back once he helps out in a thing about a bomb.

The ending is the sad part, not because they all got killed. The entire action and chase sequences involving the search for the bomb are all Chris' two hour projection--God that's a spoiler, I have seen one and half hours into the future, towards the end of the film. Sue me.

Anyway, I think the film failed to build some tension into what Chris' voice over had been hinting at since the beginning. The moment you see the future, you are compelled to act on that vision, thereby changing the course of events. This means the scenario wherein the bomb went off anyway, could still happen. The reason he was not able to see a possible future involving his finding the bomb was because he was not able to physically tie himself up with any event involving any physical proximity to the bomb. Now, that is a mouthful. Watch the film and see if you can get my meaning.

If you don't like the film, you can at least talk it over it with me.

Oh yeah, on a side note, Nicolas Cage is taking on slow action movies in his aging years. I think maybe he's seen the future.