INSPIRATVS

This afternoon has found me pseudo-scribbling (i.e. typing) ideas about the novel that has had crazy changes in the past four months. It does help, that self-imposed deadline of January 11, 2011 (I had promised an old friend of mine two years ago that the book will be finished by that date), even if it really meant that I shall have to reinterpret the date as the submission to a printer, to a publisher, to the editor/s, or simply as the submission of the first draft. Lord knows which.

It is my conviction, unless fate plays another cruel game on my priestly vocation, that 2011 shall not be replaced by another year without my ideas being finally published. It's been thirteen years going on fourteen. The ideas have stayed too long in my mind; I wonder whether the reader will sense the stench of corruption that has beholden me. Haha. Goodbye, Nobel Prize; goodbye, Pulitzer.

I must admit that I had aspired for fame as a writer when I was much younger, especially when I started with this endeavor; I have grown old and weary enough to cheerfully admit that right now I shall happily die satisfied as long as I get to see my book in book stores (by that time I'd be so ill with disease I shall have to drag my ass into the store while strapped into a wheelchair). 'Tis my ideal death scene to collapse while browsing the first copies of the book.

That makes me wonder: how do I repay everyone who's inspired me to write (obviously, the infernal dragon who's opposed me all these years does not count among these benevolent people)? Is acknowledgment enough? Shall I yield the proceeds to them? I cannot give them the dedication part -- that I am resolved to give to one and only one person. The only solution, it seems, is to write another book... but does that mean I shall have to live another fourteen years in the loony bin?

Ah, but I must dedicate the second book, if I ever survive the depression caused by the first one, to a good friend. I am no genius, which is why I need at least one comrade to walk me into that door called destiny. Lucky me, I've got at least one, and I am so grateful to her that the second dedication is but a small gift.

After which, I can happily be run over by some reckless driver, or (un-)intentionally fall into the Pasig River, or get stabbed by an ice pick by some deranged drug addict as I refuse to hand him the little pamasahe that I have, or some other violent death for which I must happily join the ranks of poor souls whose deaths are, like the fictional Albert Jerska, mere statistics.

God help me and my and my corrupt mind and calloused hands.