ilikeyourshirt

            Just when it seems as if everything on the human mind has been put into writing, people continue to discover things about it that is either the missing puzzle piece of some unsolved study, or a negation of some common belief we once thought was undisputable. A funny thing about the brain: it doesn’t just get the experts and genii involved, but also with us common people who try to give names and pictures for the pains it puts us through.

             The light bulb is a traditional image of an idea. You and I have seen it a million times in cartoons and comics, even on science text book covers; I remember at least two or three science books with light bulbs on them even before I reached high school. But I know its association with ideas better from cartoons. It’s like the very first thing children learn about the brain: that when you are stuck with a thought, all the “wires” create this bright “spark”. Basically, it’s a precursor to learning about neurons. And then, there’s the image of cogs. I had this book of the human anatomy simplified for children, and it showed the brain as an organized array of wheels and cogs; that would be the first time I’ve seen thinking made tangible. Somewhere around high school, I saw I, Robot and Will Smith said something about robots being unable to feel because they were made of “just lights and clockwork”—which is quite ironic, since that “clockwork” pretty much makes concrete the idea of thinking about how one feels.

Several times I’ve watched cartoons with my brother, and there’s now a new trend of portraying brain activity. There’s this one show we both absolutely love called The Grimm Adventures of Billy and Mandy, and I can’t forget my brother’s laugh when he saw this one character’s brain being portrayed as a hamster running in a wheel, then tripping and unable to run further (this is exactly how the show will make you feel, so unless you have a test coming up, I suggest you watch it sometime). So this I guess, was the animators’ way of showing our inability to process incoherent things; when the brain can’t just put two things together, our hamster trips. I’ve even seen another cartoon use a mouse making its way in a maze to show the process of thought. And as if that wasn’t enough, even the feelings of a brain freeze and suppressed anger have an image: the all too familiar disaster of a nuclear mushroom cloud erupting inside the skull. I know about three shows that use this imagery.

The best way I’ve come to learn about how the brain makes people feel is through people, specifically friends. Everyone I know uses “sabaw” or soup when the brain is either too tired or unable to work properly. It’s only recently that I’ve really thought about this and pictured a simmering bowl of thought nuggets swimming in thick brain cream. A friend of mine even asked how my brain was doing after studying for an exam, and if it had already liquefied to a soup so thin, it was pouring out of my ears. This soup just might be the nosebleed people associate with processing difficulty. Another image of brain activity was the “reset” or “reboot” button, which I’m not quite sure where I picked up from. When people are exhausted from a test, they just press the reset button to allow normal processing. You know how, after a long day or a difficult test, the brain just sort of feels like it’s taking a breather? That would be it: the reset or reboot button (it’s a variation of the expression “pressing Control-Alt-Delete” when the brain has hanged, which isn’t too popular). One of my best friends has unwittingly taught me a fun—but strangely violent—way of expressing a struggling brain: gunpoint. It was around freshman high school when she first showed it to me. She made the famous L-shape of a gun and pointed it at her temple. It’s a mannerism I never unlearned; I still do it today, only I prefer using both “guns” on both temples…it makes the pain in the head seem more accurate, I guess, like the brain’s just about had enough and gets suicide impulses. The same best friend even showed me what happens to the mind when on drugs. She drew an egg to represent the healthy brain, and a sunny-side up for the stoned brain.

You have to admit, the images are quite often exaggerated when showing how the brain works, but if you think about it, that’s almost the farthest we can go with our understanding about it. How ironic that the brain itself is what feeds us these images to make its abstract processes concrete. I suppose this is how we cope with the wonder that is the brain; we try to fill it up to the brim, but it seems as if that isn’t enough. After all, we are told that only 10% of it is being used, and already we can’t take much more. It kind of makes me wonder if our images of suicide impulses and tripping hamsters are ways of the brain’s communication with its owner…telling him that he tries too hard, and makes him feel undeserving of it.

What in Dante’s nine circles of hell have I been doing with my life? That’s the question I asked myself sometime last December. You see, I’m the kind of person you’d see slacking off, bumming, wolfing down three plates a meal, and generally doing nothing productive at all. But now, I try (repeat, try) to use time more productively. It’s all thanks to this collective of events that can be described as one huge momentous event that leads to an even larger epiphany–College.

It all started on June twelve (or thirteen?), year two-thousand and seven. It was the first day of classes, the first day of the series of events that will lead to the three greatest epiphanies of my seventeen year life. For your own benefit, let’s skip to the good parts, since recounting every day of my almost over freshman life is not something anyone (even me) would like to do. If you compare my life to movie, you’d probably say the first semester was the draggy part, and the second semester is where things got interesting in music, sports, and even studies (back to drag here).

The first epiphany I got during my freshman year. Let’s call this the study epiphany. You see. I was the slacker who gets good enough grades in high school. I thought college was going to be a tough, but still easy to get good grades. I was in for one rude awakening. It happened at the end of the first semester, when we got our final grades. My grades were the lowest in the whole block! I got an average of 2.7, while my blockmates’ grades were pretty much on the B level. That was so lame! I vowed that I will change for the better, to say no to bumming, slacking, procrastinating, and all other forms of laziness. I was going to make sure that I do. Failure was not an option. I now study harder, although not hard enough, I am trying my best, and that counts. Hopefully, my hard work will be reflected in my final marks.

The second epiphany is my musical epiphany was brought about by an artist named Andy McKee (Sounds like Nanny McPhee). As a fledgling guitarist, hearing and seeing him on YouTube was really inspiring. In addition to that, AMP or Ateneo Musicians Pool even organized a program called guitar 101, in which the AMP members teach you how to play the guitar. Seeing this as a sign, I signed up straight away. I had two teachers then, since I joined an intermediate program and a beginner one. Seeing them play made me want to pick up a guitar and practice day and night. It’s wonderful, the feeling of being able to play music. What more if it’s music as great as a masterpiece? By the way, if haven’t seen Andy McKee on YouTube, I suggest you do. More power to the guitar!

The final epiphany was my sports epiphany. I was taking Arnis as my PE then and I’m not a very sporty person, which means I’m pretty much fodder when it comes to sparring. But I didn’t want to be. As a kid, I took Taekwondo, I kind of sucked at it, although I did become better before I quit. I was sick of contact sports then; it was creepy, the way people look at you with their murderous eyes. (Yes, that and the head kicks) I wanted to change that, and so I did. I practiced a lot, like an hour a day for six days a week, since I’m not really naturally gifted, although I wasn’t a klutz either (If you don’t count me tripping on my own feet). Luckily, I got the silver medal on the culmination tournament at the end of the sem, Plus a bruise the size of a fist on my arm. It simply showed me the difference frequency can really make in any sport, and that hard work really does manifest itself when the time comes. In my case, it was the time when I was being thwacked, ka-powed, clobbered, and oofed.

I’ve always wanted to do many, many things. Playing the guitar and striving to get good grades and trying to get better in sports are just a few them, literally. In this world, there are so many things that we, as people can do. I don’t want myself to be limited by what I have to be and what I have to know, but by what I want to be and what I want to know.

At the end, looking back on all of these things that happened to me makes me remember how much I’ve changed for the better. It’s all thanks to the small motivations from my friends, family, rivals, and the three big shoves I needed to get my ass in gear. Today, I look forward to seeing what I’ll be after this summer; as long as I keep on trying to be better than whom I was yesterday.

I found myself looking for something interesting. I was looking for something to help me sift through my emotions. What was I in the mood for? I don’t exactly know.

Stumbling along Albert Einstein’s rhetorical question, I stopped to think.

“A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin, what else does a man need to be happy.”

It struck me that barely anyone I knew would actually agree with the fourth object that Mr. Einstein had included in the list. I can just hear them saying, “Einstein’s brain has too much physics and math. He’s gone crazy. A violin isn’t something that would make your life happy. It would make more sense if the scientist behind the famous Theory of Relativity should have said that something like Physics would make a person happy.”

Call me a lost dreamer or call me a hopeless idealist, but never let it be said that I think Einstein is wrong for coming up with this particular statement. I only happen to agree quite strongly with him because I too am a violinist. My relationship with my violin (yes, I now treat it as if it’s an individual) did not quite start out so well. During elementary, my classmates and I were required to learn how to play this particular instrument. To make a long story short, I grew together with my violin and ended up growing attached to it through every lesson and recital. It was especially during recitals that being a violinist was the most rewarding. Just imagine being in front of a whole sea of faces and ears hanging on every note, every line. The melody of the violin enchanting them so much that their jaws could not help but stay open.

It gave me such a thrill to put people into a trance every time my classmates and I started playing the timeless notes and tunes of various composers. High school was different though, the school no longer gave violin lessons. Continuing with a private tutor, I was eventually given a chance to perform solo during one recital. To play solo for an audience is no ordinary thing to do. It meant all ears were concentrated on me and my violin. Each note had to be perfect because every person would be scrutinizing the melody, the pitch, the timing, everything. There could be no room for mistakes; to make one would put the soloist to shame and future embarrassment. One little fumble on a certain line could destroy the whole performance.

I was on the verge of declining to play at the recital. The pressure was too much for me and I thought I did not have it in me to handle the crowd alone with my violin. The risk of screwing up was horrifying. I could not take the big leap to finally perform on my own.

I did not have the guts.

I did not have the courage.

There is almost nothing worse than to admit my fear, the fear of looking like a fool in everyone’s eyes, my fear of making mistakes, of failing and so much more. It’s definitely something you and I have in common, right? No one wants to be called a coward, a chicken, a scaredy-cat or what have you. More often than not, we keep the fear to ourselves and make sure we keep a straight face when confronted with that fear. We cower deep inside and act all cool on the outside. Have I struck a familiar chord yet? You know what I’m talking about.

I am very tempted to tell you to just forget the fear and focus on your strengths. It would be something that my optimistic side would say, the side that knows no problems and knows no nerve-wrecking object in life. The courage in me, would tell both myself and my reader (that’s you) to go through the fear, to experience it and to embrace it as part of your identity. Though it is socially more impressive to appear fearless, it’s just not fair to yourself to keep your fears hidden from the rest of the world. The fear has to be realized, has to be admitted, and it has to be a part of your life since it is something that will keep emerging if you keep trying to suppress it.

Facing the fear alone won’t help. No one can get over something scary by himself, it’s not humanly possible. You’ll end up running away from the fear or becoming more afraid as time goes on. I remember trying to think of so many ways to get out of the recital. From skipping a few rehearsals to pretending that I had an important family gathering on the day of the recital, my lies were as smooth as silk, but my mentor soon saw through everything. It must have been the fear behind my eyes and my violin-playing every time I went to rehearsal. I blurted out everything, my anxieties and my worries about screwing up the music. It was exhausting, but soon I felt like an empty music sheet with no marks or blemishes, just waiting for the courage to compose a tune for my life that I can jive to.

The day of the performance came. Let me just say that my knees were shaking and my hands were sweating. The shaking and sweating stayed with me until the whole performance, but then I didn’t mind because I delivered the piece exactly the way I imagined I would. I dare not say it was perfect because in music, nothing will ever be perfectly done. As long as I heard the applause and as long as I knew that courage had been there for me, I was sure that had given the audience a melodious rendition to make their jaws drop. I will never be able to express my joy, neither words nor melodies will suffice. Einstein was right, he just missed one important thing: courage.

Now, how about you? Have you found courage? Or do you need to perform in front of a live audience to find it?

I am looking for my drive, the motivation that pushes me to excel. You see I seem to have dropped it, somewhere along my way to college. Have you seen it? It looks very much like a kid in the middle of the night with a book to glued to his nose studying it. Hmmm… It also looks like that student in the library, who seems to have gone through the table of contents of every single book, in the quest for that one book that will unlock his research paper. People always tell you to go back where you last had the object you are looking for. I’ve gone back to my high school, looked in every nook and cranny, but I didn’t seem to have dropped there.

It feels like you don’t have enough energy to hammer the nail into the wood. You go through this feeling of regret every single day, every single test. When you get the results, you tell yourself, “Who took this test? It has your name written on it but surely the grade doesn’t do you justice.” Yet, on that same day, you go home and surf the net, check your email, chat with friends, read though blogs and listen to music. But you won’t pick up the book and start studying for that long test tomorrow. It seems as though every single muscle in your body and every single occurrence in the galaxy is keeping you from studying (except perhaps for that barely audible voice in your head that is being drowned out by Simple Plan on your iTunes playlist). And when tomorrow comes (it always comes), you take the test and leave the classroom hammering your head to the wall. 

I wasn’t always like this. Back in high school, I had the highest grades among my barkada. They would ask me about the vertical angle theorem or the activity series of metals and I’d have an answer. If I didn’t, I would have opened the book and looked for the answer. Sure, I wasn’t the smartest person in the class, but I was smart enough to copy the math homework from. I was smart enough to understand proving back in the third year, when my other classmates would scratch their heads and randomly write down theorems.

It felt good back in high school, when I had my drive. It felt good to have my classmates ask me about the answer number 12 after the physics long test. It felt even better when me another classmate asked me about number 20 in the same long test. It felt good to be able to answer the math homework without asking for help from another classmate. But it felt even better when my classmates asked me about the homework. Of course, even my parents were proud of me. On family gatherings, it does your ego well when you hear your parents casually mentioning your accomplishments in school. That kept me going through high school.

It’s different in college. I remember someone telling me, “There aren’t a lot of differences from Xavier and Ateneo. Heck, even the gardens and the benches are the same.” He was wrong. There are a lot of differences. (He was right about the gardens and the benches though) It’s like what my dad used to say about fishes and ponds. Being in high school was like being a big (not the biggest) fish in a small pond. The problem comes when you go to college. You become the small fish in a BIG pond. What’s true is that you didn’t shrink, but rather the pond grew exponentially. To make it even harder for you, in college, there are even bigger fish swimming around with you.

It’s harder in college. It’s like moving from the featherweight to the heavyweight class in boxing. No longer was I the smart person who people approached about the chemistry assignment. Amidst me were salutatorians and valedictorians from science high schools and private high schools around the country. I couldn’t even get a B in my first long test in college.

I think I lost my drive somewhere around that time. I was motivated because of the people around me and when these people around me changed, I no longer had the drive. My drive, which was fueled by pats on the back and words of encouragement, could not continue to be ablaze in college. My motivation didn’t come from myself and that’s I guess where I went wrong.  In college, where you only have yourself to rely on, I have to find a new motivation to excel in the things that I do. Else, I let myself be swallowed up by mediocrity and spend the rest of my life regretting everything.

But alas, here lies the Great Wall of China. If I can no longer use my old motivation to drive myself to be competent, at the very least, then how am I to find this new motivation within myself? I would not want to be stuck in first gear for the rest of my college life, looking for that spark that will help me push myself harder. How do I know that this motivation is even inside of me? Where do you start looking for something as abstract as it is unique to every person? It sucks not knowing where you are and what your supposed to do. Groping in the dark feeling my way through life isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I graduated high school. What sucks even more is seeing other people whiz by with their lives all mapped out, it makes you feel even more pathetic about yourself.

Here is an optimistic thought, “Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.” Winston Churchhill said this.

I still don’t get the joy and glory part though. Oh well.

***edited at 8:13 pm***

**I may not look like it, but yes, I was an officer**

Stalwart Swords

CAT officers have the privilege of seeing their cadets undress.

Or so people believe. This, among many other misconceptions, is a devious lie that officers formulate for the sheer fun of it. It may seem that officers enjoy a load of perks – getting seats in the teeming cafeteria, claiming dominion over public places, and laughing their asses off while you try your best to stay erect and refrain from scratching an itchy nose. Logic would tell you that these officers are power-hungry monsters, but beneath those facades are pitiful creatures tricked into a senior year of endless responsibilities and expectations. You don’t need me to tell you that C-A-T is not the same as F-U-N. But unless you too are an officer, you will need me to tell you that the spoils are worth the toil because the best things about being an officer aren’t the bragging rights, nor the cut-in-line privileges; the best things aren’t things at all. What defines a corps isn’t the number of cadets nor the skill they possess in handling rifles and swords – they’re those unbreakable bonds that strengthen from every moment of shared hardship, low crawls and duck walks. I should know; I was an officer.

Before CAT, there was the Cadet/Cadette Officer’s Qualifying Course and it goes by the friendly banner: “COQC: Where future officers are made!” But like cunning TV ads, you never really know some words can mean different things until you buy the product – I already sunk too deep when I found out that the banner actually meant “tortured” instead of “made”. But for all it’s worth, a moneyback guarantee wasn’t necessary.

So there we were, unsuspecting juniors lined up to meet their doom. The gym roofs seemed to shake as commands went shooting off from inside the acquisition room.

“SQUAAAAAAAT!!” one officer roared and a fellow applicant went scurrying off the line and on to safety. I would never have known back then that among the 34 fit applicants, I, with all my health issues, would actually make it through and be one among the 14 graduates. Of course, there was a lot of fainting and hyperventilation, but I made it nonetheless.

To most students from our school, Research or STR proved to be the highlight of their junior year, but to us applicants, punishment was our daily bread. I remember one time when I was having a laugh with my friends then the terror officer passed by and of course, I scuttled to greet her. I tried so hard to keep myself from snickering, but she sensed my lips twitch and gave me an overdose of pumpings (a form of punishment where you cross your arms and hold your ears while continuously shifting from squat to standing position). Asthma thwacked me hard on the back and I ended up wheezing heavily – unfortunately for me, Ma’am Terror was having her period and you know how girls are when they have “it”. She mistook my panting for laughter and I had to do thrice the number of pumpings that she previously ordered. After that, all I was able to do was drop to the floor with a resounding thud – walking became an arduous task; taking the stairs was impossible. I did a lot of crying then.

These individual hardships, however, are trifling moments that you get used to and soon forget. The best times in COQC are marked by communal suffering.

I remember hearing the funeral Tap every time someone dropped his rifle. When this happens, that cadet, accompanied by another, will have to do the low crawl back and forth across the field while the rest of the flight squats. So in a corps, one’s fault is the fault of the flight, that’s why we had to look out for each other and each of us assumed the responsibility of reprimanding our fellow applicant if he/she is tempted to break a rule and bring the whole flight to certain death.

Reception had to be the biggest thing that happened in junior year. Without the constant support of everyone from our flight, none of us would have made it through the demoralizing and traumatizing things that they made us do. I remember doing the duck walk four times across the field. We almost gave up, but instead of doing things separately, we decided to waddle in equal pacing and sing YFC songs along the way. I can still vividly recall our dead beat faces – smudges of dirt, squished bananas, blood, sweat, grimaces, smiles, and tears formed a concoction of bliss and gratitude – gratitude for God, and for the people in the flight. Without everyone, I might never have managed to eat ampalaya and sili, kneel my way across railings and pebbles, devour two whole rice without a viand (it’s actually harder than it seems), sprint blindfolded, pretend to be a dinosaur, duck my hand inside a toilet bowl (yes, dear, a toilet bowl with a banana pretending to be something else), and sleep on a tiled floor with mosquitoes swarming over me. If the Philippines had any vultures, there would definitely have been one waiting for me to die, but no worries - my friends had my back.

Through the tough times, we had to stay strong for ourselves and for everyone else. We faced each hurdle together and we came through the Reception with victorious hearts. I joined COQC for a grade of 1.00, and not for the cool uniform, the desire to serve, the improvement of my person, nor the friends I’ll be able to make and the bonds I’ll form with them – no, I did not apply for any of these things, but I got them all, and I couldn’t feel more blessed.

Bonds aren’t just built on the happy moments, although they help – stronger relationships are built on joint suffering and shared woes. To me, esprit de corps doesn’t just mean loyalty to the corps; it means loyalty to my friends. And even though I had to go through all of these just to figure that out, I don’t regret taking the swim for without these experiences, I would never have learned the true meaning of camaraderie and I would never have known that true friends are found in war, and will go to war with you.

-dawn

It’s dreadful to be annoying, or to be a fool.

A fool, who is not very astute; a fool, ignorant and very much dull-minded…I could be called a fool when I don’t do well in studies, or when I have a time lag during lectures (usually anything that involves figures). It’s just as terrible to be annoying. And here’s the salt of it: It’s difficult to know if you are.

Being a fool is to be obtuse, and this is evident if people see you’re not very sharp with absorbing information, or relating to it. I have the battered—yet still functioning—gut to admit that when it comes to Algebra, Chemistry, Geometry…or anything math, I do absolutely horrid with it. Also, I am the last to hear of any news, trivial or not. News spread and assumed to have fully circulated in three days won’t often reach me in a week. The answer to the question, “Then, why didn’t you ask?” is that I was never born with that brain compartment programmed to compel me to update on how people make the world revolve. I care more for what would happen if it all stops, but that’s beside the point.

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If there were one word I would delete from the English dictionary, it would probably be the word pathetic. The word simply sounds horrible. It sounds annoying to the ear. When you say the word, the image that pops in is an old dying man hooked up on life support, or some mental retard who can’t even go to the bathroom on his own. Maybe that’s the reason why I abhor the word; I’m a growing young man, a fully functional member of society. I definitely would not want to be associated with some mental retard.

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Once upon a time, there was an activity held on a usual English 12 class on a usual day. This activity was about groups of people choosing some negative adjectives that they think will fit your personality. I was described as spaced out, lonely, and dull. Interesting. Everything except the lonely part hit the bull’s eye, since I have got great friends, but who thinks their friends suck anyway? In any case, there was a follow-up activity the next class. It was about the word that you hate being associated with you. Being the dull person that I am, I found it hard to figure out the word that I hate being associated with the most. I have been called lame, killjoy, loser, shy, quiet, crazy, evil, vile, tactless, boring, ******, ******, *** ** * ******, ******, *******, ***,and finally,  ***** ******. I somewhat hoped that one of these words would ignite something, but none of them worked. So I thought about what I call myself, weak. Yes, that is it. Read the rest of this entry »

A look into my mind’s own exclusive dictionary…~Processing the word “annoying”…5%…15%…55%…75%…100%

Definition: An adjective that refers to an individual whose company other people want to avoid since his/her choice of words or actions bring about irritation and dislike. It is a fitting description to those who are unaware that their personality causes discomfort to those human beings they are constantly with. There may be times that these people are accepted, but then, there is always a point where they cross the line. Read the rest of this entry »

 I have always been one to believe that words are arbitrary and opinions are relative. A ball is a ball only because we say it’s a ”ball”, but when it’s flattened, is it still considered a ball? What makes up a ball and how can one say that something is a ball? Can a snob be a ball because it’s made of plastic? Can a politician be a ball because it’s round? Can gangstas be balls because they bounce? Notice how words can mean different things as well. To put things in the language of an academe, words and meanings do not exhibit what one would call a one-to-one relationship. So what is a word and how does it work?It doesn’t. Read the rest of this entry »