My constipated Brain

    There is this trick I do in High School where I would browse thru the pages of a magazine then I'd ask somebody to pick a page. I would then describe the randomly picked page. It's not a word for word thing though, I would only point out, for example, that there is a picture of a girl on the right side of the page or that there is a soft drink ad on the left and so forth. It required no effort at all. Sometimes I could see the "pages" in my mind and I could even "flip" thru them to get to the one I need. It was more of a visual thing-- I could only recall the pictures and I forget them after a day or two. I could not recall text. Well, sometimes I can but not every time. It was a hit-and-miss.

    If there's one thing that can be said about the study of the human brain -- and especially in the field of memory -- it's that even today, it's notable less for what is known than for how much is not known. The workings of our brain remain, for the most part, a mystery. But if there are areas of consensus in the field of neurology, one of them is that the notion of "photographic memory," in which a person can take mental snapshots and recall every detail at a later time, has never been proved to exist. Scientists say it could be a version of "eidetic memory," which is, essentially, the medical term for crazy, crazy freakish recall.

    Am I making this up? Fat chance. My schoolmates would have figured it out on day one. It's something everybody talks about every time we have class reunions. Photographic memory or not one thing is for sure. Whatever it is it had served me well in school and in my profession as well. I had a leg up when examinations week comes up. And for the longest time I did not carry a datebook but remembered all my appointments. It was all good until I hit middle age. By that time I have been accumulating memories since I was maybe two or three years old. I should say that it isn't as if I have a day to day recording of everything that happened in my life. I only retain life events that made an impact on me and only those I personally experienced. Like there's this piece of memory that I vividly recall waking up a day after a flood and seeing millions (no, not really millions, but there was a lot) of hito on the yard of our host in Legaspi City. It's fragmented and I can't really connect it to other events but I do recall all the people I interacted with on that particular day. But as memories piled up-- the good as well as the bad, the ability for recall became more of a curse rather than a blessing. When an entire life is perpetually available, that life exists, in a sense, forever in present tense. And sifting through a perpetual and onrushing flood of memories is less fun than it sounds. It's hard, after all, to erase bad memories when you can't erase any memory at all.

    And that's the rub, I suspect that all these years I may have been suffering from depression stemming from the inability to forget unpleasant memories and experiences from the past. Particularly memories that had caused me so much pain. I think that this thing is likely the result of obsessive-compulsive thoughts rather than "photographic memory". I'll leave it to the experts. As far as I'm concerned I look forward to old age and the day I, hopefully, will be able to forget most if not unload all these "bad" memories that have clogged up my constipated brain all these years.

Johnny de Leon, Ngo-ngo and a deck of cards

   
    Grandmother calls out my name. I stood up, dropped whatever I was doing and raced into the house. By the time I ran up the stairs darkness has already crept into the house. Grandmother had gone back to the kitchen. Only the light in the kitchen is on. I would usually flop down on the floor near the kitchen doorway. From under the glass cabinet-- where grandmother kept her best china, I'd pulled out my stash of green army men then line them up for a make-believe reconnaissance mission.

     The AM radio is on, tuned in to the station of Johnny de Leon's program. It was actually the only radio station Grandmother listened to and Johnny de Leon was the king of the airwaves at that time. You could hear his voice early in the morning and again just before the day ends. He would do the news, commentaries and even dish out advices on relationships. On Friday nights there was "24 Oras" where he voices the character that would give resolution or a twist to a story that, you guessed it, happened all in one day.

    At six o'clock Johnny de Leon would break for evening prayers. He'd play a recording of the Angelus-- three Biblical verses describing the mysteries are recited as versicle and responses alternated with the "Hail Mary". After a short pause, a narration of the story of the "deck of cards" would follow. It's about a "soldier boy" who got into trouble when he was caught spreading a deck of cards during church service. He would be brought before the Provost Marshall where he would explain the meaning of each card. He would start with "You see Sir…" something I would mimic later in life whenever I was asked to explain. I would learn many years later that the narrator was the then popular actor/singer Tex Ritter--father of the late actor/comedian John "Three's Company" Ritter.

    Johnny de Leon would come back with his spiels then smoothly segue to one of many commercial breaks where Ngo-ngo-- Johnny de Leon's cleft-lipped sidekick, would do his "Bataan Matamis"  thing. It's interesting to note that in an industry where one's voice is the ticket to success, a novelty like Ngo-ngo could survive. Today where political correctness has gone overboard Ngo-ngo wouldn't even be on radio much less doing a cigarette ad. Ironically still, Ngo-ngo even recorded a song ("Hernando's Hideaway") and even made TV appearances later on. I remember Ngo-ngo as dark-skinned, slick black hair, short in stature, skinny and stands with a slight forward angle-- not exactly TV material either.

    There was no television then. No video games. Grandmother didn't even have a refrigerator. Instead she had this cabinet with screened doors where leftover food was stored precariously perched on a drinking glass standing on a saucer filled with water-- a precaution against ants, she would later tell me. No, there were no cockroaches. Never saw one. No mice or rats either. Grandmother told me that is so because she kept a sawa on the rafters. And, the resident tuko took care of the rest.

   Sometimes I would lie on my back and stare at the ceiling hoping to get a glimpse of the sawa. Nope, I never saw it. The tuko, on the other hand, guards its turf on the southwestern side of the house. You know it's there because he belts out, without fail, a guttural mating call right after the Angelus.



    

My Tower of Babel

I was maybe fifteen when I first became aware of a faint ringing inside my ear and head. At first I thought it's in the environment and that everybody else hears it; but when I started to complain and asked people if they also hear the sound. They looked quizzically at me and said I was crazy. I shared it with a sister; she said I should get help-- a mental institution kind of help, with these "voices" that I hear. It was only then that I understood that it's a highly personal sonic phenomenon that's inaudible and unintelligible to others. It's like a sonic mirage: a sound that doesn't exists but is heard and experienced by me alone. I later learned to suppress it by deliberately avoiding to pay attention to it. It was that or I could have gone mad. It is like being held prisoner inside your own head; a party that doesn't stop and you're not invited. It has since worsened. The disturbing and persistent sound had become louder and has increased in pitch.

It's Tinnitus.

It is quite common, the doctor reassured me. There is, however, no cure nor even a remedy to alleviate the condition. I was made to understand too that the condition could not be measured objectively by any existing medical tests. It's a false subjective phenomenon. Thus, the condition is rated by, who else, but the sufferer himself, on a simple scale from slight to catastrophic according to the difficulties it imposes-- such as interference with sleep, quiet activities. I rate mine as "troubling".

More than once, this internal hubbub had driven me to deliberately seek out "noisy places" to drown it out. I once walked out from an important meeting to stand on the sidewalk for a good fifteen minutes until I could "hear" myself think again amidst my inner din. There had also been several instances when I was roused from sleep in the middle of the night by the ruckus.

I would describe the inner phantom sound I perceive as a continuous steady whining buzz much like the "sound of the night" of my childhood but in a slightly higher pitch. Annoyingly, I could hear the buzzing even over loud external sounds. The problem is involuntary; I simply could not override or ignore the sound.

It is one of those things in life that I have learned to cope with. It made me wonder though that in the event I go deaf, would I still "hear" the buzzing inside my head; and, if I go mad because of it, will the sound continue to bother me or will it be drowned out in the madness.


... and the band played on.

Remon

I ran as fast as my spindly legs could take me. When I got to the public health clinic, I was not allowed in and so I ran around the back and peered into a window. It was Remon alright. He was splattered on a table like a broken rag doll, writhing in pain as three people were pulling on his arm. They were hurting him. Something didn’t look right, too-- Remon’s elbow is on the wrong side. I shouted something. I don’t remember exactly what. I don’t remember much after that. But I remember running one more time, this time to our apartment-- maybe more than six city blocks away from where we were. My lungs have shut down by the time I reached it. Out of breath and blue in the face, I tried to tell mother what had happened. But, no words came out. I was gasping but was not taking in enough air to fill my lungs. Laughably, mother first thought it was me who was in trouble-- like I was having a heart attack or something. It was just my asthma acting up again. Later that night, I still had a hard time breathing; I slept sitting on a chair with my head on the dining table.

I later learned that Remon was playing basketball, as he usually did after school, when it happened. Somebody deliberately went under him as he jumped to make him fall in a bad way. Unlike me, Remon was quite good at playing basketball and maybe for some it was enough reason to hurt him. An elder brother was good at it, too. I guess the talent and ability to play good basketball skipped passed me. If there is anything I was good at it's catching cold along with other air borne viruses.

I was actually surprised Remon was hurt in the first place. I genuinely believed then that Remon was impervious to pain. He was built like a tank with a body mass twice as mine. When we are together, people insisted I was the younger sibling. I was actually a year older. I was maybe eight then-- but I looked like a scrawny six-year old.

I remember the times I was asked to serve, as an altar boy, in early morning Church services. Our parish priest, the Rev. Fr. Kutcher, SVD, required that an older brother should accompany me. I brought Remon along-- who, by the way, never complained even if it meant waking up at the break of dawn. After each Mass, we shared snacks-- which the shops fronting the Church: the Frisco Bakery or the Mandolin Variety Store, provided for free. Of course, I was entitled only to one snack-- a bottle of Choco Vim and a piece of cake or pastry, from either of the two shops. But, I was so sure then that nobody would mind if I get a set of snack from each of the two shops. After all, I have “Kuya” Remon with me. And, he definitely deserved a snack, too.

We took different paths as we grew older-- maybe even grew apart, but I know that even as we seldom shared snacks as we did when we were young boys a long, long time ago, Remon, had stood up and spoken for me in times when everyone, everything was against me. Remon stood tall as my “Kuya” whenever I needed one. Yes, even if it’s not a Sunday.

Salamat Remon.

Mafia Whores

Two weeks ago while playing Mafia Wars I went through my Mafia list. There I discovered three names that shouldn’t be there. Back when I first started playing Mafia Wars I decided to cheat. And so I created three phantom accounts on Facebook which I used to augment my Mafia family. For these accounts I used the names Roy Batty, Zhora Tyrell and Pris Tyrell (--the names of the "replicants", genetically engineered organic robots, played respectively by Rutger Hauer, Joanna Cassidy and Daryl Hannah in the 1982 cult film “Blade Runner”-- top billed by Harrison Ford as the burnt out Blade Runner Rick Deckard. Tyrell, the surname I used for the two female accounts, is the name of the powerful Tyrell Corporation, the "mega–manufacturer" of replicants.)

Before long, a sufficient number of people I know started playing, too; and so I didn’t need the fake accounts anymore. So, I deleted them. Strangely enough, these imaginary people who no longer have Facebook accounts are still listed as members of my Mafia family; stranger still, they have a need for energy packs. It’s disturbing that figments of my imagination now have lives of their own, continuing to live on Facebook and have needs. My thoughts have thoughts.

Is it possible they've opened their own accounts after I’ve deleted them? Do they PM each other? Do they have feelings? In the film "Blade Runner", replicants are exclusively used for dangerous, menial or pleasure work on Earth's off-world colonies. The use of replicants on Earth is banned and replicants who defy the ban and return to Earth are hunted down and "retired" by police special operatives known as "Blade Runners". Could it be possible that the fictitious people I created have, like their namesakes in the film, defied protocol? Have they formed their own Mafia families? Have they formed alliances with the people I play with and could they be, at this very minute, plotting to take me down? It scares me to think that I may have possibly hurt their feelings when I unceremoniously deleted their Facebook accounts-- as real people usually do when you “unfriend” them.
 
Suddenly, It’s no longer fun to play anymore. I now constantly look behind my back when I play. The only thing holding me back to altogether stop playing Mafia Wars now is the mortal fear that I could further piss them off. They might feel that I’ve abandoned them.

Monday morning after Armageddon

I grew up living in a series of middle class apartments mostly around Quezon City. We didn't have appliances by modern standards-- other than a stove and a clothes iron. I was nine or ten before we even had television-- a B&W Electone TV with a rotary channel selector; there were no remotes then and you have to wait for fifteen minutes before you could see ghostly apparitions of a television show on the screen. The rabbit antennae only pulled in two channels, and we grew accustomed to the picture rolling the entire evening; we later learned that if we kept a hand on the antennae the rolling would be less frequent. I don't remember listening to a radio as a boy, though if I turned the television on early in the morning, it played a rhythmic sound which I later learned to be music. I was already in my teens when we had our first radio-- an Akai integrated hi-fi system with a turn table, a Teac reel-to-reel tape deck and an amplified FM/AM analog radio enclosed in a huge coffin-like cabinet that occupied half of the living room.

We didn't have toys either. But I discovered early on that you could whittle a semblance of a toy out of a block of wood. I developed scavenger skills and would pick up, as I walk home from school, bits and pieces of metal parts and vestigial remnants of what used to be a toy, tinker with them and turn them into something else. When I wasn't making something inappropriate out of nothing, I would stare at the wall until something comes up. It was at this time that I acquired my lock picking skills and the awakenings of a criminal bent.

The worse times were school breaks-- it was three months of nothingness. It was akin to being Laika in Sputnik as it orbited the Earth in deep space. Ten days into the "Summer " vacation (-- we actually only have the wet and dry seasons here, but we delude ourselves by calling the dry months as summer), I was eagerly looking forward to school opening not because I enjoyed school but because it was an escape from soul-crushing boredom. Worst was Holy Week. Back then it runs for the full seven days-- today people observe it, grudgingly if at all, between 12 noon and 3'oclock on Good Friday. I remember spending my time during Holy week just sitting around the house and twiddling my thumbs. Playing outdoors or looking happy is discouraged-- if you so much as smile, you'd be called a "Hudyo". Going out on the street is like being on an episode of Twilight Zone. Everybody talk in whispers. Radio and television broadcasts would stop-- telecasts would come back from the dead on Black Saturday with the annual rerun of "Demetrius and the Gladiators" with Victor Mature-- who moves and talks with a distinctive look of constipation on his face, to bore to death those who were still alive at that point.

Those times seemed to have passed. We've won the war against boredom.

People standing in line at a movie house box office, at a bank or at the LTO could pull out a smartphone or a tablet to play "Plants vs Zombies", check their e-mails, read an eBook, listen to music while they read the closed captions on the flat screen LED 3D HD Monitor on the wall. We now have 24/7 internet or cable TV-- yeah, even if it's Holy Week, and we could bypass commercials by surfing through the channels or having a quick arcade game on our Nintendo DS. Having an iPhone in our pocket, a Sony PSP in the living room, a Kindle in the bathroom, an iPad in the bedroom, means we never need to suffer boredom ever again.

I dread to think what would happen if a global electromagnetic pulse is unwittingly or wittingly set off that would disable all electrical and electronic equipment and devices. People will find themselves, maybe for the first time for some, without their gadgets. It could be Cathartic.

People around the world could experience their first Holy Week.

Goodbye, Mr. Jobs

I too watched the iPhone 4S presentation streamed on the internet. Apple CEO Tim Cook's solitary appearance at the Cupertino event said it all. It wasn't the absence of the iPhone5, and the silence that seemed to hung over the event, that disappointed; it was the absence of Mr. Steve Jobs that made it somehow feel like a posthumous event.
The next day we were officially informed of what we already knew-- Mr. Jobs has left the building; his Mac monitor is dark; his keyboard silent. His St. Croix black mock turtleneck, his faded Levi's 501s, his Lunor Classic Round glasses and his New Balance 991s stowed away in some dark place. But, for those of us who religiously anticipate and watch each keynote address it was no surprise. We saw Mr. Jobs progressively withering away. At the iCloud keynote last June, we saw him, gaunt as an Arab freedom fighter, moving about the stage like a spindly mantis stalking a fly; shaky, wobbly, rickety; his turtleneck bunched up against his shriveled body as if it hanged on a clothesline on a windy day.

And then it happened. He disappeared. Like Obi-Wan Kenobi disappearing under Darth Vader's light saber blade to become a spirit in the Force, Mr. Jobs transformed to pure thought, an idea; disembodied from the material world; digitized; and will continue to be in future iterations of the iPod, iPhone, iPad, iBook, iMac and the next cool gadget we never thought before we'd ever need or want.

              And as the flames climbed high into the night
              To light the sacrificial rite
              I saw Satan laughing with delight
              The day the music died