Let the old freaky year make way for the new freaky year

I used to be pissed at invisible forces. Probably the result of overdosing on Kafka and Camus, as well as inhaling way too much solvent, bug spray, paint, rugby and ACME whatevers emanating from the hardware store next to our house. Then one day a strange zen came over me and everything made perfect sense, albeit in a topsy-turvy way. Life is simple. Life is beautiful. Life is not the pre-inferno buffet I thought it to be.

Nothing depresses me anymore. Not even sitting in a taxicab with a busted aircon in heavy, apocalyptic traffic, staring into a thousand and one container trucks bullying their way through Roxas Blvd. while listening to politicians rage against a bold star over the radio for reasons only Rod Serling (the creator of The Twilight Zone) could make sense of. Traffic, ludicrous politicians have zero effect on me. I am unfazed. Like a yogi tied up in a chair and made to listen to Aqua songs. Not even Cartoon Heroes has a chance against me.

Why am so happy as we’re about to let the old freaky year make way for the new freaky year. Why do I have a contented Cheshire Cat smile? Why do I feel like Norman Vincent Peale, seeing the positive even in the bleak? Why do I no longer think I’m a pig on antibiotics? Here goes:

My ears still work. When I was still working for cosmodemonic PR agencies and writing hallelujahs to washing machines, fertilizers and politicians, I would play John Coltrane or Ornette Coleman when I came home from work as a form of metaphysical therapy — Blue Train or Lonely Woman. It was like listening to the heavens unfasten. Nowadays, my ears can choke on bullshit and nonsense all day, but once Coltrane or Wayne Shorter or Miles Davis start spewing lonely fire everything in the universe becomes fine.

I could still get from point A to point B. A Taoist priest once told me that we live ourselves to death by prioritizing all the wrong things — losing sleep over trifles, outdoing others, wishing our rivals ill. We must realize that the things that are essential are the things we do best — like breathing or walking. No need for cutthroat competition. We move at our own pace. To each his own trip. I may not have that Taoist temperament but at least I love walking. I am a big fan of long walks. So, I’m bound to get somewhere, hopefully not just literally.

There are freakier freaks out there. I know a guy who announces the ensemble he’s wearing, has his hair done like Roberta Flack for three mind-numbing hours, and whose definition of an egotist is, as a Woody Allen character once exclaimed, "Someone who constantly talks about himself — and not me!" Do’h!

Another poor sod walked the lengths of Megamall with his fly open. Incident no. 2: We were on a bus one time and when the conductor played the Introvoy’s Line to Heaven, my freaky friend started playing air drums (with feelings ha), not minding at all the sticky stares.

My uncle is also another freaky joe. He takes a dump with the door open, so we unavoidably have front-row seats to a live poop delivery. Congratulations, sir — it’s a piece of sh*t! He has even freakier friends with names like Kaning Lamig, Idyong and Uga the philosopher.

I saw a man in a bookstore talking to the tiny people inside his head about the rock group ACDC. The freakier thing was that the tiny people inside his head would rather talk about Black Sabbath instead. Thus, the nutty argument. (True story! I did not make this up.)

I thank all these people for freaking me out and being the David Hasselhoffs of my life.

Our toilet at home still flushes. Apocalypse for me is not the Whore of Babylon or the Beast sung about by Iron Maiden paying a visit to the Malabon street where I live; the end of the world is a septic tank that’s so full that it has no choice but to puke out all that crap to meet its makers. Jesus Mary Joseph! I even have recurring nightmares about it.

My teeth haven’t ached in years. Wisdom tooth equals excruciating pain equals a trip to the dentist equals a fate worse than being Michael Jackson. Can’t blame me: My aunt once took me to a dentist named " Dr. Tornor" who had a creepy leer and a drill that looked as if it once belonged to the DPWH.

Beer is still legal. Except on the eve of elections — we need to be bright and sober when we troop to the polls the next day to replace the old corrupt pigs with the new corrupt pigs.

Readers. Getting feedback from readers make this writer’s life — the sleep deprivation, the acidity, the Foul-ups, Bleeps & Blunders of it all — worthwhile. I really dig the e-mails from people ranging from 20-year-old St. Scho students to 40-year-old males taking up their doctorate in anthropology and playing jazz guitar on the side. These people know their music very well (unlike poseurs who claim they adored Morrissey and Trent Reznor in college, when in truth they were doing the Mr. Roboto in parachute pants while singing "Everybody dance now!" at Limits). Nice to know that there are young girls out there who like Tool, A Perfect Circle, Jeff Buckley, Pink Floyd, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and forty- and fifty-ish individuals not mired in that stupid Elvis/Ventures/Neil Sedaka trip and listen instead to prog rock and jazz fusion.

Because of these people, I’ll always consider writing as sending a message in a bottle, my S.O.S. to the world. Seems I am not alone in being alone.

(Yes, even those who tell me my writing style is pukeable. Like Donna Angela Tuliao and Flood.)

Cable television. Imagine a world without cable TV: All we could watch are everyday variety show assholes copying each other, newscasters reporting as if on amphetamines ("Sunog sa Quiapo! Sampu, patay!") and treating a really trivial event as if it were Armageddon, as well as talk shows proving there is a palpable decline in civilization. At least with cable, we could watch the interesting lives of monitor lizards rather than slimy, reptilian behavior in showbiz.

I got a girlfriend who’s my heaven, my hell, my beautiful everything. She is real. She is not some posterized angel forever free from mucus and bad memories who gazes with Photoshopped eyes. She loves Sandra Bullock whose effect on me approximates the torture of fingernails slashing across a blackboard. She gives me the convenient excuse to play mushy love songs from the Carpenters, Sergio Mendes and such. She snores. She blows her nose while playing infinite solitaire. She sleeps like a soft, furry animal. She is the sum of those little things that make her absence bigger than the world.

Enough reasons for me to be in bliss, for now, at the start of the new year.

Yes, this pig’s in zen.

* * *

For comments, suggestions, curses and invocations, e-mail: iganja@hotmail.com.