for Jana

Octobers used to be dreadful.

Octobers used to mean one more month added to my age. The last (and the most powerful) of storms, almost sweeping me (and the world) away. The month between my birthday and my year-end bonus and all the self-pampering it entails (which reminds me, I have yet to buy stuff for myself this quarter). Come to think of it, I may have not written any poems in October. In any year.

Maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe October was self-doubt, the knowledge that my wallet was too thin; that people’s patiences, too, wore thin;  that the cold was starting to bear upon us; that everything else had to take a backseat to everything else; truth, beauty, and a picture of (who). There was no aphrodisiac, indeed, like self-imposed loneliness.

October was when I felt I had to settle for just about something, anything; there were so many things that passed me by while I was trying to justify the way things were, the way things presented themselves. October, the scene of some of my biggest mistakes, my biggest heartbreaks,  (what I thought were) my biggest sacrifices. Farther down, the song says, I am desperate for you. Only, it turns out, I was desperate for myself, to get my bearings back, to get back on that road again, to start feeling and loving and closing my eyes and feeling nothing but joy and mirth and all the warmth and fuzziness they entail.

It’s been a long, long, long time.

So many tears I’ve been searching back then, oh October, so many things I’ve been wasting (away). Here, a stray note; there, a stray crash cymbal. Now I can see you be you. Oh October, you will never be cold again. No storm, no road left untraveled. No more what-ifs of grease-men in winter jackets being fought over by grease-women in almost nothing, no more Modern Masters of Time in blue Arial, 600 pt., no more of the streets. The streets. All I walk on and ride over. All streets leading to you, all the right places and times, all days leading to then, I cannot tell you when then, but I can tell you it will.

I no longer think of pain, thinking about going farther down; all I think of is how farther down that road, I thought I took a detour, met a dead end, then burrowed through to light. It’s been so long, so long since I saw truly.

How can I ever misplace you?

So, what does a guy with a load to carry do? Picasso painted Guernica. Hemingway wrote For Whom The Bell Tolls. Ginsberg breathed out Howl. Brokensauce recorded “Watermelon”. And since I trust that a lot of you, my readers, are lyrics people, I leave it up to you to find deeper meaning in these words:

Lately, though, he’s fallen on some hard times. He lost both his parents in the span of four months, and was recently diagnosed with both diabetes and cardiomyopathy. I haven’t been in touch with Christian lately, and when Aaron broke the news to me this afternoon, I couldn’t help but share Christian’s cry for help:

Outside, a crowd had gathered around a fire truck, while Quezon City Fire Department personnel showcased their rappelling skills on the 30-storey CyberCenter building. Smoke from a machine drifted through the air as firemen staged a daring rescue using a mannequin borrowed from the Zaara boutique inside the building.

At the outskirts of Westridge Place, though, another rescue, this time belated, was going on. Thirty-year-old businessman Ellington Chua noticed a curiously-marked Kia Besta van going up the Olympus Place condominium building. He had previously noticed the same van attempting to enter Westridge Heights via the front entrance while he was having dinner at Il Duce, a restaurant located just beside the entrance. “I saw this van trying to enter Westridge, but I saw the guards waving it away. That van had something like a big “Q” with laurel leaves at the side. When I saw it again, I was walking back to my unit at Olympus. This time, though, it had a huge tarp with “Medical Mission” printed on it.” He was not aware of any other entrance to Westridge.

Milo Parungao, a worker at the Elysium Residences, noticed the van go through the back entrance beside the chapel. “The van had ‘AMBULANCE’ written in front, but I didn’t hear any sirens or see any lights.” Traffic was stalled at Oxford Drive, where the fire drill was being held. With Westridge security guards guiding the now-negligible traffic, the ambulance cut through Dartmouth Avenue, went up the Olympus Place on-ramp, and went down thirty minutes later.

Chua was making his way back to Olympus Place when a Westridge guard stopped him and directed him to go back to the Central Plaza: “The guard was telling me, ‘go back, go back’, since the fire drill was mandatory. I’m an engineer. I thought they only held fire drills on individual buildings?” It was around this time that he spotted the van in question dashing towards his condominium.

In the meantime, the crowds that were gathered at the Central Plaza were getting restless. The ChicoSci concert that was scheduled to start at 9:45 PM did not push through as planned, meals were left unfinished in the mad dash to the fire-drill rally point, and not a few call-center agents were getting irate.

“I was this close to making my first sale,” a visibly-pissed off sales representative from GatewayServices, Inc. was heard ranting to his colleagues. “The guy was about to say ‘yes’ to a DSL upgrade when this stupid fire alarm suddenly sounded.”

“Plus we’re stuck here with all these jejemons,” he added, pointing to a crowd of adolescents in black that was waiting for the ChicoSci concert to commence. He then popped his collar and took a drag from his Marlboro Blue.

At 10:33 PM, the van made its way down the Olympus Place ramp and merged with the Dartmouth Avenue traffic that was moving freely now that the fire drill had ended and the Central Plaza crowd was dissipated. Ellington Chua suddenly remembered that he had left his takeout cannoli at Il Duce and got back just before the restaurant closed. Milo Parungao bumped his head on a steel bar and was taken to the field clinic, where he was pronounced stable and fit to return to work. GatewayServices, Inc. resumed operations and the sales rep in question was finally able to get his first sale, this time on a new subscriber. He later attributed it to his smashing good looks, Missouri accent, and powers of persuasion. The band ChicoSci took the stage to shrieks of applause. Westridge Heights security personnel apprehended a couple of youths who were caught sniffing rugby from a bottle; the concert itself, though, was generally orderly, and lasted until the wee hours of the morning.

The body, identified as that of a certain Stephen del Monte, was brought to the nearby Funeraria Quirino, where his remains are yet to be claimed. Police suspect no foul play in his death, which appears to be caused by carbon monoxide poisoning.

(728 words)

Mula sa http://inevitablydeep.tumblr.com/post/640377581/do-not-reblog-i-repeat-do-not-reblog-ok-ba-ok ito:

Part of the entry goes:

Kung wala ngang Diyos, sinong gumawa sa Mundo? Ha? Hindi valid ang sinasabi ng Scientists kasi THEORY LANG nga e. THEORY – look it up on a dictionary, okay? It isn’t proven true. AT KUNG WALANG DIYOS, SINO ANG KINUKWENTO NI JESUS SA BIBLE, SI HUDAS NA HALOS NAGPAHAMAK SA KANYA n’ong 40 days and 40 nights sacrifice niya?

Just to clarify:

1. I am Catholic.
2. I stopped going to Mass, but have been going back to church a lot lately.
3. I took 12 units of theology and three units of Philosophy of Religion in college. Which makes me more of an expert on the bible and biblical criticism than this pair of sixteen-year-olds.
4. I majored in chemistry then shifted to management information systems. So that makes me a science major, somewhat.

Turns out that the other kid studies in my alma mater, so she’ll be taking Theo 121, in which one learns to exegize. In addition, since she’s a pre-med student, I bet she does believe in science, or at least has to pretend to believe in it. Which makes her rebuttal all the more laughable.

Personally, I don’t like the term “Big Bang” for the universe-creation event; I prefer the term “Horrendous Space Kablooie”, the way Calvin and Hobbes uses it. I believe in God, of course; and “Let there be light” could perhaps refer to the Horrendous Space Kablooie as scientists postulate. But to dismiss science as mere “theory” and to hold the Bible as, well, “Gospel” truth — isn’t that undermining your own chosen profession, Little Miss Aspiring Doctor?

From what little I remember from Theology class, parts of the Bible are not to be taken literally. It is merely possible that the Devil tempted Jesus during His forty days and forty nights in the desert, as much as it is merely possible that the Horrendous Space Kablooie actually happened. What I remember from my science studies, though, is that hard, empirical evidence trumps hearsay anytime. In the case of the Horrendous Space Kablooie, there are papers upon papers written on the subject, with matching data (of course, there are the “creation scientists” attempting to refute them).

As for the Temptation of Christ, even theologians do not agree on what the Devil was trying to do, or whether Jesus actually fasted for forty days and forty nights (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temptation_of_Christ). For all we know, the author of the Q document was trying to draw a parallel between other figures who supposedly fasted for the same length of time. Of course, these kids haven’t taken Theo 121 yet, I suppose, so I guess they haven’t caught on to the subtleties of biblical criticism.

I haven’t seen any paper that proves the “fact” that The Temptation In The Desert actually happened, though, but I will always welcome anything that attempts to do so, as long as it is fun to read and can hold up to scientific scrutiny. But as it is, the other kid’s rebuttal will always remain that — a little kid’s rebuttal.

Children play during a sudden outpour in Agham Rd. QC Joan Bondoc http://twitpic.com/1rrwav

Because I miss Agham Road, the rain, and playing in the streets during an outpour. Time was when “torrent” meant water, not full-length albums or internet porn.

Rain is soccer and basketball on days when classes were suspended. It is going to the dorm with my father in the middle of a Signal Number Two storm and arriving there in the middle of a sunburst. It is carrying someone’s umbrella and getting wet because it won’t cover both of you, and you end up getting wet but do not mind it anyway. It is running in risk and slumbering in safety. It is hot chocolate and warm jackets and tight hugs and a good book. It is Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong and Nina Simone. It is to cry over someone who treated you wrong. It is is to go celebrating after a game-winner. Rain is childhood. Rain is being grown up.

I was not listening to anything right then, and it was really raining, or drizzling, as it was. Something about being on the southern tip of a mountain range, at the Ground Zero of two opposing weather systems, was driving clouds up Mount Banahaw and down to the plains. Indeed, there was a foreboding two hours ago, atop Makiling, which took us all of a hundred-odd kilometers to finally leave. In the 6 o’clock near-sun, something like a mushroom cloud had gathered around the summit. There was no rain, at least not yet; perhaps it was still too cold for the condensate to fall down. I liked the sight of it, even behind glass. Especially behind glass. When I’m indoors (or in this case, in-bus) and it’s raining outside, I feel safest. Warmest, too, even with the air-conditioning on at full blast. Two hours later and we were driving along the foothills of another mountain, another mushroom cloud, and there was no more drizzle, just Bebel Gilberto wafting through the headphones of my mind, in a language I can only pretend to understand.

I remembered all these while waiting for a bus going home last week. I get off work at midnight, take the bus to Cubao, then walk from Araneta Coliseum to EDSA, where there is a queue of buses waiting to load. As a matter of preference, I take the ordinary buses since it is no longer that hot at night and I like the feel of the wind on my face. They are more likely to be cruising down EDSA at that hour, too.

Just last week, I saw an air-conditioned bus going to Novaliches. Not Malinta Exit – Novaliches, mind you; this was SM West – Mindanao Avenue – Novaliches, the ones I used to take going to my ex-girlfriend’s place, only these were airconditioned. The last time I recall taking an air-conditioned bus from the area was when my mother and I commuted to Cubao to shop for Christmas Eve dinner a decade and change ago; after that, I never saw, much less took, another air-conditioned bus from Novaliches again. That day we went to Cubao, the electricity shut off and the whole of Luzon was plunged into darkness for what seemed like the whole day. The moon was bright when we got home and us neighborhood kids played patintero on the newly-cemented Sikatuna Avenue that passed in front of our house, every five meters or so still clearly defined.

It’s amazing, I thought that night I saw an air-conditioned Don Mariano Transit bus, that things I very much needed long ago suddenly appear when I need them no longer. I have no more reason to go to Novaliches. Not even to visit our old house, the interior of which has burned down and has been converted into rooms for rent by people we never transacted with (I wonder how they got the building permits? What price memory?), not even to get off at Rainbow 1 and walk all the way to my ex-girlfriend’s place. The only reason I have now is to visit my parents’ graves just across the road from our village,  which is quite impractical given the time I get off work. They don’t even sell candles at the memorial park gate anymore. O Muerte, cuan amarga es tu memoria. Oh Death, how bitter your memory is. Or better, O Memoria, cuan amarga es tu muerte. Oh Memory, how bitter your death is.

Indeed. There are things I commit to memory — parents slow-dancing before breakfast, sadness over losing people I loved, jogging on early mornings after lighting candles at my mother’s grave with my father who has since passed on, air-conditioned buses plying the Alabang – Novaliches route — and there are things which will die to memory, bitter, buried under happier ones, never even happened — taking an air-conditioned bus to Novaliches one muggy night in May 2010, getting off at Sikatuna Avenue and walking through that door and waking up everyone in the rooms rented out by those people we’ve never talked to, sharing a cigarette with the neighborhood bullies who were by now full-time tricycle drivers talking in Jejenese.

Then again, riding on the ordinary bus to Fairview last week, I saw a shooting star, like the one I saw from our backyard at five in the morning as a seven-year-old, and failed to wish, Bebel Gilberto’s “Samba da Benção” playing in my mind. I understand now. Google solves everything. Bebel sings:

E melhor ser alegre que ser triste
Alegria e a melhor coisa que existe
E assim como a luz no coracao
Mas pra fazer um samba com beleza
E preciso um bocado de tristeza
Senao nao se faz um samba nao

It’s better to be happy than sad
Happiness is the best thing there is
It is like a light in the heart
But to make a samba with beauty
It’s needed a bit of sadness
If not the samba can’t be made

So there I went, playing a sad, somnolent samba in my mind, looking at the sunrise waiting to break out,  seeing a mushroom cloud forming over the Sierra Madre, and finding my way home to happiness.