Three Sundays ago I rediscovered the pleasures of driving alone. Well, I drive myself to work and back home everyday when I am in town, but it is a short drive, down the familiar route of Kamuning, then across EDSA, and then Kamias. Occasionally, I would drive to far away Makati or Manila on some very important ‘business’ (otherwise you won’t find me there) but I would have company for those drives, if not on the passenger seat beside me, then other drivers in cars that are too close for comfort in the usually jam-packed lanes of EDSA.
On that particular Sunday, a series of fortunate events happened that led me to make that drive from Tagaytay to Batangas alone. I woke up a little past 4 am (my body clock was not tuned properly yet) and decided to start out early. I was looking forward to the drive since the last time I drove alone at day break, the experience had been magical that it is permanently imprinted in my mind. It was still dark when I set out and went down Magallanes Drive but by the time I reached the turn to the zigzagged mountain road that would take me to Lemery, morning had already started to break.
What I so love about early morning drives is the dawn to sunrise show. The thing that makes sunrise (and sunsets too) so dramatic is how the display of light changes so fast that you actually witness the landscape transform before your very eyes. It is like watching the scenes change through a viewfinder (remember that toy from our childhood?), something different at each click of the lever, and in my case that morning, a different view at each turn of the bend.
That is what made that drive special-- being the only car on that strip of road at that particular time of the day meant that I had once again gained access to a private show. There is a stretch on that road where the cliff to my left gave me a clear view of the valley below, where there was a splay of orange on bluish-grey skies over Taal volcano, whose shape was still muted by fog. Breathtaking.
What made it even more overwhelming was the thought that at that particular moment, I was probably the only one in the world who would have seen that view. That car that I met a few feet later would have seen a different view by the time he reached that bend I just came from.
A few seconds later, as I turned another bend, the scene had changed: the sky was more orange than blue, the fog had lifted a little to reveal the top of the volcano. By the time I reached the national highway, the turn from night to day was complete, the show was over. But what a show…Wish I could say that it would have been good to have you there, but then I would be lying—I intend to make drives at daybreak my solitary pleasure.
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This weekend, I participated in the International Coastal Clean-up day. Picked up garbage underwater. Partied after. But the most interesting thing about that weekend was the kind of garbage I collected down under.
Half of the garbage I picked were footwear, all missing a pair—a little boy’s rubber shoes, black sandals of a size eight woman, pink slippers of a young girl, the sole of size eleven basketball shoes, and more. The coast was also littered with washed-up footwear.
There must be a good story behind the pair-less footwear underwater. Or someone can spin a good story around them.
Around who owned them. Around what happened and how those pair-less shoes got there.
For me, I can only wonder.
