Tempestuous "/@*%*#/"

Mother Nature can be a pretty nasty bitch when it wants to be. That’s all I’m saying.

Last night, as I desperately prepared to cross my perpetually tardy self across the street to meet my friends, thunders roared, and lightning struck across the dark and heavy skies. And in just a matter of seconds, heavy rains submerged the street in wetness. This was no drizzle. There was no soft pitter-patter of watery droplets on your arms, clothes, or hair. I’m talking huge raindrops, no, globules of wet liquid streaking down from the skies and splattering every inch of ground it can get its hands on. The damned road was immediately flooded.

In a flurry of hurried impulsiveness, I said, “Screw it!” and jumped out from our building’s ingress’ roof thing and started what should have been a short walk. I took a step forward, frail umbrella clutched tightly in hand, looked to my right for any wary vehicles passing on the one-way street, and headed on out with full determination. I was mildly halted when the sidewalk came to an end and I was left with no other choice but to cross the flooded street. As I looked on, I could see the raindrop’s splatter jumping several inches above the water’s surface, and the collected water on the ground running off like white river waters along the cemented road, all of which are indicative of a pretty high waterline. For some reason I have yet to determine, my stubborn-assed self decided my mind was only playing tricks on me since it was relatively dark even with the orange glow from scattered streetlamps. So I took my first ginger step forward, on tiptoe even, not to gauge the water level, but to make a run for it. At once, the fabric of my slip-on sneaker started to absorb the water molecules of the grimy semi-flood, and as I muttered a meek “Oh, shit!” to no one in particular, I brought my other foot in front of my other foot, and as I saw it make a big splash upon breaking the surface of the runny waters as it searched for solid ground, I merely cried a quiet “Aaahh!” as panic crept up my mind. Frantically coming up with my next move, I came to the conclusion that since my second step landed on deeper waters, and my sneaker completely soaked as opposed to my other foot-filled shoe, that spot was probably the deepest part of the flooded road. I decided to take a bigger step to sort of get me across faster, all the while thinking that the waters would be lower. But as my foot connected with the paved road underneath the huge splash it made, I was outraged to find that the water level had only gotten higher there. Now, not only are both my feet soaking wet, part of my leg and pants is too. When I realized this, my idiocy even made me decide to just go back, so for an entire minute and a half, I was standing there, my body clearly torn as it went one way then the other while I debated on my next move. Feet firmly planted on the ground, the water had started to creep up both my legs now as the rain continued to pour down on me. I decided to just walk the rest of the way in big, hopping steps, each time thinking the waters would recede as I walked on. Alas, it never did, and the water level just got higher and higher. As I stood there to survey the damage, car headlights blinked as a signal to me. I looked at the source to find a parked car, whose driver was laughing hysterically over my humiliation. I could only glare back before I turned around and walked away to meet with my friends, all the while nursing my poor, mortified ego.

In the end, I got out physically unharmed, emotionally outraged, with grayer shoes, and two-toned jeans as the water got me mid-calf… and nine hundred and twenty pesos worth of new shoes and socks. Argh!



:p

***
Quotable quote, not exactly related to this post, but noteworthy nonetheless:
“I think it’s a little presumptuous to assume that my chair is the wrong chair when my chair could just as easily be the right chair.” – Rory Gilmore, Gilmore Girls…

An Act of Contemplative Decision-Making

I sighed. Why must a simple choice be this hard? As I contemplated on my choices further, I clenched my hands into fists. I didn’t even realize it, but I was pacing the glossy, tiled floor. I glanced around, afraid I might seem conspicuous to the others as they droned around me toward their destinations. I sighed again. Could this actually be God’s way of punishing me? Had I unknowingly done something that even remotely deserves the wrath of Karma’s vengeance?

Like others faced with a need to make a decision, I decided to weigh my pros and cons. Pros. Cons. Pros. Cons… on and on my mental list went, yet still, I came up with nothing. I was left with the same dilemma I had been mulling over for the past forty-five minutes. For God’s sake, what is this?! My frustration had built up so, that I didn’t even notice I had stopped my pacing. And as I blasphemed God’s name into my own personal hell, I looked up from where I was standing, and there it was, the sign, staring at me in the face the entire time. The goofy smile on my face couldn’t have been more asinine as I chuckled at my own idiocy. I slowly but surely made my way inside. There was not a single doubt in my mind as to why this is the right choice...

...Dahil sa Jollibee, bida ang sarap.

*rawr*



:p

***
Quotable quote, not necessarily related to this post, but noteworthy nonetheless:
"When you're tasting anything, the first taste acclimates the palate, the second establishes the foundation, and the third is to make your decision." - Emily Gilmore, Gilmore Girls...

Oh, Crap...

In life, we always expect more than we should, only to end up in disappointment. We keep wanting the best out of everything, only to get nothing in the end. And when we do end up with the crappy things in life, we tend to complain and drown ourselves in self-pity. It’s like a sedative, almost euphoric in some ways too. It provides us with solace, and at the same time, contempt. But we like it anyway. Sure, it’s easier to blame someone else for all the trouble we go through, but sometimes, blaming ourselves is just what the doctor ordered. I guess you can call it penance for our guilty souls. Our conscience finds it unbearable to come across such unfathomable circumstances in our lives, and we really only have ourselves to blame for it. It’s the way of Karma. No matter how hard we stare it in the eye, it will follow us home, just to bite at our asses.

But if we’ve already repented for our bad choices, bad judgments, and bad everything else, why do crappy things keep happening in our lives? At some point in time, isn’t everyone entitled to the good stuff? We try and we try, and yes, we do try some more, yet somehow our asses just keep getting bitten. Until we find that the question has now become, how long do we hope for change?

Yes, there are times when wallowing in our own self-pity seems to provide us with a sense of comfort. But if we keep doing it over and over, doesn’t it just get tired? In addition, it really does nothing for the ego. It brings us down even further, and when we’ve hit rock bottom, suddenly we find it very hard to get back up. And isn’t it always harder to let others see these moments of weakness and vulnerability? Because, let’s face it, all of us are predatory scavengers. We take what we can, and we gobble it down. It’s always better to see yourself on top, looking down on others, making them feel lower than they already are. The humiliation that we manage to scrounge from them is somehow gratifying for our human natures.

Somehow, buried deep within the twisted recesses of our very beings, we love pity. We bask in the glory of it. That’s why we keep taking so much crap in our lives. We put up with it for all we’re worth. The thing is, it’s just too much. Life will always present us with crap. And if we want to stop receiving crappy things in life, isn’t it high time we stop accepting crap and demand something more instead? Like I always used to say, life is like a box of crap, you never know what you’re stepping on until you’re already in deep shit.

:/

***

Quotable quote, not necessarily related to this post, but noteworthy nonetheless:

"Yes, everyone loves a scandal, no matter how big, or small. After all, what could be more entertaining than to watch the downfall of the high and mighty? What could be more amusing than the public exposure of hypocritical sinners? Yes, everyone loves a scandal. And if you find yourself not enjoying the latest one, well, the next one's always just around the corner." - Mary Alice Young, Desperate Housewives...

"Cosmedienne"

One of my usual hobbies is reading scripts of my favorite television shows off of the Internet. These days, Grey’s Anatomy had been ranking way up in my favorites list. So there I was reading an episode away when spunky Dr. Bailey delivers a striking line I still find so intrinsically disturbing that I felt compelled to write about it: “We’re all part of the cosmic joke.”

If you have been religiously watching the show as I am, you would know that Grey’s Anatomy is about Meredith Grey, a medical intern at Seattle Grace Hospital, and her group of doctor/surgeon friends, all of whom are trying to save the world, one 3-day shift at a time, while juggling their lives together with it. Each episode brings a window to various life stories as the doctors face one patient after another. On this episode that Dr. Bailey made me stop reading in my tracks, Dr. George O’Malley comes across a patient who jumped from a 5-storey building and lived to tell the tale with no more than a shattered leg bone. Yeah, it does sound like it probably hurt, but apparently if you jump from such a height, you’re expected to have incurred more damage than that (i.e. crushed lungs, and the like). And while George thought that it was a “carpe diem” moment, the patient wasn’t exactly in a seizing-the-day mood. It turns out that the reason why he jumped in the first place is because of some girl who works in the very same hospital, the one he considers to be the love of his life. So while they prepped the patient for surgery, and after reconsidering his original motives, and much of Dr. O’Malley’s continued arguments of surviving for fated second chances, George goes off to find the girl, only to find that she doesn’t want anything to do with him. When the patient asks kind and gentle O’Malley as to what had transpired on his meeting with his girl, George simply tells him she was on vacation, to spare him the disappointment and probably hurt. Realizing his newfound purpose in life, they proceed with the operation. And just like that, just when the anesthesia first kicked in, he dies. And George desperately tried to make sense out of what had happened, Dr. Bailey goes on to shed some light, and according to her, we’re all part of the cosmic joke.

Could it possibly be true? Could we have been living lives based on some joke by the cosmos? I don’t really believe in fate or destiny, but I won’t deny that there are times when I just can’t help but wonder if certain things are just meant to be and are just out of our control. The patient’s tale was a perfect example. He tries to kill himself, but survives, leading one to immediately assume that there’s something bigger planned out for the remainder of his life. A chance. A second chance for repentance, for rekindling what was lost, for whatever. He survives so he could be with the love of his life, and she doesn’t even want to see him. So, really, what was the point? And just when he realizes his reason for living, he dies. Again, what’s the point? What’s the point of having been given a second chance when it was taken out his hands just as easily? Was that the cosmos mocking him, telling it to his face that he made a mistake? Was that really something that fate had in store for him, a fleeting chance to find purpose, only to have it taken away? Seriously, what’s the point of all that, then? Was that some sick joke that the gods all across the heavens contrived for their amusement? Could cosmic fate be God’s version of irony?

I’m just baffled, is all. We make so many choices in our lives everyday, and we don’t even fully understand half of it. The other half we could probably second-guess, but there’s no certainty as to why we’re doing it either, is there? How ironic that we have to go through all sorts of trouble in life when we don’t even have a purpose for doing it in the first place.

Realization. Could that be what life is truly about? We only get to live our lives to realize the errors of our ways, and before we even realize it fully, it’s too late. It’s always already too frigging late…

:p

***

Quotable quote, not necessarily related to this post, but noteworthy nonetheless:

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women are merely players. They have their exits and their entrances." - William Shakespeare, As You Like It...