WE WERE born at the height of martial law
and our mothers
who were already going into labor
had to ask permission from cops
to go to the hospital
because it was past curfew.
we had to make do with "long-distance relationships"
at an early age
because our parents were OFWs,
part of the labor force
that the government then thought
was its best export pieces.
or in others’ case,
families wanted to migrate and escape the whole poverty contagion
here,
leaving behind pesky children
too stubborn to leave the country
without really knowing why
daddy was complaining
about how his local business would die
under cronies’
"pacman"-like mentalities.
by our pre-puberty/puberty years,
the country went into a revolution,
or seemed to be always
on the verge of one.
we listened to "angst music" from abroad
and our teenage years
were filled with imported but pirated
"alternative" music.
new wave would be our favored genre,
and songs bearing sorrow-filled titles
like "more to lose" or "girlfriend in a comma"
would make the soundtrack of our generation.
by the time we got into college,
the roads all been paved
(or, at the physical level, are still awaiting
crumbs from politicians’ pork barrel funds)
and we are ready to take in
more artsy-fartsy angst.
people are taken into grunge,
and all that gloriously glamorous aloofness
and anger of eddie vedder.
but kurt cobain killed himself,
literally ending the nirvana.
we were young adults falling apart at the seams,
earnest for that "jagged little pill"
that gets us through the day,
and to another night of partying,
raving,
smoking,
drinking.
at the homefront, families are/were drifting apart
as we see younger people
- people we call brothers or sisters—
go to other countries
to become OFWs
(nevermind that some have come back here in boxes,
lifeless and in need of a justice fix).
we were being expected to take over responsibilities
ducked/abandoned by our parents
when we can’t even feed ourselves.
things are moving fast,
as in at least 56 kbps fast,
and moving even faster with each new pentium series,
that we have to cope with information overloads.
we stay up late tinkering with computers,
virtually re-inventing,
re-modeling,
re-xxxing everything,
taking the whole goddamned thing apart
only to put it together,
and killing ourselves in the process.
in between,
we saw how the great technological boom
became the great technological bust,
giving the word "crash"’ a whole new meaning.
because unlike systems,
truckloads of monies
theoretically disappear
when the market goes bad.
meanwhile, we go through college,
get past college,
or barely—
ending all our best times,
or more accurately,
ending all our chances to use school as an excuse
to endlessly wander the mall,
to hang around with friends,
and engage in what we perceive to be intellectual discussions
for entire days,
and nights.
we are shoved into the corporate world
we love to hate,
and are placed at the awkward situation
of having to choose between
being a starving underachiever,
or being a moneyed sell-off-to-the-establishment.
we realize this was the same dilemma
our parents—then hippies—
were faced with
when their own parents
decided to stop feeding them.
for entertainment,
we get in touch with friends we stopped seeing years back
because of some silly "great debate" over
political ideologies.
we realize there’s nothing much to them but idiosyncracies
over a hundred-bucks-worth cappuccino
in an overpriced café.
we plunge head on to another great debate,
this time on whether U2 should be considered a traitor
for going soft on America,
as bono, they claimed, was getting cozy with the imperialist leaders
to push for his drop-the-debt campaign.
we seal the argument with a compromise that the band has matured
and has realized niche advocacy can do the trick.
meanwhile another friend—
not the ernie-bert-duo one of whom died of AIDS -
just made it to the headline,
getting killed over a war he thought up until his final breath he
was fighting
for and on our behalf.
we show up at his "parangal" angry because
we prefer him alive
than a dead hero.
on his honor,
we pledge never to patronize starbucks
and hang around figaro instead
because they serve homegrown coffee
(needless to say,
that was our best but still cheap-shot
attempt at nationalism).
we get into relationships we never get out of,
chaining us to responsibilities for life,
forcing us to ride the goddamned MRT everyday
to go to work.
and we make do
despite the fear of heights,
the fear of closed spaces,
the fear of crowds,
the fear of earthquakes.
we realize international politics
are changing dynamics
when so-called terrorists
blow up even America.
and for a while there we were thinking,
"hey, the end is near."
but back home,
the country continue to battle with the same set
of problems it was having decades ago.
what’s worse,
radios are blurting out
a weird genre of rap,
forcing us to think about years ago
when we were in charge of the music
and the partying.
we realize we are hung up
on the last decade of the 21st century
and have developed a fixation for everything ‘90s.
our best memories go back
to that time when a movie
that starred winona ryder
attempted to depict—somewhat erroneously—
our time and age.
we continue to tell ourselves
we are amused by people’s romanticism
with our generation,
and the depiction of our time
as the epoch of coolness—
but then all of us woke up one day
with that news
of winona getting caught shoplifting,
makes us want to rush to her side to say,
"haven’t you learned anything?
the fashionable thing with stealing is not getting caught."
we grapple with the notion of the wasted generation.
we find comfort in our backpacks
that contain our things and entire lives.
everything is handy,
everything is portable.
and there is nothing more glorified
than a road warrior.
ironic.
your world stops when your laptop gets hacked.
xxx
.
