gahdspeed

[gahdspeed]

A letter from October 21st, 2020

Oct 21, 2023, 6:30 AM

The following is a letter from October 21, 2020, delivered from the past by FutureMe

To three-year-old Claire,

By the time you read this, I hope you've died enough that you're not afraid of the sun waiting for you every morning anymore.

Strive to become death itself, so you no longer have to fear whatever currently grips and holds you back from living in the world you continue to build for yourself. As the Hagakure Guide puts it: "Die in thought every morning, and you will not be afraid to die." Rise from the rubble. And always look back.

Claire

21 October 2020

8:57 PM

Amidst the pandemic, your thesis, and other academic responsibilities, simping for Levi Ackerman, and your silent grief for another circle whose lives were changed by the ultimate passing of their comrade last year.

[gahdspeed]

2001

[gahdspeed]

what resembles the grave but isn't

Always falling into a hole, then saying “ok, this is not your grave, get out of this hole,” getting out of the hole which is not the grave, falling into a hole again, saying “ok, this is also not your grave, get out of this hole,” getting out of that hole, falling into another one; sometimes falling into a hole within a hole, or many holes within holes, getting out of them one after the other, then falling again, saying “this is not your grave, get out of the hole”; sometimes being pushed, saying “you can not push me into this hole, it is not my grave,” and getting out defiantly, then falling into a hole again without any pushing; sometimes falling into a set of holes whose structures are predictable, ideological, and long dug, often falling into this set of structural and impersonal holes; sometimes falling into holes with other people, with other people, saying “this is not our mass grave, get out of this hole,” all together getting out of the hole together, hands and legs and arms and human ladders of each other to get out of the hole that is not the mass grave but that will only be gotten out of together; sometimes the willful-falling into a hole which is not the grave because it is easier than not falling into a hole really, but then once in it, realizing it is not the grave, getting out of the hole eventually;  sometimes falling into a hole and languishing there for days, weeks, months, years, because while not the grave very difficult, still, to climb out of and you know after this hole there’s just another and another; sometimes surveying the landscape of holes and wishing for a high quality final hole; sometimes thinking of who has fallen into holes which are not graves but might be better if they were; sometimes too ardently contemplating  the final hole while trying to avoid the provisional ones; sometimes dutifully falling and getting out, with perfect fortitude, saying “look at the skill and spirit with which I rise from that which resembles the grave but isn’t!“ 

[gahdspeed]

*welcome to the black parade playing in the distance*

[gahdspeed]

"Keep da Change!" c. 2018 from "Ligaw-Tingin", a komik anthology of Filipina wlw komiks published with Gantala Press.

[gahdspeed]

the “this guy looks weird” to “this guy looks weird 😳” pipeline literally so dangerous.

[gahdspeed]

i am beyond relieved to have what for two years i had thought to be some form of romantic love, negated by an unironically shattering knowledge that would otherwise have torn my insides had my feelings were real in that sense.

i guess the crawling feeling had bothered me so much that it never offered space for other emotions to come through. when i became aware of the other's relationship, the chills i felt with the realization that all the attention i'd received in the past wasn't of that nature were real, and for a second, my view went white and cloudy. yet, the knowledge was what freed me from two years of being constantly troubled by why the hell i couldnt stop stop stop thinking about them. i felt a brief sadness, but whatever. i got to witness the sun shone brightly somewhere in my head. nothing can top that moment.

love is a blessing, but it can also be a curse oftentimes. i'm in the point of my life where non-romantic comradeship is the only thing i allow to bother me because it's in it where i find the genuine desire to completely be with someone, fight against heaven and hell with them and be of service to them. being in love with people isn't something i can tolerate and handle right now. i am thankful that my suspicions concerning my feelings turned out to be all wrong.

loneliness makes us do crazy stuff to ourselves sometimes.

[gahdspeed]

[gahdspeed]

day 8: 8 days after i took the putanginang rapid test, and 15th day since my first - and hopefully last - symptom appeared and took me under its control. i still haven’t regained my sense of smell yet, and i’m *completely* sure that this shit has nothing to do with [virus name redacted], but that doesn’t stop me from worrying about it, either. anyway. the last five days i’ve spent listening to stuff impassively and mostly for educational purposes. i’m very looking forward to sharing the spreadsheet comprising of my weekly music list + recs on the internet, as part of the ̶c̶r̶e̶a̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶j̶e̶c̶t̶s̶  few stupid things i’ve been wanting to orchestrate for a while. i’m still trying to reimagine its design not really as a self-centered display of the music-related stuff i’ve listened to, but hopefully more as a platform for online collaboration between musicians/music fans/unemployed/plebs/etc. no limits. working on it. 

and finally working on my music. :)))))

[gahdspeed]

SAVE US FROM OUR SINS A. G. COOK

[gahdspeed]

day 3: i’m not in a panic state anymore, unlike the one i was in after i found out that i tested positive for that goddamn antibody test. i also feel low-key embarrassed for ruining everyone’s morning that day, specifically the ones i came into direct contact with the day my first (and hopefully last) symptom appeared. i also want to apologize to friends whom i had impulsively ranted to about the inaccuracies of rapid antibody tests, pricey PCR tests, and milktpapi--basically a few people whom i had made the mistake of blabbing shit to without their consent. upon learning that i *tested positive*, aunts from my mother’s side immediately sent me a bunch of different vitamins to take (one of them being the chinese herbal medicine that supposedly *cured* the dictator’s son, martial law denier and oXfOrD gRaDuAtE bongbong marcos’ covid-19 when he had it months ago). i take all of them daily, in gratitude and in frustration.

i’ve yet to take a swab test to confirm if i really *have* it, but then i realized sooner that knowing whether i contain the virus or not wouldn’t really change anything if after that my loss of smell continues. i so miss my smell. i miss sniffing myself. 

i guess the most important thing that came out of the last two days since seeing those plus signs besides igg and igm is the feeling that everything doesn’t look surreal anymore. that sudden realization definitely helped me collect myself so i can work this shit out with my already vulnerable parents, friends who stopped worrying about me, and relatives who keep on sending me that dr. ong youtube video. i really hope this ain’t it. 

[gahdspeed]

day 1: people on reddit say i have it; cousins who are kind enough to conceal what i low-key believe to be true say i don’t; a young medical technician who, like myself, questions the accuracy of rapid antibody tests, would’ve declared the result negative only if they were the nurse who took my blood; friends begin talks in a scientific lingo i couldn’t understand; everything on F♯ A♯ ∞ says i have to prepare for the worst. 

this is how i remember my august 18 2020 9:45 am went: nurse called my name, asked first if i knew people who tested positive, and if i went out of my house often. shook my head to each query. they then proceeded to say it straight, with no hint of letting me prepare for what’s about to come: positive ka. you tested positive. take a picture of your result. isolate for 14 days more. i asked them if i should go to the hospital, even if i already knew the answer. hindi. no. i said my thanks, went to the bathroom, got out of that place, walked past the precinct where my father was jailed numerous times, and wondered what album should i listen to next going home; i opted for none.

[gahdspeed]

fever dream #1

it never ceases to amaze me how thoughts of you can immediately transform themselves into images of you doing stuff that makes you think of life, or makes you wish you didn’t ask for it. well, you didn’t ask for it, like how i didn’t ask for it, or M didn’t ask for it. our parents were either thinking too grandly of the idea of giving birth to a child whose life will later on be determined by how much hours their mother or father can or cannot work a day, or how the mental picture of bringing another life to this world can be realized only with less than one thousand pesos as long the couple don’t wear protection and ermita remains ermita, and it excited them so much because they were religious fucks who knelt before god and made others do the same to them. i hope you're doing what makes you breathe, even if you don’t have stomach for it. you have emphasized enough through your last musical project the remnants of a demolition from which for who knows how long you stood and emerged. but that's not music, i first thought, like someone from mow's who would always process people's musical tastes with his self-made sink filter. how can that qualify as an album made of pieces of percussion sounds and bells and vocal reverbs, when the only thing i heard was your lingering silence when i asked if you could hug me for the last time? i cannot give you my money, nor our no-longer-ours house. i cannot give you my one and only pair of chucks. i cannot hand you without blinking the last food on the plate. but you should've came to me. the only thing i can do for you is compete with the void inside you and fill them in with piles of innate loneliness you would never wish for them ever again, even if you no longer texts me back. anyways, my offer remains valid.

[gahdspeed]

Chino Moreno, 1989

[gahdspeed]

My mind shifting to memories of me watching episodes of Naruto & Naruto Shippuden on local TV stations and online streaming websites always makes me nostalgic and somewhat gloomy, mostly for the best reasons. Like everyone else in their early to late 20s, I basically grew up with Naruto, stuck with him in his messianic journey to save the world infected with generations of unsettled hatred and vengeance. My early high school journals (to which I still go back to sometimes) are filled with rants to giddy run-on sentences from how Orochimaru sucked when he gained control of Sasuke to that time where Hinata unhesitatingly faced Nagato (Pain) and scored a blow in order to get closer to Naruto. These memorable times, frankly, never left me in spirit and memory, nor did time succeed at washing those away with years of affliction and anger enough to conceal events in life that were once happy and worthy of telling. Even after about a decade, I still find myself clinging to them because they remind me so much of the kind of person that I used to be.

One character in Naruto that didn’t really sit well with me was Uchiha Sasuke. I didn’t understand his motivations, or perhaps I was just too young and naive to fully grasp the intensity of his emotions that he capitalized on to achieve his personal goals. He was this figure so enormous and intensely mad for his visions there was no way to tame him without considering the possibility of killing him. I couldn’t contain Sasuke, not even Naruto at first, thus he became another handsome character to me whose intentions and history of traumas didn’t matter as long as he remained physically beautiful. 

But now that I’ve grown up, with everything from my /childhood/ finally brought to light, I can finally say that among all the characters in Naruto, Sasuke was and still the only character in the series whom I strongly resonate with (the other two from other animes being this and this). I can finally understand with empathy the things he had to go through growing up as a result of Danzo's Duterte-esque methods of sAvInG tHe wHoLe ViLLaGe some loser elderly guy's eternal hunger for power. It may seem exaggeratingly fictitious at first that someone with a failed childhood would go through such lengths to achieve the very selfish-deemed goal that brought him his drive in life, but when you're someone who have gone through the same abusive and lonely things when you were young, it's ultimately hard to get away from these memories & continue living without spiralling into the same void, not even time can withstand its extremity. ⁿᵒᵗ ᵈᶦˢᶜᵒᵘⁿᵗᶦⁿᵍ ʰᶦˢ ᶜʳᶦᵐᵉˢ ᵃⁿᵈ ʸᵉᵃʳˢ ᵒᶠ ᵈᶦˢᶦˡˡᵘˢᶦᵒⁿᵐᵉⁿᵗ ᵒᶠᶜ ᶦᵐ ᵃˡˡ ᶠᵒʳ ʰᵉ ˢʰᵒᵘˡᵈ'ᵛᵉ ᵖᵃᶦᵈ ᶠᵒʳ ᵗʰᵉ ᵃᵗʳᵒᶜᶦᵗᶦᵉˢ ʰᵉ'ᵈ ᶜᵒᵐᵐᶦᵗᵗᵉᵈ ᵇᵘᵗ ʷʰᵃᵗ ᶦᵐ ᵗʳʸⁿᵃ ᵈᵒ ʰᵉʳᵉ ᶦˢ ᵘⁿᵈᵉʳˢᵗᵃⁿᵈ ʰᶦˢ ᵖˢʸᶜʰᵉ ʷᶦᵗʰᵒᵘᵗ ʳᵉˢᵒʳᵗᶦⁿᵍ ᵗᵒ ᵗʰᵉ ˢᵘʳᶠᵃᶜᵉ⁻ˡᵉᵛᵉˡ ᵒᵖᶦⁿᶦᵒⁿ 'ʰᵉ ᵇ��ᵈ ᵍᵘʸ' ʸᵃˡˡ ⁿᵃʳᵘᵗᵒ ᶠᵃⁿˢ ʳ ᵃˡˡ ᵍᵘᶦˡᵗʸ ᵒᶠ ᵖᵘˡˡᶦⁿᵍ.

Sasuke couldn't have emphasized this enough. His concluding speech always gets me everytime, and remains one of my sources of internal strength especially during these emotionally draining times. He's no longer what we were used to think about him. He's now a father to Sarada, Sakura’s husband, a tomato-loving guy in his early thirties whose goals of protecting the village never wavered, and a ninja, who once told us to keep believing, trying and enduring until we finally become able.

Happy birthday to my first love . 愛してる  (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡

[gahdspeed]

Haruma passed away today. Seeing him on screen has always been synonymous with bittersweet childhood that i'd rather forget, but just couldn't. It's like i grew up with him, and he knew the things i've been through during those years. I was just thinking about him during the first two months of the lockdown, and was actually planning to watch his other works when I finally get the chance. But I guess I won't be able to do that for now.

Rest in power, Haruma. Your contagious smile was and will always be one of the most beautiful smiles I've ever seen in my life.

[gahdspeed]

not because i display so much of myself on social media doesn't mean my mother has been freed from paying her debts from more than a decade ago. choosing to exercise my right to speak out, even if it includes petty rants and little knowledge on how these -isms work and affect us on a daily basis doesn't automatically spell that i am able to sleep at night without spiralling into thoughts of disappearance and traumas. stop implying that i consume my meals worry-free, and that i take my bath, masturbate and not think of all the people that i've lost and almost hugged.