It's Only Castles Burning

Hey, but I’m sick of everybody
Tellin’ me what to do.
- Poe

On March 15 this year, I scheduled a meeting with my immediate superior, and promptly told her I was done with the firm. Fin. Kaputt. I was, of course, considerate enough to give four weeks' notice, but that's about as far as my commitment goes.After that, I get to unshackle myself and say hello to sweet sweet freedom.

You see, I duked it out in the corporate world for nearly two years, surrendering myself to dress codes and a rigid schedule. I got intimate with Microsoft Outlook for 40 hours a week and smiled patiently while girls launched into vicious gossiping sprees: Oh my god, Peachy, our boss thinks so highly of herself and intentionally mispronounces all these words BAHAHA—oh ♫ HELLO boss! ♪ I have kwento for you!!♫ I swear, there is no end to the insincerity. 

Since August 2009, I have also tolerated the self-satisfied drone and sheer vapidity of office buzzwords. Can you imagine the bravery it takes to read emails that talk endlessly about “moving forward” and “best practices,” especially when they're used within the most ill-fitting contexts? Do people really know what the hell these words mean?

I sometimes get emails from very serious and motivated people who would say, “Unfortunately, it is not our best practice to feature this. Regarding the issue, we can ask one of our designers yakkety penis penis. Moving forward, I hope this resolves the problem blah blah gonorrhea.” It makes me want to go over to their seats and applaud them. It makes me want to toss ticker tape and glitter and gummy bears in their general direction, and congratulate them for sounding like total professional dickheads.

But enough of that. The point is that I hated my job. I hated talking about how good our lawyers were, about whatever it was that made us the best law firm in the world, spanning 70 jurisdictions and representing the bejesus out of commercial giants. This year, I received news that we had just reached the pinnacle of all corporate dreams, that we were named the highest-grossing law firm in the entire world. HOORAY! To celebrate the news, I clipped all my fingernails and went out for a cigarette.

Anyway, I am saying goodbye to my job. I am also, in effect, saying goodbye to hefty quarterly bonuses, generous medical coverage, and reimbursable vacation leaves. Whatever. All that money’s just a clever trick to keep you paralyzed to your desk, agog at the size of your paycheck. But I see too many jokers who hate their high-paying jobs, and surely I have a choice, surely I can engage in something worth my time.

So now I’ve gotten myself a consultancy gig for a startup foundation; it’s a lot of work towards renewable energy and community development, and it’s good to know that I’m working for something I can care about. I’m turning 28 this year, boys and girls. I am finally doing justice to the fact that I have a pulse. I am finally moving forward towards best practices. Barf bag, please!

What do you plan to do with all your freedom

And is there any point
in ever having children?
No, I don’t know.
- The Smiths

I’m cobbling together this entry while waiting for the saucepan to heat up. Green chicken curry’s the project for tonight, although I’d call it a wussy version of the real Thai deal; I got store-bought green curry paste instead of pounding away at a whole bunch of herbs with a mortar and pestle.

My excuses are valid. First off, I don’t know where to find bergamot, and second, I don’t have a mortar and pestle. Which is a shame — not having a mortar and pestle — because there’s so much you can do with this incredible kitchen implement. You can make a batch of awesome homemade pesto sauce or grind peanuts to a smooth paste for kare-kare. You can crush garlic with the sort of brutality you would reserve for mortal enemies. You can also crush your mortal enemies if you wish, but then there’s the problem of having them fit into the mortar, so screw that.

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I should be sleeping early, but living alone is more time-consuming than you think. And living alone with a cat — ah. So much to do once you stagger home from a sedating day in the office. Clean up the kitty litter, feed the little critter, try to sweep the dust off the floor, wash the dishes piled on the sink, and worry about tomorrow’s meal.

If I’m going to be painfully honest, I scarcely do half the job I’m supposed to in the flat. Coming home from work, all I want to do is melt into a puddle of exhaustion on my bed. I wonder how our parents did it, shuttling us from the house to school and back, getting dinner ready, feeding the dogs and cats and chickens. Was their sense of martyrdom so fine-tuned, enough so they could devote a good lot of their lives raising a pair of impossible girls?


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Shit. I almost poured isopropyl alcohol into the saucepan instead of the vegetable oil. I’m an idiot. I once lathered my hair up with feminine wash instead of shampoo. I didn’t want to know that! you protest. But I said it anyway.

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Duy and I are getting married next year, and one thing is for certain. We don’t want kids. I cannot reconcile myself to the possibility of it. There’s so much to do, so much to work hard for. And think of all the places we haven’t gone to yet! What’s going to happen to all the gallivanting when a kid enters the scene? What about all that lovely beer, the carelessness? So forget it, ladies and gentlemen. No kids for me. Woe is the babe accidentally formed in the soft pulp of my uterus (knock on wood). Imagine dinner time, what a travesty it’ll be. I’ll be whipping up curry, but then I end up sending a few glugs of isopropyl alcohol into the pot by mistake. And then the police will be after me! No no no no no.

=====

So Peachy, here’s a deadline for you. One poem by Sunday. One poem. It shouldn’t be so hard. Damn, I’m sweating bullets.

Another cog in the loading zone

Mystery achievement, where’s my sandy beach, yeah?
I got my dreams like everybody else,
but they’re out of reach, I said right out of reach!
- The Pretenders

I'll be turning 27 on November, and the bald reality of that number is making me feel a little funny. Make no mistake: I'm not slipping into a terminal case of denial about getting older, the way some folks chirp about how it's their 18th birthday every year, even if everyone knows that they're fucking 30, their wrinkles a spread of canyons that could easily be a lucrative tourist attraction—no. My unease isn't on account of me pining for lost youth either, as though youth were a thing you could hold in your hand, its corners and surfaces all there, a thing which you later misplace quite by accident, never to be retrieved again.

It's not even about how I "feel old" -- which I do not -- or about how the years are lurching on and the tides of cultural filth and human depravity are about to crash over my head, or whatever it is people say these days to sound intelligent. It's really about what 27 represents to me. It's what 25, 20, and 18 used to be before I finally became those numbers and I'd gotten past them, moving on to larger digits pinned to my chest. You know what I'm saying?

No?

It's just that -- okay, look. When I was 15, I distinctly remember feeling that 18 -- turning 18 -- was inconceivable. 18 meant adulthood. 18 meant being one of those young women I saw in Sunday mass, their backs graceful and their faces placid. Turning 18 meant receiving a bonus prize of confidence and wisdom from the benevolent cosmos. I also thought I would get some nice boobs. And would that it were true, because by the time I turned 18, I found myself fundamentally unchanged: I still had terrible posture, and people kept on asking me if I was okay because I apparently have a stern face and therefore look angry all the time. Plus, I wasn't particularly smarter or more mature (although I did think I was, I really did), and I didn't feel like an adult at all. I also never got the boobs.

In other words, certain ages represent distant, inaccessible landmarks that I’m always waving at and speculating about, convinced that I would never get to within 10 yards of them. I know it sounds ingenuous and downright stupid, but when I was younger, I didn’t think I would ever turn 18, 20, or 25. I most certainly couldn’t imagine turning 27.

Especially 27. Stepping into 27 means officially stepping into that ominous-sounding category called “the late 20s,” a period which I’ve always looked at as a colossal milestone, marked by the first genuine stirrings of professional achievement and financial stability. Neither of which I have. I feel like I’m getting shoved prematurely into territory that I’m ill-prepared for. I feel like I should be writing more poetry at this point. I’m not. I feel like I should be doggedly sprinting — huffing and puffing — after Lifelong Goals Dreamed Up When I Was 20. I’m not. Instead, I’m committed to my daily responsibilities in an office with a general mood dry as a nervous throat. I work from 9 to 6 and get paid twice a month. Which is fine, I guess. There’s rent to worry about and bills to answer to, practical reality that I’d be hard-pressed to thumb my nose at.

Well. So. 27 is a month or so away. Things are comfortable, trotting at a steady clip, but I’m also in a state that’s dangerously close to complacency. Time to kick awake those little hibernating dreams in the basement, time for the kind of chaos that prefaces true satisfaction, time to do stuff that I really wanna do. I can save enough and walk away from this job in maybe a couple of years, I can get a tattoo, get on that fucking Bohol spot where they let you plummet from an impossible height so that your body is possessed by wind and gravity all at once. Burn my clothes, get stung by clots of hot-tempered jellyfish, learn to sew. Go and hike up more mountains. And then and then: write the stinkiest poetry, poetry that I’ll want to disown, lines and metaphors that’ll make me crinkle up my nose, poetry that isn’t self-reproachful or afraid or cautious. And enough of the terror, Peachy. Enough.