Sa mga hindi pa nabasa ito, I'm reposting Lorenz's first essay in our college English class. Our professor, DM Reyes, chose this essay to be workshopped by the class. Lorenz read it and we were speechless afterwards. There wasn't a single thing we wanted to change- it was perfect. His papers never got workshopped since then. (There were more of us lesser beings to attend to. Haha.)
SInce his first essay was about writing and memory, this post is dedicated to remembering him.
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Jose Lorenzo A. Tan
8 July 2002
A Waste
For some people, it’s their fabulous jewels or their Manolo Blahniks; for others, it’s the collection of robot figurines that they hand-painted themselves; for others still, it’s the family photo albums. Everyone has that “most prized possession” that can’t be traded for anything.
My most prized possession is my journal.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve also been known to plunge myself into the baser pleasures of secular humanism: my money and smut come in second and third. However, these things are dispensable items that I can replace easily in the event that they burn away or get stolen. In contrast, how can I retrieve five years’ worth of my life?
My journal is more than just a repository of excellent prose that recalls the scent of dead flowers; it is the archive of my very soul. (But then I suppose every person’s journal is that person --- unless that journal is of the perverted type which contains false accounts intended as a psychological palliative for autosuggestion, but these are rare cases).
Having eulogized my journal, I have put the reader in a better position to understand the horror of what happened recently.
A few nights ago, the computer hanged suddenly on my sister. Not only did it stop responding; it also started to generate a mechanical sound from inside the CPU. It was the sound of a ticking time bomb.
In light of the strange circumstances, Papa decided to bring the CPU over to the computer store to have it checked. Hearing him announce his plans during lunch that day made me think immediately of my journal, which I write on the computer. Would I have to save it on a diskette, I asked, worried that it would be erased in the shop. Papa said I didn’t have to, since the technicians would probable save the files themselves.
The bad news is that I believed him.
When Papa returned home more than two hours later, I rushed down the stairs to finally start writing. Quite anxious for my fix, I hooked up the wires myself, turned on the machine, and looked for my files.
You guessed correctly (thanks to my foreshadowing clues). They were not there. Not being the edgy type, I postponed my glass-shattering shriek and half-calmly asked Papa whether the good men at the store had saved the files.
There is no need to recount his reply, but I will because I'm partly masochistic: No, he said. The technicians replaced the entire hard drive, saving nothing.
Although I found that afternoon that I had lost, fortunately, just one entry, May 24, 2002 (I had backed up the rest a few days before), I still felt deeply bereaved, as if someone I loved just died. Losing body parts, according to Vogue, can be very traumatic for people, but especially for women who lose their breasts in mastectomies. Well, I felt like I had just had my breasts sliced off when I heard that May 24, 2002 was gone forever. I felt ill and considering my inclination to nausea, I was surprised that I didn't throw up.
May 24, 2002, was a page long. I was in labor for at least two hours with her, writing until around midnight last Friday.
Other people mourn their pets but I have only my journal. Its entries are my hamsters, goldfish, dogs. When one of them suddenly ceases to exist, I weep just as bitterly. In many ways, my loss is deeper, since I have lost nothing external like a domesticated organism, but part of my self. Attending my own funeral, burying my breast: that's how it feels.
These are histrionics, to be sure, but the drama is only slightly exaggerated. I wasted my time on this entry. Antoine de Saint-Exupery would say I tamed it. Of course I have no illusions about the quality of that work - it would never win the Pulitzer or the Palanca. However, it could have made the "Young Blood" column and without a doubt, the Inquirer's terrible "2BU" section, which every non-dullard teenager should spurn!
All these reasons fall under the same heading: waste. "Waste," Rhett Butler said in Gone with the Wind, "makes me mad." Or something like that. This is exactly what my Journal is supposed to be prophylactic against - forgetting, which to my mind, is one of the most horrible forms of waste.
The DVD has been with me for quite some time, but it was only recently when I started watchng this series. After two episodes, I was hooked. This is a really funny and clever show!
Mary Louise Parker as a single mom dealing in the suburbs
Warner Brothers has just announced that Half-Blood Prince will be delayed. The film will instead be released on July 17th, 2009. From the press release:
