We All Fall

We went out to see D.'s brother's exhibit at CCP, only to miss it because we weren't early enough for gallery hours. We walked around and I pictured myself standing in those hallways during my Usher days. Tonight, ballet was on the Main Theater. One of the advantages of being an ex-usher is that you can, once in a while, be a 'guest' to these performances.

D. and I ended up watching the Philippine Ballet Theater on orchestra-center seats. They danced three separate sets: locally-inspired, classical, and contemporary. It's been a while since I've seen pivots, pirouettes and arabesques. It was always beautiful from this close. The musical score on the contemporary set sounded like chillout or ambient and it just leaves you awed. Although you never completely understand it, all these graceful turns pose an efficacy. In that moment of aesthetic contemplation, you forget all the other awkward events that happen in the real world you belong to, that world of pressures and pretensions.

I remembered what we did last Sunday. We just hung out, listened to chillout and read the 2002 Likhaan Book of Poetry and Fiction. One of the poems, called 'A Dance Lesson' (by Naya Valdellon) clung to our minds as we watched ballet tonight. A line from the poem goes:

For you are a dancer,
and though your movements
mimic grace in flight
you must always return
to touch this earth
that dances under your feet.

We all fall down. Eventually, we all will. But right now, thinking of this rainless September evening with D., it still feels like we will never fall from grace.

...

After ballet, and thereby accumulating a thousand or two culture points, we had to reward ourselves with dinner. We had imported beer, baby back ribs, mashed potatoes and sausages at the Grappa's near the Trellis. They had 100 different paintings of sunsets on the restaurant walls. All these sunsets, the good food, beer, and the proximity of the sea reminded us of Boracay last summer. And since this is still CCP: those happy usher duties after Philosophy classes in college. Now I'm out here as a guest, and a PhD student. In Process Philosophy class, they tell us how differentiation is sophistication, detail is enrichment. After tonight with D., and looking on all the time we've been together, life feels like it's been enriched.