Impulse In The Afternoon

Brewed coffee, tall, luv, said to the girl.

I settled warmly on a comfortable chair and examined my treasures. One of my life’s deepest regrets is that I read books very late in life. No one ever told me it’s important. I was already in college when one afternoon impulse made me pick up a book I found in a dusty library. I was 17. I’ve never stopped reading since then, playing catching up. And there’s a lot to catch up.

I bought James Joyce’s Dubliners and Mozart, a biography by Maynard Solomon, in Booksale.

Impulse brought my legs to a Jag boutique. Doted on some new designs of tee shirts. But decided I need no new shirts. So glimpsed for the nth time at the woman behind the counter, sighed and got out. Same impulse (or was it a new one) said to my brain, hey, Brain, how about a new notebook and pencils. Said right. So went straight to National Bookstore, passed a P100 below books sign, ran my eyes over the titles. Eyes stopped at Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man for only P99. I had a copy once which I gave to a good friend, bought it for P245. Tempted to buy a new copy but I don’t like buying books I have already read. Put the book back on the shelf, saw Hermione Lee’s Biography of Edith Wharton and bought it.

Found the notebook I was looking, a small cutter, and a set of Mongol 2 pencils. Paid for them at the counter and started hunting for a good coffee shop to spend the afternoon. I found a cozy place called Coffee Dream.

Plain or flavored, Sir? asked the girl.

Plain. Make it extra black, luv.

Sharpened a pencil, read some pages of Joyce and a blurb of Mozart's biography. Put the book back on the table, tasted the brewed, and commenced to write.

Impulse in the afternoon is the dog's bollocks...

How to Write a Short Story in 5 Minutes

Arrived from work. Tired. Found my little brother sulking in a corner. Ignored him. Ate my dinner in peace. Turned out he wanted a short story for his English class tomorrow, first period. Don't like seeing sulking people while my stomach is digesting food. So told him why just write anything that came to his mind, and tried to come up with something like an outline of his short. I'd take care of the rest. So I took a quick cool bath, drunk my milk, asked for the scribbles my lil bro had done. And commenced right away to writing. 5 minutes later later we had a nice little story. Read it below if you like. A slug of brandy would nice.

It is Sunday afternoon. Alvin and his gang agree to play a game of basketball in Norkis Park. In the middle of the game, Jeff plays it rough against the opposing team.

“What’s wrong with you?” says one opponent after he gets a black eye from Jeff’s elbow.

“Why? Are you a tough guy?” replies Jeff.

“Do you have a problem, bro?” chips in second opponent. Alvin doesn't want any trouble. So he tries to separate Jeff from the angry ballplayers.

“Back off, Jeff. We don’t want any trouble here. Let’s just play basketba..” A sucker punch lands to the face of Jeff. Jeff fights back. Two more guys go to Jeff with their fists. Alvin can’t just watch his friend get beaten up. So he joins in the fistfight and is followed by their other friends. A rumble breaks out.

The fight only stops when the Norkis security guards come with their clubs, handcuffs, and bad intentions.

At home, Alvin’s father scolds him and gives him an advice.

“I don’t want you to go out again with Jeff and those gang. If you don’t listen to me, something bad will happen. If you want to finish your study, stay away from bad company. Understand that?” says Alvin’s father.

But Alvin is a hardheaded person. He still hangs with Jeff and the gang, and gets to drinking alcohol and smoking.

One afternoon, Alvin and his gang once again agree to play a game of basketball. They put a bet, 20 pesos per player. The game gets tough. Once again Jeff plays the bad guy and elbows his opponent who gets a cut on his eyebrow and blood spurts from the cut. A rumble erupts.

Alvin remembers what his father once said to him. So he separates himself from the skirmish and tries not to get involve.

“What are you doing here, boy? You're one of Jeff’s, right? So you a coward now?”

The guy has a knife. Alvin wants to run, but it is too late. The guy stabs him on the back. The security guards and the police come. And Alvin is brought to the hospital.

After the operation and some days of recuperating from his wound, Alvin recovers and sees his family around him. He looks at his father.

“Father, I am very sorry. I should have listened to you. It’s too late now and I've learned my lesson. I hope you forgive me. This won't happen again.”

A Boned Life, Books, Comics, & My New Job (Yay!)

After some writing stints in various companies (8 all in all) for almost 3 years, I am once again in this mood to re-examine my life. Like that old fish in a story told by David Foster Wallace, I ask myself this question: So, Jonas, how's the water? Well, there's only one word to describe it: BONED. Yes, boned water. Go figure.

Also here are some updates of latest happenings since my last post:

Read two books

1. The Tombs of Atuan (Ursula K. Le Guin)
2. Side Effects (Woody Allen)

I was quite busy this past two weeks. I wrote my last article for Rambo, which he will probably hate or love (that depends on his mood). And last July 30, Friday, was a blast night with my former officemates in Kitteric. Here, let Xan tells you the story. You’ll love her blog, too. I'm especially digging this:

I... remember him coming to the office ever so timid and silent, smoking a stick or two, and wearing the most decent clothes among us all, he looked boring to me. But it didn't last long, thank jeebuz! The real Jonas was pretty much an alcoholic and talks of so many things in a span of, oh I don't know, let's just exaggerate it to 5 minutes. He's got tons of stories to tell, books to share, and words that sends me to look them up in google.

Xan's story complete with pictures explains why that Saturday morning didn’t do well for me to open a book. And I just realized again that two cappuccinos and a couple of biogesics won’t go well with a hangover, or maybe still don’t enough. But I may again forget.

The hangover was still with me till Sunday. The rest of the day was spent trying to stay sober till evening, and succeeded, of course. Monday was my first day on the new job. So you can surely get the picture. I did finally find to chuck some minutes to read the second book of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle in the weekdays.

And I have to tell you, Woody Allen’s Side Effects is pure hilarious. But still, in my opinion, the man is a lot funnier and more wicked in movies.


I am now again starting to read Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe. Maybe this is the best time to read him. I am also nibbling some pages of Tribute, a true treasure to me, thanks to Genica for this great gift. Also gave her one of my favorites, Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man.

Read 15 comic books

Yes, kids, I am an awesome hoarder of comic books. And I don’t want to finish them off in just one go. That wouldn't be proper. The best thing to do with comic books is to consume them one dose at a time. You have no idea how it weakens me trying to keep myself from taking more than two comics a day. I have to control my impulse. And I tell you, it takes a lot of discipline.

Put up a new blog about SEO

I know it would be a boring site to keep. But when I started toying with the idea in my head, I was surprised when I find my self loaded with ideas to put there. I already have some rough drafts in my laptop that I’ll soon publish there. I am also reading blogs about passive income. Maybe writing articles about SEO content is my best niche to generate some dollars in the internet. Yes, Internet, you can’t keep me from getting rich someday.

Got a new job

My 8th job in three years since I left the university. This time I am the staff writer of Live2Sell Group of Companies. I average 7 articles a day and I think I can improve on that. I am targeting to produce 10 500-word articles, SEO techniques applied, per day. The company pays me higher than my previous jobs in the past, and I can still do some freelance writing on the side.

It’s early yet to tell, but I love the location and the environment in the office. The Boss seems a good man, too. I also work with an awesome team of SEO specialists. SEO people are best kind of people in the world. I have never met one whom I don’t like, except perhaps the one side of Rambo when he’s on one of his epiphanic moods, which could turn you to stone or bore you to death as they put it, deluding himself to think that he is the fricking Justin Bieber of SEO. Maybe he is. Or at least he has that spirit.

A Tale of Two Piles

You see, I started late. I was not much of a reader till one book changed all that. Said book led me to another, and then that another to another till it's too late. I am hooked and became aware of the gaping horrible void in my life. And I think only through reading the great lore of awesomese can save me from total self-destruction.

Those two piles above show the earnestness of my goal to read 100 books this year. I have yet to get past that number since I discovered my passion for reading only in college.

Like any virgin bloke to reading and with no one to guide me which one is a good read and which is not, I read any books available in a library near me. Or when one good soul told me that I could find cheap books in Booksale shops and when I have enough money to buy them, I would pick ones that have fancy titles and covers in them regardless of who wrote them. More reading made me wised up a bit, and became more informed, biased, and a little intelligent in my taste on books.

That said, here are the books I've read so far since the start of the year. Apparently, I'm much behind schedule but there’s still enough time I think to catch up.

Since January 01, 2010

1. If You Really Want To Hear About It (Edited by Catherine Crawford)
2. Capote: A Biography (Gerald Clarke)
3. The Dark Side of Genius (Donald Spoto)
4. My Lost Mexico (James Michener)
5. V. S. Pritchett: A Working Life (Jeremy Treglown)
6. Siddhartha (Herman Hesse)
7. Of Human Bondage (W. Somerset Maugham)
8. A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway)
9. 21 Great Stories (Edited by Abraham H. Laas & Norma L. Tasman)
10. Walden and On Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau)
11. The Greatest Salesman In The World (Og Mandino)
12. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
13. A Century In His Life: Alexander Solzhenitsyn (D. M. Thomas)
14. Waiting For Godot (Samuel Beckett)
15. Where Angels Fear To Thread (E. M. Forster)
16. F’D Companies (Philip J. Kaplan)
17. Catch 22 (Joseph Heller)
18. Welcome to Hard Times (E. L. Doctorow)
19. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (Stephen King)
20. 99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939 (Anthony Burgess)
21. A Portrait of The Artist as Filipino (Nick Joaquin)
22. Education of a Wandering Man (Louis L’Amour)
23. How The West Was Won (Louis L’Amour)
24. The Ferguson Rifle (Louis L’Amour)
25. Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography (Andrew Turnbull)
26. A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula K. Le Guin)
27. Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller)

Second pile comprises of some classics I've missed and contemporary books that I want to read. This is only a short list. I still need to find more books to include in it. If you have some titles in mind, kindly drop me some lines in the comment below.

Thanks guys as always for reading.

Sweet'O Voice of Yesteryears, or Now I Know I Could Do It

Yesterday, a voice from a distant past made my heart jumped. Oh, what a sweet voice! When I looked back, I saw a lovely face of a young woman! The melancholy that was devouring inside my heart suddenly left me. Felt like I had long expected that voice, calling me with that name, which was once I called mine.

* * * * * * *

It was two years ago. Just quit from a job. I was in no mood to apply for a new one. I figured that my last salary would be enough to last me for a month without work. It would mean living frugally, which would also mean days without food. But my rented room was a wonderful haven. It had several piles of good books I'd accumulated for months, a coffeemaker with enough supply of 2-peso Nescafe classic, a good stock of wine that include some bottles of gin, brandy, rum, whiskey and, occasionally, beer, a DVD player, and a 21-inch TV. The TV was lent to me by a now ex-girlfriend, who took the TV with her, of course, after we broke up. A piece of bread was enough to quell the hunger so I didn’t need much more than that. Sometimes I bought food from a street vendor and ate in a sidewalk, and occasionally in a cheap restaurant. I was economical and would only spend what money I have to buy for pirated DVD copies of good movies, second-hand books, a good supply of bread and wine. The days passed by fast and heavenly though I was often hungry. But, cripes, those wonderful mornings were bliss when the rays of the sun would fill my room at 8, and the coffeemaker would soon be brewing. The smell of coffee would heighten my famishing stomach, and I would eat a leftover of bread bought the other day with a relish, washing it with a slug of brandy, and followed by a cup of coffee.

It was during this time also that I had read Saul Bellow’s Herzog and The Adventures of Augie March, E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, James Joyce’s A Portrait of A Man As An Artist, a rare copy of Ernest Hemingway’s Islands in The Stream, George Orwell’s 1984, Philip Roth’s Ghost Writer, Bernard Malamud’s The Tenant, and biographies of Theodore Dreiser, Truman Capote, Jack Kerouac, Gore Vidal, and V. S. Pritchett.

That time, I still not owned a laptop. So I wrote in longhand and filled some pages of my notebook, or write in bond papers. I read most hours of the day, and watched a movie in the evening usually starred by Johnnny Depp or Anthony Hopkins, or I watched and listened to a record of The Carpenters, or a documentary of Bob Dylan and The Beatles.

Why I post this here is anybody’s guess. Maybe it’s the flask bottle of Matador brandy, which I downed in one go to see if I can do it. Which I apparently could. But may again forget later. Or maybe it is because of that sweet voice that has touched a chord in me, making me want to express or write up something, anything, while I still think of that voice reverberating in the solitude of my heart.

I Am Officially A Book Critic, WTF

For those who don’t know, I am also a book critic. I review books, weigh their worth or unworth, and impose my judgment on them like the DeathDealer, comic book-style. That I think is what a book critic does for a living. So I said to myself, hey, self, reviewing books sounds fun and chickenshit. Let’s try it.

Being a nationalistic bloke as I am, and with nothing else to do, I picked a newly published Filipino novel with a nationalistic theme or something on its plot, and I was set to go.

Long story short, after about an hour of reading, half an hour cursing, and some minutes of writing the review with the help of a bottle of brandy, I finished the shit. You can read it here.

I was greatly satisfied. Two weeks later, I made a follow-up post titled Caffeinated Reactions. It is here.

J. D. Salinger's Death: The Sound Of One Hand Clapping

An idolized writer’s death has stirred something in me. Or so seems to be always the case for every budding writer. The report of his death gives me a nice jolt, with a passing impulse that makes me pick up my pencils from everywhere in the apartment, sharpens them, picks the notebook that I just bought the other day, and commences to write.

Every scribbler by now must have paid their respects to the singularly reclusive and a great writer, J. D. Salinger, who died some hours ago. He is 91.

And for an aspiring writer like me, a line or a whole post would just be an apt tribute to the man who penned down beautifully the disenchantment and rebelliousness of youth, in the Catcher In The Rye, which I’d read twice. First when I was 19, and the second time was two years ago.

After writing that last sentence above, I paused a moment to continue my reading on the other reports from Time Magazine, New York Times, and other top websites that cover the death of J. D. Salinger. When satisfied, I went to my room and searched the four volumes of his works amidst piles of books. I succeeded to find the three: his sole novel already mentioned (Catcher In The Rye), Nine Stories, and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour: An Introduction. I was a little chagrin when I recall that Franny And Zooey, lent to Paula, a former officemate, was still not returned, along with my two other books: Love In The Time Of Cholera, and Beloved by Toni Morisson.

Anyway, the great American Dostoevsky is now dead and this post is dedicated to him. His life has been a legacy to the literary world. His singular reclusiveness adds more colors and mystique to his writing life. And his death would also mean the unraveling of the mystery surrounding his life, which can hopefully provide us the answers to the big questions: Did he leave us another masterpiece or two? Does he still have more new great things to say to us? Did Holden Caulfield grow up in his other unpublished works? And other such questions. Life would be far more interesting if the answers are in the affirmative especially on the first and second questions.

So that’s that. I’ll probably reread A Perfect Day For Bananafish, and For Esme – With Love And Squalor. Meanwhile, got to go now and file some works. Man, I got some SEO articles to write. A man has to earn his living. Till later then.

A Post About Books, and I Love Lifeboat

My days have trudged on slowly. And I think I should make one blog today. Yes, today I am going to blog about books (and those of my girlfriend too) because I’ve all the luxury now to read and talk about them. When I said I have the luxury, it means I just feel lazy to write any more articles for the clients. But crap. I’ll write the rest of the projects when I feel like it. I mean I can’t work well when I am not enjoying whatever things I am working on. But for the record, I’ve really been doing the best I can to deliver to our clients some quality works that they want, and possibly on time. And I’ve not disappointed them yet. For now. Or whatever.

But, for today, I’ll take the pleasure to post about books – those lovelies that still remain a faithful companion and a consolation to me when bouts of anger, desolation, and jealousy strike me.

I’ll start with The Dark Side of Genius by Donald Spoto. A dark side indeed portrayed honestly and lovingly by one of Alfred Hitchcock’s biographers. I followed it up by supplementing the words with what clips and videos I can find in youtube. And the experience is very enlightening as it is entertaining. You cannot mention Hitchcock without thinking of Psycho, which the master thought as a hilarious movie while others couldn’t sleep after watching it. And, of course, his early feature “Lifeboat” in which the lead actress, Tallulah Bankhead, tired of wearing a panty during a shoot just took it off for all to behold, and to Hitchcock's silent diversion. The master of surprise and the unexpected in films was the director we never have (except perhaps Lino Brocka). And there’s also The Birds…

After some delightful hours of eccentricities, I picked up another good book: The Greatest Salesman in the World. I’d heard of the book in college but I’ve had a handicap not to read, or watch, anything when almost everybody is talking about it. So years later I now read the book and enjoyed it a lot. It’s like reading How to Make Friends and Influence People or Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Effective People.

When I finished it too shortly, I relished once again some good hours with Pearl S. Buck. I can now say that I’ve read The Good Earth and have changed my opinion on China from something positive to negative and now better to worst, and just a good opinion about China and the likes of Chip Tsao.

I am now reading Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays and Doyle’s The Complete Novels and Stories of Sherlock Holmes.

The girlfriend had read Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet and attempted to read The Brothers Karamazov on a wager, in which I’ll buy her a unisilver set if she finished it in a month. Her last report says she’s still at chapter 3 or 4 and it's almost a month now, which means I’ll soon get a Nick Joaquin novel. She’s also reading The Greatest Salesman in the World.

Got Thoreau-ed

Finished finally after few nights of devouring Thoreau's years in Walden Pond, plus his bonus essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. Like I always did, there were several unsuccessful attempts till I finally able to read, and now digesting, everything the author said in his book. It was a heavy reading. As you may know I avoided everything heavy. Always did. Except, of course, the drink. But what a satisfaction and, well, an epiphany! I commend it to readers. If you are one of the few adventurous readers, read if you will the likes of Thoreau, Nietzsche, and the others. And read them at your own risk, a worthy risk.

The 200+-page of the Walden is quite deceptive. It was short and very compacted, not a single word wasted. It contains the essentials of living well that has been rehashed by many writers and subjects of their books.

For instance, think of an ultimate reason of your hard work. Reason tells you it is important to your happiness. Everyone wants to live a happy life.

Don’t fell like going through all that variety of degrees in each man’s or woman’s measure of happiness. What I do like to do is to offer some observations why so many people are so confused of what really matters to their lives. People work hard to get at the top, be recognized as the best, that is, at the expense of everyone else, sometimes tramping many others on the way, cheating, if not going to the point of affecting future events by corrupt means, by limiting the freedom of those others who they think are bellow them. I am, of course, thinking of you, Politicians. You and your so-called politics are for dogs!

In many homes, parents especially the mothers put hold their daughters decision to marry, not just because it’s the most honourable thing to do, but which also methinks, in most cases they thought to have fallen in love, and they once were meaning to tell their parents, but cannot for many reasons, till the girl got pregnant out of other many reasons too, which now complicating matters, and the parents, instead of alleviating the problem, putting a stop to many errors already committed, they so complicate it more out of what they thought to be for their daughters' future (what future?) and their daughters’ happiness (what happiness?). They thought they have so lived longer and should know more than the young. The result, instead of resolving the issue, the rub has breeds further problems and more insults to both parties, because they can’t control their guilt feelings, which angers them the more and so generate more hatred, confusing the minds of young women, adding more miseries in the world. It is but a mockery and a-showing of their brutish ignorant nature.

H.D. Thoreau summarizes a happy life lived well in three simple words: “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” Yes, right, we so heard it so often. We almost don’t hear it but only as part of the world’s mundaneness. But there’s no any other sound and ultimate answer. And that’s what one should have been trying to live now. Scrap all things unuseful, retain what is. Now wait, I need a drink.

A Bohemian Occupation

After several weeks of living a misanthropic and relatively chaste monk-like life, I have now devoted my time in peace reading literature, sipping cheap booze, and poking fun to my Friendster friends. If we are not yet friends at Friendster, please add me.

You see, I am now taking a much deserving break from flaming and other internet non-sense, which was kind of fun till both sides turned uncool. The trick is to be the most awesomest intense uncool and try to stay at it as long as you can. But that’s another story that has added further pollution to our Whirled Wide Webz, making some scholars busier on their on-going study of Anger on the Internet. Anyway, this is a break article and I am keeping up my word to Self to stay sober after dinner and write nothing but the best in literature, that is, well, for a change.

So with that allow me first to introduce you to some little secrets inside my room. First off, there are only two living souls who know where I am: my self and the ex-girlfriend. There is only one way to reach here and you would have to grope your way through a dangerous foggy little path, canal stink, fresh animal and human excrements, and the common danger of getting raped by tattooed men and fairies. I took this room four months ago because it was nearer to my former office, more spacious than the previous one, at the top floor with its three big windows, and, of course, because it’s cheaper. The first thing you’ll soon notice when you enter the room is the smell of brewing coffee, books, and a mixed aroma of cig smoke and brandy, with a tinge of perfumed soap. Aside from an assortment of classical and perverted movies, empty bottles of booze, an electric fan, a single bed, I only got a few articles of clothes. Most of them I gave away some months back to younger relatives or to unknown strangers.

Eating up much space in my room is my collection of books after some months of indulging to my vice of buying them cheap from Booksale shops. I piled them according to already-read-books, read-these-later and must-read-these-now. The first pile I put below the bookshelf. The second category of books is just cramming around wherein a promise was made some weeks ago to arrange them somewhere. The must-read-these-now books
I divided into two towers and put them where I can easily see them the moment I wake up and the instant I enter the room. This strategy works well to me by reminding me of my ignorance and to haunt me with guilt and remorse every time I wasted a single second of my life.

That said, here are the books I had read so far the past days:

Theodore Drieser: At the Gates of the City 1871 – 1907, by Richard Lingeman. A great-cool-turned-uncool account of a literary genius.

A Biography of Truman Capote, by Gerald Clarke. If ever I have a son and he turns up gay, I will try to train him to write like Capote. And we would both drink liqueurs as hard as we can.

If You Really Want to Hear About It: Writers on J.D. Salinger and His Work, Edited by Catherine Crawford. Don’t mess up with a recluse especially a determined reclusive writer. There’s good haven in reclusiveness. A very good book, very important collection of essays and scraps of biography of the author, and I haven’t got enough from it.

V.S. Pritchett: A Working Life, by Jeremy Treglown. Having the passion to write and being in love simultaneously is an equation of bliss.

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow. Reawakened my lust for adventures.

Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell. Writing for the future is a kind of lol. I’ve tried several times to read 1984 and now I’d finally finished it. Quite wonderful.

Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway. Rediscovering the joys and silent sorrows of Hemingway’s prose. Devoured Hemingway novels during college days and I still not have enough. Fucking awesome bastard had killed himself. I got lucky to find this book at a second hand bookstore.

A Biography of Jack Kerouac by Tom Clark. Beautiful sad story of our old man Kerouac. Healed some of my extreme brooding tendency, and made me stop complaining over any circumstantial malady.

Underworld by Don DeLilio. This book is supposed to be good but it’s literally garbage and I can’t finish it. The prologue is excellent though.

Herzog by Saul Bellow. Reading Herzog is actually a bad choice on my part considering my present mental state, making me stagger to finish the book. But when I started reading it, I got already caught up by Bellow’s narrative powers and I cannot put down the book till I had read everything. It helped me understand more about my current situation though.

I am now almost through reading Philip Roth’s Ghost Writer, and next would be Gore Vidal’s Palimpsest: A Memoir, and the Biography of Robert Penn Warren by Joseph Blotner.

Well, how about you? Like to share what you are reading now? Put them at the comment below and we can keep each other posted.

Lovely Interruptions and the Whatnots of Leaving and Starting Over

I quit my job and it was worth my while.

Tell you frankly, I once liked that former job but got only disappointed of how things turned out as it was. I felt some pangs of qualms, of course, for leaving the place and some good people I worked with, and yet also happy for making the decision.

The days that followed were days of what they called 'a new phase’ of life, specifically, of a solitary one. I spent most of my time reading in my room, and sometimes, when the fancy of jotting down some nagging thoughts, I’d write in my notebook, or watch films, mostly those of Anthony Hopkins and Johnny Depp. That had become a rote for a couple of weeks with some welcoming interruptions when the girlfriend called, or when we dined together and then walked her home, or when Ms. En emailed me to get some money of which I’ve no idea of having.

Some little troubles with solitary occupation are the habit of eating that I sometimes found buggering. I’d need to go out and buy some food. Most days I’d no appetite and ate only when hungry. But I’ve got some good stock of the usual rum, gin, whisky, brandy, Chinese wine – of all them cheap booze, of course, and sometimes beers and cola, and a bounty of cheap nescafe that I find satisfying in fixing myself with the coffeemaker which was given to me as gift by the girlfriend.

A day would fly fast and it would soon be sundown when I am almost over with a book, or sometimes finished two in a day. I was rather catching fast with my reading, giving myself a quota of two piles that I put on top of the TV where I can easily see them with authors such as E. L. Doctorow, F. Sionel Jose, Ralf Ellison, Nick Joaquin, Bernard Malamud, Sinclair Lewis, Norman Mailer, Frank McCourt, Dreiser, Joan Didion, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Friedrich Nietzhie, Dostoevsky and Orwell, among others. Well, let’s just say I love to read and so fuck what you think.



The occupation of reading, of course, would make me react in them that would stirred the violent reactionist in me, making me reach for a pencil and papers and scribbled the impressions. Most of the time, I just read and think a lot. Meanwhile, the depleting stock of the wine would made me think of the inevitable trouble of landing a job again, supplied with the lavish encouragement of the girlfriend. I need to work again dammit to support meself, pay some rent and buy me some drinks. And so no matter how I digress, I cannot but to concede. Gosh, why can't one just die of occupying himself of what he loves most?

That brings me to the present: this first weekend of my new job. From editor to this so-called Advertising Specialist (or whatever the fuck it means) of yet another International Corporate Business. The excitement of the new job, new environment and working with new people trumps my desire to postpone doing a “real work” (as mother called it) and live in yet some days of pleasurable solitude.