Fickle Cattle is PBA's Best Personal Blog for 2011

Great news! I won in the Philippine Blog Awards for Best Personal Blog! Thanks everyone for the well-wishes and support!

2011 Philippine Blog Awards

Some good news for this blog...

I'm a finalist for three award categories in the 2011 Blog Awards!  Yay!  And even better, there's no public voting component whatsoever. So I actually have a fighting chance of winning. :-)

In any case, I've been nominated for the following prizes:

Best Personal/Diary Blog

Best Literature/Literary Blog

Best Single Post for my blog entry "Clarity"

Thank you Philippine Blog Awards! It is very much appreciated! See you all on awards night!

Perspectives

I was with my friend Toph one night, driving along a stretch of highway, when he asked me to drop by the house he bought for his mom in Taguig. He wanted to visit her. I obliged; it wasn't that often that Toph manages to find time in his busy schedule to visit his mom, and I figured I had some to spare.

It was two hours before midnight when we got there, and we practically had to wake the whole household to get in. We made our way into the living room. I sat on the sofa, admiring the cool light fixture attached to the ceiling, four half globes set on a large wooden square, while Toph promptly left and made his way up to his mom's bedroom. I heard several voices; I figured his nieces, who were also living in the same house, were probably awake by now too. I didn't know what was happening, but there was a palpable excitement in the air.

Then everyone came down, and with their loud voices, you'd think they've been patiently waiting for Toph rather than being rudely awakened in the middle of the night. One niece asked for a dress from his uncle for the prom, and he said, with a smirk and a small twinkle in his eye, that he would think about it. His mom was very affectionate, constantly touching her son's cheek with an exclamation about how gwapo (handsome) his son had become.

More than the fuss over him, what amazed me was how soft Toph seemed. How human. It was as if all barriers around him were brought down, and now there was just him. It was as if I was seeing Toph, the true Toph, for the first time.

It was a remarkably touching scene, and reflected an aspect of my friend's life I wasn't familiar with. I love Toph, but he can be a bit arrogant. The arrogance has basis though; he is a self-made man, who managed to wrangle some success for himself despite the extreme poverty he inherited. Though to some he may seem abrasive, to me it is merely the tenacity of an individual unwilling to succumb to the low expectations of his community. He once told me that he knew, even as a child, that he would never allow his circumstances to define him. He believed, no, he knew that he was more than the poverty he was born into.

We didn't stay long, although we did stay long enough for Toph's mom to show me a few photographs. Her lined face seemed to be set in a perpetual smile. I realized it was because her favorite son was home. I smiled politely, and tried to be as sociable as I could. Still, I felt like I was intruding into something terribly personal.

We were quiet on the ride back, although, as it usually is with close friends, it was a warm, comfortable silence that felt natural and apt. Toph broke the silence when he told me that when he was younger, especially during the first few years when he was still trying to make his mark in the world, he was very insecure about two things: his looks, and his poverty. He made some bad decisions because of it, but as he grew up, he realized there were more important things, and that he didn't really have to prove anything to anyone. He said he was finished proving himself to everyone. He was himself, and he knew that that was all that mattered.

Photo taken here.

Rules are Like Super Important (Rule-breaking too)

When I first started dating as an openly gay man, I turned to television shows for rules. Because I felt that rules were important. And because I had no clue what I was doing.

So, you start out with the "no kissing on the first date" rule, which really just works on the heterosexuals (I'm not sure about the lesbians). Gay guys are like bunnies. Kissing is important.

That rule transformed into the "no sex on the first date" rule. Which I managed to follow for a time. Until I realized that gay guys are like bunnies. Sex is important. (And I'm a gay guy, just to remind you).

Which metamorphosed into a third rule: "I will only have sex with you if I like you" rule. Which I've broken so many times it became crazy-stupid. Gay guys are like bunnies. And it gets worse when you're drunk and in the mercy of beer goggles.

Then I stopped having rules altogether. Which is a disaster. Not having rules is an invitation to heartbreak. You fall in love and emotionally connect to soulless automatons that vaguely resemble humans, and break the hearts of good people just looking for someone to connect with. So, we're back to square one. Rules are important.

When I met Jt, I had made up another rule. It was the "I will not get into a relationship with someone while I'm in law school because I will break down and cry from the pressure of both school and the relationship and I don't want to have a nervous breakdown and I promise to the universe this will only be about sex" rule. I broke that one. And I've never been happier.

So what's my point? My point is that dating rules are important. But make sure they never get in the way of your happiness.

Here's another one. I really can't make up your rules for you. No one can.

Photo taken here.

Happiness

I used to suffer from intense bouts of depression. It came in waves; there would be months when I was normal and happy, followed by days (or moments) of crippling loneliness. At some point I learned to anticipate it. Every time it happened, I locked my room, turned off the lights, and wallowed.

There is always a certain poetry in the experience of emotional, abstract pain. It is distinguished from the physical kind in the extent of its subtleties: sadness is not just sadness; there are depths and layers. When you wallow in your pain long enough, you learn to discern the differences.

When my depression came, it usually didn't last very long. The worst was three days (I skipped school and just slept. Sometimes I played video games). In one case, after 24 hours of not moving, I got hungry, so I started to look for something to eat. I rummaged through my kitchen (I was already living alone at the time) and found nothing. I saw this box my friend gave me two nights before. Nothing was left in it except for the few paper cups that used to contain cupcakes. I scraped off the few crumbs remaining and had that for lunch. I even chewed on one cup to get some of the cake out. Because I forgot to buy water, I drank directly from the tap. I crashed in bed, and slept until midnight. By the time I woke up, the depression had lifted, so I took a shower, went out, and had goto in Chowking in Salcedo.

The depression was not always triggered by something. Sometimes it just came, and I had no choice but to deal with it.

I had a conversation with my friend Ron a few years ago. He was telling me that maybe my depression was not legit; that is, it's not clinical depression. I told him it's possible; that maybe I'm addicted to the pain because I considered myself a writer, and I wanted experience in order to be able to have something to write about.

Another anecdote: I was much younger, and I was writing my first short story called "A Few, Unimportant Things". I had a soft spot for neurotic, emotional and quiet characters with a lot of internal struggle. In my early short stories, nothing really happened in the physical world; the issues were mostly in the character's head. I found dwelling in their psyches emotionally thrilling.

Anyway, I wrote that short story in three weeks, inhabiting the character of the protagonist fully: his life was constantly running through my head. At that time, a different type of loneliness settled in my life. It was subtle, but the world, and everyone who inhabited it, seemed sadder. It was as if every person I met was being crushed by the weight of mysterious, depressing circumstances.

Fast forward several years later, and my depression is practically gone. At the very least, I haven't wallowed in a dark room not eating for years now. When asked about it, I tell them that I realized at an earlier point in my life that my happiness was more important than my art. One day I woke up and I decided to be happy. It didn't happen immediately, but I got there. I explained that I still understood why young men would want to go through such sadness: a lot of great art are produced everyday, all over the world, because these artists have such a profound well of experiences to draw inspiration from. I said I used to dream about that, and then I realized it's not worth it, at least for myself. I was content with being content.

Photo taken here.