Do you know how it is when you feel the urge to write about stuff - some of them trite (i.e. strange encounters with random people in the elevator) and some of them not (i.e. the February 14 bombings) - but then things happen and you never get to writing about them? And then a few days after, you end up not writing about those things that you wanted so badly to write about for the simple reason that the urge to write about them has gone?
I relate those questions to my whims, yes, but more to time and how it's defined - its being able to heal all wounds or transform utterly horrying experiences to rather amusing ones. I feel that time has that power to pry the subject of the experience and the object of it apart, so that capricious memory is the thin thread that binds both together. That makes sense, methinks. After all, the journey towards the future can only be undertaken by subjects. Objects are lugged around for a while but are eventually abandoned. People can have only so many baggages. If they bring too many with them, they'll soon get left behind.
Philosophical waxing aside, that's how I feel about writing. If I allow so-called literary urges to pass me by, then I lose them forever.
And it's not just about writing. It's about everything I've done so far. Take debating, for instance. It's no secret that I've been rather 'if-fity' about debating. When I'm in the thick of tournaments, the passion I feel for it is palpable. I openly announce (to my teammates and friends, anyway) my noble intentions to start training and matter-loading. And while I'm saying that, I actually believe that I'm going to see my promises through.
But when the tournaments end, it's as they never happened. They, and the raging emotions that accompanied them, would be shoved centuries back in time, and my commitment to debate would be remembered but ignored. It's as if whole the debating experience was a momentary high that I thoroughly enjoyed but now feel very little need or desire to return to.
I'm not sure what this characteristic is called. Fickleness? Maybe. Laziness? Possibly. Whatever it is, I'm not proud of it. But I can't exactly say I'm ashamed of it either. It's hard to be ashamed of something that hasn't really done you serious harm.
But I do envy those who can sustain their passion for something, anything. Indeed, it's one thing to be passionate; it's entirely another to have the diligence to see that passion through. My mom always tells me that she'd rather pick a diligent person of average intelligence over a sharp person who's lazy. I see the point in that.
And to my credit, I find it rather sad that I can be both but am not.
* * *
Being a DCA for the IIDC 4, which ran for the last five days, is just what I needed to cap my debating career. I'm not saying that it's the last tournament I'll ever be attending. It may very well turn out not to be. But if it does, then I'm fairly confident that there is nothing more that I'd go scrambling back to.
There was just something about the whole thing that gave me closure. Call it the debating to adjudicating transition, which began in last year's Australs and which ends now that my scores and, most especially, my margins are pretty accurate. Or maybe starting and ending with a national tournament. I don't really know.
In any case, closure's not a bad thing to have in that one part of my life that I just know I'll have difficulty leaving behind.
* * *
Charmed unpredictability is how I'd describe my debating career.
In high school, I always felt that I was seen as that club member who was around all the time but had no real talent in debating. Case in point: I joined the Forensic Guild as a freshman but only got to debate competitively when I was in third year. And that was just one time. In fact, I think it would be more accurate to say that my debating career began only when I was a high school senior. And even then, it was a career that showed every promise of ending soon.
In the Ateneo, I started out as an unknown debater from a Tier 4 debating school. I knew absolutely nothing about the ADS. I signed up for that org anyway. During the first general assembly, I saw those people who had viciously wiped the floor with me in high school tournaments. Needless to say, I did not particularly like any of them. These people know that, as they are now my friends.
I even remember how I didn't know about the whole Phase 2 thing (training for the more advanced debaters) until Joelle called it out to me while we were on separate elevators in Shangri-la. And that was the day before the Phase 2 try-outs. But I went and qualified, joined the interclub tourney and made it to the finals, and somehow found myself with varsity status.
The rest, as they say, is history. Pretty interesting history, actually, but I won't go into that now. I'll leave that for the piece on my debating career that I'm planning to write soon.
* * *
Where debating is concerned, I have often felt that someone other than me was directing where I would go and what experiences I would have. For instance, a significant number of the tournaments I've attended were those I intended on skipping (i.e. 2002 NDC) . And while strong personalities abound in the ADS, I have never had issues with any of my teammates.
It's been a charmed life, really. It could have been better, true, but it could have very easily been so much worse. Truly, I have a lot to be thankful for.
* * *
RK commented during the IIDC 4 that all he remembers me saying during both the Oxford and Cambridge tourneys two years ago was that I wanted to sleep. Is that true?
I am sure that's what I said during the first round at Oxford. The wooden benches were just so cold, and it was around four in the morning then, Philippine time. I'm sure Ollie would have danced the lambada for me to wake up and absorb the mumbo-jumbo of matter he was so kindly acquainting me with. But as it turned out, he didn't have to; I found myself more awake during the succeeding rounds.
The point here is that I can't remember enough to deny having said that. It could be true. The Goddess of Wit and Eloquence. The Goddess of Prevailing Persuasion. The Goddess of Dreams. The Goddess of Sleep. Yep, all me.
* * *
Sometimes, I disappoint myself with how much I like sleeping. Not sleeping exactly, but what it stands for. I mean, I'm all for passion and wanting to do great things. But while I think of the passion to do something great as good and inspiring, I sometimes find that the urge to just break away from the real world and lose myself in either the unconsciousness of sleep or the world of imagination, whether mine or someone else's, is a whole lot more appealing.
I am like Walter Blythe in that way. He's the second son of Gilbert Blythe and Anne Shirley, for those of you who haven't read the Green Gables series. As Leslie Moore put it, he had the face of a genius and looked as if he belonged in another world. Now I'm not sure if I have the face of a genius. I'd say I have the face of a panda bear (especially because of my eye bags) more than that of a genius, but I sometimes feel like I belong to another world. How can I not feel that way when I'm so fond of escaping this one?
I read somewhere that if you constantly feel that the Earth is not your home, then you may be an alien of sorts. Am I an alien then? Or is this the thirst for transcendence that is essentially human?
