29 by jesse valenzuela

Time wont stand by forever if I know its true
And Ive learned not to say never
Or else Ill seem the fool
Twenty-nine youd think Id know better
Living like a kid
When my lies may seem less than clever
Is when I fall for it
Only time will tell if wishing wells
Can bring us anything
Or fade like scenes from childhood dreams
Forgotten memories
Some rides dont have much of a finish
Thats the ride I took
Through good and bad and straight through indifference
Without a second look
Theres no intentions worthy of mention
If we never try
So hang your hopes on rusted-out hinges
Take em for a ride
Only time will tell if wishing wells
Can bring us anything
Or fade like scenes from childhood dreams
Forgotten memories
Only time will tell...



photo from photos.almacrae.com/Paris/wishing_well.jpg
photo copyright © 2000 Andrew Leith Macrae

banausic

when the lights are out. nothingness.

as if nothing happened, like the day is a blink.

in daytime, i once again see things.

people, places, motions.

as if something is alive, like the night will never come.

life, i guess.

and then the lights are out again.

nothingness.

then day.

night.

goes around.

stuck

i want you to hold my hand and pull me out. let's walk, let's talk, let's see the world.
i want you to breathe so heavily and my lungs be filled. let's run, let's laugh.
but i'm stuck. i wish you'd know.

tribute to FG

flat cap, graceful strides, carefree face, and a smile when you pass by him. that must be FG. the professor known for his notorious all-or-nothing exams in biopsychology. when i was his student, i had all the guts to sit right in front of him, which turn out to be the most breath-taking experience i had inside a classroom. no one made me so proud being a psych major then but FG. he had consistently electrified our neurons to fire and fire while he did so neatly those well-drawn brainstem or indole ring or neurotransmitters. he was loved not only because he was a genius or an artist or an idealist or a realist. he was loved because he loved life and shared it with us, his students. we all love him. as for me, i will never forget him. whenever passivity or humdrum is around, i play the video tribute made by the psych department for him during the wake. i play it and i see once again and love life. i wish to be remembered exactly as how i remember FG.

i will never stop reading and remembering these lines he shared...

"Live with a high mean and low standard deviation."
"Genius is obsessive. Laziness is contrary to genius. Kung tinatamad ka, hindi mo kaya. Rationalization lang iyon."
"You read behind words. You think."
"When others are hesitant to take the first step, take it."
"When the resistance is very, very strong, then the will must be stronger."
"Mitochondria - they are like the Meralco of the cell."
"Namulaklak ang cerebral hemispheres ng tao kaya nagkaroon ng temporal lobes"
"Don't aspire for it. Earn it."
"Domestification of the human male is one of the greatest achievements of the human race."
"300 million sperm in one ejaculation. Talagang overkill, noh? Tapos isa lang makakarating doon."
"Intelligence allows us to inhabit any place on the earth."
"You have no right to destroy what you did not create." (regarding suicide)
"Philosophy is the unscientific study of the mind."
"The females inherit the earth. And the suffering thereof."
"Mathematics is simplification and contraction of notations"
"The μ is the most democratic measure because it gets from every value."
"Psychology is the greatest of all in CSSP. Mayroon bang Experimental Sociology, Experimental Economics, Experimental Philosophy? Only Psychology offers empirical evidences from experimental Psychology."
"I do not know many. I only know enough to teach my classes."
“You do not fall in love. You rise in love. That's how you love rationally...”
“Meanings we find are the meanings we make.”
“What you learn in UP is to go on and never give up. That if there be one person left standing, let it be me. Let Ateneo fall first before UP...”
"I wish I could write a poem that would be the song of my race. That would be the most beautiful song."
"Perfect correlation rarely exists in nature. It only exists in force."
“The last domesticated animal is the human male.”
“There is no predestination. Only a matter of probability or chance.”
“Just be observant. Divine comedy is always happening in our midst.”
"I still pursue my north star."
"My last love is Psychology. I was raped by Psychology."
“A rational man doesn’t extricate himself and blame it on the environment.”
“Even great men make mistakes…which may be great mistakes, too.” (After explaining Aristotle’s mistake regarding the brain’s mechanism for regulating temperature)
“I just come to class to tell stories, and when I remember, I teach.” (After realizing that he has strayed quite far from the topic)
“Thinkers are absent-minded because they focus on their thoughts.”
“Just like other professors (in UP), they (professors from other universities) just croak... ‘croak-croak-croak.’ ”
"Do not live long enough to be worthless."
“I’m not a wise man. I’m just a plain teacher, and I’m happy with that. My life is an anecdote. Just one big joke.”

"What's a measure of a man as a social being? The measure of a man is how many doors he has opened to other people, especially to those he doesn’t know, to those who refused to open the doors for themselves and to those who cannot open the door for themselves."

“Life is serious. Life is funny. Life is comical.”

desperation

desperation is the crack on my head.
please patch.

uncaused cause

you sit there. a let-out breath, a flicker of your eyes, a twitch of lips, a kindling of your limbs. a machine with a myriad of processes and routes within your systems. and what do they say? a product of billions of years in the making, an evolved organism, a surviving animal in the big dome of the blind watchmaker. ah yes, a passing, an accidence! you are no longer the prisoners in a cave talking about the casted shadows, not even an image of the divine, nor a subject of the greatest inquiry. not anymore, no more. they say you are just a passing. nothing more.
you sit there. a flash from this screen, a cluster of symbols, an array of colors, a capture of your eye, and finally an acumen made by your three-and-a-half-kilo master organ. wow, a series and multitude of firings and firings for just a snap of time. and what do they say? a mere mechanism to fit in the changing pool of animals, an adaptation, a natural tendency of specialized structures that lie within your inside. you are no longer the discoverer of the mathematical constants, no more! they say you are an accidence.
you sit there. a question, a wry, a confusion.. or an apathy, a boredom or a nothing. maybe perturbed, maybe not. worry not, you are as they say a species of passing and of accidence.
you sit there. a machine of orderly, organized, beautiful myriad of mechanisms.
a passing? an accidence?
you sit there. think. think again.

(Written Wednesday, June 07, 2006)

clickin' and clickin'

when the clock strikes eleven, my life gets predictable. in front of a screen, attending to at least five open cyber windows, chatting with some friends, listening to and singing along (closed eyes and head-banging) with kelly clarkson's "walk away", while drinking a glass of milk, then, pausing from time to time trying to purge the ruins out of me in a blog. nothing occupies me for the past days except for some decaying ruins inside me. it's ineffable, so complicated, i'm completely blank! but there is a very long list of things i wish to do. oh, to finish my plays that i was writing for almost over five months already, to start the new one that is bombarding me lately, to read another lorca piece again, to memorize a good sonnet once more, to go to the beach and drink a godiva vodka under a blue moon, to make a short story for my father, and finally to have a whole day and night talking and talking and singing and singing and dancing and dancing with my friends. but for these past days, i want to spend it with my family before school pulls me out of the house again. sweet but at times boring, haha! i can't believe i'm so idle lately, totally carried away by the soporific days. i want to feel life again like there's no another day, but oh damn this humdrum! oh please, i need a problem, a crack in the pot, a crime, something to splash the water into my face.
...
i am alive at midnight. it's predictable but i am alive because i feel my heart beating with every click of this keyboard. life seems to pass me by, i know. but before i close my eyes, my zygomaticos major and orbicularis oculi contract well. a smile eternal.

(Written Saturday, June 10, 2006)