11:13 AM Been warming this wrought iron bench with my gluteus maximus for almost an hour now. I sit alone in this tiny park in the heart of the city, staring hard at what they call as the Fountain of Justice, a collection of steel protrusions resembling a bicycle wheel’s radius. Not a spray of water from any of its spouts, it makes a mute dismal picture that perfectly highlights what a drag all this waiting for nothing has been.
What am I doing here anyway?
You’re trying to feel your way through the minutes of an unemployed day, said me.
A well articulated point my dear, but must I do this in a turtleneck? The forecast said today’s going to be cloudy with a bit of rain and really strong winds; now it’s sweltering!
Surely, you know better than to blame the damn forecast. You feel hot, you take it off. Plain and simple.
Nah, I think I’d keep this on. It makes me feel a bit more in a writing mood. Besides, the doctor said I need to sweat every chance I get.
And I thought you were one to neglect professional medical opinion (nods his head, grinning lopsidedly.)
I smile back, a smile of shared fondness for the queer stuff that alternative lives are made of, may it be watered down cynicism, a weak ray of bleakness, the ridiculous pleasure borne of mundane banter, or the simple magic of stretching one’s gaze to see.
Just beyond my forlorn lifesphere, the city is a constant stream of movement and color in the form of jeepneys and people. Movement and color aren’t exactly life. I feel a grim grin working its way around my face. I look up to see the Monday overcast stretching endlessly like a fluffy bed of smoke. I feel a change coming. My deliverance is going to fall upon me any minute now.
11:18 AM Everywhere I look, I see concrete as dull as the clouds outside. When will banks break free from the neutral-color scheme? Still, there’s a steady trickle of people entering and leaving the Philippine National Bank-Luzuriaga Branch. I had better let them be, these people who have a legitimate business being here because I, on the other hand, am here—to escape the rain.
As a gesture of good will, let me say at least that the place is pretty conducive for scribbling—cool and really nice and quiet, with an air of reverence and tacit mind-your-own-damn-business understanding enfolding all folks to the point of social asphyxia. I guess money does that to everyone at some unfortunate point in time.
Plus, I try to be unobtrusive and non-threatening, blending really well with the brick red leather couch here, as I am clothed in four different shades of brown, the color I favor the most. If I attract too much attention, God knows what others would think of the guy-who-clearly-doesn’t-have-a-business-to-be-here.
Tick-tock tick… I can feel my sepia camouflage failing me; I feel all the more like some sort of reconnaissance man, looking around surreptitiously and jotting down copious notes. The security guard is beginning to notice me with an evil eye, looking like a bulldog chewing on a wasp (however unsavory that is.) It must have dawned on him that I’ve been sitting here way too long to be devoid, beyond reasonable doubt, of any cruel intentions. Don’t panic. Sit up straight and look normal. Shrug. Calmly! Do it again, calmly. Now summon that will-I-deposit-half-a-million-or-two-million-look. There, you look so above suspicion. Now check on the guard from the corner of your eye.
He’s handing out numbers to middle aged women.
Allora, the reconnaissance man moves on to the next subject: a creature (I’m uncertain as to its sex; it has boobs but they look incredible to me so I remain on the safe side) across the aisle wearing a checked pleated mini skirt, furry calf-high boots, and an ominous Apocalypto belt. Its dark hair has some seriously deadly Viking highlights and its bodily composition rivals that of the Venus of Wilendorf. Discreet stares from all over the PNB house are currently flying to this creature’s direction, motivating it to stand, shake its hair, and strut its stuff down the aisle. I close my eyes and wish the stares were all daggers, really sharp but rusty.
It was precise, tactile, clean, and over in a matter of seconds—the perfect crime in the mind.
3:13 PM I’m on a red bus now with six other passengers, giving the usually jam-packed vehicle a hollow feel. I feel sorry for harping to my best friend on the phone about how she should get a job fast (because she’s somebody who can do it but just wouldn’t because she finds meaning in what she’s doing with her time, even if it’s reading Spanish chicklit at home, without pay.) What was I thinking? I’m out of a job myself! So I sent her a text message:
I’m sorry for sounding like a prodder-nagger kanina. What really matters to me is that you are following your bliss and I am at your side to support you. I can’t live your life for you naman di ba?
Pipit texted me back: It’s okay. Please, understand my crankiness too (translation: stubborn lang talaga ako.)
Not a bad attempt at amnesty, huh? Somehow it makes me feel I hold considerable promise as a conflict and reconciliation worker. I lean on the window pane and hum Que Sera Sera, one of Pipit’s favorite get-by songs, hoping to nap all the possibilities away.
3:55 PM I feel like a pebble of Truth has just been dropped into the pool of Emptiness that is me. The Will searches for that pebble in vain; it will only discover though that vast and deep is the emptiness that this one soul could carry.
They say the jar’s emptiness is what holds the water, that a jar without a hollow is not a jar. That a jar that is full must be emptied before it can be filled. I remember a time when I got so full of myself. I had to drain out a great deal of Pride, mostly by weeping, which felt awful at first but really light and liberating in the end. But that’s historic stuff of months ago. Today, talking about emptiness, I’m wondering whether or not the things I devote my life to do hold water in the grand stream of things. I couldn’t be definitely sure of that, could I?
“Wisest is he who knows he knows nothing.”
I free my gaze through the window of the now filled bus. I see a gnomish old man in faded tattered clothes smoking a cigarette. I look at his brown feet. They look relaxed and at home in the electric pink crocs cradling them.
Socrates is right. I know nothing really. And I’m quite happy about that.
With not a minimum of smoke, turbulence, and noise, the bus moves out, taking me home.
10:11 PM Just finished off two Fugi apples and nine Hiro sandwiches with a vengeance. My only witnesses: the folks on CS9’s HEROES and Fringe.
The night is cold for mid-January in this country. The cold seeps through my blanket, right through my low-fat body. I’m trying to think of yet another self-discovery, hoping it would somehow warm me up, even just a little—
You know why you always fall for someone who’s unlikely to love you back?
Because I’ve mastered it and it makes me feel in control and I’m unwilling to risk plunging into the Unknown, where I won’t be able to calculate my reactions and no amount of intellectualizing can put up the so-called ‘comfort zone’ I’ve always locked myself in.
There is a consistency to your candor which is truly beautiful!
And may I say so about your sarcasm?
Why don’t you leaf through your old journals and look up what you had written, say, exactly three years to today? You might find something that would help you make some sense out the abovementioned ‘realizations.’
Hmm, right! Here… we have it: (Reading aloud) January 12, 2006—
Yes. Just keep moving. Keep moving no matter how every harsh unuttered word weighs you down. I know they do. I know you are what your peers do not speak of you. You are weak. At this point, you have no choice but to be.
It’s because you think too much. You are caught in the crises of a world too big and too small for you. You are scourged by your humanity, that part of yourself that gives so much, too much, to a benign promise, a sacrifice sine qua non. You need to detach yourself from these things, find out who you truly are by yourself, unshackled by any outer faith, burning only from within—an entity very much of itself. You have only yourself. And it is all you need to begin with.
Hmm, back then you were penning a resolve to break free. Now it seems you’re caving yourself in a, uh, I don’t know—your comfort zone, perhaps.
Does this mean the real me is a prisoner of himself and is content being so? Am I being too hard on myself and actually liking it? Is splitting hairs all I’ll ever do as a means of getting by in the glorious flux that is Life?
Figures we’ll have to find out how Jeprox finds out about the find he thinks he’s finally going to be fine with, won’t we?
(Sigh) That lacks a great deal of musicality. Though, I think we’d better give it a rest, for now.
Vero. Buona notte e sogni dolce, fratello.
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