A moon's dark side

Now that I’ve really thought about it, the only opening line from a movie that I can recall with some certainty is that of the 1990s flick Flatliners. Had to spend several minutes recalling the movie’s title. And had to search Google for the name of that actor who spoke the said line. Only two things kept flashing in my mind: the face and the fact that the guy was in a recent television series called 24. Couldn’t remember that Joel Schumacher actually directed the movie about a group of medical students who experimented on experiencing clinical death and being resuscitated back to life. It was the opening line that struck a chord and stayed in my mind all these years like soot on the wall: “Today is a good day to die”. It was fearlessly depressive.

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Asking her why their organization decided to put up a regional office in Bangkok even though their regional development strategy didn’t really put Thailand in the priority list, a friend just shrugged. “It’s all about leadership in the region. For instance, what has Manila said about the situation in Burma?” I really didn’t know how to answer that. Said I’m not even sure if the Philippines now has proper trading relations with Myanmar (as Burma is called today). But my acquaintance’s comments made their mark. At the airport, I bought myself a copy of this slim volume entitled Finding George Orwell in Burma. By a British author under the pseudonym Emma Larkin. I’m now in page 130, on Orwell’s essay Literature and Totalitarianism. Orwell: “The imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.”

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An afternoon in Manila after a devastating typhoon in the early 21st century: like being sucked into limbo where time seems to be at a standstill. Forcing one’s self to work has turned from tolerably bad to excruciatingly worse. Emotional weather report (with special credits to Jessica Zafra): flatline, with possibilities of dipping into another record low. Should take Nietzsche’s ideas seriously and try to look into the gastronomical reasons for such depressive states. Does it have something to do with the brown rice? Or perhaps the canned milkfish? Was too much sugar the culprit? Surprised at one’s impulsiveness, but felt liberated because of it. Looking forward to a really good run and sweating off all these psychological and spiritual clutter.


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