Page Turning

A lady opens her book. She is clear-skinned, white but not pale, glossy, maintained and moisturized. Her sleeveless beige dress runs straight from a flat chest, uninterrupted by a flat stomach on to her ankles, the fabric soft enough to ripple with the hot, noon breeze. Her hair is in a sensible bun. Her eyes were wide and animated.

We were in an out-of-office meeting that we had offsite, in a popular coffee shop. The meeting has been running for over two hours: tedious, loud, and repetitive. The lady’s book was a best seller, and she’s been reading for all the two hours we were having our meeting.

More minutes roll into the meeting’s mind-numbing babble, and I spot the lady spontaneously and unembarrassedly weeping. She held the book between her thumb and the rest of her fingers, and kept crying. She does not pause. She does not take time to recover. She turns the page, and keeps reading.


***

I must have been seven or eight years old. We were in class, and I remember the white light coming through the huge windows dousing itself from the corridors into our classroom. It must have been a pretty boring class, and one of my classmates must have been sowing the seeds of what perhaps is, independent thinking.

My classmate was A.A. - big-bellied and sloppy but way smarter than anyone would have thought he looked.

During class, he was reading a non-school book he borrowed from the library. He hid it on between the textbook for our Grade 2 or Grade 3 class. He held the ends of the textbook with his left and right hand, but the library book was tucked in between. I wish I could remember what that other book was – I would have read it, if only for the risk he took.

The teacher eventually noticed. The teacher removed the decoy textbook and revealed, to both the surprise and delight of the entire class, that A.A. was reading was something else and deliberately hiding it. He looked interrupted, but did not look embarrassed.

He got caught. I remember my classmate and think of him proudly.



***


The College kids of my time must have read and conversed more often. Therefore, we must have lived more. We must have been among the last few who didn’t completely rely on the internet. It was still SMS over social media, journals or print instead of blogs, network games over online games, libraries over search engines. It existed then and we adopted it, but we must not have been as reliant. When we become reliant on technology, a necessary persistence towards knowledge is lost.

Whenever you are looking for your next book to buy nowadays, you go to amazon.com for the reviews or look at the commentary from virtual libraries.

Back in College, you found out what to read next in reviews written in newspapers, campus publications and through actual conversations.

I remember how I heard about Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. It was through a review published in the Philippine Collegian. A college student wrote about how he chose to end the last chapter of the excellent book. He read that part in the loo, standing up in the toilet bowl. I remember how I admired it then, and thought, how intellectual, how bohemian . In these times, someone else would have thought, how poser or how hipster.

We let ourselves be young.


***


24 and 25 summers old, lovers for less than a year. Even with beautiful novelty of being in our first year as lovers, our careers bored us to tears. So we juggled work with Graduate School if only for the nostalgia of learning again, with subliminal wishes of ending up with a more fulfilling occupation. And we often drank, we often went to the movies or the theater. We often travelled out of town. We were often starved and we found ways to make ourselves satisfied. We've had our highs.

In afternoons after Saturday classes, we lie in bed with a poetry volume we borrowed from the university library. We read poetry together.

A line from a poem hits the mark:

Through separate evenings, when
only you can take the stars
or give me the moon, while I assemble
all the reasons why I love
you, this way, still.

(From Rita B. Gadi’s Kidapawan in my Heart)

I love you this way, my D. On our separate evenings, only you can take the stars, or give me the moon.



***


The Shape of Me and Other Stuff; Dr Seuss. It was before he learned to recognize, form words, mumble or comprehend. He was not even a year old when I started reading it to him. I must have done it to him a thousand times, as I could now recite it from memory. But I didn't how how we took it, I had no clue if there was anything he understood, or how the spirit was forming in him. I knew my mind was as blank as his.

I just kept reading it to him.

He was already walking then, so he must have been over 12 months. He walks to his shelf, picks out this book, walks on his still-wobbly knees and hands it to me. The look was instinctive, pure and moving. I acknowledged the request, and with this gesture - I unmistakably felt that he was loving me back.

We turn a page and read.

Roofs

Even on our Friday shifts (which ends in Saturday morning), there's no such thing as winding-down in the office. It's the end of the week and I'm toxic, catching-up and already busy the following week.

We are busy with designing and tweaking our processes so that we can further dehumanize ourselves and make us function like input/output machines. We call it efficiency. We brandish it as optimization.

It must have been 5am and I haven't had my "lunch." I walk to the parking lot and get the lunch box I left in the car. Crab sticks in spicy mayo on wheat bread - the high point of my shift.

Everytime I go out to the parking lot at 5am, the very humid summer air refreshes my lungs and the openness of the sky imposes itself on you. In the next hour or two, the sky will become monochromatic. It will patiently, monochromatically infuse itself with the glaring colors of sunrise.

How I wish I could run, fill my lungs with this beautiful morning air and watch the sky's spectacular transformation.

Dismantling my hesitation, I go back inside the office. I eat my sandwich while working in my station, my very own veal-flattening pen. I look up to the ceiling, remember the beautiful sky outside, my legs aching to run, and my suppressed imagination slashing the ceiling and telling the roof, "Roof, you are an awful waste of sky."

On Monsters

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.
- Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil.

The world is never bereft of monsters we have to fight, including the ones inside us. Lately I've been battling a lot of monsters. Maybe I'm finally growing-up.

Remember who you are. We are always who we once were.

Bone Marrow & Tawilis-Induced Bliss

“It’s like the States.” Our parents would usually say whenever we drive along the Skyway. Many years ago, they’ve travelled the US coast to coast by land and the view of the interstate highways must have summoned a similar image.

We packed the sandwiches D. made and snacked on them in the car for a short trip that would take us to Tagaytay, then to Nasugbu. We are attending a friend’s wedding as candle sponsors, followed by an overnight excursion with little one, Lolo and Lola. Since they would graciously take care of I. while we attend the wedding, we insisted on getting the tab for trip. They will, after all, get everything on a 20% senior discount. Along with the life-long free movie pass, a senior card was one of things that made us look forward to growing old together.

We checked-in at a zen-inspired bed and breakfast called T House. The shampoo smelled of green tea. A comforting silence came about with a cool highland breeze. There were plenty of deck chairs, quiet spots, and white outdoor sofas. They served tea and cookies to the room right before bedtime.







The weather was perfect for the bulalo we sipped at the restaurant for lunch. At dinner, we inhale more of that crisp mountain air and go out to the city for tawilis, sinigang and beer. At breakfast the following morning, we had the most neatly-arranged beef tapa with a fruit bowl, bread bowl and free flowing coffee.



We talk some more, read the papers and take pictures. I started on a new book. A little while later, lunch followed and we had more tawilis at another restaurant with a nice view of the lake and volcano. Before we back to the city, we shop for Pasalubong – ube jam by the nuns of Good Shepherd. Before heading home, there’s another side trip to the Mahogany Market for more beef, potted plants and herbs.

D. and I probably had the most food on this trip, as we also had the buffet at the wedding. The caterer served an excellent Blue Marlin, which probably tasted better because we were witnessing two friends be bound together by love. We also saw the most successful money dance we’ve ever seen. Their choreographed dance number was amusingly executed. This was a very well-attended wedding but the guests mostly aren’t all necessarily from Manila. They were from around town and it guests that made this wedding big gave it a warm, country feel.

A wedding, and staying in a B&B made this a Tagaytay sojourn. We engaged in long conversations with Mama and Papa, let the little one run around or carry him around, told him to say “tree” or “bird” as we sip coffee or finish breakfast or lunch. I was looking at everyone, wordlessly speaking or gesturing a zen mantra with a sweeping, enlightened smile: this is this.

We took the Skyway again on the way home. I wondered if anyone of us still thought if this was anything like the States. I’ve never been to the states, and they must have have better highways. Someone might have thought whole thing was cliché, or even cheap, but I sure love my own.

When We Began This Read

The December sky has the grey that won’t sadden you. Though the frivolity of Christmas is hushed, there is a kindness, an imposing thankfulness and satisfaction in the air, you can almost hear it, as though it was hummed by children in a chorus. In these last few days of the year, the daily grind is crushed to a temporary halt. We go out for lunch and the restaurant tables are packed with families but no one’s rushing – the Christmas frenzy has quelled and there’s barely anyone here on business.

I was able to dance little I to sleep just before our orders arrived. D. lays him closely on side. The silence was restful and we cherished that as we look forward to his awakening. This was a Vietnamese-inspired place and we got him the glass chicken noodles, D. had spicy shrimps and I had a plateful of curry noodles.

We ate quietly, except for the occasional resonance of “mmm” as we savoured and chewed, accompanied by a nod of approval. As there was barely any space between the tables in this packed place and we overheard the two families from the other table, boasting about their latest Singapore, Boracay and Subic trip to each other. They glowed in enthusiasm during that exchange, and yes we’ve been there too, but I truly hoped that we didn’t sound like that if we ever talked about those places. Our eyes met and there’s an invisible laugh.



I buy D. a chocolate mint gelato from a nearby shop and I begin my new read, On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. The jacket reads, “In 1962, Florence and Edward celebrate their wedding in a hotel on the Dorset Coast. Yet as they dine, the expectation of their martial duties weighs over them...” It’s their honeymoon, and even at page 40 of a short 203, Florence and Edward barely made it to second base. It’s a gripping, non-complex storyline that’s masterfully written, as though every world was so thoughtfully packaged and reading every sentence was like opening a Christmas present. “She was no lamb to be uncomplainingly knifed. Or penetrated.” You have to pause and respond, “wow.”

The other Ian McEwan novels were embellished with thicker plots and surprising twists but in its simplicity On Chesil Beach takes an edge.

“How’s your novel?” she goes. I remember another Ian McEwan we both read from a while back. We weren’t married then, but we’ve been together a few years. It also was New Year’s Eve and you went all the way to Malate to meet with me. You wore a red shirt, we held hands and had a hot drink while we read in an empty, glass-ceilinged coffee shop and no one else was around. The year was also about to end and the world was ours.

Here we are, a few years later.

“Turns you on.” I say.

The little one wakes up and we start him with some soup. He doesn’t like it hot, but he eats noodles like he was born to eat noodles. In delight, we feed him and watch him eat.

I close On Chesil Beach and go back to this other one, --- this novel of ours that’s happening now. This may not have been masterfully written by McEwan, but this is the one that I will read again and again and again as I long to repeat it.

Selfishness to Selflessness

Regaining Weight

I’ve been regaining weight and I’m regaining a sense of who I was when I was obese. Strangely enough, it’s easier to be confident when your mind and heart is clogged with butter from bagels. The saturated fat does the talking for you.

On other parts of my life, I feel the lightness of being, the longing for repetition.

Worries, Errands, Bills, and other forms of Whining

I forgive who I once was, the emotionally immature who documented my useless ranting. I ask forgiveness from my wife, who years before (and maybe occasionally), had to endure all that I was.

From Selfishness to Selflessness

If I ended now, I would have been a good story to tell. I know. I know because I long to repeat every moment of my life.

Family is a blissful selflessness.

The Highest Highs

I.'s laughter. Mouth opening and eyes chinked in a smile. I. falling asleep on my shoulders. The nasal high of sniffing his scalp. Hearing him say the first few words of his life: mama, dada, banana, fish (he must’ve have read JD Salinger’s A Perfect Day for Bananafish in a previous life). Having family. Having my own family. Having I. Having D.

Having these highs and wanting almost nothing more.

(Pictures by D.)

2012

Let's not hurry and let's not worry about end of the world. Trust in the beautiful process of the universe. We will persist. We will perish. It will be sorrowful. It will be joyful. It never really ends.

Love all around in 2012.