So for the past... two, three weeks?, I have abandoned blogging on Notepad, and have retreated
to the twisted comfort of the more personal Emailing.
I say comfort because believe it or not, those two Notepad windows (one the copied email, and
the other the window I type the reply in) give me the most company than anyone ever does
around here. It's brilliantly a bit pathetic, the people closest to me are furthest physically
and take form in these black 7pt Tahoma pixels (Courier New, in the case of reading it in my inbox)
on a white screen. But whatever, the last thing I am going to do is abstain from it. I guess you
could say it is beautiful, this strength of bond.
You know who you are, you beautiful few,
You who have sat in front of the computer to read (at least) 10KB emails, you who have sat in
front of the computer to actually write back; you who have told me about your good day, you
who have told me about your bad day, you who have asked about mine; you who have told me
about the way you see the rest of the world, the way you feel scared, the way you feel content,
the way you feel miserable, the way you feel frustrated, you who have asked how I am doing;
you whose emails have in all seriousness kept me sane, made me incredibly sad but at the same
time the exact opposite, you who have listened, you who have given all the company ever
possible as long as online communications can help it;
You who have responded, who have communicated, who love, who have never forgotten -
I love you, thank you.
"Thank you" would be the century's greatest understatement for this, even with the bigger font
and Bold. My mind and vocabulary cannot summon anything else better for me that will permit me
to throw that phrase back to the lousy creator of the thesaurus. Perhaps, in the future, I shall find
someone else's wordplay to express my appreciation (in other words: Adrienne is a sucker for
quotes), but I hope this will suffice for now.
The first phrase speaks for itself and means everything it could possibly mean.
And that is enough cheese for today.
-
The first week I skipped documenting my mundane life was when I ran a fever - which I had
mentioned in my previous entry. In short, it sucked, it makes you feel fat because you HAVE to
eat and after that you can't somehow burn it and the most you can do is sit up in bed for twenty
minutes before feeling the need to sleep again, I missed a week of school, blah blah blah (wow I
haven't used that in like years)
The second week consisted of a lot of catching up before the exams - which were postponed
because of the very rude intrusion of typhoon Milenyo. It was fun at first, for my bored,
change-craving self. Until the typhoon killed the electricity - and kept it down for four days.
The Philippines needs some kind of geographical renaissance, no jokes. Electrical wires need to
be underground, especially for a country where 130km/h typhoons hit (the record is 260, in 1995 I
think), pull off Holy-Fields on big obese Acacia trees in Ayala Alabang Village (
fig. 01) - which
in turn bring the electrical wiring down with them (
fig. 02).
What was funny about the whole absence of electricity was the food in the refrigerator. Unless you
want it to stink up in there, which we didn't, you have to cook everything. Imagine. Burgers. St
Peter's fish. Lumpiang Shanghai (Filipino spring rolls). Minced meat. Chicken. All these frozen food
had to be cooked lest it turn into a moulding pile of animal. There was a big stack of food in
containers sitting on a table beside the dining table. You would be like, Oh, I think I'll have this
today. And dump it on your paper plate (water conservation). And I toasted little pieces of bread
over the tealights (thank you Ikea for creating those damn things) in front of me. I like the feeling
of hot, liquid wax drying up on my skin. I play with candles like a Agustus Gloop eats chocolate
(ssho-kgho-lahht).
AND FUCKING MILENYO BARGED IN ON THURSDAY WHICH MEANT I FUCKING MISSED
GREY'S ANATOMY.
Moving on.
Wednesday that week I got my phone confiscated because I had made the decision not to
vandalize my arm with a pretty cheesy quote I was getting from a classmate's notebook. No
sweat, parents need not have been involved, the head prefect (head prefects here are teachers) of
my level is so coincidentally and conveniently the one who wants me to be Editor of his
"upcoming book" Meaning it took me less than a minute to convince him that rules could be bent.
Ho yeah, that's the way it works here. Connections.
Not like the phone mattered anyway, I didn't have it for a week and when I got it back there
were no messages whatsoever. During the typhoon, disconnected from the rest of the world, I
half-hoped I would find a message saying I HEARD THERE WAS A TYPHOON OMG ARE YOU
OK or something along those lines, but of course I knew better than to get my hopes up.
That wednesday:
Adrienne: No, Miss, after high school I'm getting out of this *mutters Fucking under breath*
country!
Monica: Yeah Miss, me too
Miguel: What's so bad about the Philippines?
A & Monica: O____________________________O
Miguel: Adrienne, you are seriously the smartest person I have ever met
Adrienne: Wow, you need to meet more people.
-
Today we had Oration. Everybody knows I can't speak in front of a big unfamiliar crowd. That
big unfamiliar crowd today came in the form of my class. It truly baffles me, because I don't
actually feel nervous, in my head are the next sentences to say, all clear, but my brain just loves
to send wrong messages. MY HANDS DON'T TALK, o brilliantly obnoxious prisoner of my skull,
quit sending messages there because they're making them look like a sex toy!
It's almost funny, I'm watching my hands shake uncontrollably while I try to get the word
"hospitable" out of my mouth. I analyzed, and figured out that I never had this problem in 2S1
because three quarters of it were part of the big clan anyway and I could just pretend I were
raving about something across the long canteen tables during recess. Or emulating Russell Peters
for the softballers.
I remember my completely fucked piano recital among tiny little 8-year-olds now, fucking
mini-Mozarts compared to my bastardized rendition of 3rd Grade piano pieces, again all thanks to
these insane dildo-like hands (pun not intended, I swear). It baffles me because my heart doesn't race, this ugly polygon of
skin and bone with five even uglier rays of skin and bone just decides it's going to aspire to
satisfy some 60-year-old's libido at the other end of the world Every time I am in front of a crowd,
being graded on speaking. Or any other sort of performance, in fact.
I never completely got over that incident, every time I listen to someone play the piano and they make tiny mistakes my heart stops. I watch their eyes. The hands. The chest and shoulders for any trace of sudden short breaths.
And this is why I am taking Journalism. Paper does not stare at me. The computer screen does not
stare at me. I am Superior to them.
-
Juan Mann, you made me cry yesterday. And you will every single time I watch the video of
you on YouTube. Your FREE HUGS placard. The smiling faces. The humungous hugs, those
people running and jumping to wrap their arms around you, the way that tells another person
something that cannot be conveyed in words.
The connection captures me the most. The way they wrap around the person. The way it flings
around a neck. The head that rests on a shoulder, or leans on a chest. Do you feel the friction of
the cloth? The clashing of bodies? Do you take note of the shape of who you hug, do their fingers
move, do their hands pat your back, or affably rub them? Do you feel whether the jaw moves
against your shoulder, or if the cheek rubs against your coat as if they were saying something? Do
you feel whether their cheek muscles move the way they do when they smile wide?
How about you, would you rather just keep your hands still, your arms fixed, or do you move
them around a little so you can feel the person? Do you notice if the heart beats faster? Will you
roll up your sleeves to expose your lower arm, so it somehow brings you closer? Do you try to
remember every detail of what you are feeling those few seconds the arms are locked around
each other, whether the other was crouching, or reaching up? Do you notice if they hug you
tighter, as if to say, A little longer? Do you notice who pulls away first, or if the person leaves a
trail of finger feeling down your arm when you part?
I MOTHERFUCKING WANT ONE. ALL RIGHT.
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Updated Tuesday, October 10, 2006, 09:47 p.m.
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