First Step
Posted by: Fats in: KatawanAfter the first step, it is time to move on. Sunday, May 7, 2006.
My body seems to have deteriorated over those years of work-related stress, poor nutrition and a polluted environment. Something as simple as going down to Makati City for some visa business, even by the supposedly stress-free train and a brisk walk, has almost completely drained all my energies before I manage to get back home. The heat and pollution of the city has become really bad, and the mall-environment serves up unhealthy food; the better ones are way too expensive for me. Sad, canteen or even street food used to be good, but it seems that they too have adopted mall-culture’s instant, flavored, artificial, dessicated.
Discharged of energies, even resting is difficult. If I fall asleep out of tiredness, I wake up with a heavy head and sinuses swollen from the heat of my breath. There is also always something throbbing, heavy, heated, there at the back of my head, as if my hair was dragging it down, causing much strain on my neck. Perhaps I should get rid of my hair, all this awful, heavy, hot, ugly hair.
More often, however, I feel too tired to fall asleep. My breathing stops every few minutes, or my nose gets clogged, bleeds a little, and I need to get up, or my teeth feel painfully pressured, or my mind just refuses to go to sleep. Eating is difficult, too, having lost my appetite for food of any kind, except perhaps those in a distant imagination - moke hingar, ngape, Burmese salad - and in a distant time - dried fish when I was small, tilapia in Lingayen when I was a teenager, gamet in Vigan one summer over twenty years ago.
After the first step, it is time to move on. Sunday, May 7, 2006.
