IGME Files

The Housecleaning Files:  I

          I got this from among the stack of papers made by our texters from a previous show I was a part of.  One of the many “menial” tasks I did was to collate from out of hundreds of these suggestions every week, summarize them, and hopefully spring an idea for a show.  Nuf said…I’ve moved on since then. 

          

          The point is that I’ve been housecleaning, er, room cleaning.  I’m a self-confessed slob.  It’s so hard to admit it without thinking I have committed yet another self-incrimination.  I don’t know anyone would admit to it outrightly though.   

           

              After the “belated” Christmas present I got from a very good friend last week (a very nice meditation set), I took it to mean as a sign that I wanted/needed to start with a clean slate.  This means a physical change, the easier ones come first, isn’t it?  I don’t know I was up for the biggest challenge yet – how to detach one self from things, emotionally and psychologically.   

            

             What do you do for a dust-paper-newspaper-junkie like me, whose idea of the world rests on every collected piece of paper (emphasis on the word “every”) from test papers way back in college, the xeroxed articles culled from books, notes, the test papers, even the class cards (where my grades were for most part not to be proud of), are still with me!  Details, details…I won’t go into more details.  Is this plain nostalgia, information-hungry, or is there something more? 

           First, I removed the spring-bed I have but retained the thick folded mattress.  The reason – I haven’t slept in it for years anyway.  For the covered shelf which had been the home of the nicely-stacked papers for years, I got all of it and placed all of them in the wooded floor for scrutiny.  I just said to myself, “wow!”  This was/is me!   

           

             I remember reading or watching a home improvement advice with a predicament like this to help you, ask yourself something like what can’t you live without, keep it.  The rest, throw it away to the bin or give it away.   I have found a better idea for myself, the papers/documents/notes will be grouped together according to my interests, the four big categories:  Film, Literature (Scripts of Plays, Novels, History, Etc), Photography, and Culture. The rest are Personal Documents (love letters, my idea book, newspaper clippings, etc).  Sounds better alright, I have started it this week, but more and more it’s becoming tedious.  The only motivation for me is to get rid of the closed, stuffy smell of papers that’s been forever stuck-up, like what you smell in an old and decrepit library if you’ve ever been to.  Anyway, work has started.  I have to be RUTHLESS, I told myself.

          

              It’s easy to discard the notes I have in college, I’ll just read over them and hopefully have the information on my long-term memory.  But what if it holds beautiful memories, the good and bad emotions attached to them?  Can’t just throw them away easily.

Here are the life lessons, the just beautiful memories, good and bad:

·        Bembot – I found the programme where I got my first role as an actor in a student production, directing class (2^nd sem, ’98).  The storyline for this one-act play “May Pangako ang Bukas” is all hazy to me now.  All I could remember was I played the role of a shoe-shine boy of a poor family, what with my thin as a rail frame. 

·        The back-side print in a tabloid in 2000 where I found out an “ex-friend” was killed in a carnapping incident.  Later, I was questioned on the phone by the NBI.  For a sec, I felt like a suspect because of very intruding and disturbing queries made.  This investigator never got anything substantial from me for I was out of this person’s life months back. 

      Maybe I should throw the news file coz it gives me the creeps.  I don’t know         what has happened in the case.

·        I am a bottle collector, especially the colored bottles.  I realized I couldn’t keep the ordinary ones anymore (those with brown energy drinks).  I deserve something better, more variegated, in all shapes and forms.   

      There’s something that drew me about the bottles, not only the person that  unwittingly inspired me, but also its intrinsic quality as well.  Like the glasses that make them, I wanted to be seen-through.  And if it’s broken, you can’t glue them and never bring back to its original look.  All of us will be scarred through time but it’s really up to us if we want to lay hold of oneself, or relinquish one’s power.  

·        And maybe to sum up my rationale from being a junkie, here’s a few lines from “The Adaptation” script: 

    

     “There are too many ideas and things and people, too many directions to go.  I was starting to believe THE REASON IT MATTERS TO CARE PASSIONATELY about something is that IT WHITTLES THE WORLD DOWN TO A MORE MANAGEABLE SIZE.” 

To be Continued…