Marlon’s World

It is when the night falls that loneliness becomes more unbearable. After all the laughter that I’m expected to churn out, the witticisms that are required of me, the smiles and the occasional blushes that have in time been obligatory, I end up dark, lonely and miserable in front of my desk and my stack of books that tell all stories but mine. No one sees this. No one sees how I suffer. The visage is always deceiving, for even I lure myself to thinking that everything is okay.

Solitude can be magnificent as it leads me to think things over. But it is also depressing – nay, it’s probably even fatal – whether when I sit down in a quiet nook or when I converse with a variety of people. I may appear cheerful, aggressive, loud or pensive, but the emptiness is unbelievable: it is as if life passes in front of me in slow motion, and people just walk by without taking notice. Everyone’s playing the same game. Speed is ironically vital; there’s no turning back.

The romantics have always painted how the life of the young bourgeois is. Those from the outside think that it’s all flak. No, it’s not. When you’re struggling to fit in and the only way to do so is to drink the same poison as they are drinking, or wear the same clothes as they are wearing, or act in the same way as they are acting, or desire in the same things they are desiring, you end up pitying yourself, questioning if there’s anyone who thinks otherwise, hoping that people finally take a second look without preconceptions or rejection or lies.

It is thus that I have come to realize how absurd life is. I would like to believe that optimism still works, but the truth is, everything we do is bound to be futile. I always am sad whenever I meet new acquaintances who, after a few hours, would be forever gone. It’s true. No matter how many “Catch you later” or “See you soon” I say, I somehow know that it will be the last time I see them. It’s the irony of meeting new people. We all want to hold on to them, we all want them to linger. We want to spend silent minutes and noisy hours with them, as if every moment were perpetually the first. But we simply just can’t. We move on. We forget. We let go. We mix up all those faces and features and voices in a cloudy and putrid mass of recollections. We go back to being strangers.

Then I begin thinking about all my chatmates. Whether I am in my legitimate identity or an assumed one, I always feel connected to whoever is online, never mind that everything is absurdly virtual and ephemeral. I wanted to meet a chatmate from Italy or from Argentina, or a “fan” who said that an article I wrote was excellent, but I just know I can’t. They are not interested to meet me, I’m sure. They are interested in the identity I have created for them. And I cannot begin to imagine how it would be when the day comes that I wouldn’t be able to access my Messenger, lose my password, or meet an untimely death without being able to say goodbye or ask if those many unnamed virtual personas had really loved me. I would just be a registered concept, an idea that was too good to last.

Material things provide for temporary solace. Good food. Nice clothes. A night in a pub. A bottle of rum. But when I come home, wasted, sweaty and drunk, loneliness begins to well from within. It is thus that I come to know that the life I have aspired to have for so long is but an excuse to live and that in the process of working for that ideal, I have committed myself to not being at all free.

I gathered somewhere from the Internet a good quote: it is only when you stop playing that you begin winning the game. This is me right now. I want to stop playing, get out of the court and be the spectator.

I was feeling down the past week (my monthly bout with depression) when this song came out from my mind’s deepest id. Catchy and very feel good. I hope it inspires all of you, guys!

There was a time when I lived my life
Thinking only of the things that would bring me down
And all the while what I didn’t know
Is that I never learned to take the time to look around
There’s a little good in everyone
And sometimes it takes a little work to see the sun
If you try you may find your life has just begun
Don’t you run
Don’t you run

If you’re feeling lost
If you wanna be free
If you feel like your world is tearing up at the seams
Remember there’s light
If you wait till the dawn
You may walk through the clouds
But to carry on
You’ve got to follow the sun

Listen, baby
This world may be crazy
Sometimes you’ll feel like losing the game
But there’s always a reason to keep on believing
Everyone is not the same
(But if you appreciate the things you have today
You will find the way)

First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope this year would be better than the last and as I have always said, I wish everyone lotsa love, happiness, health and prosperity. Life is short and at times absurd, so must live it as best as we could.

That said, I’d like to post a blog entry on how my New Year’s eve has been. It was in every sense unforgettable, partly because of the fun, and partly because of the post-midnight hassles. I spent New Year in Madrid with a group of friends from Valladolid: Luisa, a Filipina who is studying the same Master I did last year; Angelo, a Brazilian physics student; his girlfriend Celia, a psychologist; and Joanna, a Bulgarian classmate of Luisa. It was the first time for me to spend the Nochevieja in any capital city, since in the Philippines, it’s customary to be with your family on this evening. Besides, when everything smells of gunpowder, you wouldn’t want to be caught in Manila and its horrendous traffic.      

So we arrived around 11:30 AM in Madrid from Valladolid onboard the intercity train. The Spanish capital comes to life in the evening, so our morning was spent visiting the historical places, like the Royal Palace. Well, yeah, what’s left of the Palace after we blocked it out of the cam focus. 

After we exhausted ourselves and drank kegs of coffee, we decided to meet up with people: Juan, a Colombian engineering student from Valladolid who came to Madrid posthaste after a week of vacation in Belgium, and Joanna’s friend Ana who came with her brother Niko. We ate dinner afterwards. And joked about sacred cows falling down from the sky. And took pictures.

The next logical step was to go to the Puerta del Sol to secure our places for the midnight countdown. Because of the tight security (the main international airport of Madrid, Barajas, was bombed the day before), the security was very tight. No glass bottles were allowed in the plaza, so we had to drink our champagne before going in.

Well, the Puerta del Sol has always been the place to eat the traditional a grape of luck for each of the 12 seconds before the stroke of midnight. (We came prepared with canned grapes in disposable cans especially packed  for this event.) Given such reputation, it’s not strange to find all kinds of people. These English and Dutch guys in the next pic, for example. We also met a group of Mexican students who are studying in Madrid. They were able to bring their wine in since they had brought it in sheepskin containers. Nice.

So it struck midnight, and we all went berserk. There’s something so magical about New Years. I mean, after all bad things that happened and would happen, that one unique point of celebration and fun with friends and family still fills anyone with joy and hope.

That was the happy part. The sad part of my New Year’s eve happened about 12:10, just when everyone was ready to party. A man, a gypsy judging from his looks, suddenly went down as if to clean my shoes. Of course, I got surprised and told him there’s no need to worry in case he had stepped on my foot. It turns out it’s his modus operandi. In a blink of an eye, his friend got my wallet out of my front pocket.

My blood pressure rose at that point. I was angry, then worried, then sad, then stressed out. It was a good thing Luisa was with me because I would have collapsed. The whole story is shitty and to make it short, I managed to blocked my two Mastercards about an hour after the robbery. No thanks, though, to the Madrid police on Gran Via who did nothing but procrastinate and tell me to wait until morning for the blotter.

I was spent. I wasn’t so worried about money since I only had five euros in cash and the cards were blocked immediately. I wasn’t so worried about my student visa card, since I would get the new one within two weeks in Valladolid. The old one is expired. I was more worried about all the IDs. Securing IDs in Spain is very difficult because of the all the fees and papers that people ask for. Besides, the mere thought that after travelling in many places, I was robbed in the city that I have known from the very start. It’s insane.

But fate is mysterious sometimes. Just when I was ready to call it quits, the police located me in my hostel and told me that I could pick up my wallet and that all the IDs were there. It was found in the outskirts of Madrid, in a barrio known as Vallecas, about 15 kilometers from the city center.       

That pretty much sums up my eventful New Year celebration in Madrid. We got home at 8:30 PM in Valladolid. I ate turrones, met Tyler, an American guy from New Mexico, and took more pictures in which I looked like a beached whale.