Third World Writer

I am a pessimist, a skeptic, and maybe something of a cynic as well. I view the world as 80% evil and 20% good, and in the course of an average day I probably spend 70% of my time dwelling on negative things, 10% on positive things, and 20% on neutral. So when people call me a negative person, I can’t really disagree. This world, after all, is such a negative world.

I happen to know a number of happy, positive, optimistic people, and I do concede that they are indeed a more enjoyable bunch to be around. They’re lively, often wear pleasant smiles, and maintain an outlook on life that makes you wish they stayed happy forever. And I, too, once upon a time, was an optimist. I took steps to see the positive side of everything, I rejected thoughts that got me depressed, and I maintained a perspective that showed the world in a positive light. But reality never gave up, and before long I was forced to see sides of it that I had shunned. And as more and more of the world became undeniable, the more I found that I was no longer truly optimistic. I was just pretending to be.

Pessimism, in my particular case (I don’t speak for all pessimists), was never a matter of choice. Unlike optimism, where I had to consciously decide to see things positively and had to play down the negative aspects of things, pessimism was a more honest reaction to the world. I simply stopped forcing myself to smell the metaphorical roses while ignoring the metaphorical crap, I stopped looking solely at the metaphorical “greener grass on the other side”, and when I saw people who were worse off than I was, I stopped forcing myself to feel happy and grateful about what I already had, and allowed myself to dwell on the realization that these people have things so much worse than I could have ever seen with my optimistic perspective. So much worse.

I’m not going to presume that all optimists are as blind as I was. Neither am I suggesting that all optimists make conscious decisions to ignore some of the negative things in the world. But I have to wonder if there isn’t at least a little bit of ignorance about reality needed in order to be so optimistic, whether that ignorance is in the form of conscious denial or as an unintended consequence of focusing mainly on positive things. Because personally, the only way I think I can adopt an optimistic view of the world right now, after all the bad things I’ve read about, is if I forgot the worst of the things I know, if I ignored them, or if I just didn’t care. It is true what they say, after all — ignorance is bliss.

If I had to identify one specific event that made me abandon optimism, it would be the time I saw a man eating a mango. He was very obviously homeless, wore tattered clothes and went barefoot, and was rummaging through a garbage bin on the sidewalk on a busy intersection (of Gorordo Avenue and, incidentally, Mango Avenue). With a large smile on his face he pulled from the bin a browning mango seed and, after inspecting it, proceeded to suck whatever flavor remained on its fibers. He was happy, this man on the street, totally happy, and yet no matter how hard I tried, despite choosing to see the happy rather than the sad, I could not be happy for him. Any feeling of sharing in his smile was pushed away by a voice screaming that this isn’t right, no one should have to be happy with a discarded mango seed. And if I felt happy for him, knowing that I could do more, I was doing him, and everyone like him, a great injustice.

When I chose to be happy, I was happy, but I was hardly anything else. Now, choosing to see the worst of the world in order to know it better, I feel a profound sadness that this is the world we live in, yet I feel some relief knowing that I now live in the world my feet are touching, and not in a happier version of it conjured in my head. And now, having realized that this world is so very, very flawed, maybe I can see what I can do to help fix it.

It is an unfortunately common occurrence that people qualify all pessimists as dark, morose, depressing people who despise happiness. I have to keep explaining that you can’t generalize people into categories, especially if your idea of what the category means is inaccurate. Not all pessimists have resigned themselves to the idea that the world will never get better. I personally believe that if we recognize that there is a problem, there is a large chance that we can fix it. And not all pessimists are depressed. Depression is caused by an unrealistic negative view about the world, while pessimists usually provide arguments to suggest their views are justified.

And pessimists, myself at least, are not pessimists 100% of the time. Once in a while, even though the world remains so sad, I do allow myself to be happy.

In the spirit of a same-titled post by a former kouhai of mine, I’ve decided to write one positive entry about Christmas, a simple reminiscing of the traditions we used to enjoy as children.

Christmas in my family always began months early, with setting up the tree, pinning stockings (socks) to the wall and writing letters to Santa. We’d list all the things we wanted to receive, say thanks for last year’s gifts, and perhaps apologize for any misdeeds that might affect the number of goodies we got. I made sure to include “world peace” in my wish list, for extra good-boy points. =) We’d put our letters in out ’stockings’, and find a few days later that they’d gone missing (Santa got them), and then we’d get all excited and spend the rest of the year suddenly being polite and nice and doing different chores and favors.

As the weeks passed we’d start sleeping earlier and earlier in the evening, because time flew much too slow when we were awake. And then, on Christmas Eve, we’d go to sleep right after dinner, or skip dinner entirely and jump straight to bed if we were especially impatient. As we tried to force ourselves into as deep a sleep as possible, the grown-ups would stay up “to cook the food for our Noche Buena”.

And then at around 1:00 or 2:00 someone, usually a sibling, would wake us up all excitedly. “It’s Christmas!” they’d say, “The gifts are here!” and we’d all go to the sala all cool-like as if we hadn’t been waiting all year for this day.

And then there it would be, the most enchanting scene to our childish eyes, gifts and chocolates and apples and peppermint candy-canes strewn across the floor under the tree. Jose Mari Chan or the Chipmunks or APO would play in the background, and the table would be filled with spaghetti and palabok and bread and coke and ham and the dreaded queso de bola. Our parents would force themselves out of bed and act all surprised as we scrambled to collect all the gifts that had our names scribbled in Santa’s messy loopy handwriting. And then we’d stay awake, playing with our toys or boardgames straight until morning, while the grown-ups went back to sleep.

Christmas Day was always spent with family, that was the rule. We’d make a trip to our cousins’ place, or they’d make a trip to ours, and we’d spend the day playing and talking about how we seemed to always get the same kind of things, the same toys, the same brand of jeans, the same designed T-shirts, but how curious it was that Santa’s handwriting on our cousins’ giftwrap was always different from the one on ours. That and how Santa managed to go from house to house at faster-than-light speed were two of the greatest mysteries of my childhood. ^__^

Ah, those were the days when I still loved Christmas. It’s too bad we couldn’t stay children forever.

What’s your Christmas story?

Terrible, just terrible.

I should have 11,669 words by now, and I’m nowhere near that number. Worse yet, my plot seems to be falling apart. After getting stuck on a scene for more than an afternoon, I decided to outline my entire story, chapter by chapter, breaking things down to specific scenes and what happens in them. And then I realized that my characters didn’t really have much to do.

If I continue things as they are, pretty soon my flimsy plot is gonna rip, and even the characters will be wondering what the heck they’re supposed to be doing. They need a reason to be meeting, to be doing the things they’re doing, and the Devil (I have a Devil character) needs a reason for not just gobbling the world up and spitting it out (he can do that if he wanted to, you know). I need a reason for everything, and the reasons just don’t seem to be coming to me.

I’m considering changing stories. The Hand of God is a great concept, but trying to make it fit NaNoWriMo I tried putting the concept and characters into a forced plot that was bound to unravel. And now, 6055 words into my story, things are starting to make no sense. Hrm.

(Still, I love my characters. ^__^ I can’t wait to create a plot that they would fit nicely into.)

So. What to do, what to do? Should I proceed with this thing, try to make it work along the way, eventually either landing Gold or falling in Shite? Or should I go with a plot I’ve been working on for years that’s sure to have less kinks in its fabric but doesn’t have much of a theme? Or, there’s this other story I’m considering that I haven’t spent much time thinking about, but has the potential for a solid plot, some romance and really wicked action?

*le sigh* This NaNoWriMo business is tough.

I think for now I’ll work out the plot lines of these three things, and by midnight I’ll (hopefully) decide what to go with. And then, I’ll work like hell to catch up with the word count. I’m already more than five thousand words behind schedule.

Darn it.

(p.s. Shameless plug – I’m posting my nanowrimo progress here. Please nag me.)

Ending day three of NaNoWriMo, where I should have clocked 5000 words, I’m 1171 words behind schedule and just started Chapter Three. I must say, seeing the word counts of some people (at 9000, 10000) kinda makes me feel insecure. ^__^ But that’s okay, easy does it.

I realized today that I might be doing all this for nothing. I mean, I’m writing a story that will never get published, and probably no more than two people will ever read because, well.. without intending to be anti-Christian, it kinda is. (This is based on my guess that if you portray Jesus as an idiot human who was tricked by the Devil into thinking he was the Son of God, then you’re anti-Christian).

At any rate, I also realized today that even if no one will ever read this story, I think I’ll finish it anyway. There’s a certain satisfaction to be had when you see the ideas in your head actually flesh out into words and sentences and chapters.

“Hey, I wrote a whole chapter!” I want to say. “This one is about a boy who made a sandwich.”

Chapter Two – A World of Invisible People – DONE

So today was my first day with NaNoWriMo, and I must say, this is tough. My eyes are shot, my knees hurt from sitting in my bed for so long, brain is just about ready to shut down. But yes, I did it. Two hours late but I did it. That’s one chapter and 2027 words in the bank.

The story I decided to write is entitled The Hand of God. It’s about a group of people who find that they each possess one of the “abilities” of Jesus mentioned in the Bible. There is a country girl who can calm storms, a yuppie who can multiply food, a janitor who can heal the sick, a prostitute who can walk on water, a policewoman who can raise the dead, a priest who can exorcise demons, a family man who resurrects three days after being killed, an atheist who can turn water to wine, a homeless man who knows the future, a teenager who can command living things to wither, an old man who set foot in heaven, a young boy who talks like he knows everything, and a teacher who has visions of God. The story is about each of their personal struggles and internal conflicts as they deal with their unusual abilities, and as they discover the reason behind them.

This is not a religious story, to be sure.. If anything, it’s probably even blasphemous. -____-

Chapter One – Goodbye Mr. Timothy, DONE.