The Lonely Road

Monday, November 29, 2004
Stupid Things

The weekend has been crazy, I'll tell you that

It has been days since I've written but that's only because I have been busy with all sorts of things and feeling kinda down every now and then. Amazingly, no one even noticed but that's just me. I'm used to being alone.

So I haven't written on Dream Machine in a while. Video games and TV seems to be the routine and honestly, it makes thinking a lot harder. Furthermore, I find it harder and harder to think of the stuff to make the story pour through. So maybe I'll take a break for a while, after all, I can't write if I have no fuel right?

But you know, I find it easier to write in extreme depression or at least, when you get that feeling where it seems your guts are falling off and your just trying to hold it in. I mean, I'm not in trouble, I don't cry out suddenly or on the brink of a breakdown --no-- I'm just shutting everything off. Like how you try to shut everything out when you're really not in the mood to entertain anyone. Not really apathy but something like that.

Hard to say what's going on. Maybe just confused in some ways. Too much thinking will do me in one day, I know. I worry about the people around me sometimes. Yet, this time, I've never been more scared in my life.

All my life, some awful things always happen to my family. When we look back at them, we just laugh at it or at least respect the experience has something to be reckoned. There were times when one of us would be hospitalized in a 50-50 situation and to be honest, I think we all have been there on the edge of death, one time or another. But that's the thing, it has always been one of us. One would be in trouble and the others would pull him/her along. I never thought I'd have a dilemma like this...

My dad was brought to the hospital a few days ago and was diagnosed with very high blood pressure. Enough for a stroke to kill him, he told me. It seemed unreal yet he was after all, diagnosed with such time in and time out but I would not have expected to hear it straight from himself. My dad has always been a strong man, a real luchadore lifestyle dude. He'd never seem to understand what I did with books, writing or computer games but instead he'd do the typical manly things; taking interest in cars, electronics and action flicks seem to be his favorite thing. We never seem to see eye to eye but at least we respect each other. So hearing him admit weakness and even the possibility, God forbid, of ... (i shudder at the thought) seems to unreal. I can't admit it yet I can't ignore it.

But that's not the only thing...

It's seems my brother has been growing up yet his attitude hasn't. I mean, my brother and mother got into a fight over the computer while I was asleep. Apparently, my brother decided to have a fit when my mother had wanted to use the computer for a moment. So what happened now? My mother went into depression, awful ain't it?

Have you seen anyone really depressed? I mean, chronically depressed? It's not nice. It's as if their very lives have escaped them. Like I didn't know my mom anymore. My mother is a very wholesome person overall so seeing her like this, really worried me.

It was a very dismal scene when I went downstairs. My mother had her eyes closed on the recliner and her hand was holding my dad's closely as my father's head slumped down on the headrest. I have never seen them so...powerless. Now, my mother can't sleep right at night.

I feel like everything is falling apart. I'm on the verge on tears right now. My brother can't comprehend what's happening and we still get into fights. I don't get it. He wants to play his computer games to play with complete strangers who he considers as friends in which case, he exchanges for family. I can't believe him. My mom asks if she could use the computer but my brother doesnt let her, why?! so he can play with some guild member friends from who know's where, full of who-knows-who's in a computer game. Furthermore, he throws a fit whenever that opportunity is denied him. The numbskull, the idiot, the bastard, the lout. ASSHOLE. Growing up, my ass.

So what can I do now? Both my parents are having problems I can't possibly deal with and my brother isn't helping at all but instead, making it worse. School's being such an ass and business hasn't been picking up from what I heard.

My room is lonely now. No one is here. My parents are downstairs, I don't know what's happening; my brother is up on the rooftop in the middle of this storm, moping about how I am writing this very moment and not getting his way. I'm alone up here, all I hear now is the rain beating and the electric fan humming and the quiet melodies of rock n roll over winamp. I've never-- never -- felt more alone.

Riding the Lightning
7:14 PM

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Tuesday, November 23, 2004
The Dream Machine Intro

It's one of those days when I sit idly on a bench and seem to stare off into the sun that has just began to set over a cover of trees. The November rains has made the air tingly for some reason and I know that the holidays are coming up fast. School has been demanding lately and for some reason, I have begun to realize, or perhaps embrace, the way of life I had lived back then and I find myself back to where I was before. To guise amongst a crowd, a familiar face yet not too recognizable. A shadow of a person who isn't really there. Or just a wandering stranger who just happened to cross your path. I remember now how it was to be invisible and savor every moment of it, the quiet stillness and the serenity.

Most would crave attention or at least make themselves noticeable but I learned different and from a friend who I looked up to. You do things not to be noticed but just because that's how you want it because that is the whole point; doing things just to get attention is a child's act; doing things just because it's how you want to do it is remarkable. It's often a life unexplored since we demand so much of each other. And while yes, I do conform to norms, I still find ways to fight the mainstream somehow hence I go on wandering for a place to belong.

These thoughts come rarely, I admit. At often times, I feel as though I shouldn't be thinking of these but I do. I have grown accustomed to it and learned to embrace it because it meant one thing.

I had to write.

As the new sem approaches, new experiences and events are happening once again. Seems like history is catching up to me and yet they revolve around two things, Friends and Family. I have begun making new friends lately in college yet there were those rare occasions when the old circle would meet and on those rare occasions, I saw my story. Inspiration seems to come out best in either times of extreme nostalgia or extreme depression yet this was different altogether because maybe, for the first time, I was inspired by life stories. Yes, my friends have begun to trek their own life's paths and I find it endearing that we still have time to meet and exchange stories and so, I want to write this new story, in honor of our journey and somehow, to look back at the times we once shared.

The story will be in the context of my already written, GHOSTS, and following the first story, I will now venture on into the life of the Dreamer himself. As I received feedback from people, they seem to be intrigued by the Dreamer's personality who was displayed as being enigmatic and cold, I have to admit Dreamer is one of my favorite characters in the story and I couldn't wait to start his story where he was the star. So, following the first story, Syndicate Wars, this will be called the Dream Machine.

I'll get to the details on a latter time but for now, all I can say is it will be centered around the essence of family. Elle, Isaiah and Scion will play crucial roles and with the absence of the story's buttkickers (Richmond and Giovanni), you might ask what can possibly compensate for the action they have provided? It's simple really, Syndicate Wars was just a launching of the story and the succeeding titles will account for the synopsis of the entire series. Each story will layer over one another in depth, Dream Machine will do just that.

Riding the Lightning
5:27 PM

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Thursday, November 18, 2004
Duality

Duality...

Does it mean something to you? Do you believe in it somehow? The thought of two sides residing in one being seem somehow farfetched from human reasoning yet it is not very hard to believe at all, well in my case anyways.

It seems that there are some parts of the mind that sanity just cannot put in line. It's like a dark conscience, that inkling that contradicts what you are already thinking. Those it seem so unreal to believe that you are hiding some things just so that you can appear "normal"? I mean, we dictate a lot of things from each other, amazingly, we dictate each other too much from each other that we somehow lose the being of our oneness. This oneness becomes a mask that hide our true selves in which case, we lose the selves that we already have originally.

In much cases, we forget it so much that we never even conceive that it actually existed to begin with. You know, it's pretty much like Superman. He was an alien yet he hid this from everyone to be accepted. Or like Spiderman or any comic superhero with an alter-ego. They seem to live secret lives aside from their normal boring ones. It's pretty much the same thing with us real people too.

There are some ideas or things that are taboo out in the open that we somehow find ourselves frustrated by our entrapment. Hence, we express it in different ways (like drawing, writing, vandalism) but I think it somehow deals with that trapped self or ours wanting to be freed. I don't think that someone is just made up of one dimension, surely, there is more to a person than what you see firsthand. See, that's why stressed out people go insane. They just can't take it anymore. ahahahahahaha.

So anyways, I'm going to start GHOSTS' second book Dream Machine so maybe I'll post stuff about it in the coming entries. I've ranted long enough haha.

Riding the Lightning
10:13 PM

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Dead of Night

It's the dead of night yet I am still not asleep. Why? I have to write.

When I was a kid, I remembered how I spent my lazy afternoons. They were spent with books and the sanctity of comic book stories. Which is why perhaps, I am fond of telling my own stories and never seem to shut up about it. I loved drawing, yes and it has been a practice for my whole life yet I find that my skills are still inadequate compared to other people. And drawing can never really capture the essence of what I want to express, and they somehow only get whimsical adventurous lined with heroes and villains in costumes. Never real people.

Yet one graphic novel changed this... and somehow, opened up the possibility of a new medium. This was the X Trilogy of Marvel comics, conceived by Alex Ross.

I will never forget that introduction (I Grew Up in the Marvel Universe) and how it dug up all the fantasies of costumed capers of my heroes yet that book opened a whole new stage for them also. They have grown up and became real people, associated with emotions and struggle we all face. As I read it, I couldn't hold back that inkling at the bottom of my soul and that it had began to bubble up again, and I felt the familiar zest to tell stories of my own. I loved that series and I still hold it close to me everyday since it changed my life forever. Some people will never even contemplate learning something from a mere "comic book" but I do, I grew up on it too.

I created stories of my own after that. Of course, fashioned after comic book stories. My first attempt gave birth to a character that people may associate me with, though most do not know of him. He was Kid Thunder and he represented adventure.

Along with him, I gave an array of companions each with their own profiles. Believe me, James and I took weeks to think up a good story. The story wasn't really good, it was the first time after all but I still throve to make it good. I found a certain joy in writing it all down because it was laying it down in letters and words instead of me telling it to a friend. But despite my efforts, it didn't turn out as good as we have expected. The structure was all wrong, plot was messed up and characters were shallow and transparent. I was discouraged time to time but I couldn't stop it anyhows. My story needed to be told.

I still keep that first story with me because after all, it will be the first out of the many and upcoming. More stories began to open to me after that. Not necessarily the same as the comic/adventure genre but instead, I have began writing a more deeper and philosophical story for which I am better known for. Isaac Matthews was born here, in the pages of the Shadowkeeper's Journal, a work still in progress.

But most of all, I realized the kind of story I wanted to tell most of all. A story that can give people the view of the world in my eyes and people with my perception while musing the facts and possibilities of the ever-changing world. A sci-fi adventure yet real in the human sense. This was the birth of GHOSTS, the story I still write and the one I hope to finish.

I don't know, I just see the world as being an infinite pool of stories and tales with each person telling it differently. Writing is now an addiction for me, I can't help it. I have to do it. It's my perrogative. From the very first time I read an adventure of Spiderman, I thought that the drawings made the story so cool but as I grew up, I realized now that it was the story, his story that was being told. So I want to tell my own stories too, not for me but for other people to know too. Maybe even make them learn a little as I have with Alex Ross' work.

It's the dead of night yet still I write

Riding the Lightning
12:03 AM

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Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Piper's Call

I am fascinated by two stories. One is the story of the Pied Piper and one is about Neverland. Most people wouldn't even think or know about these two tales, such a pity. For now, I just want to talk about the Pied Piper maybe I'll talk of Neverland some other time.

The Pied Piper tale goes out since fairy tale times. It's about a certain musician that agreed to rid the rats of a town in exchange for something, the something changes through each person it is made known to. But then, the townspeople didn't pay up. So what did the Piper do?

He took the children away. He played his hypnotic hymn and lead the children out of their homes into who knows where. That's the end of the story. But it seems to end so peculiarly because there was nothing more to be told. They never said where the Piper brought the children or what did the parents do about it. Which is why I am so fascinated by this story and I somehow find certain... messages in it.

Why children? Is it some sorts of pedophilic gesture or maybe, a more intiguing detail? For me, I find that each of us has that child in us that somehow responds to a Piper's call. As we grow older, our ears deafen to the music he plays because yes, I do believe there was indeed a Piper. You notice that when you grow older, everything seems to be well... run out of color? I mean, why do people describe the aged as being gray? Gray connotes being dull and bland and even in death, a corpse turns pale and colorless as the life is run out on it.

I take details such as this to another level than just knowing about it but instead, I want to know why. It's part of the drama, I suppose and yes maybe Martin was right, I do have a heart of a poet. But think about it at least. Is your colors running out? Are you deafened by the Piper's call? When we are kids, the world is an oyster filled with mysteries and questions that entertain and fuel our imaginations to staggering possibilities yet as the world is made more and more known, we somehow feel that feeling wherein we say to ourselves, "Is that all there is to it?"

The Sky was an ocean to me where stars swam freely, glittering across the dense blanket of night. Yet I knew that the sky was called an atmosphere, that stars were big balls of hot gas and the night was just an effect of the world's rotation in its orbit. Yes, growing up takes the fun outof anything and while some people around me are in a hurry to grow up, just the same, I find some grown-ups yearning to be a child again. Is it because of the Piper's call? Just what is it?

The Piper's call is different for each person just as a child you see the world differently. I saw my sky as ocean, maybe you saw it as monster or a person, a plant, a nothing that's something, it's all the same, it's his call. We deafen our ears to misconceptions from when we were ignorant and didn't know about things but that's what made that time of our lives great. Everything was a mystery and the questions seem to add colors to our lives. The call seeps through everyone yet only the children can hear it since the grown-ups were already deaf in the sense. Age and knowledge somehow ran the colors of their lives dry.

So I don't know about you but I want to hear it. That's why I never fully appreciated science or math. They make it too formal and methodical, having answers to everything. Would you really want to know that the beauty of the stars are actually just because of hot gas? I leave it to the imagination,

Will you do too?

Will you let yourself hear the Piper's call?

Or weep for the child that has left you forever?

Riding the Lightning
5:57 PM

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Monday, November 15, 2004
Shattered Pieces

What drives you?

Is it passion? Friendship? Ambition? Dreams?

...

Love?

What is it? Is it really an emotion or a passing feeling? Or maybe it really is a certain power... I've been one of those people driven by such passion and as I look back on it, I find myself ridiculous and rash. I let my heart do my talking as I always do. Following passions and dreams have always been my perrogative as a human being. Nothing was stronger. Yet Love drives you differently, if indeed I was truly... in love once.

It is a whirlpool of mixed emotions. On one hand, you feel light as air and senses are heightened to a degree of irrefutable bliss. It causes you to lose focus yet at the same time, you see things so clearly like it's a whole new sense, apart from the physical consciousness.

On the other hand, there's that perpetual wrenching in your stomach. That anxiety that keeps you awake at night and the ever-present thought of your other every minute of every day. Furthermore, it hurts; more than any pain you might endure because there is no cure for it. Once you're marked, it's often hard to let it go. Like a drug.

I'm sorry, the emotion has lost me over the time and I have forgotten the sensations...

But... I have what's left of me now right? and the pieces can still tell a story somehow. Indeed, it makes you stronger than you could ever imagine you to be and you can find a deep inner power that somehow pushed you to do more, an inner strength so overpowering than any kind of steroids. I felt that drive and I never wanted to let it go because for once, it made me feel that I am living my life for somethng important. Meaning.

However, life's not always filled with happy endings. I know, for one, that love is never always a mutual feeling even though some would contradict me. But what do they know? Tell me if at one time you fell in love and they never loved you back. If you haven't then I'm afraid I have no ear to share to you. No heart to feel for you. Because you have never had to say you love someone and never had it say it back. And never had a chance to feel your heart break so horribly. It's a hurt so uncontrollable yet it chains itself to you, like an ugly scar forever embedded.

The worse thing is, is what it leaves you. It leaves an all new meaning to the word, sadness. You end up hating yourself because of the mistakes and finding yourself so stupid to think that something may actually happen to your pathetic dream. It shatters things you never thought you'd have and it seems that you never find the right pieces anymore. So what do I do about it?

Easy.

You take the pieces and put them in a little box and forget about it. Move on and never look back. If ever someone would spark such a feeling once again and you find yourself in the same spin cycle, I advise you look at your shattered pieces and hope to find a clear reflection; a reflection of a feeling so wonderful yet so devious; of an experience so wondrous yet so tasking; of a person you were so in love with yet never felt the same way. I still keep my pieces and some days, I often want to piece them together again yet I just remember that something broken will never be as good as it was before. And believe me, my pieces are far too few to remember what it originally was.

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it oepns up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love. "

-Rose Walker to Desire (Sandman: The Kindly Ones)

Riding the Lightning
6:57 PM

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Sunday, November 14, 2004
Taping Reruns

So I haven't been faithful to most of the other blogs i've put up but for writing's sake, I need to at least make an effort right? I hope to make this a frequent habit though. Writing IS a practice and it does require dedication, it's just that it is hard for me to put down words other from making it a story. As Sophia once said to me, "You're life always seem to have drama" or something like that and well yeah, sure, I look for it or piece it together, maybe even thinking that my life is one big movie or at best, a comic book.

So what's with the drama?

Maybe I just grew up on it. I grew up on stories told by book, tongue or show and yes, I do see that my life somehow revolves around intrigue and drama and I'm just playing my part. So I find myself somehow in-between. I'm in-between reality and fiction. I may be breathing the air God's good earth has provided yet my mind seems to say otherwise instead, it suggests that it's all just a show for some other cosmic being to watch.

I say, life is how you see it. For me, it's all a reality show complete with cast. It makes every detail more interesting and I don't know, a certain quality to life. Life tends to get boring for most people but I rarely find a dull moment in anything.

So why write?

When I'm gray and old, I want to know that I had a time in my life that I had this fond appreciation that most people cease to acknowledge. Age will take its toll on me one day, I know and perhaps (hopefully not) my great zest for this play will run itself dry as it goes day by day just as how we grow tried of tv shows. One day, the final episodes will run and so, I just hope I have enough to watch the reruns.

Riding the Lightning
6:09 PM

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