A few updates

29th September, 2024

What was supposed to be just a week before this second Weblog entry has become over a month. Who could've guessed! Anyways, I'm only writing now because I have anywhere from three to ten things I need to get done to-day and I can't bring myself to start on any of them. I'm thinking perhaps this can be a sort of shot in the arm, something to get my brain thinking "productively."

College has not been good. But it's not bad either, at least not in any quantitative or measurable sense. What it is is boring: mind-numbingly, soul-crushingly boring. The kind of boring that has on one occasion made me try to piss a professor off with a stupid answer to an only half-stupid question. I say "try" because of course he didn't fall for it. Instead, he went on with the discussion as if I wasn't on the verge of just walking out of there and skipping class entirely.

Hundred per cent it's the ADHD. Almost every single class thus far has been very understimulating—past twenty or thirty minutes, my temples start hurting, I get these weird hot flashes and feelings of malaise, and my brain keeps telling me to GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT (either that or pull out my phone or start a scene). I can only ever catch a break when I'm the one speaking. It's bad and I know it is. One friend, who's majoring in anthropology (I'm in history), told me once that they were "almost in tears" from how this two-hour lecture seemed to just drag on and on and on. I can't say my experience is any different.

The other usual problems remain, of course: procrastination, forgetfulness, inattention, &c., &c. I still turn schoolwork in late and attempt futile, self-destructive all-nighters to compensate. Necessity (i.e., the family being neck-deep in debt, my dad being in his 60s and still working) dictates that I graduate roughly four years from now, maybe even earlier than that if the Lord Most High wills it. But with how university's been so far, I think I'm going to have to take another year or two to finish, and even then probably only by the skin of my teeth.

Soon I hope to get medicated; my last prescription was for Strattera, but I never went through with it because of a (very justified) suspicion of ADHD medication and of the psychiatric industry at large, which for the record I continue to maintain. However, necessity is necessity, and rarely do we get to choose our own circumstances: "Men make their own history" and so on.

If the meds work,—and I hope they do,—then perhaps I can turn this Weblog into an actual per-week affair. For now though, expectations should be kept at a minimum. Besides, I have a few other plans in the pipeline. The one I'm most excited about is this "zine-journal" for students of the University of the Philippines (all campuses, from Dilimán to Mindanao!), by students of the same. The idea came to me mid-identity crisis, while I was agonising over whether I actually wanted to be a staff journo/writer for one of the student publications; it turns out I didn't, and I still don't. All I want to do is commentate and polemicise, and as I see it, the zine-journal, comprehending "work of a theoreticoliterary-slash-academicocultural nature," is the perfect way of doing that.

Progress-wise, I've already succeeded in getting together some friends and comrades for the Initiatory Committee. Part of our pitch goes:–

Some people have their heads in the clouds, others have their heads so far up their asses that they begin to think sloganeering and cigarettes equal good, revolutionary practice. We of the Initiatory Committee seek the company of neither. We believe in investigation and debate not for investigation's sake nor for debate's sake, but for the fulfillment of ends which in more immediate contexts may find expression in, say, asking who the "táyo" in Pantáyong Pananáw actually is, or interviewing a janitor at Palma (or, fine, AS) as regards wage theft by the admin, or interrogating María Clara and Sisa's madnesses vis-à-vis the nation-building canon, or even just writing poetry about freshman lovesickness; and which more broadly consist in antiïmperialism, women's and queer liberation, disability and climate justice, &c., &c. Concretely, this means being political in a way that refuses the temptation/delusion/egoism of impenetrability, of institutionality, and of permanence. In other words, it means a theoretical practice that is consciously political, consciously accessible, consciously independent, and consciously ephemeral. Hence "zine-journal" instead of just "journal" or "publication." As we see it, "zine" represents the culturoliterary aspect and "journal" the theoreticoäcademic, with the added implications of counterhegemonic publishing and democratic organising.

If the foregoing somehow interests you, friend, then please write to me: baojingming1968@gmail.com. We need all the help we can get!

Pao Ching-ming s.L.Q. = Permanent Link =

The first-ever entry

26th August, 2024

I am writing this blog post, which as the title immediately above indicates is my first-ever on Tapilók-bángon, right before I sleep—it's a quarter till 9. I'm sleeping early to-night for class to-morrow starts at 8:30 in the morning, and the commute from mine to campus takes at least an hour and a half, not to mention the 20 to 30 minutes I need to actually get to a specific class. That means I have to be out of the house by 6:30, which in turn means I need to be awake by 4:30. With how easily I get distracted and with how many mental boxes I have to check,—Have I ironed my shirt right? my pants? Does my pen have enough ink even? &c., &c.,—two hours is perfect for prepping. Any longer and I'd rather just stay at home; any shorter and I start panicking, panicking, panicking.

I'm not sure if the 20 to 30 minutes I spend getting lost on campus looking for the right building and room are normal. Apparently, the University of the Philippines's Dilimán campus, where I go to, is 493 hectares or 1,220 acres big. To get around without a car or a bike or the patience to walk everywhere, you have to take a jeep(ney), which in the Philippines is basically an elongated version of the typical US military jeep but used for public transport.Thus far I've only gone to three in-person classes, all in one day (that being Tuesday the 22nd), and all of them I went to by jeep. Plus a bit of unavoidable walking. Really it's three things: plain unfamiliarity and newness, as a freshman; general shelteredness and klutzhood, as a long-time shut-in; and objectively, the campus's outsizedness.

Anyways. This Web-site, and by extension this Weblog, probably won't be out until days after the 26th. I'm still dating this entry the 26th though—that's honesty. And I still intend on finishing this in one go, as a sort of exercise in writing spontaneously and without the usual neuroses and excuses. Not that those are necessarily bad, or that they should be laid at the feet of the individual "writer" (cultural worker? literary worker? culturoliterary worker?), of course. I just want to be able to write less restrictedly, which is naturally to say, more freely. Last year I recall commencing a series of typewritten journal entries with the same aim in mind, but it never proved sustainable. Maybe this Weblog—and yes, I'm calling it a Weblog, not a blog—will succeed where that previous attempt failed. I think it helps to have an audience, or really a community with which/whom to share these things.

Neither is the intention, by the way, to solely tackle form and technique. That would be reactionary! I mean for these entries to have substance. But then what exactly is meant by substance? One aspect or thing standing in contradiction to another aspect or thing cannot exist without the other, without its opposite; form cannot be without substance and substance cannot be without form. So in a very literal way, it would be impossible for any one of these entries to be totally, entirely unsubstantial, just as it would be impossible for an idea to exist without being expressed, i.e., formalised, in some way, for kernel not to have shell and for shell not to kernel something—whatever that is.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that although one of my primary motivators is my desire to better my practice in a sense, the number one thing is still the meat of, within, and underpinning that practice; or, if I can word it more clearly, the point is not technical improvement for its own sake, but for the sake of making the expression and exchange of ideas easier, more thoroughgoing, &c., &c.

As regards any rules or routines for this Weblog, the plan is to come up with stuff as I go along. I'm not even sure if I want to do these entries weekly—hence "hopefully" in the tagline above. I shan't be fixing a strict schedule, but I will try to make a week the longest time without posting.

I would write more but at this point I'm far too sleepy to even try and be coherent. So: more to come soon . . . hopefully!

Pao Ching-ming s.L.Q. = Permanent Link =