Regular-working people wake up at 9:00 in the morning and think they're late. On a graveyard shift, you will wake up at night and the day is just starting. For a while, it should be fine. But after four months, it starts to bother you. Especially when these things become synonymous with each other:
Dinner, Breakfast and Meryenda
Day and Night
Buses and Home
Restaurants and comfort rooms
Coffee and water
Male and Female ( on jeepneys or Harrison street)
People and Shadows (at the most dizzy times)
1. Dizzy but Gillespie
Streetlights are taking over empty streets. A portion of my latest dream--the last fibers of my sleep--is still in the corners of my vision, creating blots of violet confusion that blurs the definition of walking and floating. It could be the origin of moonwalking. Good thing, the memory of my feet turns me into a train that follows a geographic cliche leading to the right places.
Everything becomes sound. Only light is real: embossed from the dim and foggy ends of spaces between things and me. I whistle in my head while listening on cellphone-radio. The pace of travel dictates rhythm. Unpredictable like jazz. Traffic has its ways of surprising you even during ungodly hours. There's the soundtrack of hurrying that features a bassline from the late-80's fingers of Flea. There's the soundtrack of apprehension that features the sophistication of Pink Floyd. There are nights when a lonely howl of a cheesy Dong Abay sneaks into the scene with blood--sometimes as passionate as U2. But the overall sense of travel never fails to deliver Bob Dylan free-versing solo.
2. Mantra-volta
Approaching the office, I see myself as a pair of lips slowly touching the surface of burning brewed coffee. It wakes me up, strips me off the dust of sleep, and reduces me to a machine, or some sort of mechanism in the service of the company feeding me.
There are times that coming to the office is a not a bitter pill to swallow, but an oversized suppository approaching my ass.
People at work would talk to me. I wouldn't talk back most of the time. I prefer talking to people online. Maybe it's because of generation gap. My co-workers at night are in every way older than me. They always talk about other people, about their accomplishments, about their failures. They're older than me. It's better if I just listen. I also have this feeling that office-talk is not the arena of my tongue. I'm loud over beer and friends. I'm loud when I should, silent when I should, and passive if pissed. Mantra is focus.
Work, that cage, would always remind of the vastness of my small ipis-infested dormitory in Cavite. We were all complete: the actor, the couple, the athlete-slash-cool guy, the religious and monks, the clairvoyant, the artists, the writers, the money-driven proud chub, the new kid in town, the happy-go lucky, the lonely, the happy, the broken. A talk would go a long way. Over beer, over coffee, over nothing, over hunger..it doesn't matter. Free-verse, rhyme, whatever...it doesn't matter. Nothing else matters. Philosophy, literature, reality, love, loss, memory, morality, porn, science, God, gibberish...all is one and connected. It was a universe created while we were talking and laughing and singing and suddenly. Beat.
3. Sleep
At the end of the day, a graveyard worker's real enemy is sleep. It's not the kind of enemy you want to kill. It's the enemy you want alive. You want it fresh. But sleep is mischievous and sneaky under the light of the sun. Here's how sleep becomes evil:
Sleep, wearing a coat without a tie, visits you on the bus while you're trying to finish some book. It comes along with tiredness and blesses you with comfort. You sleep and find hard to wake up at the end of the ride. Slowly, sleep will walk away, away, away, leaving you with sun-filled energy inside.
At home, you eat, watch TV, try to relax, but where the hell is sleep? Nowhere. No jumping sheep. Reading makes you anxious or excited. Thinking is no use, Sleepiness is absence or at least complete disregard of thoughts. Then you get creative. Try milk, try TV again, try music, try radio, try walking, try counting dust, try porn, try praying the rosary, try eating again, try banging your head to the wall, try water, try taking another bath, try talking to someone, try laughing, try thinking about...try forgetting about. You end up sleeping 4 hours late and waking up early. Then sleep attacks you at work. Evil son of a bitch.
4. Sleep Part 2
It takes a lot of strength to pursue a craft. Artists do deserve to be called artists in this third-world post-colonial, post-GMA, pre-post-Pacquiao, post-war-pre-war time-space. From my point of view, I can clearly see the worthiness of art--visual, literary, sound, etc.--how it is a flower yellowing on a pile of 21st century junk--the middle finger that stands tall and proud over folded expressions, limited motion, second-hand decision, dead people working for living not truly living neither leaving.
Pursuing art is still rebellious! It's what my beard and my receding hairline longs for. The rebel in me has been dwarfed for sometime now. It used to be a condensed universe gearing up for its big bang. Now it's a deep thirsty black hole empty, pulling lost energy. Sleeping. Noynoying. Everyday I write yet I am dissatisfied. Something's wrong. Really wrong. Sleeping. It's wrong. Especially when your grandmother is dying. Poems and stories and music are all gathered in one place enjoying free beer, live band...guests are coming: God, Plato, Ginsberg, Horace, Platypuses, John Lennon, Borges the blind librarian, Khalil Gibran, Pepe not smith, Marcelo del Pilar, greek gods...goddesses, muses..Luther, people laughing while everybody else is working like tiny little ants.
Dinner, Breakfast and Meryenda
Day and Night
Buses and Home
Restaurants and comfort rooms
Coffee and water
Male and Female ( on jeepneys or Harrison street)
People and Shadows (at the most dizzy times)
********
1. Dizzy but Gillespie
Streetlights are taking over empty streets. A portion of my latest dream--the last fibers of my sleep--is still in the corners of my vision, creating blots of violet confusion that blurs the definition of walking and floating. It could be the origin of moonwalking. Good thing, the memory of my feet turns me into a train that follows a geographic cliche leading to the right places.
Everything becomes sound. Only light is real: embossed from the dim and foggy ends of spaces between things and me. I whistle in my head while listening on cellphone-radio. The pace of travel dictates rhythm. Unpredictable like jazz. Traffic has its ways of surprising you even during ungodly hours. There's the soundtrack of hurrying that features a bassline from the late-80's fingers of Flea. There's the soundtrack of apprehension that features the sophistication of Pink Floyd. There are nights when a lonely howl of a cheesy Dong Abay sneaks into the scene with blood--sometimes as passionate as U2. But the overall sense of travel never fails to deliver Bob Dylan free-versing solo.
2. Mantra-volta
Approaching the office, I see myself as a pair of lips slowly touching the surface of burning brewed coffee. It wakes me up, strips me off the dust of sleep, and reduces me to a machine, or some sort of mechanism in the service of the company feeding me.
There are times that coming to the office is a not a bitter pill to swallow, but an oversized suppository approaching my ass.
People at work would talk to me. I wouldn't talk back most of the time. I prefer talking to people online. Maybe it's because of generation gap. My co-workers at night are in every way older than me. They always talk about other people, about their accomplishments, about their failures. They're older than me. It's better if I just listen. I also have this feeling that office-talk is not the arena of my tongue. I'm loud over beer and friends. I'm loud when I should, silent when I should, and passive if pissed. Mantra is focus.
Work, that cage, would always remind of the vastness of my small ipis-infested dormitory in Cavite. We were all complete: the actor, the couple, the athlete-slash-cool guy, the religious and monks, the clairvoyant, the artists, the writers, the money-driven proud chub, the new kid in town, the happy-go lucky, the lonely, the happy, the broken. A talk would go a long way. Over beer, over coffee, over nothing, over hunger..it doesn't matter. Free-verse, rhyme, whatever...it doesn't matter. Nothing else matters. Philosophy, literature, reality, love, loss, memory, morality, porn, science, God, gibberish...all is one and connected. It was a universe created while we were talking and laughing and singing and suddenly. Beat.
3. Sleep
At the end of the day, a graveyard worker's real enemy is sleep. It's not the kind of enemy you want to kill. It's the enemy you want alive. You want it fresh. But sleep is mischievous and sneaky under the light of the sun. Here's how sleep becomes evil:
Sleep, wearing a coat without a tie, visits you on the bus while you're trying to finish some book. It comes along with tiredness and blesses you with comfort. You sleep and find hard to wake up at the end of the ride. Slowly, sleep will walk away, away, away, leaving you with sun-filled energy inside.
At home, you eat, watch TV, try to relax, but where the hell is sleep? Nowhere. No jumping sheep. Reading makes you anxious or excited. Thinking is no use, Sleepiness is absence or at least complete disregard of thoughts. Then you get creative. Try milk, try TV again, try music, try radio, try walking, try counting dust, try porn, try praying the rosary, try eating again, try banging your head to the wall, try water, try taking another bath, try talking to someone, try laughing, try thinking about...try forgetting about. You end up sleeping 4 hours late and waking up early. Then sleep attacks you at work. Evil son of a bitch.
4. Sleep Part 2
It takes a lot of strength to pursue a craft. Artists do deserve to be called artists in this third-world post-colonial, post-GMA, pre-post-Pacquiao, post-war-pre-war time-space. From my point of view, I can clearly see the worthiness of art--visual, literary, sound, etc.--how it is a flower yellowing on a pile of 21st century junk--the middle finger that stands tall and proud over folded expressions, limited motion, second-hand decision, dead people working for living not truly living neither leaving.
Pursuing art is still rebellious! It's what my beard and my receding hairline longs for. The rebel in me has been dwarfed for sometime now. It used to be a condensed universe gearing up for its big bang. Now it's a deep thirsty black hole empty, pulling lost energy. Sleeping. Noynoying. Everyday I write yet I am dissatisfied. Something's wrong. Really wrong. Sleeping. It's wrong. Especially when your grandmother is dying. Poems and stories and music are all gathered in one place enjoying free beer, live band...guests are coming: God, Plato, Ginsberg, Horace, Platypuses, John Lennon, Borges the blind librarian, Khalil Gibran, Pepe not smith, Marcelo del Pilar, greek gods...goddesses, muses..Luther, people laughing while everybody else is working like tiny little ants.
