The Chronicles of Hernia

June 9, 2006

Fuck.

It’s 12am Friday morning, and I’m in the office vainly trying to hear news about our ATMs since I had long ago since the beginning of my Jedi(?) training here at West in the hopes of becoming one with the calls. It’s been a tiring week, albeit full of pleasant surprises and disappointing ones as well. Three of my friends had somehow fallen in the last day of training due to some power-tripping asshole pretending to be an authority in the industry…(try to hear him pronounce the word ‘actually’ with his take on an American accent…makes you want to throw up). As depressing as graduation was, I was looking forward to the weekend and blowing off some much needed steam.

In short, I needed what any self-respecting human being alive would do…DRINK. Shit, I was thirsty. Craving. So badly that I almost chugged down a bottle of Isopropyl in my sleep. And no, I was thirsty, not stoopy nor had my common sense decided to take a leave of absence. It was just simply, for a semi-retired alcoholic suchas myself, a wake-up call.

And as per the agreement, we had all decided to meet up at around 3 pm FST (Filipino Standard Time) at Gerry’s Grill in Glorietta. And as expected, we showed up late, but freakin’ early. It was just me, Janis, Olivia, Ymore, Trix…the usual. So we kicked things off with a couple of beers, the heat kind of deciding for us what drinks we would have. A couple of rounds of conversation went by and 4 pm hit…our trainer, Arland, showed up and the drinks started to flow a bit more and the conversation quickly turned from that of stupidity at work to more…personal and definitely sensitive matters (with details that will not be included here due to their graphic nature). Here I was, surrounded by a maelstrom of dashboard confessions, frustration, laughter and ridicule all at the same time. So you could imagine just how difficult it was to let all this sink in all at once. Information overload at the least likely place, time and level of sobriety.

(to be continued when I fucking feel like it)

To those of you who question your religion and spirituality, or even for the just plain curious or bored, please read this interesting excerpt from a book that I read several years ago entitled "Conversations With God" by Donald Neale Walsh.

FORGET RELIGION.

  Because it is not good for you. Understand that in order for organized religion to succeed, it has to make people believe they need it. In order for people to put faith in something else, they must first lose faith in themselves. So the first task of organized religion is to make you lose faith in yourself. The second is to make you see that it has answers that you do not. The third and most important task is to make you accept its answers without question.

  If you question, you start to think! If you think, you start to go back to that Source Within. Religion can’t have you do that, because you’re liable to come up with an answer different from what it has contrived. So religion must make you doubt your Self; must make you doubt your own ability to think straight.

  The problem for religion is that very often this backfires - for if you cannot accept without doubt your own thoughts, how can you not doubt the new ideas about God which religion has given you? Pretty soon, you even doubt My Existence - which ironically, you never doubted before. When you were living by your intuitive knowing, you may not have had Me all figured out, but you definitely knew I was there!

  It is religion which has created agnostics! Any clear thinker who looks at what religion has done must assume that religion has no god! For it is religion which has filled the hearts of men with the fear of God where once man loved That Which in all its splendor!

  It is religion that ordered man to bow down before God, where once man rose up in joyful outreach.

  It is religion which told man to be ashamed of his body and its most natural functions where once man celebrated those functions as the greatest gifts of life!

  It is religion which has burdened man with worries about God’s wrath, where once man sought God to lighten his burden!

  It is religion which has taught you that you must have an intermediary in order to reach God, where once man you thought yourself to be reaching God by the simple living of your life in goodness and truth.

  And it is religion which has commanded you to adore God, where once you adored God because it was impossible not to!

  Everywhere religion has gone it has created disunity - which is the opposite of God!

  Religion has separated man from God, man from man, man from woman, even as it claims that God is above man - thus setting the stage for the greatest travesties ever foisted upon half the human race.

  I tell you this -  God is not above man, and man is not above woman - that is not the natural order of things - but it is the way everyone who had power (namely men) wished it was when they formed their male-worship religions, systematically editing out half the material from their final version of the "holy scripture" and twisting the rest to fit the mold of their male model of the world.

  It is religion which insists to this very day that women are somehow less, somehow second-class spiritual citizens, somehow not ’suited’ to teach "The Word of God", preach it or minister to the people.

  Like children you are still arguing over which gender is ordained by Me to be My priests!

  I tell you this: You are all priests. Every single one of you.

  There is no one person or class more ’suited’ to do My work than any other.

  But so many men are just like your nations. Power hungry. They do not like to share power, they merely exercise it. And they have constructed the same kind of god. A power hungry god. A god who does not like to share power but merely exercise it. Yet I tell you this: God’s greatest gift is the sharing of God’s power.

  I would have you be like ME.

  The blasphemy is that you have been taught such things. I tell you this. You have been made in the image and likeness of God - it is that destiny you came to fulfill!

12.04.2005

It’s about six in the evening and I’m sitting outside of this giant inflatable playground in Rockwell. I’m watching my son zip by in a dizzying blur as he chases other kids around. Round and round, where it stops nobody knows. He’s laughing and running around like crazy. I call his name occassionally just to check to see if he’s okay. I smile inwardly as I watch him run by, often missing that feeling of freedom. Sometimes, I often think that losing your childhood is to great a price for puberty, the right to drink alcohol and a steady paycheck. To a child, the word responsibility does not exist. Much like gravity to Peter Pan. He runs up the stairs again, bouncing his butt as he slides down, laughing insanely as he gets up and starts running around with my nieces. I watch him, envious. I can’t even begin to remember what it was like to laugh like that.

(To be continued at a more convenient time. Stay tuned)

Irony is without a doubt the greatest curse any deity can inflict upon mankind. And yes, welcome back to another of my angst-ridden postings. How I wish that some things in life can be achieved without breaking a sweat, that lessons can be learned without the harshness. Hah! Wishful thinking! Hope is an example of this malignant sense of humor. While Hope is one of the greatest things a person can truly have in their lives, it also serves to be a harsh mistress. Uncaring, unforgiving and indiscriminate. Like the descent of the cold Siberian winter, it blows everything down in it’s path. Leaving the survivor to be a little older and definitely a little less of a man than he once was. How much more of this shit can we take? To want to give something greater than yourself is a gift. Truly it is! Such a marvelous gift can sometimes make even the strongest of will bow down before its awesome power by the simple giving of this gift. But what use is such a gift if the receiver is completely blind to it’s potential? Such is irony. Or maybe even karma. It leaves the giver just a little bit more puzzled and inadequate as to just what gift to give next and whom to give it to. Let’s face it peeps, we just looove to give. And how the gods must be laughing their cosmic asses off. Can you imagine the entertainment value? Here, we call them reality shows. The drama is unbelievable! While I agree that Hope is an intrinsic and essential part of human society, it is also the one thing that leaves us folks in utter denial. As the old saying goes, when you’re at the bottom of a hole, the only place to look is up. Whether we climb out of this or not is another thing entirely. (to be continued as my eyes and my brain are ceasing their daily functions)

In this life or the next, there are no wrong answers. Only right ones in search of a different question.

*siiighhh*

      I take a cursory glance at my watch and see the time. It’s around 8 am and I haven’t had a wink of sleep. I’m here at my friend’s condo enjoying the company, trading stories of past glories and comedic failures amdist the hazy atmosphere of cigarette smoke backed by the steady hum of the aircon mixed in with the gentle sound of Jeff Buckley’s rendition of the Nina Simone original "Lilac Wine". The conversation flow is one that I am all too familiar with…one with all the stories of Nature and the great outdoors. As I try my best to recant the tales of my (mis)adventures, my mind (what’s left of it anyway) is taking me back to the days when I seriously persued rock climbing. In the middle of my tirade, my fingers once again felt that old, familiar twitch. One of nervousness and excitement that could only be satisfied with the kind of effort that moves mountains. The rest of my body follows, subtly reminding me of sensations and positions that were felt quite some time ago, of falls, successful ascents and the injuries that were sustained in these attempts. The pounding of adrenaline surging through my body as I vainly attempted to solve or punch through the difficult sections of the climb. With bleeding fingers, scratched knees, rope-burned flesh and the dank annoying odor of sweat mixed with sunscreen, I somehow prevailed, or not…depending on how much alcohol I had had the night before. Those were indeed great times. Imagine, facing the daunting challenge of defying Nature’s most potent reminder that we are indeed just a fraction of Her equation called life! To achieve the feeling of complete weightlessness in the span of a split second before self-preservation takes over. These journeys on limestone were always enjoyable at least. I could remember the single-mindedness while attempting to float up 200 feet and trying to imitate Mikhail Barishnikov (sans the tights) while doing it. The amount of concentration and the many months of careful preparation that took me this far could only be gauged by a simple question: will I or will I not? I remember feeling the numbness of my fingers as I slowly ascended the first piece of limestone which was to be my baptism to outdoor climbing. Here I was, a couch potato by nature doing one of the most dangerous things known to man. Even up to today, I can still look back and smile inwardly as I go back to that first climb…did I finish it? Hell no. My fingers bled out, lactic acid pumped into my forearms as if it came from a newly opened fire hydrant. Fear kicked in and I soon found myself back on the ground wondering what the hell I was doing there…

       I snap out of my silent reverie to see that my other friend, Rhoda is already signalling me to leave so that we could go crash at her place. It’s definitely past 8 am and my eyes feel heavier than 18 wheeler trucks. I remember that I still have work to do in the afternoon and must somehow manage the strength to actually go home, take a shower and show up for work. I leave the condo with mixed emotions. One of dejection as I have always felt when I left the game too early, and one with a small sense of satisfaction. I close my eyes, take a slow, deep breath only to realize just how many cigarettes were smoked that day. I trudge back to the reality of my life and the clutter that is my room on the 6th floor. Maybe I’ll leave climbing thinking that it’s now a young man’s game. Or maybe not. Whether I’ll be back in the gym, pulling on plastic or once again braving the dried moss of Montalban’s slope, or if fate would have it, once again be regaled by the pristine cliffs of Cebu. Whatever choice I make in the near and uncertain future, I somehow know that Nature will once again play a part in it.