cold fish
February 21, 2001 3:43 am

The past few days have been very cold and wet ones. As usual, severe damage and population loss is happening in remote areas of the country that I can't pretend to care about. I'm sitting in the coffee shop again, with cappuccino italiano in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

I'm looking through Mimi's slander (again, because I never have much in the way of new reading material) letting the words burn into my mind, as I am wont to do when re-reading everything I have. I'm thinking about how these people can put such intimately personal thoughts onto paper (or cathode) while overcoming the initially sense of wariness that comes with spilling these things to complete strangers.

It's not that I'm surprised. One can walk into the local bookstore and find hordes of personal writings, albeit filtered through the machinery of big-time publishing as well as the essentially fictionalizing element that comes with post-rationalizing one's thoughts, ranging from the romantic to the cynical to the anomic.

It's just that all these things are very far removed from my own programming. I sort of lost touch with a lot of emotional involvement five years ago. Yes, there were lapses, but in my mind they are better left unremembered. 

Don't get me wrong. I still get angry, and disappointed or elated, but those are emotions that are base at most, attached to things like food, computer games, art or books. But with people, no. 

I don't know precisely what it is that makes me this way. I could easily chalk it up to bad memories and thus a consequential unwillingness to invest (and not "sacrifice", for I have done little for friends) shares of caring into other human beings.

A year ago, a former college mate approached me for a light, and we sat down on the black steel benches at the university promenade. 

He hadn't been in school for some time. He was on a leave of absence and he was obviously very morose about it and its surrounding circumstances. Again, like in the past, he angsted to me about many things, about how sex had become unfulfilling, about how unconnected he felt with collegiate academia, about how essentially empty his life.

I was by no means his close friend. But when shit hit the fan of his heart, he would always come to me and we would bask ourselves in the thirty three degree rays, the nicotine smoke and the toasting aura of our thick jackets. He on the verge of tears and suicide, and I, wondering, why does this not mean more to me than I think it should?

How was I supposed to feel?

"Sushi. That's what my ex-wife called me. Cold fish."

My dad handed me an envelope that came in the mail today. It was from HSBC. He told me to look through it and said, "Maybe we can earn some money."

"Catch the money train. Whenever you refer three friends to HSBC who are approved for credit cards, we'll credit you with P1,800."

My dad's financial condition must be worse than I thought.