Tuesday, January 21, 2003

Caffeine Emergency

It’s been a long, long time since I took out my Bugs Bunny mug from the cabinet… I have a perfectly good reason for that…

1) My thesis should be finished tonight… or at least I should finish it… TONIGHT!
2) An article for … shit, I don’t even know the subject because my teacher here have been my prof for like four sems now, and he’s been giving us the same assignment ever since.
3) Review for my Ethics finals, unlike Pam, I’m not a great fan of the subject.

So, yeah, give me all you’ve got, Nescafé… This should be a long night…

***

I got really, really insulted when Margaret Atwood called journalists as corpse fly (see Shayn’s blog)… I’ve seen National Geographic’s feature on body farm and I didn’t appreciate the comparison…

But today, I felt like one. I felt like I was a maggot feasting on an 8-hour corpse. I finally succeeded on interviewing my neighbor who was a survivor in MV Maria Carmela tragedy (the boat that got burned on its way to Masbate. He lost his wife and daughter).

I thought that if I get this particular interview, it would be a feather in my cap. The hardest part was gathering the strength to knock on his door and ask for some of his time. I swear, that was the first time I felt so unconfident for an interview. When he actually said “yes” I felt like opening a bottle of champagne and jumping like banshee. I did the latter when I came back to my own home to get my paraphernalia.

That was before I saw a tear forming in his eyes, his throat tightening and swallowing seemed to be a challenge, and his thoughts… his thoughts where somewhere else… Like he was hearing his wife’s cry for help and the face of fear in his daughter… He was helpless then, he’s helpless now. And I’m useless.
I hated myself at that moment… And I seriously asked myself if I really, really wanted to do this professionally… If I could listen to other people’s version of hell and write about it. If my sanity could stand this kind of torture.
I didn’t finish the interview. I had at least five more questions, but I couldn’t go on. I simply couldn’t.

He said all he wanted was justice. My article won’t be printed in any paper, not even in a lousy school organ. But I promised to myself that I would put my heart in this piece. That’s all I could do for him. That’s all I could do for me.

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Tuesday, January 21, 2003

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