Sulyap ng langit sa ating buhay

Maraming iyak ngunit mas marami ang mga ngiting dinulot mo sa ating munting mundo. Mapalad kami sa bawat segundong kasama namin kayo ni Kuya I. Salamat sa pagbibigay mo ng kabuluhan sa aming buhay. 


Nagmamahal ng lubos, ang iyong mga magulang.

The Science Teacher and Construction Worker

She stood up, she handed me her favorite Dr. Seuss, wordlessly telling me to read it to her.

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She claps with her whole body.

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There was an earthquake last night, I told him when he woke up. "You mean there are two tectonic plates rubbing against each other?" He quoted Nietzsche over lunch. Right now, the difference between my son and me is that he found out how vast the universe is --- he showed me how small earth and the sun is, in comparison to the many galaxies in the universe
Perhaps he won't be so surprised by our insignificance,

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In my head, there's an imaginary conversation

A: How can you read Che Guevarra on your staycation?
B: What's wrong with that?
A: He would rather die than stay in a hotel, your Che said.

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I will be a science teacher or astronaut while V. will be a construction worker, he said. Needless to say, he meant no insult to V., or to construction workers.

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At her age, 10, 11 months, she prefers one parent over the other. That baby center updates appraised us so. She prefers her mom, no question about it. She cries and sets off like an alarm when she's 1.5 feet away from her mother. But it only makes the moments she is with me much sweeter. Ealier tonight, you let me inside your play pen, and I read Neruda to you while you stood up, as if to assure me that you were never going to run away from me.

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I'm working in his room now. I'm documenting feedback listening to a Death Cab for Cutie song. He goes, "Can you add that song to my playlist?"

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Of course life's not all soap bubbles and butterflies, but thankfully enough, life isn't vapid or too tedious. We are together all the time.

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Think ----> Sing

I must have been searching for this song for a decade now. I've had the longstanding agony of having 20-year++ LSS on a song I didn't know the title. I've sifted through a great many alternative 90's playlists. I've combed through the albums of suspected artists. I must have hummed it to SoundHound or similar apps for hundreds of times. I never found it.

There was no one to confide to. How could I even explain what I was looking for? Even when I found it, I don't know anyone who might have even known this song. Even the search engines couldn't help me when I googled portions of the lyrics. All I remember was "to think about the moon." I never found it.

I conceded. There will always be unanswered questions in life.

The universe did me favor when I chanced upon listening a song called "Bliss" by a local act, Sundown Muse. Summer was coming, and I was listening to Spotify while washing the dishes. I heard the line "How do I presume to sing about the moon...."

My first thought was, it sounds like they plagiarized. On second thought, I thought this might have been the song and this must have been some kind of tribute. When I ran that line, Fossil's Moon came out. I must have listened to it at least a hundred times that night. A deep scar disappeared. It as if I resigned from my job. It is as if I won the lottery. I divided the atom. I explained the universe in a beautiful formula. I was transported back to my childhood room and this song was playing on the stereo.

I sing, repeatedly, from the lyrics of the song: "this elation evades description."

How can I presume to sing about the moon
Oh how can I presume to sing about the moon
Shall I say it is enchanted
Shall I say it is romantic nonsense
Now that I *** the adolescent swoon
Oh how can I presume to sing about the moon
Shall I say I love her dearly
Shall I say I need her ever near me
This elation evades description
So how can I convey my conviction
Oh satellite
Your majesty makes my heart rise
Oh concubine
Your radiance swells up my eyes
All the multitude that's faced you
Who can say they never once embraced the moon?

I spend all day with my family. I do, however, spend a significant amount of time developing curriculums for this teaching job, working online, rediscovering myself such as I have now. The lesson plans included /s/ and /th/ sounds. I may never have been able to figure it out if I didn't keep listening to what the universe was telling me:

thing ---> sing
think ----> sink

A simple inference makes it obvious.

Thank you, Universe. I'll keep quiet now and listen some more.

None of These I Imagined Possible

"You can just drop me off, I'm almost seven now." I wasn't driving, and I would have been grateful do walk him inside the school. He shooed me off and I felt even more grateful.

I'm just guessing, but in the glare of her eyes, something tells me that she is receptive to everything I am reading to her. The way she waves when I say hi, the she assures me that she can hear and she is listening.

And D., the she makes me love even what I thought I despised. Okra tastes feels like eating spit, I told her once. But now I enjoy the crunch and the texture and the way it pairs with rice and seaweed. What a delicious sight she is, always. How kind she is, how infinitely beautiful.

How easily did I ward off the stress when I ran a short 7k on the treadmill. I jumped into my well, and just as quickly I warp-zoned to the beach with DJ Tiesto blaring at my ears through bluetooth earphones. Running is a way of forgiving yourself.

When the internet went down for my evening classes, I ran back to my parents. I even slid in a drink or two with my brothers, and my father.

I often let everything just pass without pondering. But all these happened in one day, and none of it, many years back, was something I would have imagined as possible.

A little after midnight, I washed the dishes. Then I was never alone.

Who Have I Become Now?

After many years. I still say, the world crumbles beneath our feet. It's probably the worst year in politics. Oh, poor human race. It's another hottest recorded year of a doomed planet. While Satan's practically poking us with pitch forks, we put on the rose colored glasses and turn to the bright side. 2016 was:

the year I quit my job of 10.5 years and found a new one
the year I supported D. (best I can) in the final two trimesters of pregnancy
the year V. was born

the year I had the most money (and still kept most of it)

the drive-my-kid-to-school-everyday year.
the coffee shop, books, music and TV series year

After many new years, I finally stopped asking, who am I? Just who have I become now?

A once-in-a-while-runner, online worker, husband and father, who almost never wears long pants and leather shoes. A man who has streaks of occasional brilliance.

For a long time now, I've cleansed myself of perceptions that I am some great man. People never really grow up. We never discover who we truly are.  But I still want the world to change. Every year, I feel more compelled to uphold what is right.

We hit our walls, the earth crumbling beneath our feet, and we keep running.

We and our silly ways. 

How to Dream

There's a portion of the house he labelled as the craft area. That's her tiny hand on the Alice Munro book we were reading together. It was the same day she showed us that she could already crawl. For a while now, she's also able to sit upright and on her own.

I'm listening to a song by the Kooks. I run sometimes, read often, work at home, spend 100% of my time with family. In shutting down so much of the world, we find a gentle equilibrium. I've been happy, and beginning to compensate for all the time I've wasted doing something else. 

And I've also been guilty. I am not unfazed with what's happening outside, in my country and the rest of the world. It's not just indignation I feel, it's outrage. It is as if the history of the country and the history of the world is a recurring manifestation of failures, only in different faces, different modes of technology, in but always in the same pursuit of greed for money, power, violence. The rest of us settle for indifference, becoming bystanders to our own fate. 

History's a TV series, and we're just willing (if not gratified) to watch each other die. 

In between, there's craft corners and a baby's hand on the surface of a book. A man reading, running, working, loving his family and his life away. The country, the world will come to its senses. He keeps hoping that in good time and in a more gentle way, 

We should all read some more. Kindness and understanding shouldn't be so arcane, so scarce. The December light falls on him. I'm not just dreaming, he almost seems certain.