Saturday Pill

Written on January 25, 2006

Attending that saturday class is a pill. It heals me of chronic malady from weeklong stress caused by work and hohum disorder put together by a world that doesn't learn new things, doesn't aim to do new things, doesn't try new things, afraid of getting shot, run over, bumped by an unknown catastrophe yet to happen.

I learn new things from three people every Saturday. Of the three, two are my professors, one is a classmate who is a doctor who knows a tanker about human behavior.

I can categorize my classmates into three: the sponge group, the wood group and the gymsum boards. I would like to think I belong to the sponge group, taking in everything, spitting out the unwanted. The wood group refuses to accept new things, obstinate in their grandeur. The gypsum boards aren't totally hopeless as they let in a few of the discussions. Their only handicap is limited intelligence capacity. Some of them are teachers, quite a number are fresh from college, one or two others are corporate folks, here and there a writer (lifestyle, I think), one is a theater crew, and the rest are self-professed bums.

I have always been an unobtrusive student, keeping thoughts to myself, making comments in silence. But heck, why not this time? I find myself taking the floor every 10 minutes during my first class. Sometimes, i cover my ears so I won't hear a word a classmate says lest I hug the floor again.

I think knowing to weave nice words together is not enough. One needs to learn how the world works. We shouldn't tinker with ideas we know a zilch about. We shouldn't don't talk about sex when -- well, I guess, I shouldn't talk about sex. We shouldn't talk about the corporate world when we have never been employed even as a clerk in an SME in Makati or Ortigas or Pateros. If you are a writer writing about the pyramids, reading about the pyramids is not enough. You got to experience it. You got to be one with the pyramids. Emily Dickinson is dead, and with her in her grave is the monopoly in writing about the bees and birds.

Still, it sure is a pill listening to wannabes like me.