What's in a Holiday?

What’s in a holiday? Not so much except for frizzy hair and wet mattresses caused by a seemingly lethargic system getting more and more bored of life at the moment. The bed is as good as a deathbed for precious time and fertile thinking were it not for holidays which fragment this fledgling lawyer’s life like a forgotten page in a newspaper loosely drifting in a ghastly corner of a street.

No work means no life for me, sadly. No work means a sluggish life in this humid apartment only ventilated by a wall fan which punctured in its place an enormous picture of two felines looking straight at the other end of the room which happens to be large windows now covered thickly with dirt. No work means thinking many lugubrious thoughts and plans which will in the end ruin my day. No work is self-destructive.

The past few weeks have seen me less court appearances much of writing pleadings and legal opinions. This is punctuated by a brief meeting with a client at the close of the week consulting many trivial legal questions. Being wealthy really has its price and being in such kind of stature breeds a paradoxical animosity between same bloods. Being wealthy breeds greed and apathy and that’s how the Civil Code provisions on Wills and Succession and lawyers of course come in. Settling their disputes makes me feel awkward but at the same time makes me appreciate the beauty and wisdom of the law on heirship which I loathe back in law school.

My senior has this knack of illustrating their respective shares on the estate of the patriarch. On the whiteboard she draws a circle divides it into half further divides the half portion by thirteen and shades a piece then tells to the doe-eyed heir: “This will be your share.” My senior breathed an aura of resignation after an hour of talking and talking explaining all legal complications of not settling the estate among themselves. I know she wants to tell them one last thing in a high-pitched tone: “Why don’t you all agree with the darn estate and have your selves enjoy your share till you breath last!” She was able to say it of course but in a courteous manner what do I expect. Between truth and business existence, the latter is more potent in this practice so to speak but being candid sometimes in specific matter pays well. This is a golden rule. It expels the air of opportunism and insincerity and draws the woman sitting opposite to you (eye-to-eye) to inevitably tell with all her enthusiasm: “Ok, how much will it cost? What will be the arrangement? Should I sign papers now?” What a sheer power, made my eyes grow bigger in real time.

And so we got an extra with that deal, another annulment case this time. Keep the cases coming, rainmaker.

Holidays, another one coming next week but I have nowhere to spend it at this time. No way to spend it for one of the loneliest persons ever lived. Nowhere to spend but this room with all of its four corners, with a laptop, with black ants eating fallen crumbs, with a few old newspapers, with a bed, and with nobody. “Nobody, nobody, but you!” Yes, you. Who? Is it okay to plug my number here? Me so pathetic.