Despondent to the misery
Anticipating short-changed catharsis
Temper trapped between depression and crankiness
All I can say is goodnight
all i want for xmas
all i want for xmas is...
... to wake up without an alarm clock
...to ride my bike again for leisure
... to read a book in silence
... to play my guitar again
...to be able to take a long, warm bath
... to be relieved of my perpetual headache
... to wake up without an alarm clock
...to ride my bike again for leisure
... to read a book in silence
... to play my guitar again
...to be able to take a long, warm bath
... to be relieved of my perpetual headache
Shit
A shitty life is:
When you wake up in the morning and in the middle of the night because someone has to shit
When you get called to drop everything to help someone shit
When you get called to clean after somone's shit
When you're eating but have to stop because someone needs help shitting
When you constantly hear farts, when you constantly smell farts
When you constantly see and clean after shit
When almost all you see and do has something to do with shit
When you realize that there's nothing you can do but deal with all the shit
Holy shit
anxiety
Time stands still
when circumstances
declare your indefinite
hiatus from life.
On constant adrenaline rush
motivated by functioning depression.
Wondering about faith
in an Almighty, Omnipotent
and the dissonance to that claim
and existential reality.
How can that be true?
I stare at the imminent
and protracted decay
of life.
Living among the sick,
oppressed, vulnerable and dying.
No silver linings in sight.
when circumstances
declare your indefinite
hiatus from life.
On constant adrenaline rush
motivated by functioning depression.
Wondering about faith
in an Almighty, Omnipotent
and the dissonance to that claim
and existential reality.
How can that be true?
I stare at the imminent
and protracted decay
of life.
Living among the sick,
oppressed, vulnerable and dying.
No silver linings in sight.
Tired
I has taken me a long time to put things into writing.
I am not in a good place right now.
I am overwhelmed.
I have been feeling like this for more than a year now --but more so at the start of this year.
With so many things happening I often feel like I'm hanging on a thread.
Oftentimes I'm too exhausted to pause and consider.
I just feel tired.
Too tired to even stop and think and more so to write.
Everything.
Can't articulate.
Just cry.
Alone.
I am not in a good place right now.
I am overwhelmed.
I have been feeling like this for more than a year now --but more so at the start of this year.
With so many things happening I often feel like I'm hanging on a thread.
Oftentimes I'm too exhausted to pause and consider.
I just feel tired.
Too tired to even stop and think and more so to write.
Everything.
Can't articulate.
Just cry.
Alone.
Zombies are better off than capitalists
I find it interesting because it reveals a side of humanity that puts into question highest boast of civility and order amidst chaos. It makes us put ourselves in the shoes of the characters and ask the same question of 'what will I do given the same circumstances?'
Zombie movies function as a mirror to our collective values and pretenses on matter of survival and being human. It dares to put us in the middle of the tension between living to fight another day in an eternity of living dead; asking us whether it is actually us the survivors who are the real walking dead for we are no longer different from the zombies who are driven by the primal urge to press on living at the expense of others lives.
It is on this theme of the zombie movie genre that I find Yeon Sang-ho's Train to Busan a welcomed contribution to themes advanced by the zombie genre. I find it special because it saliently functions as a Marxist social commentary to the conventions of class relations, that is more relatable than George Romero's take on the idea in his movie Land of the Dead.
Choosing to see otherwise
In the midst of all
the pageantries and tradition that comes with the yuletide season, we
are often led to believe that Christmas is a time of joy and
celebration with our loved ones.
It is.
But to one must
remember that, such wasn't the case in 1st century CE in
Roman Judea.
Once Jesus was born
and after the shepherds, then the wise men have left, there was only
the impulse to flee.
King Herod orders
the execution of all young male children in the village of
Bethlehem, so as to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn "King
of the Jews".
In an ironic twist
of faith the so-called Savior flees with his parents to their
salvation from the oppressive hands of the State.
The Christmas story
would not be complete if we exclude the story of the innocents
massacred by Herod1
as Jesus, Joseph and Mary made their way to Egypt –as refugees.
It's possible that we forget
this story, because it doesn't fit in with the motif that we have
been accustomed to because the State, the Church, the corporations,
the establishment and the powers-that-be who benefit from the status quo chose to paint us an incomplete picture –one that is: safe. Unchallenging. Reactionary.
Because for us to see otherwise would mean the turning of tables and
the shifting of power.
The great irony of
the Christmas drama is that Christ was born so that he could die.
We try to romanticize it by saying that it was a mission --a part of
a divine drama that will unfold, where Jesus dies for his ungrateful
creation.
The space in between
Jesus' birth and death presents us with narratives that challenges us
to rise up and make a difference by proclaiming freedom for the
oppressed2,
turning the other cheek3
and loving our neighbor as our selves4–to
bring hope.
How do we become
hope incarnate in the midst of violence at a time when the poor
suffer, when tenderness and life burned out of them5?
Should we be content
in preaching heaven? In praying away our sufferings? Or should we
take sides and declare that a better world is possible?
The gospel challenges us to struggle with the oppressed in realizing justice by refusing to treat evil as an acceptable part of a larger harmonious vision ---that is to live in constant anxiety with nothing but faith in the One who said that whatever we have done for the least has cosmic significance6.
___
1Matthew
2:16-18
2Luke
4:18
3Matthew
5:38-40
4Matthew
22:39
5A
line I borrowed from Otto Rene Castillo's Apolitical Intellectuals
6Matthew
25:40
Cynical talk is cheap
Me and the organizations that I'm a part of do not join and are not supportive of token 'environmental awareness' activities like Earth Run.
I agree with the contradiction of the run’s intention and the outcome that followed. I’ve seen a lot of critical posts based on the picture above. A lot of them blasting hypocrisy and rightfully pointing out the failure. But I’m quite interested in how the case would be if the same standard put on the event stand with the personal ecological footprint of those who made the post.
I’m sure all would fall short and that everyone would be guilty of the same hypocrisy that the event organisers have been founded guilty of.
But having been involve in a number of advocacies. I’ve come to realise that that hypocrisy is the gap between aspiration and action. Perhaps the alternative to hypocrisy isn’t moral purity (since no one manages that), but cynicism.(experience also has it that the cynical ones usually are the most apathetic at social engagement).
It’s not easy living green without going completely off the grid, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do what we can – and accept that sometimes we’ll fail. The key is to be aware of our own contradictions and struggling to be better, while living in the constant tension of the vast space in between the now and not yet of our vision.
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