Damned In Blue

Last year, my then-girlfriend-now-fiancee and I saw Rise of the Guardians . It was a refreshing take on all those childhood figures we've come to know and adore. Despite the fresh characterizations that seamlessly told a tight and cohesive narrative, one part about the film that really struck me is when Santa asked Jack Frost a deceptively simple question: what is your center? Santa, with a thick. Russian accent, went on to discuss how he is viewed as fearless, giving, scary, et. al by way of a Matryoshka doll. Each doll represents a layer of his personality, and as another doll is pried open, another layer is revealed inside it. At the very center of the Matryoshka doll is the smallest and final doll that represents what the person really is. All this time, I thought that kindness is my center. All my life, I believe that I went out of my way to make others happy, to be content playing second fiddle, to simply be part of the background. Because I want the people whom I truly love ...

So I got to chat with a psychiatrist this morning. She confirmed my greatest fears - that I've become a spineless windbag and I need to stop saying the opposite of "no" and just. have. some. balls. She didn't say it that way, but I'll elaborate the entire conversation as I traverse the steps that led to this epiphany that's actually been hiding at the back of my mind for so too long. It only took three hours worth of talk for my unfortunate realization to submit to my consciousness. I can already imagine the epiphany raising his hands with a wry smile painted on his face. "Okay, you got me. Now, fix this fucker and make his life better now. Like how he always wanted to live his life." Minutes leading to the consultation, I was having reservations on how I would go about this "problem" of mine when ordering food from a local coffee shop where we met. What if my problem, like 99% of the population, is just make-believe? That I'm merely pu...

Unconsciously, the past two posts happen to be my "progress report" on my way to self-improvement. It's a conscious effort to make the necessary tweaks to make myself better moving forward, but the commentary featured here serve as windows to the shattered self I'm currently trying in vein to piece myself and make a better whole. So far, it's tough. It's not meant to be easy. Just thinking about how easy life was does not necessarily want to bring back those old memories, but it kinda got me asking myself, "Why?" I never blamed my past for anything. I actually loved  who I was and am - the fact that I make mistakes all the goddamn time is what I really find as my strongest point before. But now, everything's changed. All the mistakes that I commit, I see as a disability to my progress. As much as possible, I want to keep everything level-headed and keep myself within my comfort zones. Going behind enemy lines, something that's actually new an...

The act of writing comes from a well of discombobulated ideas, aspirations, and memories in life that are brought to life in the form of words. They are recalled for the purpose of being able to look back and see the steps I've traveled leading to this very point. I write because I wish to retrace the events leading to my becoming, steps that are fundamentally necessary to my being but, at the same time, excruciatingly gut-wrenching. I write because these thoughts running in my head are broken. They represent pieces of what once was whole, but are shattered by a faintest of ideas. Regardless, they're there, scattered and waiting to be cleaned up. Descartes started from brokenness that was preceded by Occam's Razor, the concept that sliced pre-modern philosophy into a loss. Only when Descartes reasserted his own existence in this broken world that everything made sense. That's basically what I'm feeling every time I write notes in this personally impersonal journal -...

Early this year, I have decided to leave the band that I started to play out of passion and love for heavy metal before the end of 2013. Although we're still in the process of putting the final touches on the album that has been taking so long to finish, there's really nothing more I can offer to the guys. Don't get me wrong - I love playing with them and have had memorable times with them as part of the 2006 Muziklaban Grand Finals and other gigs we've played for, but I honestly feel I've been a dead-weight in the band for so long. I practiced the guitar only hours before we started playing on stage, I never come up with new riffs, no tricks to show to the guys, just nothing to offer new and refreshing. There was this time during the recording process that I was making mistakes everywhere with our songs. Imagine the songs you've been played for more than three years consistently, yet manage to let the notes ring too long, not muting the strings properly, plucki...