Midsummer Misery
It's been a pretty shitty April, has it not?
“Kaunting tiis na lang Toni,” says my dentist, as we spend another hour on my botched root canal. We discovered it by chance when I came for routine cleaning. She took an x-ray and found there were no actual canals or at the very least they weren’t deep enough. She also found a brewing infection. She didn’t say it, but my hypochondriac brain was already saying Meningitis. I try to tell her it’s okay by stretching my mouth into a smile. Not easy to do when you’ve got two pairs of hands in your mouth.
I try to imagine what she’s thinking. Does she pity me and my dental hygiene? Does she see all the dentists who’ve come before her and the mess they’ve left behind? I imagine her as an archeologist, looking for something salvageable in a lost civilization. She’s drilling now, the kind of drilling that you feel behind the eyes and between your toes. Raise your left hand if you feel any pain. What difference would that make, I wonder. Does taking things slowly reduce the net pain? Wouldn’t we just be stuck in this miserable little office for much longer if I complained?
Nothing like the dentist to age you and remind you of your mistakes. “Did you ever have braces?” Yes, as a child, but I lost my retainers and never bothered again. “How often do you floss?” Not enough, if this is a problem. And a root canal procedure requires you to go back at least four times, and each time was just a two-hour clinic in regret. Two hours a day, four times in a month is just too much time in your head.
I’ve been Online long enough to know how April seems to bring out the worst in me. I look back at my Tinyletter and I find that I may have what seems to be a seasonal sort of depression every time it gets too hot (Dagupan City reported a record high heat index of 51ºC the other day). But of course, dread hits different when you’re living in the Philippines in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis.
But after a month of lethargy and feeling sorry for myself, I’m picking up the pieces. I’ve been unbearable, even cruel. Not just to myself, but to all the people around me. I’ve been barbing with my sister, mom, and boyfriend. I’ve said things I regret. I’ve been eating my feelings and it shows. Or more precisely, I’ve been eating to fill a void. I have spent a whole month longing to be pure nothing, what Rita Dove calls it. A daystar. A scorching bright nothing, one with the sun.
But in a pandemic, nothing can be a privilege. I need to work. I need to earn. I’ve been disregarding the heaviness that everyone around me is carrying because I keep holding on to my own. What I need is to cultivate kindness. I’m sorry to all my friends who might have had to deal with me during this time.
I just started Fruits Basket (2019). I was struck by the MC’s memory of her mom, who told her that humans aren’t born in kindness. She says that kindness is grown and cultivated. “It's easy to understand desire, because everyone has it from birth. But each person's kindness is pretty much handmade by them, so it's easy for others to misunderstand it, or assume that it's phony.”
That’s it for me. I don’t think I’m better, but all that hokey self-help eat-pray-love white woman nonsense starts with identifying the problem. Once you do, it loses some of its power over you. When you utter it, you can exorcise it. Something like that anyway. I never finished Eat Pray Love to know how that one ends exactly.
Taking a leaf from Jam Pascual’s (one of my favorite writers) Substack, here’s a list of some of the media I’ve been consuming:
I made twin playlists last year: Into the Isekai (I) and Into the Isekai (II). The former is my ode to mahou shoujo. Hand me that lightstick, I’m turning into a pretty warrior featuring Yukika, LOONA, TWICE, and bops from Chromatica. The latter is Neo Tokyo, Ghost in the Shell (the anime), featuring Björk, ATARASHII GAKKO, Metric, and some formative tracks from Le Tigre.
This poem called Further Notice by Philip Whalen
Chainsaw Man by Tatsuki Fujimoto. An excellent manga in both story and art style. I think part of my misery has been because of the grief when I finished it. It’s about 90+ chapters only, and MAPPA has announced they’ll be turning it into an anime.
I guested on this 4/20 podcast of Kwentong Creatives with my cousin Jake to talk about how we’ve been developing his Gyudon brand, Kodawari. We hit 6,666 followers and we thought about going private for the gag.
I’m almost done (finally!) with Persona 5 Royal. I first played P5 in 2017, the same year I visited Tokyo for the first time. Playing it again, discovering Tokyo through Joker’s eyes alongside the other Phantom Thieves has been the most soothing balm. I personally think it is the perfect game. The commitment to the aesthetic, the depth of the plot, and the most likable characters. My biggest gripe would be that I believe Joker and Akechi should be canon. The full soundtrack to P5 is on Spotify.
Hope you’re doing better on your side of this pandemic,
Toni
You're one of my favorite writers too Toni <3 Hope your teeth are chillin', I'mma get into Chainsaw Man din