There were two sandwiches staring up from the plate, but she didn’t really notice it because, hey, who notices sandwiches anyway.
There’s this girl, she’s sitting in a 7-11 at two-eighteen in the morning and staring at the clock that was staring at the spy mirror and she’s fiddling around with her mobile phone.
In one deft move she presses the button : ERASE ALL MESSAGES.
A clean mobile phone is zen : devoid of all those damn messages you save just because you don’t have a reason to un-save (delete?) them. And then maybe you’ll find a reason just like this girl did, which she did because well, she was fucking out of her mind bored.
There could be a hundred and eighty definitions of boredom but this girl’s reason was quite different, in a sense that she wasn’t very anxious, but was simply trying to define the calm before the eye of the storm, or that moment before realising that shit I’m gonna drown and it’s not going to be pleasant, I’m royally fucked !
This girl’s father told her when she was young that during the 1993 storm that hit Manila, the eye of the storm had a certain sound before it arrived, “a hissing sound?” “no..not rea–” “a booming sound?” “more of li–” “then what sound…if it’s not hissing or booming then you don’t really hear it, do you?” and as if this were not enough she added “and if you don’t know it then maybe there isn’t any sound at all” and she left with a very dissatisfied look on her face, because in 1993 she was only 14 years old and didn’t really like listening to explanations.
Of course, her father was quite amused because deep in his heart he believed this daughter of his would one day either be famous for snappy remarks such as this one, or would wind up in jail.
Now she assumes she’s bored, and she’s really bored beyond belief, but before you start feeling sorry for her you must know that this does not go wihtout saying that she tries her best to de-bore (un-bore?) herself. She does a lot of things and sees a lot of friends and when she’s alone she doesn’t fall against the bathroom walls bawling her eyes out, in fact she’s a fairly happy human being and she just went second-hand clothes shopping with her mum the other day and had a lot of fun, for a shopping incident.
As long as it’s second-hand, which is quite more entertaining.
But in the time in between I suppose this girl was still bothered by this eye-of-the-storm sound that her father had tried to explain to her, because every August or September when the clouds and thunder rolled in she would wait for the eye of the storm to hear that sound but she hasn’t really remembered a storm louder than the 1993 one, therefore, the waiting for the sound proved to be quite useless.
Anyway, this boredom is more potent because she really doesn’t realise how bored she is. She has a job now, and as a job does not really launch one into the throes of far-flung happiness at least she’s not vegetating in front of the TV, or coming up with guerilla hypotheses(sis?) with her friends. Or at least she isn’t really staring at the sky from the Sunken Garden or taking a walk down the lagoon, at least she isn’t being chased by stray dogs or watching Art Attack! at four in the afternoon, and its replays at nine. Get a job and de-bore yourself, was a plan she came up with, and lo and behold here she is.
Hey. Listen. This girl told me earlier that maybe or most probably, Mercury Drug sells bottles of anti-boredom syrup, or anti-boredom pills. She’s just so unbelievably surprised that the Chemical analysis laboratories would release such a medicinal breakthrough before the cure for AIDS, but she guesses that there are a lot more people out there in life who are in dire need for this pill and she’s just lucky to have such a lax governent…governing the country that chemical labs really do come up with miracle workers and sell them.
But for the bored, cigarettes are still the numero uno concoction. Cigarettes come in handy; twenty sticks to a pack, and it doesn’t take much effort to light one, you put it to your lips, inhale, and exhale. She reasons that cigarettes can be brought anywhere and you can have colourful cigarette lighters. You can even collect cigarette packs. She can maybe worry about her lungs in five years, or even ten years if she’s careful.
So, to futher be de-bored, she insists on using a cigarette roller, see archives maybe you’ll find it (Top Ten), because the movement of her fingers on the black roller texture gives her a reason to remember that there is more to lighting, inhaling and exhaling. If she runs out of tobacco she tears open a Marlboro Light, removes the tobacco, and rolls her own cigarette. Then, for a few precious seconds she is busy.
But she’s not always bored. How can she be bored, look at what she does, she hardly comes home, she hardly sleeps, she’s always either getting out of the bathroom shivering wet after a shower and hurrying to get dressed “dammit I’m always so fucking late” she mutters, or she’s always trying to talk someone into going out of town with her. Constantly hangs out with those damn noisy bunch of people who spend every available weekend holed up who-knows-where, talking till four about who-knows-what. Or she’s inventing jokes at 77 with the owner of the cafe who refuses to make cappucino “for personal reasons”. If not, she’s always trying to make the dog bark, make the dog angry, make the dog laugh, trying to teach the dog new tricks such as “Sit. Sit. I said Sit. Sit goddam it. Sit… can you hear me? I said sit. No dog of mine should be so dumb. Sit. Sit. Hey… Oh, comeon, don’t be mad, I love you smelly doggy” *hugs and kisses to the dog*
And even when she’s watching TV her foot moves, swinging left to right, back and forth, kicking the person in front of her, or behind her. She’s always and forever walking as if she’s got some big emergency, always running to the train before the doors hiss close, always wanting to be the first one off the bus. In front of the computer…? She’s singing at the same time. When she’s sending an SMS she’s explaining to anyone who can hear what the SMS contains.
She’s just so hyperactive.
She just can’t sit still, can she?
It’s such a zen thing, as stated in the first paragraph: deleting things you can’t really figure out. Things that don’t make sense. Her mailbox on Yahoo, it’s about to explode. “You are using 99% of your account”, says the attractive red bar that dangerously lingers to its maximum limit. She’s feeling un-zen because of all these little details that surround her. Her paintings make her sick — they certainly don’t belong to the Shabby Chic(tm)palette.
Good lord in heaven above.
(and)
Hotheaded devil burning in hell.
But how can things be less crowded if, along with two officemates in the waiting room of the CAP Clinic awaiting their turn for the standard employee medical examinations, that “relaxing zen fountain” that trickles “relaxing water sounds” makes her want to tip the whole goddam thing over?
“I want to tip this whole goddam fountain over,” the girl muttered to her officemate.
“You won’t do that. It’s supposed to be relaxing for Chrissakes. Will you just relax?”
“I’ll stick my hand in, then.” The water, it’s not cool. It’s not refreshing at all. Yeah. That’s what she does. She sticks her hand in things that are supposed to be relaxing, into things that are supposed to be left alone.
So many times have the tables turned, have the clocks changed, have the birds nested, have larvae turned into pupas or pupas into larvae or how does it go before they turn into butterflies? So many times of that sort of thing.
Manila has been chilly for the past few days. Dipping a bit under twenty if you may, and people use this as an excuse to shrug into light jackets. Her office is freezing all day long. The temperature doesn’t even bother her. And yet she lets it, just so.
Just so. There is a temperamental elevator at her office building, she knows it stops at the 8th floor, the 8th floor which is virtually empty, without lights. It’s the first elevator to the left, and still she insists on riding it each morning, getting a thrill when it lurches between the seventh and the ninth, opening at the eigth. Yesterday she dawdled around the eigth floor, because it opened.
Is she, you may be wondering, equating zen to boredom? No she’s not. “She’s not? But it’s been mentioned nearly ten times already.” Has it? I don’t know. I, as the writer of this little “story”, do not reread anything anymore, do not print anything anymore, do not even bother to go back a few steps to wonder : “Hey, didn’t I just have lunch?” And she, she as the subject of this little “story”, is transported back to work, her teeth biting her lower lip, swinging in her chair. She’s probably dreaming of her next cigarette break. The escape for a little chitchat, the need to hear the noise before the eye of the storm.
So that’s why she didn’t hear it — because before the eye of the storm is the calm before the eye of the storm.
But calmness has a noise. It’s not zen. It’s not spiritual. She doesn’t really feel like focusing on the poetic aspects of things anymore. These days, she refers to them all as “stuff”. An example: “That stuff… what do you call that… over there.” (she’s ordering lunch, by the way).
She forgot the word potatoes.
But with white noise or without, who really gives a care in the world… she doesn’t know, she won’t bother, she wouldn’t even bat an eyelash. Because who cares, right? She never deleted ALL her messages, she left just one on her phone, and if that isn’t zen, she doesn’t know WHAT is.
