A few minutes after logging into my workstation a college buddy, whom I haven’t had contact with for months, suddenly sent me an instant message with the news that he had his left hand amputated a couple of months back. That startling piece of news woke me up from the stupor that I was in at that moment having slept all the way from Ortigas to Ayala Avenue.
Thank God I wasn’t harassed (again!) while asleep on the FX cab but that’s another story. Anyway, yeah that piece of news shocked me although not the same shock Ralph Fiennes registered on screen upon learning that his wife has been murdered in The Constant Gardener. What struck me then was how ordinarily he broke the news to me. It was almost robotic, like that character Jude Law played in Steven Spielberg’s AI, but then again it was done over the internet so that part of me analyzing doesn’t really count. Initially, I thought he was playing mind games but that’s way out of his character. So I believed him and I realized this friend, who I thought was the most gifted and intelligent among my batch mates, almost had his life cut abruptly short by a 13kV jolt of electricity. This led me to think of my own mortality which has crossed my mind in unexpected moments for the past year or so. I’m not sure if that kind of realization, wondering about one’s mortality, comes with age or with certain events in one’s life. You see, I’ve always told my friends that I’ve always had this nagging feeling that life, for me, ends at 27. I’m not sure how I chose that number. I haven’t had a close brush with death which makes people think if that this is the end of the road for them. I still am bewildered but watching too many sessions of James Gandolfini and Lorraine Bracco leads me to a conclusions that this could be attributed to I obsession with depressing movies.
Coincidentally, I would be turning 27 in a week which honestly doesn’t really give me the creeps but maybe others would especially those who have seen too many Asian horror movies. Yeah, it would make a great script for a horror movie which could catapult Carlo J. Caparas to worldwide fame. Haha... Kidding. When you try to think about it, could this be a premonition? Perhaps. And if it is, should I start planting my seed and propagate so that I could at least leave a part of myself – a bunch of mini-Chids? Should I then start deciding on who should get my book, audio, and video collections? On a more serious note, should I stop being cranky and sarcastic and full of venom and start being all friendly and saintly? Maybe I should just leave it at that. Sort of rhetorical questions that demand answers. Those questions would remain unanswered. People would start wondering how I would have answered those questions the same way movie buffs wondered what Bill Murray’s character whispered to Scarlett Johansson at the end of Lost in Translation. And I have made my decision. I won’t throw in the towel just yet. I won’t sell out. I will fight the way Rafa fights every point in all of his matches. As Harvard-educated lawyer Alex of Survivor Fiji said, “If I’m going to go down, I’m going to go down fighting.” and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
I also thought, dang! I still have many things to look forward to.. . like how J.K Rowling would end the final installment of the Harry Potter series… or if Tony Soprano survives the 7th and last season of The Sopranos… or how LOST would end in 2010 when it airs its final season… or witness the moment when Martina Hingis and Marat Safin would win Roland Garros and ascend again to the top of the tennis echelon… Yeah, that would be a life well-lived. Popular-culture style.
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