A posting post the post

Gregg was right. I was totally the different person when we met later in the night, after I wrote that awful, desperate and whiny post about I having nothing of urbane civility left almost a week after Milenyo. Writing seemed to have purged all the angst. I asked him to join me in Malate while at home, enveloped in the now-familiar sticky heat darkness, after realizing that I don't need to endure another depressing candlelit night. We, which later also included Mark, hung out at Chelu and drank for no special occasion... well, maybe except for one, my liberation from all anger and anxiety of the previous days. Or maybe this night marked the last stage before grieving for my destituted existence could genuinely begin. We drank, got modestly drunk, and I wasn't too modest about spending my dwindling savings on luxuries like beer. We also ate, we ate a lot while Gregg complained about needing to lose the weight he's packing in between bites of balot, chicken skin and all other sorts of street food fare.

At one point, Mark realized that we haven't been together like this for a long, long time, us being essentially what's left of our Gen Gali/Mr. Piggy's peer group. What was intended to be a simple night of needing to get drunk so I could sleep for much longer, ended up in anticipation for Sunshine Dizon (that's gayspeak for sunrise). Back home, morning sunlight was already beginning to pour in my room, on my bed. How to sleep in bright daylight and the heat of the day microwaving you in the bedroom? Well, I didn't sleep much. Again.

Then the day before power was restored - and the fallen billboard was cleared - I flew to Davao to attend the Philippine National Convention on HIV and AIDS, for the first time held outside Metro Manila. PNAC was sponsoring two community fora during the convention; I was supposed to facilitate small group workshop sessions during one of the fora. The fora didn't bring results we expected, and I feel that the organizers would have to explain their "interference." (But I'm not going into this - at least, not right now.) But the best thing I got from this trip was sleep. When I settled in the hotel on the first night (some cheap but functional inn near Davao Doctors Hospital), I was already asleep 8PM (which is very early for me) and slept 12 hours straight. I had an itchy throat the morning after though; I ran the A/C full blast directly on me all night. Talk about depravity.

When I got back in Manila, the first week of restored electricity also little by little restored our normal activities. That meant getting back on the oh-so-many concerns from within the office to PNAC and to wherever else. I haven't submitted that ADB proposal yet, after learning that I have more time until the deadline for the second round of submission. I once promised myself to finish it as soon as power was restored and life normalized again but *sigh* the momentum somehow was lost, I mean, that frenzied, fierce and inspired drive to write and beat the deadline. Crammers from all corners of the Earth would know what I mean.

I didn't have a particular angle when I started this post, I'm not sure what my point is. Maybe this is an assurance that I'm still a sane person after all insanity. Maybe this is a closure that attempts to be dignified, after having exposed oneself as an embarassingly, half-crazed whine-bag. Or maybe, quite simply, this being the posting post the despondency post is itself the angle.