How do you keep a memory from being forgotten? The answer may be as myriad as the dry leaves falling from a tree. They scatter on the ground, with each leaf representing a moment in one's life. We are the tree, whose memory is as old as time itself. Choosing what to remember is like swaying our branches for the wind to pass over. Old leaves might be blown away, but it is the tree rings inside our trunk that keep our moments remembered.
Remembering comes in different shades and colors. While others do portraits of scenes, a photo snapshot of a moment may preserve an event for all eternity. Memories might be kept inside one's head, but its reliability might fall into question. For people like us, whose love affair with letters is as eternal as one's lifetime, we weave words in hopes that stories left written elsewhere will make us remember what was, was.
A few days ago, I stumbled on an old, online depository of memory which people from Pinoyexchange call the Wireless Journal. The WJ is a mobile service where one's thoughts can be expressed in a form of a text message. Once sent, it travels at a speed of light where it is stored and arranged in one thread, whose owner can read every time he wishes to reminisce.
My Wireless Journal represents an epoch of my life. Its avatar Proximus, was an angst-ridden kid who seeks meaning out of a life suspended in mid-air. Being the waiting successor to a business empire built on sex, news and sensationalism, he spent his days exploring his new-found sexuality while confessing a romantic feeling he could not express to his bestfriend. He whines about his erratic and often 12-hour work schedule and savors long-distance travels around Luzon. He finds solace in journeys only to get bored with destinations.
What's interesting about Proximus is the life he once had. His frustrations at work remind everyone that he is just a kid forced to assist his father run their family business. His love-hate relationship with his father reveals that despite their animosity, which Pulsar had written later in the blog, they had a bond which he could always look back and treasure. He wrote of people he met along his journey. While most of them had already exited his life, three stayed on to become a part of his present. His sexual repressions and hopeless romanticism might have echoed a very different person, (he only got de-virginized on page 37, and had his first taste of m2m relationship only on page 46) Proximus clearly shows the connection why it takes Mugen, Darkstar and Pulsar to serve as balance when romantic emotions or lust assault my heart.
Reading through Proximus, I realize how bored and restless I was in those days.
The Wireless Journal spans from the third month I crossed preference. It saw my ups (falling madly in-love with PK) and downs (the family business being stripped of its assets after the government forcibly stopped its operations). It witnessed my attempts to reach out to people like me, and my first introduction to the gay club scene alone. What is fascinating about the entries posted is that they were spontaneously thought. There were no rules involved and pure honesty is the only requirement. Unfortunately, Pinoyexchange discontinued the service less than a year after I subscribed to it. Had WJ remained online a little longer, Proximus would have also witnessed the first time I became emancipated from a gay relationship.
The rest was history.
A year later, the Pulsar blog began and it wrote mostly about my relationship with Phanks. It evolved and spawned animated alter-egos which represent the author's innermost thoughts in the face of emotional deadlocks. The evolution did not stop there. While technology offers more innovations on how to leave one's mark in history, the hunger for remembrance remains wanting. Five years after Proximus left its trace in the Wireless Journal, its reincarnation Hakken began leaving its traces in Twitter.
The pursuit of immortality indeed is a lifelong passion.
Remembering comes in different shades and colors. While others do portraits of scenes, a photo snapshot of a moment may preserve an event for all eternity. Memories might be kept inside one's head, but its reliability might fall into question. For people like us, whose love affair with letters is as eternal as one's lifetime, we weave words in hopes that stories left written elsewhere will make us remember what was, was.A few days ago, I stumbled on an old, online depository of memory which people from Pinoyexchange call the Wireless Journal. The WJ is a mobile service where one's thoughts can be expressed in a form of a text message. Once sent, it travels at a speed of light where it is stored and arranged in one thread, whose owner can read every time he wishes to reminisce.
My Wireless Journal represents an epoch of my life. Its avatar Proximus, was an angst-ridden kid who seeks meaning out of a life suspended in mid-air. Being the waiting successor to a business empire built on sex, news and sensationalism, he spent his days exploring his new-found sexuality while confessing a romantic feeling he could not express to his bestfriend. He whines about his erratic and often 12-hour work schedule and savors long-distance travels around Luzon. He finds solace in journeys only to get bored with destinations.
What's interesting about Proximus is the life he once had. His frustrations at work remind everyone that he is just a kid forced to assist his father run their family business. His love-hate relationship with his father reveals that despite their animosity, which Pulsar had written later in the blog, they had a bond which he could always look back and treasure. He wrote of people he met along his journey. While most of them had already exited his life, three stayed on to become a part of his present. His sexual repressions and hopeless romanticism might have echoed a very different person, (he only got de-virginized on page 37, and had his first taste of m2m relationship only on page 46) Proximus clearly shows the connection why it takes Mugen, Darkstar and Pulsar to serve as balance when romantic emotions or lust assault my heart.
Reading through Proximus, I realize how bored and restless I was in those days.
The Wireless Journal spans from the third month I crossed preference. It saw my ups (falling madly in-love with PK) and downs (the family business being stripped of its assets after the government forcibly stopped its operations). It witnessed my attempts to reach out to people like me, and my first introduction to the gay club scene alone. What is fascinating about the entries posted is that they were spontaneously thought. There were no rules involved and pure honesty is the only requirement. Unfortunately, Pinoyexchange discontinued the service less than a year after I subscribed to it. Had WJ remained online a little longer, Proximus would have also witnessed the first time I became emancipated from a gay relationship.
The rest was history.
A year later, the Pulsar blog began and it wrote mostly about my relationship with Phanks. It evolved and spawned animated alter-egos which represent the author's innermost thoughts in the face of emotional deadlocks. The evolution did not stop there. While technology offers more innovations on how to leave one's mark in history, the hunger for remembrance remains wanting. Five years after Proximus left its trace in the Wireless Journal, its reincarnation Hakken began leaving its traces in Twitter.
The pursuit of immortality indeed is a lifelong passion.
In leaving my footprints scattered all over the internet, the effort of many years of writing roller coaster emotions that seem so incoherent in those days now make sense. Proximus was a 20-year old bisexual kid when he wrote of my existence many years ago, Looking back, now that I am reading the countless entries I sent in the Wireless Journal - all those dreams, heartaches and sudden bouts of repressed lust of my youth - it seems like everything happened just yesterday.
It's like rediscovering a nearly-forgotten life and savoring its essence, knowing those moments will never happen again.
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it all started wid words, which end n sentences, overdosed wid emotions, born wid tears that may never be cried. every meetings are partings, every places we go become witness to our story. memories are forever with u, dreams are eternity when u are close to me. i am a poem that is written in ur pages
while you, PK is the sweetest lyrics that make up my song.
- Proximus, August 18, 2002
PK is Roy aka Jollieboie.
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