Bad Karma

This morning, I set aside my unfinished stories on Ramadan, the Human Security Act, (and many more that I could not mention for fear that doing so might stop me from writing them); I’ve foregone the pleasure of re-reading Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Zahir,” and “The Aleph” (which in the past few days have intoxicated me) or Edwin Mullins’ “The Pilgrimage to Santiago,” which I had started and abandoned a few months ago, or, Starhawk’s “The Spiral Dance,” which I found switched in between the rotten copy of Hendrik Willem Van Loon's "The Life and Times of Rembrandt Van Rijn" and Italo Calvino's "Difficult Loves" on the shelf of an obscure bookshop!
Worst of all, I turned down Dasia’s invitation for coffee--which is very rare, it happens only once in a hundred years!---because I had earlier promised Mandy I will attend that forum for her.
Only to be told---after half a day of listening to the speakers masticate about mining inside an air-conditioned room---that I did not have any business to be in that forum. They invited Mandaya, not me.
I was kicked out, so to speak, by people who did not even bother to explain why my name (instead of Mandy's) appeared on the attendance sheet (and it was not Dava Maguinda, I swear!) and why I had to waste precious hours before they could tell me I was not wanted in the first place!
But okay, it was over and I'm not going to wallow into it!
I was only there “to fulfill an obligation” and did not want to engage in any sort of “intellectual masturbation” about mining and the “indigenous peoples,” anyway, when the “indigenous peoples”(except one) were not even around.
Besides, I don’t really believe that there is some kind of a middle ground on such issues as mining. If you talk about mining and you tell me, we can just pose questions without making any strong statement for or against it--I’d surely feel very uneasy just sitting there, keeping my seat extra-warm without even bothering to ask: Are you deluding yourself? Are you pulling my leg? Or are you fooling the people?
So, I was just too glad to get out of there as fast as I can. They also told me I could not write anything about that forum, something that I never dream of doing so in the first place. For, except perhaps, for lawyer Marvic Leonen, who made perfect sense to me, are they really worth writing about?