Bottled ※ Brain

My eyes Blurry vision Near-sightedness Capable of seeing Incapable of seeing clearly Far... Objects Letters Words Pictures I am blind and blinded But... I can see Though not very far I try to open my eyelids And feel the sensation of seeing More than eyeglasses or contact lenses... I need contact with the Light, the Father of Lights Without Him I am blind

2004 has barely started and it's now coming to an end. Too many things have happened to me--both bad and good--and this is perhaps the best time to write about them as I store them in my bottled brain. I cannot recall everything with precision; but I can, however, create a poignant picture of the events that have transpired. What is clear is that I will only write about the most important ones. If I have, for the record, forgotten some very monumental events, then my neurons must be blamed for not functioning as is expected of them. 1. Leaving high school. I graduated from Koronadal National Comprehensive High School in March of 2004 with some 1,500 or so students. The ceremony was very lenthy: it started promptly at 1pm and ended at 6:30 pm. Graduation always spells "leaving," no matter what ceremonial speakers say. It was a moment of saying goodbye to really great friends in high school. Until now, I sure do miss the high school people: my teachers, the Recorder (our E

LAST MOVIE YOU SAW IN A THEATER: The Incredibles WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW: Whatever Happened to Worship (AW Tozer) FAVORITE BOARD GAME: scrabble (and squabble) FAVORITE MAGAZINE: Time. Join the conversation. FAVORITE SMELLS: Rotten egg. Sewer. COMFORT FOOD: Uhmm.. sweet air. FAVORITE SOUNDS: Funeral music. WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD: When there are harmful bacteria and viruses inside my system WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING: God. FAVORITE FAST FOOD PLACE: Rodic's. Tapsilog.. wow. FUTURE CHILD'S NAME: Bloody Mary FINISH THIS STATEMENT: "IF I HAD A LOT OF MONEY, I WOULD": eat my money. It's the root of all evil, see. ha ha ha. DO YOU DRIVE FAST: I walk. DO YOU SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL: No, I sleep with a stuffed pillow. STORMS -- COOL OR SCARY: Cool. No class. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CAR: In dreams, man. FAVORITE ALCOHOLIC DRINK: I don't drink. FINISH THIS STATEMENT,'IF I HAD THE TIME, I WOULD LOVE TO': worship m

The family has three dogs. Let me tell you about them. The oldest, Rocky, is the most intelligent and obedient, but also the fiercest. My younger brother, Sean, named him after a character in the Flinstone Kids. Rocky is actually the antagonist in that cartoon series. Second to age is David--I named him after King David of Israel who's described by the Bible as a "man after God's own heart." Apparently, what is true to David the King has not been true for David the dog. While David does look adorable--he has white fur, and he really looks "cute"--he does not have the ability to think. Except for my father and Sean, no one can pursuade him to go out, sit, crawl, or do things. Okay, animal activists, perhaps that dog must be thinking, but he's not thinking really well. I pity him for his low Dog IQ. Third is Isaac. I don't know much about him, except that even if he's younger than David, he thinks better than him. I even surmise that Isaac, at some

I always tell people, regardless of race or gender, that I am not allergic to anything--not to crabs, lobsters, meat or Visine--except to stupidity. I can, however, forgive people who are innately stupid--that kind of stupidity that's acquired at birth. Those who choose to act stupidly are not reasonable beings at all: in the first place, why act in such a horrendous, unbecoming manner when they could always choose the opposite? Pretending to be stupid is forgivable if the situation requires one to be stupid. There are many of such instances. But I do not write this to give you an exposition of why I hate stupidity. To do so would yield to a war. Many people would surely disagree with me: I myself might even disagree with the things I had said in the past. You see, stupidity is a very relative word. For Christians (I am one of them), for example, following and believing in Christ is not stupid; the world views them and their actions as foolish--and therefore, stupid. Christians, on

For three days, I have not stepped on dry land, except the shiny, lubricated floor of the passenger ship. I have mostly breathed air excessively saturated with salt: it was as if I was eating sodium chloride without opening my mouth while my nose was doing all the tasting; I have seen the waves of the blue sea as they hampered and resisted the forward motion of Superferry 15. For three days, I have had a fortaste of the Waterworld. The refreshment that has come upon my senses was a welcome treat after weeks upon weeks of study in the university. I mostly spent time in my room where I read my take-home assignments, including James Hilton's fictional novel, The Lost Horizon. Which is to say, I was idle. I slept, ate, slept, read, slept again... Three days.

Amian has just finished packing and is set to go to Baguio. Jeiel had left for Paco before the frisbee game was finished. Royson has gone to SC (that's the UP Shopping Center beside the dorm) to buy something before he goes to Quezon. Jef has decided to sleep at his friend's house tonight before he goes to Bicol. JP-Polsci and JP-Philo have both left early--they must have arrived in Sorsogon and Sultan Kudarat at the time of writing. Luther and Jason are going to Tuguegarao and Balanga anytime because they had taken their Math 53 exam early this morning. There's one thing in common in each of them, though: they're all going home today. My dormitory is now a place that looks uninhabited. It looks like that to me; there's not a soul to be seen. Of course, this one's hyperbole, but the sudden turn of the date has ushered in this tremendous, albeit short-lived, change. That noise--so characteristic of the Basement Corridor--is for now non-existent. I could actually

Hi. My name's Lindsey. I'm nine years old, and I'm in the third grade. It's cold out there. Mom told me not to stay up late, but my bestfriend Mary said we're going to play until we see Santa. I don't wanna sleep. I wanna see Santa and his reindeers. I'm sure Santa will let us sit on his lap. I'm gonna tell Santa that I wanna get a doll, that one I saw in Tom's store in the 13th Avenue. Mom told me to wait for Christmas. I've been a pretty good girl. Oh, there's Mary knocking at the door. Lindsey, you may have noticed, has a wretched view of Christmas. This girl's sentiments of the celebration is myopic: she thinks that it's about gifts, about the fictional Santa Claus. Unfortunately, her views reflect the general pathetic view of modern-day man when it comes to Christmas. It's not the gifts, the families, nor Santa Claus we're remembering. Christmas is chiefly a celebration meant to remind us of God's holy and incompa

CIV The time draws near the birth of Christ;The moon is hid, the night is still;A single church below the hillIs pealing, folded in the mistA single peal of bells below,That wakens at this hour of restA single murmur in the breast,These are not the bells I know.Like strangers' voices here they sound,In lands where not a memory strays,Nor landmark breathes of other days,But all is new unhallow'd ground. -- Tennyson

The smell of bananas was detected by my sensitive olfactory nerves. Hmm.. it smelled as if it came from Jeiel's room which was almost two rooms away from mine. That delicious smell was so inviting that I couldn't resist the urge to knock on his door, and probably have a taste of it myself. "Oh, Lance, pasok ka," Jeiel told me, as he opened the door. He bid me to come inside. "Hmm.. wow, Jeiel, mukhang masarap 'yan ah," I said. "Sige, Lance, kuha ka lang." He offered me the bundle of bananas, and I picked one. The taste was ambrosiac: I, under normal circumstances, do not really like bananas; but the taste has become foreign to my tastebuds that I wanted to refresh my memory of it. It was delicious. "Ang sarap. Thanks. Pero why is it so small? How much does that cost? Don't you like big bananas, the ones they export?," I inquired. He kindly answered these questions, and offered concrete evidences that supported his claims. Jeiel s

When I went out of the College of Science auditorium, I felt exhausted. It was an exhaustion brought about by an hour and a half of listening to my fast-talking professor (he blurts out words in such a way that we, his students, would perpetually ask ourselves, "What did he just say?"), and wondering if time is, in fact, absolute. Newtonian and Galilean physics assume that time is absolute for all inertial frames. I had agreed with this idea: after all, intuition and practical observation would prove this theory to be correct. I was about to yawn and drift to half-sleepiness had it not been for the puzzling question the professor asked the class of almost 200 people (who were mostly sleeping; some were even not listening to him): Can you travel in time? Uh oh. My mind said, "Bloody no!" But I didn't shout, of course. It was such a public place, and he (the prof) does not like interference of any kind--except of course the concept of interference of waves. Then h

College has deprived me of many things I used to enjoy in high school. The transistion has been so abrupt that I hardly noticed things changing dramatically. This realization came to me just a while ago while I was browsing through the pictures in the Yahoo group of our batch. The picture was taken while I and my classmates competed in the National Science Quiz and Fair in Laguna. I joined in the quiz; the others in the science investigatory project. Those were such wonderful days then. Which is not to say, though, that I am bored to death in this new-found college life. But the enjoyment was different. I used to be excused from classes for months (of course, I attended class, but not always) because I joined these competitions. Most of the people I've met in the University of the Philippines are people who also joined the same conferences, seminars, trainings, and contests that I participated in. Oh well, I guess I just miss high school. It was a time where I learned that excellen

The door was locked, and I felt it wasn't just possible to open it--let alone, destroy it. Beads of sweat were trickling on my cheeks,and it was so hot that I could almost taste the saltiness of myperspiration. Feeling pressured, I once again tried to fool myself into believing that I could accomplish this task on my own. The doorknob still remained locked, but I twisted it for the nth time anyway. My actions were futile, I knew, but it was better to do something that wouldn't yield to something beneficial than not doing anything at all."Please, open the door. Please," I pleaded. To whom that plea was addressed, I didn't know. There was no evidence to point out that there was no one inside the room; there was also no evidence to point out the opposite. The room was like a guarded fortification, a fortess wheare no one can never be allowed to enter."O, I want to get inside now. I'm so tired, I need to rest," I thought. I was close to giving up that I

Bottles fascinate me more than the latest cellphone models. I cannot explain this liking satisfactorily, but at least, let me give you the reasons why I like them. First They're breakable. It's great to break things. You have to take extra care in handling them, otherwise, you'll break them. That's the point: take care of your bottles so as to preserve them for the next ages to come. Second They're colorful. Not all of them, actually. But the owner always has the option to do whatever he likes to his bottles. A couple of years ago, I realized that if only all bottles were as beautiful as wine bottles (and not as bland as Coca-cola bottles), then this world would become a more beautiful place to live in. Third They're transparent. Again, there are exceptions, but most bottles are transparent. I like transparent things. Yeah.

It is nine in the evening but I am still wide awake. I sense movements from the other rooms—some studying for their Math 17 exams, but there are many who I know would spend the rest of the night talking, giggling, and laughing their heads out. But some are already asleep. They have perhaps already adapted to sleeping amidst the noise emanating from the corridor. I have yet to develop that ability. Four weeks seems like eternity here. It has been almost a month when I left my home a thousand kilometers away, in the southern part of the archipelago. I sometimes miss home, but never to the point of crying—I never cry. But there are those who secretly hide their tears of longing, and when I accidentally see them, they immediately wipe their tears, pretending they are tired. No, they’re not. They just miss their homes. Their families. I subconsciously flip the pages of the thick, heavy book. A required reading. I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish it tonight, but I know I need some sleep.