Nothing cuts deeper than the fear of death. I felt this first hand a couple of nights ago when my dad brought my mom to the hospital. In the middle of a sudden, heavy downpour of rain. Right before midnight.

The first few hours of waiting passed by without much thought. The hospital was just 5 mins away by car, and whatever happened shouldn’t need more than a quick “patch job”. After a while, though, an active imagination and deep-seated paranoia gets the best of me. Imagineered what ifs begin playing in the mind’s eye. Suddenly… panic.

A text. How is everything? Is she okay? Two texts. Then three. A call. But the line is busy. Try again. Why aren’t they picking up? Call the other phone. What’s happening? Is she okay? Are they even at the hospital? No answer.

Sleep evaded me. At 2:30am, I was a jumble of nerves. Scared. Feeling very much alone. Death lingered in my thoughts a lot that night. 

Then, even before the clock struck 3, they were back. Like nothing happened. Without a smidget of worry on their faces.

A rush of blood to the head. A breath unknowingly caught in my throat, released. A word of thanks to higher powers that be. Sweet, sweet relief.

Looking back, I would have hit my own head on concrete. Over reaction much?! 

In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, Death was never a cause for wear. She (Death) was a goth chick with a Ghandi-ish attitude. She feeds hungry pigeons with bread, comforts her brother when he is depressed, and smiles at strangers on the street.

She is the kind of person who will wait for you even if you’re 5 hours late for a meet up (and still won’t be mad at you for doing so). She’d rather greet you with a joke than a sermon. In her words:”I’m not blessed, or merciful. I’m just me. I’ve got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we’re talking, I’m there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I’m in cars and boats and planes; in hospitals and forests and abbatoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I’m there for all of them.”

Sad but true: death is there. Always. Though I don’t think I will welcome her anytime soon, maybe, I see her a bit differently now. Death is a release. A constant. A friend, too.

Maybe when I finally get to see her, I’ll be able to show this drawing of her that I made. And I hope she’ll like it.

Early into Japanese Art Class, you’ll learn wabi-sabi — a distinctly Japanese aesthetic that celebrates transience. Beauty, they say, is imperfect and incomplete. Absence creates more meaning in a piece: deliberately putting the viewer in a position to “fill in the gaps” without the aid of the artist. 

That, or I’m just way too lazy to finish this.

Only crazy people can work in advertising for long. The incredibly long hours, the impossibly demanding clients, and the drinking spree that stretches from 7am to 7am the next day — it’s hard to tell whether insanity has slowly crept into every living soul of the agency, or it had been there all along.

I guess that’s why at the first breath of relief from the overnight sensation at the office, I immediately sketched a portrait of Delirium from Sandman.

This character speaks to me on so many levels: She is scatterbrained, with the attention span of a goldfish. She is offbeat and always feels like an outsider looking in. Her speech rarely makes sense — appearing in multicolored bubbles — though occasionally she is able, with extreme effort, to control it. At which point, her talk bubble becomes neat and white. But this effort causes her physical pain.

It’s hard to imagine this personification of chaos was once the beautiful, gentle creature named Delight. Orderly, sensical, loved-by-all. But one who knows too much eventually goes insane. Delight becomes Delirium.

Maybe that’s why most ad men (and women) eventually turn a bit… eccentric (some would qualify as unhinged). They constantly think, and think, and think; trying to create something new, something that would make people go “wow!”, that one thing that can change the world. Sure, everyone wants to change the world. But it’s usually the crazy ones who do.

So here comes the 54-hour workdays, the demand for perfection, the drive to kick ass every single time. It’s sure to make anyone flip. Absurd as it sounds, though, I love what I do. And I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Web Design for DOT Pinoy Homecoming.

It’s been out for a month now, but getting to the next phase of development looks like a long shot :( Bureaucracy, once again, you’ve burst the excitement bubble. 

Cover Name: Magazine

Description: My fave — rejected — cover for TriNoma Vibe :P (posting for lack of real project). 

Copies of TriNoma Vibe are now out! Please support my project by grabbing a copy at the concierge of TriNoma Mall and in participating stores — it’s tote free! haha :D

Cover Name: Smile

Description: Another rejected cover for TriNoma Vibe :P (posting for lack of real project). 

Copies of TriNoma Vibe are now out! Please support my project by grabbing a copy at the concierge of TriNoma Mall and in participating stores — it’s tote free! haha :D