Payong

They treaded the dirty street of Pedro Gil carefully because they were sharing only a small umbrella against the cold, grey world pressing towards them promptly at 5:30 PM. The deep screams of vehicles pound from the green light, increasing intensity, and recede into the dark of the rain, borne by the glistening black asphalt. The woman looks up at the glowing red sticks telling the time at the LRT station: six.

It wasn't raining hard. But the rain was insistent (which is worse), pattering in billions of little rat feet on a small umbrella shared by two damp people. The man wraps his arm tighter around the woman while adjusting his grip on the cold metal handle of the umbrella.

I wondered. When did he do that last?

Suicide

Here's a delightfully easy way to kill yourself: get a syringe, any type of syringe. I think you can get one at any Mercury Drug store for less than twenty pesos. With the syringe in hand, pick a healthy, innocent looking vein and inject air in it. Wait for an x period of time until you start to have difficulty breathing, after which you will slowly have the sensation of drowning—but in air. Then you die an utterly clean and (just a little) painful death.

Suicide is an "in" thing nowadays; I wont even elaborate. In fact, it's so "in" that the evangelist in the church behind our house had a nice little talk regarding it just last Sunday. He said that suicide is evil and that whoever attempts and succeeds in doing it will go to Hell, wherein the person will burn in eternal lake of fire. He said that suicide is a sin because any form of killing any human being is a sin, since god gave us life and it is just plain insolence to take it away with our own hands. Destroying one's self, I think, is the ultimate insult to one's creator (if in fact a creator does exist, and if this creator is amazingly egotistic as the holy books are interpreted to say).

 
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Kidney, Kidney, Don’t Leave Home Without It

Do you know how much you'll get if you sell one of your kidneys? Around P200, 000 minus the P30, 000 referral fee you pay to your agent (if you have any). That leaves you with P170, 000 which can buy you a secondhand car, a small franchise business, a few months' rental in one of Divisoria's malls plus the merchandise, around 8,500 bottles of C2 Green Tea, fourteen years of broadband internet connection, or 1,700 McDonald's quarter pounder value meals—you get the drift. One-seventy grand is a big, big thing compared to a relatively small and useless other kidney.

 
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Close-Minded With An Open Mouth

This is my closet. The clothes here don't include three garbage bags full of other clothes that I don't wear anymore. What does this say about me? I'm messy, greedy, and fat. So back off before I bite your nose off. I'm feeling particularly natty today, for some inestimable reason, and it's only 5:30 AM. This might have something to do with the fact that I just downloaded assloads of emo songs the other night and I've been listening to them the whole of yesterday. 

 
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Vanity and Vacuity

Lately, I've been occupied with Marco, Family Guy marathons, unbelievably complicated UP enrollment, and shopping for clothes and school things. At the end of the day I'd rather sleep than blog or go online. Not that I'm busy or anything, but I just don't feel like it lately. Blogging is getting less interesting for me, and I suppose it's only just a matter of time.

 
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Hey, Body

Hey, body. I don't like you lately. I don't like how things are going between us. I know that a working relationship requires trust, patience and love and we both seem to be unable to provide these. It's all about me, me, me, and you're all about, well, you're a bag of unresponsive, uninspiring flesh. Now what? I can't leave you! That is, I can't leave you without a high chance of killing us both in the process. 

 
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And You’re Almost Happy, Almost Content—But Your Head Hurts

Who or what made us? Why are we here? Why doesn’t anyone or anything absolutely answer questions such as these, if there is such a thing as an absolute answer?

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Why I am Not Yet An Atheist

I have an atheist friend. He's gay. He kisses his cute boyfriend in public and kisses harder when people give them The Look. He's an intelligent person and he spends thousand of pesos on hardbound books with topics ranging from evolution to political science . He would probably hate me for mentioning this, but about a year ago he is a raving, spittle-showering Catholic zealot. We were not friends then.

Now that I mention it, my closer friends are either atheist or agnostic. People who are sure that a god or gods exist tend to make my right eyebrow shoot up. How can you be sure? How can you possibly be sure about things like this? I ask. Sometimes, the person tells me that he's just not sure, he knows god exists. Sometimes the person tells me that it doesn't matter if god in fact does not exist—humans need a god. Pascal's wager. Or I'm told god is love. I don't lose respect for people who think like this, but I tend to bury their religious beliefs deep in my subconscious. I'm just not a god person. Period.

 
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