ESSAY
Slew
My absence here for the past days, unlike the not a few times I went on a hiatus before, was not because of some complications I’ve gotten myself entangled into but because I found it more and more difficult to secure even a mere thirty minutes to reflect and write my thoughts down. My weekdays are jam-packed with responsibilities at work and my studies; my Saturdays, woefully, are barely spared.
Fortunately, however, because of some levels of criminality in me that I have successfully kept in latency, in between breaks (or classes), I’d clandestinely let go of my unexpressed resentment, happiness, frustrations, ennui, and sadness on pieces of papers that I always keep. I think that by writing them down I am purging myself of excess emotions that do nothing but keep me from accomplishing my tasks, or violence that I would, in very rare cases, manifest, although not completely because I am a good citizen of the state.

Silence, in addition to rest, has also become impossibly elusive; in fact, it is beginning to have that illicit feeling to it whenever I get hold of it in especially rare and fleeting cases, such as when I am sitting on a toilet bowl or when I am beginning to sleep and having REM. Either the metro drowns me in ceaseless, diaphanous noise, or I hear the monotonous sound of my voice, which can be very irritating at times, but quite often, as among narcissists of my kind, I’d find myself listening to its cadence, quality, and idiosyncrasy with furtive conceit. It was a mistake choosing to live on this part of the planet, but I’d be more mistaken if I think that there was a choice to begin with.
What makes this generation of young people unique (and superior) is that we think that noise is a given, that it is necessary in the unobstructed marching of time. We survive despite it, and even thrive in it. It is a surprise that we have not all