Matthew Stadler's Personal Weblog

I’m not sure if I am subjecting myself to a pseudo behavioral self-study or what have you, but with the aid of a voodoo guru from Kenya I allowed myself to transfer – yes, myself! – into somebody else’s body and write about what happened. Short of nitpicking or intellectual rights violation, but I will win this case because it was done with consent and with a fee. I suddenly became a woman in Asia! Oh my God. I am in front of this low tech computer that doesn’t even have a camera on it, and this woman is looking for ways to pay her bills. Nope, prostitution is out of the question I told you this is Asia. So I, the woman, went on searching for work-at-home sites and looking for ways to earn cash online. Gee, there’s a trillion of them. But, uh, wait, please encode you mastercard or visa card number… This woman doesn’t even have a purse…Has she heard of a credit card? I can’t stand it, I went out of the room and there’s this boy waiting to be fed. Okay, no problem. I reached out to the kitchen and found some warm, nutritious, vegetable soup and some pieces of yummy fried chicken. Don’t forget the milk and the vitamins, my woman brain says. What? I am going to spoon feed the 6 year old boy? Asia. That’s why white men are going gagas over these girls. Nurturing, loving…pathetic. I am going back to my own body. Is it 700 words yet? I went out into the streets and saw the dusty, dirty roads that they have. People are all over the place, like the earth is all theirs as birth right. There’s a river over here and it’s stinkingly dirty, with garbages floating all over. There are makeshift houses made of cardboards and old wood on the side of the river. I wonder why they don’t fall over. It looked so weak and yeah, poor. These houses looked just like boxes, where do they do their thing? The river stinks so truthfully. I rode in the public transport which they call jeepney. These things are works of art, it has paintings all over it and if I just know the language I could have easily decoded what they meant. Uhuh, I shall have to pay but my money’s in dollars. “It’s okay!” The dirty, two-toothed driver waved out with a big grin, relaying he understands my plight. Wow, how could a dirty country be filled with happy people? And everywhere I looked, people are just smiling or telling some funny stories or laughing out loud. Harmony in adversity. It seemed like I’m doomed. This is a place that knows no names, how can I exist without name-dropping? This is entirely at the extreme end from the intellectual world that I live in. No opera premiers to brag about, no authors beside me and definitely no pretense. I have fallen into the trap of pretending landing in this unpretentious life. This is life as it is. People exist day by day meeting the needs for survival, yet, unbelievably amazing though, is that they continue to be happy and alive. There’s some place in their hearts that allows then to see the good things in life, despite what seemed to me as dirt. Dirt cheap, dirt poor, I’ve seen it as other writers have written about it. It’s starting to rain. Four boys started running all over the streets, shouting and grinning. They took a bath in the rain. They asked for alms too, with smiles on their faces. I felt cold, and I opened my eyes.

I am still in Asia. Yes, nitpicking this woman's brain. There is more to her poverty, er uhm, her angst. She started to write. This is long overdue. When too much emotions and questions mingle I just cannot form it into words. There was much contemplation, but the adulation is undoubtedly in my heart. I just cannot weave it from start to finish. I will try today. We love our mother so much. We call her Nanay. It's a sort of an extra credit that I got her major looks. Her deep set eyes, her tall nose, wide forehead. A classic beauty they say. It made me feel like a first class citizen with relatives' hushed tones of "there's Maria's carbon copy..." I can feel adoring looks in my surroundings it almost made me levitate. It's because of this I grew up knowing and feeling I do have the looks. However, it was my mother's legacy that I tried my best to keep her face, to take care of myself. We were poor then but Nanay treated us like princesses. She never made us do any housework, she just wanted us to study the whole day. No, there's no compulsory discipline in any way, she just wanted us to grow up loving the whole business of learning, and be successful individuals – each one of us, no one left behind. She got criticized for not ordering us around -- to do laundry, to wash clothes, to clean the house -- she had four girls and she's not raising them the proper way she ought to. Well she had her reasons, or maybe pains for doing so, she was actually rebelling the way she was confined to the kitchen and not allowed to go schooling during her younger days. It had hurt her too much she made sure it's not going to happen to her children. Nobody knew that, of course, the way nobody knew one's inner pains. It's going to be difficult for me, to concretize the things that have lodged in my heart. It had to be because sooner or later I'm going to die with it. And once in one's life there will come a phase one gets everything figured all out. And I owe it to myself and to her. She sent me – my words show that what happened to my life I feel it is her causing it to – she sent me to relatives when I was in my elementary years because of poverty, that ugly word. We had to be helped out, and since I'm one of the elder siblings I had to be the one to go. My young mind then didn't grasp it that way. She sent me. And I slept every night of my young life with that thought. I did go home to her every weekends, my father picks me up Fridays to spend Saturdays and Sundays with them – but for a duckling, that is never enough. When I had to go back Sundays, I saw her toughness as indifference. I was leaving and she wouldn't budge. Her back is always at me, I almost clung to our door. She was washing dishes or what have you and I am drowning in tears. I was walking wounded. My father would snap, stop it Irene, what is the problem, you go home weekends. I now have my son and it took years for me to realize Nanay herself is choking in her own tears back then. She just wouldn't want to add to my burden. She always had her back at me, but not her heart. I had to be a mother to know. It was in college that I finally got to be reunited with her. I was finally allowed to live with the family because UP – my university, is nearer in our own house. Unfortunately the past experience ruined me emotionally. My ignorant heart accusses disloyalty. I questioned my self-worth. I clung to anyone who would show some form of attention. I distrust anyone who at the slightest shuns me. I do not want to forgive. I should be loved. Nevertheless, my tears went on endlessly. Big Brother would have thought I am indeed the Drama Queen. I cry myself to sleep. I had a lot of questions (which actually boils down to one) and scenes. I was in Grade 3 when I was nominated to be Ms. Holland in the school's United Nation's Day. I had the costume alright, thanks to my aunt's money, but for some reason or another no one was there to attend to me. I saw my classmates all made up and I thought I could put on my own lipstick, which I did. It was an experience that shattered my soul. They were laughing at me and other moms helped me out, fixed my face. It stuck in my heart several, several years after. I used to hate my mother for not being there. Now I hate poverty. It wasn't her fault. I will never ever let lack of money hurt me again. My mother died of breast cancer when I was eighteen. In the midst of our clashes and emotional fights. I was a teenager and troubled and hurt. She didn't seem to understand. I myself was amazed at who I was. At the anger. It was all love lost. Or rather love restrained. I love Nanay and I miss her just too much. I know everything she has it all figured out too. I know she knows, because I came from her womb. My eyes got welled in tears. I mean my male eyes. I think I can make a movie.

It’s the weekend! When one sits in front of a computer screen as much as I seem to, you get to weekend and get excited. Excited for what? For two days of cramming in as much things as you can possibly do in not enough time? We suspend our lives while we work. We don’t do enough fun things and we get lousy paychecks and heart attacks. I still love my weekends though. Weekends are the nights that everyone goes out on the town to let go. People abandon their lives, their worries, and their convictions. I have seen some strange things out here in the night life. The way people interact, it’s amazing. It’s nice to not be working a weekend this week. My schedule has been a bit hectic. Sometimes I think I am getting somewhere, that lecture in Portland, but then there are times when I just sit here and wonder if I am really doing it. Is this my dream? My brain seems so locked into an idea of something that I can’t give up on it. But sometimes my heart seems completely vacant. Nothing stirs it as much anymore. I miss that passion and drive I had when I first started. That innocent youth, well maybe that isn’t the best expression of it. Youth hasn’t been my strongest point. I always strove so hard to get away from youth and now I fondly remember that time. I was in such a hurry to “grow up.” Like getting to that point where life would just fall into place before my eyes. I think my mother had a lot to do with that. Being so pushed away and feeling abandoned made me dislike not being the adult in the situation. I missed out on so much. So I always strove to be better than others in everything. I had to prove I was not her, I am not Nanay. I now look back on all that wasted time. I wasted it. But there is nothing I can do about that now. I am here. I am living the dream. I still am amazed at my surroundings. Life here is more than I expected it to be. The colors and sounds are so different from home. But nothing I do to capture it seems to do justice to this place. A photograph cuts out the sounds and smells. And while my writing seems to lead to a place where I can convey the ideas and thoughts I have of this place, nothing is like being here. When I can sleep, I revel in the bright sunlight as it comes through my window, reminding me I am alive for another day. And when I can’t sleep, I watch the people passing by. Some are returning from work and some are going to it. They are just regular people in their regular lives. I like watching them. It’s like some voyeuristic view into another person’s life. I see some of the same people night after night. I have started making stories up about them. It’s better that than obsessing over other things when I can’t sleep. I wonder why someone would want to be working from dusk to dawn. Maybe that should be my new task. I will write stories, fictitious of course, of these people I see. That can’t be any worse than any other project I am pretending to work on right now. Nothing seems to inspire me to continue with my writing these days. I have fallen into a pattern of starting something I can’t finish. But maybe I should abandon that idea as well. It seems like this place is getting to me. It may be time to move on somewhere else. I just don’t like staying in the same place long. But where should my adventures take me to now? I don’t want to venture back to home. It is not home for me now. As much as I have loved it here, sometimes staying in the same place to long is hard. I liked going to France, but my French is only barely tolerable. Germany was wonderful, the people are amazing. But it is too much like home to want to stay there long term. So here I am. Asia is a good enough place for now. I should apply myself to something better. I must keep writing. I must finish something. Regain what notability I once had. All while pretending I don’t care and I do what I want. Just remember smile, because no one wants to see you when you are down. I’ll keep writing.