I spent the whole evening sitting before a mirror to keep myself company.

Cesare Pavese
November 6, 1938
Diary entry


To commune or not to commune?

Hey Nate, I just read your previous post. A report before I place a few punches in this little verbal fight clubbing.

Got good grades this sem, the last leg of my coursework. The numbers came close to what I thought I deserved, but shot far from what I expected them to give me. These numbers mark the end of my semester, maybe a call to end my descent into the tarpits of doubt.

On one hand, I'm all smiles. Moreover, my work made the people who supported me - all my true family - happy too. The other dionysian thespian mask keeps a permanent, ineffable expression. I can't love my work entirely. I know the cost of my efforts. Had I known these dues, would I have played a different gambit?

Tonight, I must consider that a useless question. Choice made, die cast, bombs planted. The time for doubts must end simply because I can't afford the luxury anymore. On Tuesday, another semester.

I indulge in our elementally inutile banter for reasons mirroring yours. You've been here. You know this.

(1) I must hear this God. Until then, I'll work with flesh and blood.

(2) I just got half of my 13th month pay. I'll get you a copy of Quibuyen's A Nation Aborted in the same spirit of the Coates that you gave me years ago. Your view of community is closer to Rizal than you imagine, his plan also invokes the necessity for a morally grounded unity. Rizal and Bonifacio followed a dream corrupted by the interests of Aguinaldo and his ilk, his unbroken line at the helm of the state.

(3) I must tell you that your preference for communes was also contemplated by Rizal and Gandhi. Gandhi saw the same solution, an unrealized dream that would've completely faced off against the European model. According to Quibuyen, Rizal's plan for New Calamba and his work in Dapitan asserts his vision of a nation of Dapitans and Calambas, a net of small, internally cohesive communes.

(4) Nobody referred to Bonifacio as 'Hari ng Bayan' or 'Hari ng Bayang Katagalugan'. You must've perused Santos, Zaide, or historians who followed their work. Guerrero, Encarnacion, and Villegas corrected this around eight years ago. According to them, the documents revealed his title as the Pangulo nang Haring Bayang Katagalugan', that is, President of the Sovereign Nation of Katagalugan. Rizal looked forward to a nation too. This was the point of his imitation of Christ, his absorption of European ideals, and the Pasyon.

(5) The elegant myth of eternal return (your six Neos and the oft-quoted story of the ogre-slayer becoming the ogre) is something I reject even if it were real. The rightists propagate this to justify their inaction or their end-of-history scenarios. I reject it simply because paralysis is not my luxury either. If the universe will tell me in the end that all efforts were in vain - a mad splashing in the water, all sound and signification infuriated at nothing - then I'll get to that end and wring that word from the cosmos myself. Never mind the footnotes when it comes to this fundamental thing. I'd rather move than receive such 'truths' from the workings of a pirated DVD player.

Something short tonight I'm afraid. A full day got the better of me.