Good Afritada Friday

You're supposed to fast on Good Friday, meaning you're expected to get by on one small meal the entire day and offer up the suffering that is growling, light-headed hunger as your Holy Week sacrifice. If food were one of those things that just by being itself turns our attention away from God, then perhaps I would not have broken the rules today. I've heard some people argue that an empty stomach helps one to hear God better when they're meditating, but I really can't see how that's possible. When you're hungry, all you can think about is that you're hungry. I am reminded of one Good Friday long ago, as an adolescent waaaaay back in the eighties, when my two siblings and I and a cousin from next door spent all day sitting around the dinner table, staring at a large metal pot filled with chicken macaroni salad. We were waiting for 3pm to strike; the hour that Jesus is supposed to have taken his last breath. I can't remember who decreed that we could not eat the macaroni before 3pm (in addition to not taking a bath) or suffer the unknown consequences of disrespecting the suffering Christ, but I do remember that we followed;no questions asked, no protestations bared. Every now and then one of us would lean over the pot, open the lid and inhale deeply. Really deeeeply. The elders exhorted us to go pray quietly somewhere or offer our services at the neighborhood "pabasa" (by that time the use of mikes and speakers to broadcast the manang's voice to the entire barangay was already in popular use), but none of us did anything of the sort. All we could think really think about was raiding that pot. When 3pm rolled around, there was only one thing on our minds. Thank God for macaroni. If fasting didn't move me to spiritual enlightenment then, it surely doesn't now. Personally, I feel more attuned to God's presence when I'm free to eat my three meals a day and thank him for it from the bottom of my heart.

Assessment: Ex-Smoker

I went to see my pulmonologist on Tuesday afternoon for the monthly check-up of my progress with Champix. Let's call him Dr. Turtlehead, shall we, because he always comes amazingly late. I was at his clinic at 2pm and he didn't show up till 4:30. By the time my name was called, my ass was the shape of the plastic chair I had been sitting in for the past two and a half hours. The woman patient who was ahead of me in line was cursing under her breath and probably would have tried to kill the doctor if someone had handed her a weapon. I didn't feel that I had as much cause to complain because Dr. Turtlehead sees me for free (he used to share a clinic with my mother at VRP, but let it not be said that I'm a complete leech -- I've been giving him gifts in exchange for being "NC" (that's 'no charge' to you), the last of which was a bottle of civet coffee).

Anyhoo, this is what it says now in my medical record at Dr.Turtlehead's office: "assessment: ex-smoker". Tuesday afternoon was my final day on Champix. I was on it these past three months, and excepting one incident of smoking six cigarettes on a single day last December, I've been clean and nicotine-free so far. I'm not entirely confident that I can resist the urge to smoke now that I've gone off the drug, but I can't say that I'm not relieved that I don't have to pop another of those vile blue tablets. They gave me terrible nausea. Worse than being in a carnival ride that repeatedly hangs you upside down until you toss your cookies. I guess I'll just have to trust that I've had enough of a mind-fix to know better than to throw three whole months of good behavior away.

I think about cigarettes a whole lot less than I used to. I used to wake up in the morning with the first thought in my head being "coffee and a smoke". These days I hardly ever remember that cigarettes even exist, and only recall that there are such things when I happen to see someone having a puff while walking down the street, sucking his cheeks in, purple lips making an "o" to exhale poison smoke. I never would have thought it possible, but I cringe at the thought that I used to look that way, and that I thought it was cool! Holy cow, the things nicotine does to your head.

Now that I don't think about Marlboros anymore, I spend all this freed-up head space thinking about food. Particularly cake, cheeseburgers and fries, pizza, green curry chicken, and the fishballs at Yakal dorm. Couple of nights ago I dreamt I was looking at the display case of a cake shop and writing names of pastry on a list. Even my subconscious wants food. Got chow? Gimme.

12 Again on April 10

My friend Renny is the biggest Duran Duran fan in the Philippines. She hasn't stopped fantasizing about drummer Roger Taylor since 1981 (guess who the bigger spinster is?). I had a thing for bassist John Taylor from age eleven through thirteen, and then quite forgot all about it. I didn't even remember going to the "Big Thing" concert at Araneta in 1989(?), until Renny showed me the pictures of us seated in the patron box with my sister and their good friend Olivia. There I was indeed, in my light-colored jeans and white Tretorns. Once upon a time I was a Duranie!

A couple of Christmases ago, Renny gave me a dvd of the band's 2004 comeback concert at Wembley. I didn't expect to be caught up in nostalgia for the long-gone eighties, and I certainly didn't think I'd find any of the members worth looking at now that they were well into their forties and likely to be sporting wrinkles and beer guts. But whaddya know, I enjoyed that dvd and watched the whole thing from start to finish. By the time the end credits were rolling, I'd begun to think that the band sounded even better than they did twenty years ago. And they looked good, too, for a bunch of old farts in their forties. John Taylor's got more lines on his forehead than a sheet of Size1 paper, but he's still a good-looking guy.

Thanks to Renny's obsessive trolling of the internet for concert info, I have now been roped into our simultaneous purchase of two front-section tickets, paid more than a month in advance, to the "Red Carpet Massacre" concert at the Araneta on April 10. Total madness, but I intend to exhaust all four thousand, four hundred and twenty reasons to be twelve again, and mad about the bassist with the beautiful smile.

Oi, Renny! This concert had better be good or I'll be swinging it over your head for the rest of your natural life :)