else it was reverie

To start by quoting the typical Catholic high school student’s spontaneous prayer, thank you for this wonderful day. Thank you for reminding me that choosing to do the right thing will result to actual blame if the people around me possess an inexplicable aversion to my outlandish and seemingly subversive values, thought processess, and—well, me. Thank you for making me realize that there can exist a day where every single thing I do (AND DO NOT DO) is utterly, indispensably wrong. Thank you for affirming the fact that I am the spawn of moral concupiscence and tragedy. I will not anymore expound on the proceedings of this day, Universe (as you well know that I cannot as well), as doing so will bring more evil to this world and I might just have had my share of today.

Thank you, though, for reminding me that through my actions past and present I have practically defined myself as devoid of any worth, and that I am useless and can amount to not even the faintest semblance of goodness. I am crude, talentless, and a breathing carcass walking among legitimate children of the Lord’s creation. Even fleas are tasked to flee before me. 

After all, am I not but gifted with the stupidity of sloth? My distinct ignavia has corroded my sense of will and skill and therefore I am this: a being—if you can call me that—of non-existent quality. Today, more than every other day, has shaken awake my consciousness to the fact of my being a black hole where hope and dreams and morals and good things go to die, for I can do nothing truly worth anything. You are responsible for allowing this to happen, Universe—today, especially—and for that, I thank you.

The clock on the face of my wall reads 8:15. If it would not be too much to ask, portents of moments reestablishing the discovery of my failure of a nature before midnight are much appreciated—you know, just so I can find more words the nature of unserviceable, deadwood, chaff, and refuse. Things that, as you have allowed me to discover today, I hopelessly am.

Thank you, Universe, thank you.

Sincerely yours, 

the anti-Christ, among many other vile things

03-05-2013

Five days into Christmas and nothing at all stirred in me. Given any other year, I would be giddier than my seven-year old cousins ready to receive their countless Santa-given presents on the twenty-fourth. Christmas spirit was a Dana trademark, my friends knew. To see myself now in this phenomenally Grinch-y disposition is an alienation that I haven’t realized until today. 

I blamed December traffic, work related stress, people-from-work related stress, the RH Bill debates, the Miss Universe 2012 tragedy, the fact that things at home seem impossible, loneliness, unhappiness, financial crises, sickness, uncertainties of all shapes and forms, the very absence of passion in my life—and I still do. How can one see Christmas when each and every day of your life unsettles you more and more? Looking back, I often welcomed Christmas with unbelievable joy characteristic of a Smurf’s because I was on top of the world: in high school, there was my group of friends; in college, I was living THE dream, among other highs. But now, my life has never been more lonely, more stressful, and more incomprehensible than what it is at present, and because of this fact, I began to see Christmas “for what it really was” and I condemned this season: bumper-to-bumper traffic is infernal; thirteenth-month pay is not even anything because the cash’ll all vanish anyway to gifts that I felt obligated to give to certain people; this house, for many weeks, had seemed like a black hole where the light of Christmas joy goes through and disappears; I had been shooting mucus in very diaphanous quality from every facial orifice for seven days and counting. In short, I was not happy with my life, and therefore, fuck Christmas. 

I did away with all my holiday rituals: the Christmas movies, the songs, the carols, the spirit of giving, and even the dawn masses. I was too stubborn; for the first time, I didn’t want to chase after some goody-giddy feeling just because I felt like I wanted to. I had myself think that this was a part of that process of “growing old.” After all, I had a job, and people with jobs aren’t supposed to go giddy at the thought of December 25th. This was a phase in the evolution of the Dana. I was ready to welcome this new version of me that would feel numb or neutral to this particular season for years to come. 

And yet again, God (believe me, I had been trying to avoid Him) in his goodness and lovingness decided to hit me in the face. I was not evolving; I was merely tolerating the evil that I didn’t know was starting to eat at my very soul. I didn’t want Christmas this year because I wasn’t good enough, and I haven’t been trying to BE good enough. I have given up trying to avoid my compulsions from defining who I am. I was harsh, I was evil, and I was a bitch, period. For the first time, I did NOT want Christ to enter into the stable of my heart because it was filthy and it reeked of sin and I was not doing anything to clean it up for when he arrives. It was not that every previous Christmas I was a spotless saint, but I have always, always tried harder, and it was in the attempt that I was made to feel what Christmas was. 

The mystical emotion of happiness was what I had always equated Christmas with. Because I was happy with my bearable life, the chilly weather, the noche buena and the gifts and the Christmas songs, Christ was here; because my family is complete and isn’t fighting, Christ is here. Because ladidadida and I can’t express where this sudden cheery joy comes from and why, Christ was here.

Things are different now. 

I am confused with what I want to do with my life, Christ is here. I am insanely afraid of my family’s health, financial, and personal problems and the fact that I do not know how to deal with any of those, Christ is here. I feel alone and friendless all the time, Christ is here. I do not know where I want my life to be headed towards, Christ is here. I have no money, Christ is here. I am weak and sick, Christ is here. I don’t believe in him, Christ is here. In the unbearable chaos of my heart, Christ is here. 

And Christ is here not only because this year, my family will still be celebrating Christmas together, or that I’m still alive and still hold the will to do whatever it is in my life that I feel destined for, or that Francis and I are still together despite so many heartaches, or that I actually have friends who care for me; he is here for reasons that are so much more than the things that I still can be thankful for, for reasons that go beyond my realization that I am still blessed despite what I see and what I feel, for reasons that escape my very capacity to understand. 

Nope, I’m still not giddy about Christmas. I don’t think I can ever be happy the way I was during past Christmases, but tonight I realized that it’s okay. I don’t think I have ever felt this thankful in my life ever before, and it’s not only because I still have reasons to thank God for despite my crappy life situation. I am thankful simply because I can choose to be, and this state of giving thanks, of choosing to see my being blessed, is all I need for me to try harder at being good. Tonight, finally, there is gratitude. And there is peace. 

(Thank you for teaching me how to count, and in counting, realize that I count to you. How can I ever have the stupidity to not feel Christmas with this? Yes, Jesus, this is the first Christmas I am saying this: you ARE annoyingly persistent, but I love you just the same, and I am more grateful now for you arriving than I have ever been. Thank you, bro, and keep going at coming here. Merry Christmas.)

Everything else pays for every time my soul succumbs to being. 

Perhaps the reason why I can’t seem to go on is because this battle has been urging me to take a side. 

My students (and even I myself, for I was trained this way) find it amusing and characteristic of me that I am always—in their words, “neutral”—about things, that I can always find a middle ground or exhaust the possibilities of both oppositions before I reveal a stand that is neither just that nor this alone [But of course, I am a literature person, a fool for Homer, I was taught that the answer is always BOTH!] but either an amalgamation of the two or the mystical negation of both. But beyond discourse of faith and morality, insane and rational love, or even the existence of God lies the battle between the soul and the flesh, of life and humanity, and when it comes to these things how the hell can I even think that a choice, or discernment, is possible?

Naaalala ko yung pelikulang Perks of Being a Wallflower ngayon. Kung paano naging “infinite” ang character nina Charlie at Sam habang nagddrive sila through the tunnel. Naalala ko kung paano sinilaban ng last scene ang puso with the impulsive, nostalgic desire to be like that again. 

Dahil minsan kong naranasan ang maging infinite tulad nila. Nung kasama ko pa ang GX, nung ako ay nasa kolehiyo pa, being infinite was an everyday experience. To say I was having the time of my life was cliche, but hell, was it the true for me, then. 

Palibhasa kasi bata pa ako noon. I would afford—with all my time, energy, and money— to go to wherever place my YFC service called me to be, to instantly whisk myself away to a movie in Eastwood with Camille after lunch and be back before my 3:30 PM class in Ateneo, to meet up with Chynna, Jen, Joyce, and Chino, and the rest of the barkada in a blink of an eye, to hop on Dru’s car with Jor, Dana, Nar, Chino, and Jen, speeding along Temple Drive with intermittent braking to the beat of whatever tugs tugs music was blasting from the stereo (kaya ginusto kong magkaroon ng automatic na kotse dahil gusto kong gawin yun ulit), to spend hours in Zekaf talking and emo-ing with Ayen, Francis, and Biboy over what we now know as the most ridiculous of ordeals, and to go on literal everyday dates with Francis over expensive food, coffee, and movies in faraway places. 

Ngayon, I have barely enough time to take a bath, eat, sleep, and more so meet any live, breathing, talking human being because of what I decided to put myself through a couple of months ago. I said yes to the full-time teaching job. I said yes to the new YFC service which now involves a gazillion more people and work. I said yes to going back to graduate school. I said yes to becoming a better friend and girlfriend to Francis. I also said yes, finally, to becoming a real daughter and sister to the members of my family. 

And that is why for the past couple of months, I have been trying to find a new concept, a new word, to encapsulate the tiredness I am feeling all the time, because that word just does not cut it anymore. Every day has become an impossible ordeal for me to deal with—well, everyday. My own mind gives up on me on a regular basis, because I have been a traitor to it given the many things I said yes to. And time, money, and energy—my comrades and allies in the past, have turned into something that I have to give my every effort to woo. 

I suspend judgment on my growing up (because really, I have no idea), but I have grown… older. I no longer have the luxury, opportunity, and perhaps even the very ability to do all those things that led me to believe that I, once, was boundless. But tonight, amidst all the readings I have to come to terms with for my lit and memory final oral exam, the quizzes I have to check, the lesson plans I have to do, the number of events I have to plan, the people I have to love and care for— in this perpetually stressed and harassed super heroine-slash-Renaissance lady of a peg I stubbornly committed myself to— I realize that I am infinite, still. 

Because this exhaustion, this mess, this pile of everything I have before me, I realized, bind me not to the struggles and scars that their existence in my life brings, but to the very fact of something that I have not cared to notice before— my strength.

I now say that I am older, more exhausted, and exponentially more weighed down, but I am more infinite than I have ever truly been.

Philippians 4:13

And lie in bed the entire day, staring at the ceiling, pretending I’m a philosopher out to change the very existence of this world. 

Or at the very least, read the books I want and carry on with what had been a blissful flirtation with this elusive literary and cultural studies degree and what it means to me aka my life’s profound yet simple happiness before I signed my name on that monumentally abysmal work contract of doom. 

I am one with the world in its state of imminent oblivion.

I’ve been telling everyone that I was slated to leave my job. That was weeks ago. 

I’ve already drafted my letter of resignation and all I need to do is to give it to the administration, so that what is left for me to do is to wait for 30 days until I’m finally out of that place I’ve called a hellhole since I was 4 years old.

I still don’t know why I haven’t done it. 

Not a single soul (with the exception of my friends from the workplace) has ever told me to stay. They’ve witnessed how working in that school has gradually killed me—mind, body, and soul—and the alarm with which they see my condition has caused me, in turn, to ring the siren of my conscience. My mornings are spent in agony not only because of the act of rising, but the predicament that I was rising up for. I hate being in that morally, mentally, intellectually, spiritually stultifying place, I hate the hypocrisy with which the two-person army operated both as school administrators, Catholics, and people, and that the entire school system is built on the foundation of their caprice; I hate the fact that I was coerced (through means of bureaucratic trickery) into teaching a subject that I absolutely did not sign up for and that I absolutely despised; I abhor how my fellow teachers are treated as if they’re nothing more but a bunch of philistine sled dogs devoid of any signs of intellectuality and dignity, working not as educators but as mere puppets to their will, the fact that not only was I unhappy, but I was inevitably turning into a person that I did not want myself to be. I want to go back to my old and real life, in order to reach the future that I had long dreamed for myself.

For a reason that I cannot completely understand, I keep coming back for more. A part of me wants to stick it out for the purpose of proving everyone—and most importantly, myself— that I can break my apparently characteristic destiny of walking out on the things that do not make me truly happy. I worry for the loss of opportunities that may come to me the moment I decide to leave, this being the only thing that was willing to take me in (albeit, wrongly) after I’ve searched for a job for more than a year. I think of my students and my co-teachers who would definitely share the burden that I will leave behind, and I tend to postpone the decision because of them. Although I have long realized that this particular field of education is not for me, I do love teaching (and even look forward to the times when I’d deliver a pretty damn good lecture to my awestruck literature seniors or succeed in contributing to the intellectual-slash-personal scarring of my childlike juniors through certain literary texts I make them read). 

If there is one thing that I have disproven about myself because of this job, it’s that I hate work. For all the crap that this workplace has given me, I did, for a while, enjoy making lesson plans and allowing the students to learn from me. There are times that I don’t mind waking up in the morning to go to work, dedicating an entire day to writing class outlines, and actually just being in that place. I nurtured the idea that I was breaking bones to earn and bask in the realness of life in this particular world, however abysmally disappointing. 

Maybe I’ve gotten used to this slavery, much like the Israelites in Egypt during the time of Moses, that it’s quite hard to tear myself away from what is insanely excruciating but is unquestionably familiar. What waits for me if I leave and cross the Red Sea to resignation? What if I was going back to the actual slavery of the emptiness of a semi-bum life once I leave? What assurance is there that I’m really headed towards the better? These uncertainties are as much a torture as the reasons that compel me to leave.

It’s the undeniable fact that I am confused that is stopping me from making yet another life-defining decision. Timing and seemingly poorly made choices (however meticulously thought out) are what have gotten my life into precarious waters, and it’s all because I cannot establish for sure what it is I really want. To decide to leave (or even to stay) is something that I don’t think I could fully account for in the immediate future, all for the sole reason that I am so unsure. That is the reason why I am where I am now: in a little, paddle-less rowboat of raging waves of uncertainties.

For now, I just really want to get back to shore.

The declaration that “I’m tired” is something I hear myself articulate every single day since I have started teaching. I’ve said worse and much creative, metaphorical things in the past, such as, “I cannot stand the infernal nature of things,” “I cannot take this anymore, I want to die,” or “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.” 

Perhaps it is at this point when I can no longer say anything more than “I’m tired” that it becomes the most true. 

I compel the heart and the mind to keep up eventually, because they will have to. 

And it’s not on the basis of its undeniable sinfulness that I want to stop, but because I know I am so much more than what my weaknesses have compelled me to become.

I know it is genuine love that pursues the great, but it is tiring, and everyday I find myself not of strength enough to love.

I am lost. 

So I spent a great deal of tonight looking up on beagle epilepsy and how to treat canine seizures on the internet in between watching over Beagie (yes, my Dad’s aptitude for creative nomenclature shows! Good thing my mother took charge of naming us, otherwise my brother and I would have been Boy and Girl[ie]) and making sure we were there when he suffered from his cluster seizures. As the entire cosmos is aware, I have a severely ridiculous but genuinely solid fear of dogs, cats, and arguably anything that moves which aren’t human beings, and so since the day Daddy brought him home, I have denied myself any kind of proximity with him. 

This conscious attempt at indifference vanished at the slightest hint of urgency. Seeing Beagie collapse on the floor — eyes popping out of sockets, whole body trembling like a magnitude 10 earthquake accompanied by haunting howls of pain and attempts at breathing — is like watching, from a fifty-meter radius, an adorable little boy crossing the street alone to get a cone of ice cream and getting ran over by a 6-wheeler truck in the process. This unbelievable panorama of pain is enough to reassemble your guts, and if that isn’t enough, prompt your hapless heart to explode into torturous oblivion. And what unsettles more than anything else is that there is nothing you can do about it. 

The experience of seeing Beagie’s epileptic fits tonight has made me learn a couple of things: 

1. My family, with the possible exception of my father, doesn’t know shit about taking care of living things. Or even anything that moves, like electric fans. (I have a lot to say about this subject, but that would be another story and hopefully a thousand decent poems or something)

2. My mother is the face of hysteria.

3. My dad carries the weight of the world.

4. I am lost and at a loss for reality.

5. The diagram of a dog’s frikking skeleton. I know where a dog’s thoracic vertebrae are. All four of them. 

4. Epilepsy is a bigger bitch than Peaches (that insanely annoying family mini pincher) or Ms. Evelyn of Achiever’s Study Nook Commonwealth ever were. 

5. Beagles now embody the epic challenge of my life: challenges (and more specifically, challenges of commitment). I am constantly faced with the prospect of going beyond myself and evolving into the best Dana I can be in order to truly move forward in life. It’s always characterized by a period of suffering, struggle, a ridiculous amount of discomforting discombobulation, and growth. (Optional but more often than not: immense happiness at having turned out a better person, among other things). Getting involved with a beagle is no different; Snoopy’s breed is even the perfect example. 

5.5. When I get married, I WILL buy a beagle with my husband and fully commit to the responsibility of taking good care of it. Only then would the life partner and I proceed to consider the possibility of more advanced life forms like Andalusian horses. Or children. 

6. We are discouraged from feeding grapes to our dogs as they are toxic to them (!!!). 

7. Beagles are hunting dogs. When I get my own beagle in the future or when Beagie gets better, I WILL FRIKKING TEACH THEM TO HUNT BECAUSE THAT’S AWESOME.

8. Phenobarbital - that canine seizure medicine with possibly adverse effects, especially to the liver 

9 (and this is cheesy). Beagie believed in me despite my denial of him. Unlike Peaches, he was never stingy towards me. He would come near me with no hints of aggression and even if I tried to shoo him away, he wouldn’t get angry and still tried playing with me. I show him contempt, he would return it with affectionate and gentle playfulness. His nature seems to be essentially Christian. Sometimes I wonder if he is really a dog. 

10. Despite my fear (and sometimes hatred) of dogs and canine teeth, I love Beagie. And seeing him in this state of pain and pity immensely hurts my heart. I hope he gets better soon because everybody in this house positively adores him, and for a pretty damn good reason, too: he’s amazing.

And to the beagle of this home I say: thanks, because you have no idea how you made me aware of the things I should be rooted to, and the very condition of my misinformed living. I pray you get better soon, because I promise to feed you snacks from now on and help you hunt down Mrs. Ortiz’ pesky and promiscuous cats.

Appendix

Beagle seizure links I may want to refer to in the future (with annotations engraved on my mind): 

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/164479/what_to_do_if_your_dog_has_a_seizure.html?cat=53

http://www.squidoo.com/dogseizure

http://www.beaglerescueleague.org/?page_id=378

http://www.canine-epilepsy-guardian-angels.com/emergencycare.html

http://www.beaglesunlimited.com/health/epilepsy-and-epileptic-seizures

I had made a pact with the universe to meet with her during every moment of my life.

I have failed because I possessed no courage in places where passion burned out. To return would take immensely more than every bit of bravery I chose not to find for myself.

But if I do not, how am I ever going to move forward?

It’s defined as “thoughtless giddy behavior” by the Merriam-Websters dictionary and is translated from the vernacular term “kilig” which means… well, if you’re Filipino, I wouldn’t suspect you to have the mindless audacity to have words for this word.

Anyway, hoity-toity. I just decided to go out of my way to articulate my belief that this might be one of the ugliest terms in the English language, probably even beating “pus,” “lotion,” or even “smegma” (but I wouldn’t be quick to jump into a verdict since I still host this unbelievably incensed “smegma vs. hoity-toity” debate inside my head). 

How do you use it, anyway?

“My crush accidentally brushed his arm against mine, prompting me to hoity-toity.”

?

Paano naman kaya ang #nowreading?

It’s pretty depressing, witnessing a reality where people’s inclination for reading and literature (AND THEREFORE, OF CULTURE AND HUMANITY) have become practically non-existent. Ang mas nakatatawa-slash-nakakainis pa ay ang katotohanan na dahil dyan, nag-iba ang batayan ng tao sa kung ano ang panitikan at sining na higit na mapagpayaman sa kaalaman. It is impaled upon the young minds of this generation that good literature is exemplified by the pages of Twilight and Paulo Coelho’s books, while the old and the come-to-think-of-it-not-so-wise carry on with their lives, believing that literature is nothing but Shakespeare or — if they’re tad smarter, Jane Austen. Habang ano ang nangyayari sa mga akda tulad ng Ulysses ni James Joyce, o hindi naman kaya ang The Brothers Karamazov ni Fyodor Dostoevsky at The Tale of Genji ni Murasaki Shikibu (personal note: pwede namang hindi mo nabasa ang mga ito pero sana ay alam mo man lang na may mga ganitong libro, para hindi ka naman nabubuhay sa tangang paniniwala na ang pinaka-“challenging” na mababasa na libro ng isang literature major ay yung mga dula ni Shakespeare)? They are, in the physical level, left to rot in the ill-treated bookshelves of libraries rarely visited, and, in a way much worse than decay, are condemned to the inferno of the world’s dying humanity and well, the sense of what is genuinely good, true, and beautiful. Ang punto na aking sinusubukang ipakita dito ay ang aking paniniwala na ang mundong ito ay nagiging isang malaking basura ng katangahan at karahasan dahil hindi na marunong magbasa ang buong mundo. What’s sadder is that nobody seems to recognize this alarming reality anymore. Maaaring lahat tayo ay mamamatay na ignorante at barbariko, sa lahat ng kahulugan nito. 

The world hasn’t been concealing its secret from us, you know.

The eve of September 1st has, despite the seemingly superficial giddy-epileptic-up-and-down-jumping-Christmas-carols-blasting-little-kid that I involuntarily turn into when it comes around, always given me a joy that escapes even the most irrational degree of profundity. People have time and again articulated (sometimes rather tiredly) that Christmas is really (just) for children, and that as one grows older, one may —  and should, even! — come to realize that this holiday doesn’t really offer much distinction when juxtaposed with any other day in the calendar.

And I should have no problems finding a excuse to differ from this common ideology. I do not recall my parents ever introducing me to the concept of Santa Claus or Frosty or Rudolph. I do not make any special efforts to be of a philanthropic mood because genuine service is in my blood 12 months a year. The last time I remember having a Christmas tree at home was when I was in prep school, before my parents got this new one that they really wouldn’t install now because the cages of our two dogs now occupy the spot where it should lord over. We never had the extravagant, newspaper worthy Christmas lights my cousins next-door have (I was always envious as a little girl) because my dad is afraid that the house might catch fire because of them. My parents stopped giving me Christmas gifts when I was in college, and my accountant/bank-manager/top businessmen relatives annually take the liberty of going to Greenhills and 168 for what is in my personal standard inappropriately cut clothes (I’m not complaining because I appreciate them, I’m just trying to illustrate a point, haha!) in lieu of the once-unappreciated gift envelopes I got when I was in grade school. Noche Buena has never been “special,” being confined to just me, my parents, and my brother throwing hotdogs, bacon, shrimp, and squid balls into a hotpot after Mass (side note: There was even a time when, after Mass, my family drove all the way from home to Cubao and stopped at a Burger Machine joint for Noche Buena. I could recall eating chicken-flavored instant noodles in a plastic cup then.). Clear cut, simple, and nothing short of “un-magical,” Christmas has long ago lost its “fanta-ecstatic” impact on me —if it ever had one, — and there has been nothing much worth looking forward to. 

But, really, at twenty-one years of age, and in a state perhaps made more mature and formidable by the unforgiving obstinacies of life, reality, growing up, and a plethora of disappointing/disappointed Christmases, I am surprised to find myself, at the night of August 31, rushing to secretly snap my fingers to Winter Wonderland and croon to Bukas Palad’s Emanuel with teary eyes, pregnant with childlike hope and happiness. I am in awe to find that for what the rest of the world-weary world would simply see as the simple turning of the clock towards the more wintry part of the year, there will always be a stirring which my heart sings of which I will never have words for.

I call it a blessing.

For the literary nerds of the Ateneo Loyola Schools 2011, The Boy’s of Bora Spa is a limbo teeming with not just physical homosexual pleasure but of so much meaning. This Block B favorite signifier does not only serve to be a bastardized, contemporary actualization of the ancient Greek concept of pederasty, but a sensuous reminder for the powers of the linguistic sign. 

Propelled by the nostalgia for contemporary literary criticism classes, the drive to research on the existence of the The Boy’s of Bora Spa has brought us to the discovery of its website, containing a list of their “male massuer therapists” and a certain information (height) on each of them. Camille, Betti, and I had developed proclivities to some of them (or rather, their names): Januz, Chinz, Jopax, Wowie, Zaido, and Ulysis, and had also envisioned a certain Kevin J. Resurreccion as an exquisite addition to the roster (but that is a different story).

And so that certain Imbestigador episode only confirmed what we have always believed it to be all along, and because of the moral corruption promulgated by this business, the momentous The Boy’s of Bora Spa had finally fallen. 

Reclamation 

After no more than a few months, it was this establishment that greeted me on my way to Sikatuna Village: 

photo (c) Francis Mina 2011

Of course the implication hadn’t been lost on me (and my block mates). The erection (HAHAHA) of this new spa and Ulysis as its brand champion only meant two things and two things only: the trade is back and the tide has turned.  

So Ulysis (and Ulysis Spa, which may be noted to still carry the same business landline number as the now defunct The Boy’s of Bora Spa), for all intents and purposes, may perhaps be seen as a signifier for so many a literary phenomenal metaphor: the new Hamlet and with that the new Simba, come to slay his totalitarian uncle to assume a rightful position as ruler of the kingdom; a phoenix risen from the ashes of what is in this case bankruptcy caused by legal offense; a Harry Potter having no choice but to succumb to death in order to eradicate the Voldemort in him and live as his own person, among many others. 

And after all that’s been said and done, only one uncertainty punctuates itself as a question:

Hit him (baby) one more time?