Once you get used to artificial lighting and a giant concrete wall blocking your view of the world, you lose track of time.  It’s a good thing I don’t do night shift, or else my body clock will be seriously messed up as it is.  “Early” is a state of mind, so I managed to ditch my daily after-work ritual - proofreading - and managed to get out of the office building with a full view of a cloudless, crystal-blue sky.

Had the Sun been ten degrees cooler, it would have been perfect.  This isn’t heaven, darling.  And this sure ain’t Sparta.

In a four-letter word, EDSA.

I have to go all 300 for the morning MRT commute, which does traverse EDSA.  Whenever I ride the MRT and have a clear view of the street-commuting peons down below, I feel like King Leonidas sans the cinematic steroids:

Madness?  This is EDSA!
Commuters?  What is your profession?  (Outsourced labor!  Ha-whoo!  Ha-whoo!)
Ready your breakfast and eat hearty, for tonight, WE RIDE IN HELL!

If historically inaccurate cinematic testosterone is not your thing, then afternoon commutes have their own sense of emo-ness.  There’s nothing more emo than waiting for a bus at 5:30 in the afternoon at the very artery of an alienating metropolis, despairing, forever waiting, wondering if there’s a place for you in this world beyond the back of the bus.

If that’s not emo-ness, I guess you have to stretch it a bit further.  You do find your place: somewhere in between.  You either talk about Lifehouse concerts you’ve already had reserved tickets to, or you talk about the aisle of a rickety deathtrap where you’re faced with a gauntlet of elbows and asses.  If you’re virgin, one swerving move by the driver could have you getting fellated through your jeans.

Then you ask yourself about the meaning of life.  If that’s not navel-gazing, I don’t know what is.  There’s really nothing existential about riding a bus at 30-degree heat, trading sweat with the working class.  These are the moments when you, an activist, revise Marxist theory (dum dum dum!) and include call center agents and their kind among the 70% majority of the Philippine proletariat.  Hey, if you’re as politically-inclined as I am, EDSA does hold a special place in your heart.

Never mind if you feel the urge to head to that commemorative plaque in front of the EDSA Shrine, drop your pants, and defecate on the engraved name of President What’s-Her-Face.  You have to do this at a particular angle if, like many Filipinos, you believe that the Virgin Mary is omniscient.

Robert Frost once wrote:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

In my case, that road is called Katipunan.

I don’t know about the next person, but I’m starting to find the phrase putang ina - and all its derivatives - completely and utterly meaningless.  “Putang ina,” often contracted to “tangina,” is of course the Filipino equivalent of “your mother’s a whore.”  While it’s used in the same way and frequency as the curse-word “motherfucker,” the direct translation is different and rather difficult to say: “Sumasampa ka sa nanay mo.”

Putang ina is supposed to be a very offensive phrase that violates the dignity of mothers and women everywhere, but if you use a curse too often, it loses its power.  People flick middle fingers too often nowadays that I stopped using it; these days, I use The Shocker.  Putang ina can be used to begin a sentence, as a conjuction, as an interjection, as a verb, as a noun, as a conjecture, as an adverb, as an adjective, and so on and so forth.

There is no single mode in Filipino or Taglish that putang ina does not fulfill.  Putang ina can be a subject, it can be a predicate, it could be an object, it could be a referent, it could be a signifier, it could be a signified…

What was once a genuinely offensive figure of speech is so common, that you might as well be offended by the word “The.”

I surmise that there was a time that putang ina was the stuff that would make a good plot device in a Ronnie Ricketts film: the hero’s mother is called a whore, the hero goes berserk, and an old schoolbus explodes.  These days, it’s too common; putang ama doesn’t have the same kick.  Putang aso mo is merely a reiteration of the word “bitch.”  Puta madre?  Nah, too common.  Puta ka?  You’re not exactly Vilma Santos.

So don’t be so surprised why I use the words “dickshit,” “monkeyfucker,” and “dogfister.”

I blame it all on emo.  We glorify heartache and unrequited love so much that sometimes, we forget what real pain is all about.  Real, honest-to-goodness, physical pain: the kind you get from botched (and yet completely necessary) tooth extractions.

The saga of my miserable tooth has come to a rather climactic end this morning.  Rather than opt for oral surgery, the dentist decided to take out my tooth by hook or by crook.  Four ampules of anaesthesia and a nerve-block didn’t do anything to numb the godforsaken molar.

Anaesthesia will never work.  So the dentist decided to pull it out the hard way.

When confronted with physical pain, it’s perfectly OK to cry.  If you twist your ankle the wrong way and the hilot comes in to force the joint into place, there’s nothing wrong about wailing like a banshee.  Now if you have a numbed mouth and a dentist prying away at the offending tooth with a pair of dental pliers, crying is really not an option.  Nor is screaming with the primal, guttural tone of a caged animal.

I just squirmed in that dental chair.  Like I was chugging a bad lime tequila, or that leeches were making their way up my rectum.  Perhaps even rigor mortis.

The tooth extraction seemed to last forever.  The pliers made the death grip.  It was a good thing I took a piss early in the morning, or else I would have wet my pants with sheer, excruciating pain.  Twisted ankles, tweaked knees, and a broken heart are nothing compared to a heavy-handed dentist pulling out your impacted and decaying molar with sheer brute force.  If that’s not pain, I don’t know what is.

Snap!  I thought it was over.  Nope, the dentist managed to snap the tooth, leaving part of the crown and the roots of the tooth behind.  There was no other alternative for the dentist but to pull it out.  Sideways, upward, a bit of rotation, lateral movements… I didn’t know whether to cry, take a shit, or go blind.

Did I mention it took two dentists to do this?

After four dental appointments and eight ampules of novocaine, the tooth lost by knockout.  The soonest I got back my wit and normal blood circulation, I took a picture of the offending tooth:

I could have taken a clearer picture, but my hands were too unsteady to immortalize the offending tooth.  The red stuff on top is actually a cyst: hardened pus that was responsible for the anaesthesia not working.  Now that I managed to kick my tooth’s ass, I could probably go one on one with Manny Pacquiao right now.

So talk all you want about the pain of loving someone who doesn’t love you back, or the pain that comes with your self-inflicted emotional misery, or the pain of belonging to someone else when the right one comes along.

Some people will blog today about the pain of a broken heart.  I, Maro-Freakin-Charim, just blogged about a dental extraction without anaesthesia.  Who’s got the pain now, eh?

That entry, of course, begs a rejoinder.

I personally think that it is at the height of a moral and ethical crisis in society when basic precepts like honesty (honeste vivere), doing no harm (alterum no laedare), and giving every one his or her due (suum cique triburere) are questioned.  When something like a just and fair society becomes relegated to the “unattainable,” it is a crisis in itself.  If rice crises and the rising prices of fuel are bad enough, the inability or reluctance of a society to work toward justice not only becomes its own undoing, but it spells its own death.

Let me explain - again - why “do no harm” is something I hold in such a high (if not neurotic) regard.  We do live in an unjust society, so let’s hold that as a given.  Society today is replete with so many liars and ingrates.  The reason why we still live today - the very reason why we exist, survive, and scrape the bottom of empty barrels to eke out a living - is because of a precept called “do no harm.”  I think Emperor Justinian I, who coined the phrase “alterum no laedare,” had enough foresight in his time to realize that for society to exist in harmony, even in its most rudimentary form, people must look out for each other.

“Foresight,” or I should say, a “duh” moment.  Consider people mobbing a thief or a pickpocket.  Or people throwing epithets at rapists on TV.  People who boil over with rage and anger when they hear of a crime.  A criminal represents the opposite of “do no harm.”  He or she is a malcontent whose existence revolves around harming another person, to live devoid of conscience, to disregard the welfare of other people.  If the malcontent harms one person, he or she can definitely harm another.

Let me get to the word “conscience.”  Laws, ethics, and personal principles are nothing more than embodiments of conscience.  Rather than to restrict us from living meaningful lives, laws permit us to do so.  There are just some lines you cannot cross.  For all the complicatedness of the law, it is merely a map that indicates your limits.  You can have your fun in a given limitation, but when your fun transgresses upon one’s person, there are repercussions.

While we’re on the subject of blogging responsibly:

A libel is public and malicious imputation of a crime, or of a vice or defect, real or imaginary, or any act, omission, condition, status, or circumstance tending to cause the dishonor, discredit, or contempt of a natural or juridical person, or to blacken the memory of one who is dead.

“Definition of Libel”
Art. 353, Sec. 1, Ch. 1, Title 13, Book 2
Revised Penal Code of the Philippines

I leave it to lawyers to interpret if libel does apply to blogs in Philippine jurisprudence.  Even if it doesn’t, this is not a license for libel or slander to find refuge in blogs, for blogs to be made as a venue for it.  Still, it brings to mind a very important point about how laws are merely reiterations of conscience: the definition of libel in Philippine law is worded in such a way that nobody in the right mind would dare dishonor someone, to discredit someone, to hold someone in contempt, or to besmirch dead people.

The motive is of course, irrelevant.  The law, being a reiteration of conscience, is very explicit:

Every defamatory imputation is presumed to be malicious, even if it be true, if no good intention and justifiable motive for making it is shown.

“Requirement for Publicity”
Art. 354, Sec. 1, Ch. 1, Title 13, Book 2
Revised Penal Code of the Philippines

Because the law draws lines on the basis of reiterating commonly-held beliefs about what ought to be, there is no reason for us to not live up to it.  The law - conscience - exists because we have to live up to it.  Never mind the perceived “sacrifices” we make because this is “imputed” on us and “imposed” on us.

To act with justice, to live honestly, to harm no one, and to give every one his or her due, is NOT an ideal.  These are the most basic of requirements expected of every single human being who lives in some form of society.

Which brings me to ask: what is so difficult about life without doing any harm?  What is so complicated about writing - irrevocably reduced to blogging, in this case - in a responsible, fair, just manner that seeks far more prudent and noble ends than to commit slander?

I won’t dare be sanctimonious to say that in four years of blogging, I never made lapses.  I wrote things that, had I lived in a less-permissive society, would land me in jail for sure.  Yet as time goes on, and you learn from your mistakes, you realize how responsible you really are for what you write.  It’s not “just a blog,” as much as every act of writing is itself a commitment to history.  To own up to it is not enough; it is expected that in the exercise of free speech and expression, that in the exercise of creativity, people should realize how important the ought-to-be is.

Besides, “do no harm” is not all that complicated.  It’s just three words.  Meaningless?  Relative?  Antiquated?  A deterrent to the creative process?

Hmmm… I am reminded of how Plato, in The Republic, offered a prescription to those who do not act justly and those who do not have the interest of others in mind.  Plato’s solution, metaphorical or literal, makes a lot of sense: the people in the polis throw the malcontent over the city walls.

It makes a lot of sense.

If there’s any feeling that has been crushing me lately, it’s being surrounded by poverty.

After writing a guilty entry over at Filipino Voices, I decided to go home immediately before I start having pangs of conscience again.  I think I’m growing morbidly obese over feelings of guilt lately, to the point that some of my friends think that I am developing an unhealthy propensity towards sociological emo.

As I alighted from the bus home, I decided to have some calamares for dinner.  As luck would have it, here comes a kid tugging at my pants.  “Kuya, pahingi,” he said.  While children can deceive you out of Christmas aguinaldo, they can’t dupe you out of food.  Soft-hearted loser that I am who would not at once doubt the innocence of a child asking for food, I decided to buy him three pieces, which he then proceeded to share with two of his friends.

I couldn’t take it anymore.  I walked fast to some corner of Citimall, lit a cigarette, and allowed the tears to fall.  Not being a good crier, I stopped crying after I was done with half.

I’ve always confessed to my mom that my real problem here is being surrounded and exposed to poverty like I’ve never seen before.  You think poverty is just an invention of cinema or of documentary journalists, until you see people actually scrounging trash cans near fast-food chains not for recyclables, but for food.  You actually see people cooking leftovers bound for the trash in tin cans bound for the dump.  What makes it extremely heartbreaking is that as you look around, you see wealth.  You are privy to affluence so much so that you live it.  You see, for the first time in your life, gaps between the rich, the poor, the really really rich, and the really really poor.

You realize you’re sick of it and want to change things, then you realize that there’s really only so much you can do.

So you do what you can, then you realize that you really aren’t doing enough.

Empathy’s a bastard.