I drowned in a zillion waves as my thoughts came crashing down on me which is really stupid. I need this alone time more than anything else. My bestfriend kept on disrupting my train of thought as I weighed if I should kill myself first or finish college. The former is pretty appealing to me. And then Ivan came into existence from my left and giggled about something she’d been working on. I really love hearing her stories on how she ended up being stressed about something she really loved to do; for example, the thing she’s giggling about is her screwtape letters. It’s a play she’d been working on with her churchmates. I really like it. I’m going to remind her as soon as I get the chance. Oh and I remembered that were supposed to get to the chairperson’s office because the fund raising thing I had going since last semester needs some ink and attention from her. I’m a kicker. If I want something, I do it. Even if it’s that hard or I’d possibly die of bulimia in the process I would still do it. I am mostly a pessimist but my friend here says that I am a masochist so that big of a sacrifice or desperation would probably show in my face because I freaking wear a sign in my forehead that says everything that I think or feel. Going back I remembered my purpose in the crowded office because the problem showed up in my head like a pop-up on your desktop which tells you that you’ve screwed something really bad. I snuck up on the office door of the chairperson and got my hopes up for the empty red leather chair. Oh and I guess she was out to eat or something because it was ten am and it was time for the office staff’s pre-lunch break. Don’t get me wrong they love taking these breaks. Like I was thinking it was more of the pre-lunch, lunch and then post-lunch break and then after a while of working there would be the occasional coffee breaks or the snack times. While everybody is thinking was that they are a bunch of VIPs who do nothing. Sorry, believe me I couldn’t help but raise that thought. I was under the impression that they are hard-workers. I mean, they still are but I cannot believe that there would be as many breaks. I love the government and their hard-working employees who are here to serve the people. Seriously! They should be given awards or something to recognize their loyalty to the country and their work. Hmm. I re-read this last statement and it sounded almost sarcastic. It is not. Although I have been trying so hard to be but I am not-sarcastic. My dad was a government employee but that was the past, my point is that I have this impression that all government employees were like my ever devoted dad. Sorry, no pun intended, of course. I love my dad. And there is no sarcasm in there either. I clicked the refresh button to see if Ivan was wired yet then when I saw that she was not, I shut my tweetdeck out. I seriously think that there is something wrong to Daryl’s way of walking. It’s like he was carrying something very heavy infront of him that he had to walk like a penguin. No- it looked a lot heavier because penguins do not look ragged or something in that manner. Anyway he just told me in an inelegant manner that Prof. Rivas had just arrived in the class. I shrugged and followed knowing that I knew that he was in the room three minutes before he told me. All it took was a good trip to a generous flight of stairs; for it was really convenient having to stay at the sixth floor without the privilege of using the school elevator. Sir Marlon told me that Prof. Rivas went up to our class ahead of us when we came to meet him in his office downstairs. It took what looked to me like a millennia to get back upstairs and get the chairperson’s signature and be informed that, yes, Prof. Rivas is present inside the room; it was like a ghost coming into existence shush, you would know more about ghosts as you read on so please do so, I am quite a blabber. So I followed the ragged penguin to our antique classroom with my friend tailing beside me. I quite forgot what we were discussing earlier so I pointed out that we’ll speak later. So I looked ahead with the enthusiasm that shamed the rest of the very enthusiastic bunch inside the classroom. It was my favorite Professor holding his coffee mug at the corridor talking to a stranger and I was bracketing him from the whole scene because I thought that it was awesome I get to be a part of his teaching life. I got myself some soppy and dramatic remarks and then congratulated myself. I turned left towards the entry that lacked the door; well what would one expect of a state university? The shamed enthusiastic bunch greeted me and I snatched the chair closest to me like I was in a Christmas party and I had to grab a chair when the song stops playing or else I would lose the game and not have pretzel afterwards. After I squished my fat butt in, I heard whining from Irish. It was her Christmas game chair and I snatched it. I said I was sorry then I accompanied her to the classroom of the sociology majors to borrow and drag some chair. Well I calmed then moved around like a freaking idiot probably because I was freaking or am an idiot. I would have agreed if you accused me either way. Still Ivan was not online so I started typing my stressors. “Do you believe in ghosts?” my professor came on and said the word ‘ghosts’ like it was my favorite cookie and I wanted to eat it and then choke it out afterwards. I could have gagged when I heard what he said. I know I had been good so why was I getting this for Christmas? “What are ghosts made of?” he continued, I could have passed out. I faked a yawn to mask out the panic surging from my gut. Then I started calculating my sanity close to the decision of Buddha: was I sane or not. It was either he was sane and I am the lunatic or he was the lunatic and I was sane. He was asking if I believed in ghosts and if I had ever known what they are made of. I would like to quote myself in the spite that this will make me popular in due time. “Things are said and named for a reason and that this is the reason they exists.” Okay, so if I am to follow that thread right, it meant that whatever is named or mentioned exists. I would then quote Hegel here that whatever is, is reasonable. I would not go one the particularities that would make your head ache but the topic here is me and as to what I was feeling. What I was feeling is the pain when you’re punch in the gut. The inspiration was passing and my thoughts were slipping when I realized that there could be a theme song for what my phenomenology class would be like. I sang the lyrics of “Misguided Ghosts by Paramore” inside my head and I could not help singing it out loud. Irish was growing irate but not by my singing, I hoped. I just came up with the lamest excuse to be sleepy so that I would seem uninterested but I was dying to know what he was talking about. It is really hard being me, there were time that I would think that there were two different me’s that made two opposing decisions. Then Irish started hitting herself because she asked the question from a different timeframe and had been accused of transcending time and space by our good professor. She started wallowing as she thought she might really be a ghost. I started to smirk at the thought of it. Sir Rivas was emphasizing everything, even calling her name in recognition. Really, the mind is so capable of many things and its thoughts are the most complex and of greatest importance. I felt like a director looking through a camera of a film about my life. When I think about it I want to start editing, close enough I would arrive at perfection. Enough about me; I heard some banging from the teacher’s table-Sir Rivas was trying to wake us up. I’m sorry if I found it rather condensing to have to think that Hegel liked the idea of ghosts and in that train of thought I started to yawn. No-maybe I got the context wrong. Because I think we are all ghosts in the manner of having the purest of ideas. I totally agree with what he was talking about-this might be the best part to strike the quote ‘tat tvam asi’ I am beginning to put everything together now. I ignored the snide remarks of Ivan, she hated the circle, said it was too slow. But I really loved the circle; it gives me time to think of things slowly but surely. I stared at the blinking cursor for a while to remember what else happened yesterday, for all I know it was god-awful and big of a disaster. Everything is made of ideas, this would have come from Berkeley. I love that guy. This could have justified what Sir Rivas was aiming at, we are all ghosts. There are ghosts. Ghosts are the essence of everything. It is the abstraction of things in themselves. He was also right that Plato was the first Phenomenologist. That he gave us the most striking remark at our first meeting in our major Phenomenology and Existentialism. Although I thought that this subject belonged to Sartre only, I was amazed to think that Plato did have something to do with ghosts. I suddenly felt giddy when I wrapped my mind around the idea that Socrates was Plato’s ghost. I am beginning to think of myself facing my own ghost. That would be heartbreaking. And then our professor went on about the manner of how we should have talked to our ghost. Don’t get me wrong because this is the critical stage of the process. I would have made my ghost a guy and would have named him Tim, because Tim sounded intimidating. Hah hah. Sorry, going back, as Sir Rivas elaborated, you would have that hunger for knowledge. People always had been very animalistic in searching or knowledge; wait for it because I am getting to the good part. They become savage for their drives are so strong they cannot help but become very needy and harsh. Sorry, I let my head go wild with describing things, I probably exaggerated. What I was explaining was that people are becoming very condensing in ways unknowable in the manner that they do not have any respect at all to the knowledge that they were uncovering. Let me give you the picture, in all of the existence of philosophy our aim is to find the ultimate truth. In this manner we’d have to uncover truths after truths, verification after verification. Like an onion with its layers of thoughts, people have tried peeling these things off generation from generation. Jesus would have had his share of peelings. Sorry, I did not mean anything bad to come from that; I was merely sighting an example. Surely, I gave you the picture of how the search looked like. I hate it. If I ever saw a scientist face to face I would have bitten him and slapped his face. Not only would I have done that but I would have said how disgusting and disrespectful he was. Did he love ghosts at all to be in that savage manner of uncovering it? No. As my professor put it, like a lady undressed in a room full of observing people, reality had gone mad. With how I understood of him talking to his own ghosts I prepped myself as to talking to mine. Tim was waiting at a corner to see if I was ready. Again, into my chargin, sanity came to me face to face. Was I ready to exist? I wasn’t so sure so I shoved Tim inside my jeans’ pocket to save the discussion for later. And then the class said my name and surely I had to report about Hegel next meeting. I was going to be a ghost reporting about ghosts because Hegel thought it was a fine dang thing to write a book about ghosts or spirits that had everything to do with existing. LOL. Seriously, what was I thinking? I nodded and agreed as Sir Rivas was expecting a confirmation. The class ended in a buzz of language distorting my thoughts. I came over to have the fund raising thing signed by the adviser because this was a form of advising. I could have laughed at myself at pointing the concept shirt with the ‘tat tvam asi’ in it. How childish and pathetic. I smirked, he said I was good. I was. I am. Tat tvam asi. Major LOL. I looked up and Irish frantically explained her end of the argument. It seemed that he was wrong about accusing her of transcending time and space. There was a silent apology at his end of the conversation and we stared at each other for a minute to realize the complexity of language. I turned to my heels and grabbed my bag. I have so much to do.
The Reveries of a Third-World Writer, with Care 