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.


************************************************************************

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.

Letter

I could not sleep, my whole body was screaming for sleep but my mind would not rest. So instead of trying to and stressing myself out to even more sleeplessness in the process, I decided to work a little.

But I should have known that I was setting myself up for some major downtime- to be in this almost complete silence at one in the morning, with only the sound of the waves and tuko of the gecko for company, there was no way that I would not end up thinking about you.

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea. (A Song of Despair, Pablo Neruda)

This is what I have been trying to avoid the whole day ever since I arrived here this morning. One reason I am up right now is because I could not drown out the echoes of the sound of my own voice- I used it to chatter the whole day away, talking about useless theories and concepts, churning out one anecdote after another that at one point I must have sounded like those Rotary guys, the ones who get trained on how to make a conversation going and interesting to capture everyone’s attention. Arrghhh. Has your own voice ever haunted you to the point of disgust? I should not beat myself up for that, I just needed to fill all those spaces with sound, otherwise you would creep in and take over.

It’s not your fault. It was a given from the very start, that you would intrude on this weekend. If I believed in the wheels of destiny, this was orchestrated from that time we first came here five years ago for an intro SCUBA dive. I dragged Pearl along, remember. I could not believe it was your first time to dive as well. I had always thought that diving was already part of the many adventure sports you’ve done. The 20 minutes underwater was enough to get me hooked—I vowed that someday I would take diving lessons. We even talked about it, taking the lessons together.

You would be happy to know that I finally enrolled in a diving class (with Pearl, Sanchi and Donyl) and even if it took us five months what takes four days for some, at least we are here now, two dives away from our certification. But in some twisted cosmic joke, we are doing our checkout at the resort where this all began.

I thought it would be easy to come back here. After all, it’s been what, three years already since you left? But halfway to the shower area just before the second open water dive, it hit me bad I almost doubled-over.

I hate it when you do that, invade my memory at the most inconvenient time, when I least expect it. You have so many opportunities to come when I am alone and yet you choose to intrude when I am not ready. But the good thing about water sports is that no one would ever know that film of water running down your face is not from the shower anymore.

Sometime a whiff of song might float by,
Then you might say to yourself, “That one,
I know that one, it reminds me of—“ and stop,
your tongue unable to find the shape of it,
in your thought the syllables slip,
murdered by memory. (When I Go, Merlie Alunan, April 2004)

Usually, it is the sound of the waves or the feel of the breeze from the sea that brings you back to me. Even that combined smell of sunblock lotion, saltwater and the sun on the skin assaults my memory.

It was, after all, our love for the sun, the beach, the sea that bridged the gaps between us – of our age difference, of all those years spent apart, of the differences in who we have become.

You were always rock-solid, while I am, as Papa puts it, the rolling stone that gathers no moss. You were straight as an arrow ever since, your life meticulously planned out while I tend to make so many detours, interesting stops, I call them (how it exasperated you then—I remember one night, while waiting for the rain to stop and traffic to ease up in some parking lot diner in Makati, how you pepped talk me about making long term career plans, visioning what I really want. I, of course, made fun of that serious conversation, but if it is any consolation to you now, some of what you said sank in. I do make plans now and it is very clear to me what I really want to do)

You did things by the book, I do things by instinct. (I remember how you were once made to set the table and you went about it with a ruler—because you read in some book that the plates have to be placed a certain number of inches away from the edge of the table).

Science was your thing, I am the kind who would stupidly ask if that flashes of light running through the wires of the MRT was electricity—it turned out it was the reflection of the headlights from the cars below. (You scoffed and said to me then, if the physics community would hear you claim that you have seen electricity, you would be an outcast. I said to you, but I can see lightning, isn’t that electricity?)

You were always conscious of your health -- you had a nutrition plan, you exercised, you played badminton, you went mountain climbing, you maintained an active lifestyle. Instead of itemizing the many ways i abuse my health, let me just say that we were complete opposites on this score.

Even what we write in our journals show how different we were. In your travel journal you wrote the facts of your trip to the Grand Canyon--what time you left, what the weather was like, what you saw along the way, what happened when your car broke down. Mine would probably document how I like the afternoon sun, how much softer it falls on the mountain range. (Sorry, I found your travel journal and read it—I can almost hear you gasp at the invasion of your privacy. I know you would be also appalled that I have mine on-line but don’t worry, I only have less than 5 people reading this, all of them my friends-promise!)

But when it comes to bodies of water, we spoke the same language. It was there that I found you and you found me. That even when you found me strange, you could like me, enjoy my company, laugh out so loud at my stories even when you grimace in disbelief at the absurdity of some of them. That I could like your friends and you liked mine (even if you said I do keep a weird set). It was because of our common passion that we started going out, started planning those weekend trips to the beach. It was there that I found a friend in my brother. And I ceased to be just your sister.

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate

Deserted like the wharves at dawn,
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands (A Song of Despair, Pablo Neruda)

Pearl woke up as I was writing this letter to you. She asked me why I could not sleep—I said work. She knew better. She said it was ok if I talked about it. But you know how it is Mano, we have always been clumsy when it comes to verbal displays of affection, that’s another thing we have in common. We were never able to verbally express how we feel—we find it cheesy, awkward. The ‘love’ expressions are not part of our vocabulary – if I said I missed you I can almost imagine you cringing.

But it was different in letters. I saw a whole bunch of my letters to you, inside faded envelopes in a box in your room, the ones I wrote to you before there was email. I was amazed how much I was able to tell you in those letters and how I never talked to you about those things when we were together. My letters were long, the longest one was eight pages (even longer than this, imagine that). I have always been a prolific letter-writer. You never said it but I knew how much you enjoyed receiving letters from me, it brought you closer to home.

And because I can’t say this out loud, let me tell you the only way I know how.

The whole time today, all I could think of was, if there was any one who deserved to be here, it was you, not me. That if there was any one who could do this better, it would be you. You would not test the patience of your instructors as I did today. When I could not move gracefully with those fins on, I remembered how you swam with it like they were the natural extensions of your feet. You were the swimmer in the family. They said I was a natural in water (well, not today definitely) but they should have seen you, known you. You were close to supernatural.

When all of a sudden I was gripped with fear while underwater, a slight moment of panic, I thought how it would have been all right if you had been there to hold my hand. Like you did all those summers ago, the first time you took me snorkeling and I panicked as we reached the reef’s edge. It was during that snorkeling trip that I first discovered that I wanted to be a mermaid. That singular moment has brought me here. And I can never ever claim to love all this more than you did.

So how did it happen that I am the one wearing your mask and snorkel now, diving in the ocean you loved, even driving your car to get here, living the life you should have lived?

*************************************************************************************

This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank! (A Song of Despair, Pablo Neruda)

I woke up with a lighter heart and a calmer spirit, as calm as the sea that morning. You know what comforted me? There was this butterfly that kept hovering as I prepared for the third dive. Darl told me this interesting trivia-- did you know that the life span of a butterfly is so short, some just 2-4 weeks after they spring out from their cocoons? And to think the metamorphosis takes a long time. I love the irony of it. When I came up to the surface, there was another small white butterfly hovering low in the middle of the sea. I imagine you to be this butterfly, just too good for this world.

Someday soon, I will write to tell you how magical it is down there, how serene, how that stream of light from the surface could pierce through your heart, how time slows down, how far removed from rest of the world you can be.

Someday, I will tell you how I understand how some people could actually devote their lives to this. I will tell you how everything about that day was perfect, and how it was capped by a shooting star that we saw as we drove home. But right now, I just want you to know that to me, you are not completely gone, you were there. And as I continue to do this, you will always be with me.

Then have I truly gone, my love.
Air has closed over the spaces I have been,
not even grief can stay it. (When I Go, Merlie Alunan, 2004)


(July 15, 2007, Balai Resort, Anilao, Batangas)