Greetings for the New Year

In 2007, I said goodbye to smoking, and except for one minor lapse one drunken-night among strangers, have never smoked cigarettes since; watched my parents walk down the aisle on their 40th wedding anniversary; swam with the Butanding one summer weekend and saw Mayon Volcano for the first time; met and made new friends; met newfound cousins; was unexpectedly told I am loved by a dearest friend, which drove Tita Gigi to tears when I told her about it; walked the ruins of an ancient city in Thailand; was happy to see an aunt recover from breast cancer and prayed fervently for the recovery of another good friend; spent 6 months getting an open water diver’s license and spent oh so many weekends by the beach and 60 feet underwater, was treated to a weekend in Las Vegas by very good friends whom I have known since grade school and I finally realized what ‘handsome’ is while watching Chippendales; was blessed with my parents’ good health and unwavering good sense of humor; drove a mini cooper in suburban roads of Amherst and enjoyed an spectacular solo early morning drive from Tagaytay to Batangas; was excited to welcome a cousin’s new baby; felt for a friend’s grief over a recent loss; finished reading many good books while spending so many hours in many different pre-departure areas; enjoyed a night of music and heard my favorite song ‘Smile’ played with a passion that resonated from deep within; shopped for cds in Quiapo; cheered on friends who got engaged, sang many love songs on videoke with good old singing and drinking buddies; said goodbye to my home of three years and anxiously moved into a smaller place that I could now call my own; sadly watched my dearest housemates pack up and move into their own little places; found a new home for my dog; climbed the 268 steps to the big Buddha in Lantau and offered a prayer for my brother on his death anniversary; laughed out loud so many times, cried a few times; celebrated my birthday with an after dinner party with friends closest to my heart while missing those who could not be there; and capped the year with a quiet time with Papa, Mama and Mana Adette, all of us grateful for this time together while never forgetting him, whose absence will always be felt.

With deep gratitude I say goodbye to 2007 and look forward to 2008! May the New Year bring you love, peace of the soul and mind--

There was a time when my nephew, Mika, asked everyone he met how old they are. His mom explained, “he is currently obsessed with time.” He followed this up with a morbid statement, “people die when they grow old.” His young mind still cannot grasp the vastness of space and time between him and the “old”, between the tangible and a mere memory, between now and permanent absence. But he continues to ask, 'how old are you' or ‘wawa are you old?’ As if the numbers would give him comfort. I smile and say, “don’t worry Mika, I am still young.”

In a Vogue magazine article, I learned that Vladimir Nabokov also liked to talk about time.

“In what way?”
“In the morning, he would look at his watch and say, ‘I make it out to be 8:15; what do you have?”

Nabokov’s lifelong preoccupation, the article went on to say, was memory, things lost but still present.

While I, I am currently obsessed with freezing time--in digital pictures, in videos, in notebooks that I lug around, in all my documentation tools. I often find myself in the middle of a joke that had everyone laughing, or in between sips of wine at a family dinner, just taking a moment to commit everything to memory—how they laughed, what he said, what they said in return, what time of day it was. And I wonder, will I remember this exactly as it happened?

Or maybe, it’s just how Joel said it in Chronos (http://rambling-soul.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html) --

And it goes on and on, this pattern of forgetting,
like the erratic beating of hearts.
The learned calls it Pi, the endless, as if

the mind has no need to negotiate with time.

Of private shows and orphaned slippers

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.

For a friend, who is far away from home and says he misses the rain...

WAR STORIES

This is an excerpt of a letter that I received from a good friend whose work and heart have lead her down south in the Philippines. The day before I left for work-related travel end of July, she was on her way to assist in the evacuation of women and children in Mindanao. We talked about how much of the stories of the innocents caught in the crossfire are buried under the ‘bigger’ news about the whole military vs. the MILF thing. Her courage, optimism and sincerity have never failed to amaze me.

The letter

Dito naman sa amin sa Mindanao, fighting has moved to Sulu nowadays, the original home of the historically courageous Muslim warriors (Taosugs). Basilan was spared, although more than a thousand families have been displaced by the deployment of the Marines and the Army. Our Project area was totally vacated when the people saw the troops occupy their community facilities. Yung timber port na ginawa mismo ng mga tao for landing ng kanilang maliliit na bangka, pinunu ng military artillery! The people decided to evacuate. Risky masyado. They might be caught in the crossfire. It was good that the MILF pulled out all their troops para di madamay ang mga tao. So quiet na naman sa Basilan ngayon. People are gradually moving in na naman. Nakakapagod na din pero if you listen to the women, you can't help but appreciate all their efforts to keep the kids alive since all the men have gone elsewhere, to avoid being picked up by the military. Uso kasi damputan sa mga areas. Kaya lahat ng mga binata at matanda na lalaki, pinaalis na muna sa communities. Ang maganda, in those areas not affected by the conflict, social capital has tremendously increased! Umpisa na sila ulit ng mga sari-sariling business. Community life is back. Trust is being built na naman.

I will be going back to Manila this Friday. Puro naman daw baha dun ngayon.Kwento ka if you have time. Nakasingit ako ng konting panahon ngayon at may staff meeting pa sila.

My response

Your news about Mindanao is sad and yet the courage and resilience of the people there is amazing (there is no way to say this without it sounding like I am trivializing this tragedy—my apologies).

I remembered once I was in Mindanao nine years ago and I witnessed one such evacuation (this was during the peace talks negotiations — how ironic that the level of conflict escalates during these negotiations). The whole town was in level three red-alert and the family I was living with told me that they always have one bag ready with the ‘essentials’, ready for times when they have to leave their homes in an emergency. They told me they have done this a couple of times but have been lucky to have their home still standing when they came back.

I tried to imagine how they must feel every time they took a look at the house they were leaving behind, not knowing if it would be still there when they come back. Ah, to live in that constant state of uncertainty and fear.

I heard later on that they came back to their home a month later and did minor repairs to their house, and rebuilt their lives. It was just one family, one small story, yet I can still remember it so clearly as if it happened yesterday.

I also encountered one small yet significant face of war recently. I was on a flight to the east coast and I sat beside this lady. I, as a rule, never talk to strangers, especially in places like airplanes where you can’t escape a boring conversation unless you sky-dive. But I noticed that the few times I break the rule, it is always to respond to a bleeding heart.

She told me she and her husband were flying to visit their son who was going to be deployed to Iraq in a week. She said she was devastated. She wrote her president and begged not to send her son off because he has four children, the youngest was just a month old.

I have certain opinions on the US-Iraq war but until that moment, it came from a far-removed corner of my mind. It was that mother’s lament at 35,000 feet that made it real, even for just that moment. I think we only talked for all of five minutes but as we got off the plane, I gave her a hug and said someone from the Philippines will be praying for her Oscar.

The war in Iraq. The war in Mindanao. I feel most of time so disconnected from these big events but from time to time, these individual stories somehow bring them closer to home.

Speaking of home, I can’t wait to get back-kahit baha. My fantasies these days include spending a whole day holed up in my room on a rainy day, just sleeping and sleeping. Soon, soon.

Have a nice weekend in Manila! See you when I get back.