Black Book

Stalker - a person who follows or pesters someone (often a public figure) with whom he or she has become obsessed . .. . The phenomenon of the stalker who follows or pesters a celebrity has been recognized since the early eighties, and in the nineties has become increasingly high profile, with a concern that the end of the obsession may well be violence against the victim – The Oxford Dictionary of New Words, 1997 ed.

I am by nature not an impulsive creature (though a handful of persistent friends would insist otherwise). I could be calm and collected, deliberate and calculating even. That is why it came as a surprise when, recently, over a bottle or two of rum, a friend told me I am so close to becoming this guy’s stalker.

Is the world so paranoid nowadays that knowing a guy’s house number, the name of his maid, the age of his dog, the fact that he wears boxers rather than briefs (an assumption), labels me as a stalker? So what if I know where he lives and that Capricorn was waning the hour he was born? Or the fact that I send him box of his favorite Valrhona chocolates on his birthday, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Valentines? I hardly qualify as Single White Female material. No, not me.

So in defense to my friend’s accusation, I told her this is just my way of paying homage to genius. And thinking back now, I would not have put it any other way. For what is obsession but a recognition of your self to another, and such persistence of thought is but a hope that, perhaps, you are not alone.

I have read Clinton Palanca’s Mad Tea Party four years back, and it is just one those experience that completely changed me. After finishing a marketing degree I have no idea what to do for a career. My original intention of becoming a half starving filmmaker went down the drain through the dogs when I got kicked out of Uni on my first year whilst taking an AB Communication degree. And then I read his book and I said to myself – I wanna be just like him. (Oh my, perhaps I’m a Single White Female material after all.)

So here I am, pretentious little me, working my ass off for a culinary degree abroad. To see the world from the same perspective that he has seen. To pursue that magic of taste that only an adventure, (or is it exile?) on a different land could bring. To experience passion, lust, love, on a different dark sky and wash away all the previous nights rejections with a bottle of wine and embrace the following day like as if one has never been hurt before. And to write relentlessly, lucidly, incoherently about my exploits - a love letter to the world, hoping that someone will read it and see the world the same way as I have.

Passion is wanting someone or something so badly it changes you

And so he says. And it has changed me. That book has changed me from that pothead drunk living for the next intoxication to a pot head drunk with a dream. And this days, a dream is all you need to wake up in the morning filled with dread and find a purpose to put up with another day hoping that tomorrow everything will be how it should be.

I have read Clinton Palanca when I am happy. I have read him when I am sad. I have read him when I am suicidal. When I am drunk. When I’m in love. When I am high. When I’m alone……. In a way that book has seen me grow.

In a way, his words have kept me alive.