The Anabases

———- I just renewed my domain and server use with Go Daddy; I sometimes question the wisdom of shelling out $60 each year. I could be continuing my blog with any one of those free sites, WordPress.com being among them. The main reason I went through all that trouble was so that I could try to make a living off the ads, what few clicks I could get.

Two years and a measly $35 and change in revenue later, earning a living via blogging has turned out to be pretty much a lie and, well, obsolete. The past two years, I was lucky enough to find some kind of filler work to get by, so I never really got a chance to work on the blogging thing. Besides, I was making more than minimum wage, and definitely more than what I make blogging. The economics didn’t make sense, if one thought full-time blogging would pay for one’s bills. I’d have to rack my brains constantly to come up with stuff, and perhaps dumb down my content enough, to attract tons of readers. That is something I am not going to stoop down to.

Speaking of work, I finally became permanent, after temping on this job for nearly eight months. I have to say that, compared to the rest of what I’ve had to endure previous to this… it’s okay. I’m now at a company that does pension planning for people in the movie and TV industry, mostly the technical crew. It’s a short, 15-minute drive from home. I work as a processor, analyzing money and hours coming in, making sure there are no contractual or eligibility issues, and what not. It’s quiet, for the most part. Except for when the two or three individuals in my own department start bitching about how bossy the supervisor is, and how it’s a waste of time doing some stupid little task is; the same people have, apparently, enough time to waste by keeping their yappers open all day long.

I sometimes want to go to their work zones and shake the fuck out of them; I’m not the only one, either. Or, better yet, kick them out in the street, where they can figure out just how lucky they are to even have a fucking job. Here I am, feeling grateful for this opportunity to save and do good, working hard to create a good impression and just do a good job. Then my zen gets disrupted by some bad vibes from these idiots.

The sad part is, they’re not the only ones in the company — or any company, for that matter — who bitch and complain. Quite a few, especially if they’ve been on the job for a long time, seem to focus on the negative. It must be a tendency, human nature, for one to forget what blessings there are, however few or great, and to keep score of each indignity at work.

But, as my brother always reminds me, “It’s still only work.”

Having had to eat a lot of dirt before getting to this point, I am still feeling unbelievably lucky. I intend to stay that way. I feel like I have all that I need right now, to get me on that path, to reach my goals. I’m earning my daily bread, and finally being productive. If some sorry-ass whiners that are fairly harmless (and I’m keeping it that way) are all I have to worry about, then I should feel so lucky. Compared to my previous life (which I’ve long since buried, albeit temporarily), which was full of long working hours, grueling loads of paperwork, lesson plan after lesson plan, problem students, and equally problematic parents and administrators, uncertainty in the summers — this is heaven. I don’t have to take work home, I can enjoy myself, or spend quality time with my loved ones, and then some.

Most important of all, I have enough time to write and reflect. I have a cushion that pays the bills, while I toil on my novel. My million-dollar-or-more insurance policy, lottery ticket-winner, retirement fund, all rolled into one. Ah, yes… I can still dream, while I work on my project; days, I go to day job; then it’s back to the novel, or some other project, and the cycle repeats itself. Then maybe this whole blogging thing might make sense for what it’s best for, namely exposure, publicity. Above all else, an outlet for creativity, for writing, rants, and various other matters of the left and the right hemispheres of the brain.

My target deadline for finishing the Second Draft: June 30, 2011.

Copyright Anabasius 2011

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—– As a descendant of families of the learned and well-read, I am very fortunate indeed. As fate would have had it, I was born here in the United States. At an early age, though, I had to accompany my parents when they returned to the land of their birth, the Philippines. Their love of books and of knowledge was never diminished, so we accumulated a modest collection of volumes during my formative years. I read a lot of these voraciously as a child. I had already read about the history of Western Civilization by the time I was ten. Back then, before the Age of the Information Superhighway, our only outlets were TV, newspapers and magazines, and the first two were already suspect under the dictatorship of Marcos. My father had friends whom he’d take us to, who were also intellectuals, and happily shared stashes of Time and Newsweek with us, as well as the current in popular books that had made it through the censors.  Good, valuable stuff like that was rare to come across. There were no accessible public libraries, and our choices were usually the local bookstore or the British Consulate, an hour’s ride away by jeepney. Yet, nothing seemed to stop me from going great lengths to find good, quality reading, and much of my early teens found me roaming both.

So when I emigrated here to the United States, I experienced a euphoria of sorts. While there was the fairly low cost of food (back in 1980′s, a few dollars could get you a lot), cars, and of course, freedom — I saw the Mother Brain, Knowledge and Intelligence Central. And of course, books — plenty of them. My brother took me to the very first public library I was to see, the Amelia Earhart Branch Library in North Hollywood, where, in a sense, my eyes were opened for the very first time. I remember seeing a copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks, and becoming wide-eyed with excitement over it.  That was nothing compared to the wide variety of reading I would see at bookstores later on. While I was unemployed for the first few months, though, I had to be happy with a stash of books from the library.

In two months, when I got my very first job, flipping burgers at a Wendy’s, I followed Erasmus’ example: “When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.” Before my brother and I both realized, we had already begun to amass a small collection that we took with us. My first purchases were not anything special, just books about soldiers and current events, mostly. Fast-forwarding 24 years into the future, I look at my shelves, and the boxes of books that I’ve collected — bought or acquired for free, or greatly-reduced prices — and realize a collection of just about 1,000 volumes! Along the way, I sold off the majority of what I had, at least twice; I had also sold a few of my textbooks online.

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Sadly, bookstores and printed media have hit a twilight of sorts. With the advent of digitization, of e-Readers and online reading, it has been harder to justify the presence of a standing bookstore. In the past few years, I’ve seen a few — both for new and used books — close its doors down permanently. Twelve years ago, a bookstore chain I had come to appreciate, Waldenbooks, went out of business. In a way, I should be alarmed; the writing had already been on the wall for quite some time. Far from being spurred to buy more, I’m actually slowing down my buying. For one thing, there are space constraints. There’s also the problematic issue of transporting them from place-to-place. When I moved from my one-bedroom apartment in Canoga Park back in 2008, I realized that I had never hauled off so much shit on my own. In fact, I had nearly twice the amount of stuff I had to move, as compared to when I moved in there in 2000.

2011 marks an interesting beginning for me as a book-owner, because I don’t really have the urge or need to acquire yet more books. I don’t think I’ll stop completely, either. I just won’t acquire them as prodigiously as I did in the past. I can’t say I’m necessarily in a rush to sell all of them, either… although the temptation to make some quick money occasionally calls. Instead, I find myself doing something I might do for another 20 years with these books: Actually read them. Just because I acquired 1,000 volumes in fairly short time span, and am a fairly fast reader, does not mean I’ve read all of them. And if I did, have I truly appreciated them? With rare and quality books being dispersed at ridiculously low values, I now see myself as a fringe part of bibliophiles who are saving print knowledge. I have accounted for those that are physically here; there are other books that are now digitized, and easily downloaded (some you might even get for free). We are the cultural equivalent of Noah’s Ark, in a time when real-time information and a lot of noise distort and confuse sensible people everyday.

This morning, I rediscovered two books I’d bought. Both of them were by Guy Murchie, a lover of knowledge, of wisdom, and a practicing member of the Baha’i faith. I had bought both of these volumes with my partner, one at a used bookstore in Venice Beach; the other at the Borders in Pasadena. I always knew that I would come full circle to them, and in a certain sense, I am continuing that cycle of wisdom and learning.

Copyright Anabasius 2011

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I’ve been watching insects and arachnids for nearly all my life.  In the Philippines, there is such a large variety of insects, even in one’s own backyard. I remember catching dragonflies by the tips of their slender wings, picking up beetles and Goliaths, and netting butterflies for science classes – all just to set them free a day later. This is a far cry from the bugphobic culture in the West. While I don’t go out of my way to catch bugs, I still get to appreciate them in whatever shape or form they are crawling or flying in (as long as they are outside the house, where they belong).

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Lately, I have been pondering the evolution of insects and arachnids. While I am a demi-scientist (that is, one in nature, if not by designation since I have yet to earn a master’s), I specialize in physics and inanimate objects, not living creatures. So I am neither a biologist or entomologist. However, I am curious all the same, and will pose these questions for posterity.

Here’s what has been bugging me lately (no pun intended): Was it a fluke that, on the scales of Nature, the bug-sized predators are predominantly arachnids, and everything else is an insect? It’s often been taken for granted that both insects (subphylum Hexapoda) and arachnids (subphylum chelicerata, class Arachnada) both have the same phylum as Arthropods, according to the rigid taxonomic structure of animal classification. The similarities supposedly end there, and any other mention of comparisons are barely made in textbooks or scientific journals.

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Yet, the lives of spiders, ticks, and most of the smaller four-legged creatures, are so closely intertwined with that of their twice-removed and distant four-legged relatives, that it pleads for a story to explain why they are such.  The first obvious difference, of course, is the number of legs: Insects have six, arachnids have eight. But if we consider the wings as an extra pair of appendages, then insects are on par with arachnids.

I have yet to learn about the success ratio of a spider on the hunt. However, I was fortunate enough to observe a few spiders in my old apartment. Depending on their location and proximity to sources of insects, a spider could be lucky and nab a meal, one out of six or even five times. However, being able to fly would be a serious game-changer for a hungry critter.

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The wings are a propelling mechanism that allow an insect to cover large distances in a split second, in any direction. Arachnids, on the other hand, use the hind legs of their four pairs as a spring to propel them, but usually only in one direction. For any creature, freedom of movement and latitude may be just as important, if not more so, than range of motion, especially when it comes to fighting or fleeing.

Here is my semi-mythological arc. When some of the arthropods mutated away from the compound-eyes of insects, to the simple and multiple eye structure of arachnids, they saw how their brethren looked like… and some of them looked good enough to eat! Lo and behold, a breed of carnivores was born, that loved the flesh of bugs. Mother Nature was upset at how the new creatures, who called themselves spiders, took unfair advantage of the situation. If they kept chowing down on their winged relatives, there would hardly be any insects left.

So, to even the score, Mother Nature said, “Very well, you can have your insects and eat them, too.  BUT… you will give up your wings.  In return and just to sweeten the deal, you get an extra pair of legs.” The spiders snickered and said, “Fair enough. We hardly use those things anyway…”  POOF! Gone were the wings, and then the spiders realized, “This was harder than we thought.” And that’s how insects kept their wings, but the spiders were out of luck. Thank goodness, too. Spiders are best appreciated from a distance – and as long as they’re not flying.

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Copyright Anabasius 2010

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