Nil

Life can turn out to be a big joke sometimes. But often, I forget to laugh.

I sometimes wonder why people would like to live it eternally. Or again and again in unending cycles. It's like saying I'd like to eat rice forever although the more exoticized parts of my stomach revolt at the thought! It's just that rice is the only thing we serve around here. And somewhere, sometime long ago, we developed the idea that projecting an eternal paradise of unending rice in our collective mind will somehow make it more tasteful.

But I guess people have to give life value or else the choice to not live will be much too attractive for comfort. When that happens, no one will be left living to pay tithes, provide captive audience to the speeches of the "important," strengthen the republic, and tell multi-colored lies to.

There won't be anyone left to imagine Nations, write newspaper articles and theses to justify actions of the absentee elite for the inarticulate masses, and generate GNP or GDP at the expense of remaining biosystems. Now that would be the easiest way to imagine utopia, a world without homo sapiens.

And I won't have to commit any wrongdoing. I don't have to feel any guilt when I do and when the people close to me suffer my karma for me. There won't be me, other people, or closeness. And I don't have to go on forever imagining soul-mates and forever-flames or whatever because I am truly and concretely nothing. Not a statistic,Tax ID number, a passbook, or 15-minuter which is just being virtually nothing.

I won't be any good to anybody either too but who would care? Ripples don't make sense without the sea anyway. And even with the sea, ripples don't matter.

A thinker said that what we have here is not really existence but just the non-existence of non-existence. I don't see much difference where even existence could be nothing but a preface, afterthought, and taste of non-existence. And he should be mighty glad non-existence didn't exist else no one will publish him and shell out pennies for his thoughts.

So there I have it, my yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows framed in the context of "nothing-anyway." But here I have the sun, it's high in the sky, telling me it's certainly noon in my place in-the-world, and my stomach tells me that I must have my lunch.

Here, I have friends. Maybe I'll spend an evening at Jol's. He might say "yeah-whatever" when he reads my mind and launch a dirtier (and infinitely more entertaining version) of everything I've just thought. Nathan will tell me that I must get myself a god or better yet, the God. And I'll get another taste of the classic Nathan-Jol debates discussing if I should-call-on-God or if it goes the-other-way-around. We all drink our spirits but, as usual, I get drunk before anybody else does because they're shooting their mouths off and I'm not. The rest of the gang will probably come in too late to change the topic to something more showbiz.

Here, I have family. Monica might come in, read my mind, and make me forget everything I've just thought. Or if I'm home, Dad might call me anytime now and ask why I'm home again and not working my butt off somewhere. Ma might call too and ask the same thing and I'll have to explain my schedule for the nth time. With a smile of course.

I think I'll have to wear it in perpetua.

Ate, Mae, and JR might come in anytime and asking where's-the-food? Thereupon I'll rub my stomach with a silly grin and that will irk them. But I'll say:

"Pipe down people! I'll have some rice cooking in a minute..."

And pretty soon, I'll be eating with kubyertos or bare hands, deep in the small talk that would take forever unless someone gets the bright idea of turning on the boob tube with gameshows featuring SexBomb Girls interspersed with newsflashes featuring GloMac. And I might get a taste of another one of those classic debates on who looks and sounds better.

I'll forget work, classes, and whatever problem or reason that got me all existential and nihilistic in the first place. Whatever this is I'm living, there's probably much more of it left to live.

Life can turn out to be a big joke sometimes. But often, oh so very often, I forget to laugh.