So let it be established once again, that I, Ken, the High Lord of Disorder, should be declared a communicable public hazard.

Or at least that’s how much narcissism can one allow himself to get delusional with.

My apology if that sounded cryptic. I flatter myself into believing I am capable of talking—and writing—hieroglyphics. Someone out there should have this bizarre urge to be charitable and have me committed for mental soundness evaluation. Or make it quick, brief and sweet: kick me in the face.

Anyway, my point. It is roughly seventy nine days ago that I smudged this site with something to say. The entry preceding this one doesn’t really count as it is merely a declaration of my presence; that I still do exist in this site and not in a progressive state of decomposition.

In those random seventy nine days I was having wild anglings and tanglings with glamourpussies, alcoholics, sophisticates, a variety of pretentious snots, drama men and women, and assorted beautiful people drowning in unthinkable misery. It’s kind of overwhelming and eventually I got sick of it. Check that; not really sick of it, but I strangely pine for extended period of quiet moments with no one but myself. That’s selfishness to you, ladies and gentlemen; and I’m too doggone proud to admit it is a bad thing.

Briefly I amused myself with a grand idea that that germinating sensation stirring in the far corners of my mind may be worth a shot but got too quick into realizing the cons outweigh that warm fuzzy feeling. To pilfer a line from a favorite Ben Folds Five song, now that I have found someone, I’m feeling more alone, than I ever have, before…

This is where the chaos and disorder set in. Chaos and disorder are permitted in what I do—people like me eat chaos and disorder for breakfast. Stress is our middle name and we stare at potential fiasco without blinking. But we’re talking of different bananas when affections are concerned.

You have no right to mess with other people feelings. And that’s where my effortless talents lie. Whenever I open my mouth I usually send out signals that are misconstrued to be otherwise than their original intent. I can passionately argue (taking cue from good ole Leo Buscaglia) about why if you’re incapable of loving someone the least you can do is not to hurt him or her and people think I’m a jerk. I say the dumbest, offensive things and people think it’s a come hither gesture. I talk of friendship and I come off like a lunatic and whenever I advocate irresponsibility I reap brownie points.

The kind of thing that inspires you to scream and do horrific homicidal acts.

All the above-mentioned ramblings and rantings are nothing compared to the lost lonely ache of knowing I’d be forever lost, invisible and will be forever explaining myself.

At one point you become friends with exhaustion.

And that’s all there is.

Before I proceed let me skip a few fences and register my absolute disdain towards people who think it is my duty to simplify myself so they would get what I’m usually rambling about. I have whined about this in the past and at risk of deadening redundancy let me restate the fact that I have no allocated patience for dweebs whose mental activity begin to explode upon reaching a maximum supportable IQ points (usually not exceeding Twiggy’s waistline). For one, mediocrity bores me to bits. Secondly, I find it very lazy for some people to cite the least common denominator mentality to conceal their glaring and unblushing lack of effort at self-improvement (hint: open a thesaurus and no, it’s not a primitive, prehistoric animal).

Don’t give that look, too. It is not my fucking obligation to be sensitive towards your touchy-feely indolence. You should have read enough or consulted trusty Webster to learn words so you’d do the universe a great service by not inflicting the rest of the free world of your unapologetic ignorance. Your lack of resolve to be word-savvy isn’t due to the fact that others are using “big words” at the speed of light. It’s because you decide to snore at anything that has more than three syllables. Fucking grow up. Don’t give me the shitty “concern” that “most people might not understand.”

Weird. Who are most people? And why would I seek to be understood when I have repeatedly wailed even to those who refuse to listen that I am a prime acolyte in the house of chaos? Not only am I fascinated with irony and contradictions but I find a certain bizarre romance in something I cannot understand. That makes me think, that warps me out of complacency to challenge myself and the limitation of my understanding.

There. I’m raving and hyperventilating like a full-blown maniac that the topic I want to ramble about melted from the flares and fumes spurting out of my nostrils. I am aware that I sound like a snooty jerk. So do me a favor. Don’t stand there, wringing your hands shiftlessly, puppy-eyed and such.

Go find a fucking dictionary and find out the definition of vicious.

The word probably was invented to define me.

I have no trouble with that, either.

Somewhere by the far corner I’ll stack habitual dreams — reveries of sand and water, unbounded trek and exploit, a horseback ride down a slope pillared with pines and peppered by crisp morning air, a teasing hammock under a fertile mango tree on a blistering summer afternoon — while vulnerably drowned in crude trappings of demanding paperclips, insolent keyboards, rebellious shredders, invasive phone shrieks and oppressive fluorescents.

Its walls will be papered with ambitious dreams: delusions and aspirations — grandeur, magnitude and infinity inhabited and claimed only by the most restless of imagination-precious crops only the most determined of passions can defy to harvest. Vision will be varnished on swathed canvasses — brave testament of the lushness of creative impulses that shall transcend the triviality of the bearer.

There will be unlocked chests on the left to store unpleasant dreams: aches, frustrations, disillusionments and the constant ally and shaper of wisdom and understanding — the state of brokenness. The key will not be thrown into rivers, lakes or ponds but best kept at hand, for that throbbing moment of bittersweet nostalgia when you lift the lid and peek inside as if to greet a vaguely-familiar wounded friend.

Neatly piled on the sharp angle where two walls wed, allow me to assemble thirsty dreams and longings — anchored arms orbiting a torso, legs twined around hips, a gentle pull or warm nestle in the unholy hours between sunsets and the first of rooster crows-gentle geometries of tenderness buried for a moment in sheets and pillows, stirred by rhythms of breathing and discreet half-whispers in celebration of a genial sleep.

The windowsills will be book-ended with unwelcome dreams — nightmares and melancholy — goodbyes lumped in throats, pickled emotions as stale as grandmother’s yellowed prescriptions, polite conversations and insufferable silences, a white coffin being lowered in verdant greens, watching misery flicker in the eye of someone who laughs the loudest.

There will be no rugs in the attic, for they hide the quivering hopefulness of the wooden floorboards. Hopefulness is a dream, too, and it would be such rude prejudice to shroud its modest dignity with discounted shoddy linoleum. In this hopefulness I would rather lay motionless, eyes shut, draining the coldness of the wood who kiss the delicate strands at the back of my neck. Or, sometimes, in this intentionally frozen stillness my eyes would flutter open and carry on it’s enduring romance with the ceiling, draining the circus in my head into a delicious infinity of empty bliss and innocence.

Wistfulness, wishful thinking, they will sit languidly in an absent couch like twins forever ensnared in umbilical inheritance, bound by reciprocation and hereditary accidents; for they are compulsory dreams too — for it is in their honor created abundant beauty to be desired, beauty gifted with wings to pursue their special soul mates and muses.

This will be my private attic, a concealed room.

As an imperative I want it hidden for selfish reasons. Once in a while, out of confidence or fondness I’d invite another spirit to lie down in it’s naked floors, to soak up the shivering radiance of its apologetic flaws (and concealed spells, if I may speak in escalating conceit). Yet the probable sweet embrace or impromptu departure of an invited guest is a dreadful ambivalence that inhibits even the most fervent concierge to fling the doors open and welcome the flood of intrusions to leave an awkward trail drenched with loam, mud and woe.

The choice remains as they always were and always will: suspend your dreams in a visible pulpit and hazard an ache; unsympathetically revel in the exquisite margins of a garret smeared of beauty and anonymous tales and forever injure yourself with deficiency and want.

Or in the attic of sadness quietly spread your wings.

Weeks have passed and I haven’t had the clarity to write about things that are important, that genuinely matter. Procrastination has nothing to do with it. I have had difficulty finding the proper words to articulate the tremendously draining events and discoveries in the past few weeks. In moments like these, words would conveniently take a holiday, leaving me stumped, miserable, voiceless.

My mother didn’t get a cheap greeting card, not even a ten-second call from me on her birthday a couple of days ago. I feel awful. It’s like a culpable barnacle lodging my brains, multiplying rapidly, emitting paroxysms of guilt racking my nerves. I called her last night and a wisdom-laden, beatific voice assured me that it’s all right but I’d like to believe I’ll never inherit those pricey heirloom whatzits preserved by mothballs. Which is fine by me. Expect that I feel terrible. It’s like I just sat through Sister Mary Fatima’s catechism thesis on what will be in store for ill-behaved boys who murder millions of potential lives with a boner and a busy hand.

Two friends are equally miserable. One is anxious and ambivalent, facing a turnpike pegged with tough choices involving affections, finances, deceits, disloyalties. The other breathes a retrospective wistful ache of the same experience while braving an intangible affection that is stuck between stop lights of daily concerns and immediate burdens. Both are amazing people who, like everyone else, are fumbling through life, making use of whatever wisdom, knowledge or insight that will get them through the spaces between dawn and dusk.

Thinking about these things makes me feel the sublime intensity and truthfulness seamlessly captured in dog barking at the moon by Joan Miro. The painting struck me deeply when I first encountered it in Arts class and it still reverberates in my mind like a well erupting into a delirious song from the weight of a penny from a wisher’s hand.

A dog barking at the moon. Come to think of it. Generally, we all are.

Admirable how a few brave souls are not shy at admitting that they are veterans of many failed attempts at this thing, which merits them the unappetizing title of being bonafide losers. But that doesn’t stop them from finding another mistake. You can argue with reason, you can argue with pain, you can argue with experiences. But you cannot argue with passionate hopefulness.

Other people will find the persistence a stupid pursuit. Who in bleep’s sake cares? Of course you’ll do stupid things but do them with enthusiasm.

In the past few weeks, that kind of blah-ness is quite a pervasive condition on me and no matter how I struggle for clarity or directional shift, I can’t help but get this perpetual twilight zone smog. Names, faces, events and emotions are reduced into one incoherent blur and many times over I get the absurd disposition that my life is one protracted stretch of horrific and surreal scenes strung together.

Despite the abundance of daily stories to write about, that creative spark seems to have taken a holiday. Missing. Out of reach. Elsuive. I should console myself of the thought that life, although not that spectacular in excessive ways, have been quite permitting. There’s nothing much to whine about and for that I’m thankful.

Omnipresent as ever is that pang of sadness. It didn’t help me that I have a few striking episodes of total astonishment over complete strangers who remind me of that one absolute deficit that’s somewhat within grasp but remains perversely unreachable, dodging me, rolling with teasing laughter. Being swaggering and self-absorbed.

I woke up in the middle of the night and lethargy descended like a malicious cloud threatening a predictable downpour. I remain very still, lying in bed, wide-eyed, bated-breathed, naked, waiting for something to hit me.

1. What’s the point of all this?
2. Why struggle?
3. Why can’t I be a bonafide asshole and just let it be that way?
4. Why can’t I bear the thought of being directly involved in inflicting hurt?
5. Why am I so bad at being too close for comfort?

As a human capable of this thing called thought process, the more I try to rationalize with shallow pseudophilosophies or recycled self-empowering tepid attempt at self-consolations, the more I flaggelate myself by mentally kicking my own shins.

It’s possible that I am hitching the rational train in full throttle. Am I a human train wreck?

If everything is so close, almost within my grasp, then how do I explain the little slivers of restraint and self-doubt that prevent me from being so happy? Maybe this is one of those moments where I am actually feeling depressed but too engrossed with petty distractions called academics and living to actually take heed and do something about it. Maybe after all the avoidance, I just want to slump on the couch next to a fond breathing thing which will prove my delusions wrong.

Or maybe a quick fix of Oreo McFlurry will dispel this supposed decline. Maybe I am feeling this to remind myself that I am very much capable of hurt despite the mounting jadedness. Maybe it’s just me. Which, with great possibility, is definitely all there is.

I am very well acquainted with how it is being sad, I reply. But writing dons its own wings and charts its own flights. I have nothing to do with its cheerless expression. All I remember is I was looking at words assembling themselves into something I am quite familiar with. Eventually they make sense. I know of joy as I know its reverse. They are constant visitors who seldom arrive simultaneously. They choreograph their stopovers with mutual respect: the other won’t knock while the other is in the middle of an enraptured conversation with the owner of the house. They both know it is rude to barge in, to disrupt. While the other dwells in the room, the other is patiently waiting in the outskirts of the fields, counting heartbeats until his time is due.

When it’s proper, appears in full glory, brimming with a smile. That’s how it is, I conclude, don’t let the words confuse or mislead you. Don’t assume too much. Nor attempt to understand anything too soon. Like you, I await the coming and going, alternating the anticipation, as steady as the rhythm of night and day.