The Eternal Recurrence Of Chris

About a month ago, an officemate of mine passed away in a road accident. Like most days, he chose to bike to work that day and was hit by a car he was waiting on the lane to cross. It was between 7-8 am, and he was about a kilometer away from the office when he passed.

I did not know Chris, and I wager he was a far better man than I am.  We do share several stark similarities. Both of us have been in the same company for 10 years, we both have a 5-year old who likes Spiderman, and we both have a baby on the way.

The way people are – we should not just be pointlessly disconnected. The grief is real, and even those who did not know him will be able to relate, sympathize or even drive change. His death has started a stir in the city for more share-the-road advocates, eye-openers for drivers to become more mindful of bikers.

I’ve been wanting to bike to the office for some time. It’s a laughable 5km distance and I have to ride the car alone with no one to carpool with. But true enough, our roads, the world-record-breaking traffic and raging drivers are not ready for bicycles. And I’ve been moved, thinking that nothing will ever happen if we just leave things as how they are now if we literally just burn more fuel into the system.

And so I got myself a helmet, borrowed my brother’s bike, and set myself pedaling to work on some days. I also added cycling to my cross-training. It’s just a start.

My eyes opened not only to a driver’s mindfulness, but to the serenity and hidden stories, sounds, and smells of a city that I often take for granted when I drive past through it the air-conditioned enclosing of a car. Now I can really pause for a few minutes to see the sunset. And every time, I also honor Chris.

Now let’s get this company to incentivize employees who bike to work, and have them start installing showers.

Ang Iyong Hinabing Haraya

Limang taon na ang nakalilipas mula ng tumapak kami sa loob ng tanghalan. Madalas, dati, bilang magkasintahan, malikhain ang mga gabi namin sa pagpanood ng mga dula, pagtanghal, pelikula, at sayaw. Hanggang sa pinayaman at inubos ang oras namin ng pagiging magulang. Hanggang muli naming panonood ang iyong dula sa eskwela.

“Sumabay ang puso ko sa paglundag,” sinabi mo. My heart skipped along. Isa ka sa mga ibon na umawit ng “Tignan mo, tignan mo, galing ko at talento. Di ko akalain na meron akong, natatanging lakas.” Akmang akma at napapanahon ang mga linya ng isang dula na umikot sa temang bullying.

Hindi naman drama ang palabas, pero tuloy tuloy ang tahimik ko na pagluha sa galak – lalo na kung paano pumusisyon ang pagkilos ng dula kasama ang mga ka-eskwela mo na iba ang abilidad (dating tinatawag na may kapansanan). Hindi rin bilang bida ang pagganap mo, pero mukha namang natural ang paggalaw mo sa ilalim ng ilaw.

Hindi lang ang dula ang pinapood namin. Pinapanood din namin kung paano hinuhugis ng karanasang ito ang puso mo sa pagiging mabuti at malikhain. Kung hindi ko hinayaan na pagyamanin at ubusin ng pagiging magulang ang oras ko, hindi ko sana nakita ang palabas na ito. Tulad mo sa dulang ito, tuloy ko paring tinutuklasan ang mga sarili kong hiwaga.

Meron din mga hiwaga na malinaw na sa amin ngayon. Tulad ng ligaya bilang magulang. Tulad ng buong puso naming pagmamahal sayo at higit pa.

At hindi lang ikaw ang nagsayaw ngayong gabi. Habang nasa entablado ka, sumabay din ang munti mong kapatid, hinahabi sa sinapupunan.

Evening Plans

A year ago, on late evenings like this, I would have been dragging myself off to work in faraway Nova, stopping by fast food drive thrus for terrible coffee. The gloom in my heart was as dark as the streets, piercing like a thorn. I spend the rest of the night pretending, performing my unforgiving job. A year ago, I tried to quit my job.

Tonight, and many nights like this, when the D. and I. are tucked in, I temporarily regain a sense of aloneness. I take to literature, writing, music, whisky, beer, coffee, squandering time on the internet, watching some TV series.

A year ago, all I wanted was to do what I'm doing tonight. Stay home, read a book or a back issue of the New Yorker (listing down more books to read and movies to watch) while drinking iced coffee, bluetooth speakers pouring beautiful sonic showers from Death Cab for Cutie, Ra Ra Riot, Tokyo Police Club, Arctic Monkeys with pangs of nostalgia from Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam and Rage Against the Machine. I feel like a stitched wound of mine has healed, or that I've pulled that thorn out of my heart.

Oh, and I managed to keep my job. Now I'm looking for new reasons to quit. The more I fuel that desire, the more I light my passion and start either believing or fooling myself that there is always something even more grand in the night.

Hydration Belt Dessert Menu

It's Monday most despised. We return to the grinding reality of work after the ephemeral pleasures of the weekend. I consider myself fortunate because I have one of the reserved parking slots in a spanking new building and live within a short running distance (about 6k) away from the office. The rest of my fellow workers are packed like sardines in a train, or enduring abominable traffic in buses that crawl and crisscross the highways like drunken turtles. Even that metaphor seems like an understatement. The struggle to go to work is a job in itself. Work and the working conditions for most workers are terrible. We should just all run against Capitalism.   

It’s Monday, there’s a lot of heavy lifting (just figurative, I scarcely lift even a pen here) at the office today, and the muscles in my legs feel fatigued from Sunday’s 21k Run. Mondays like these, there’s a twisted irony on how the fatigue in my legs actually fuels my endurance to live through another day at work. This pain is my spark. This pain comes from running.  

Running has been my representation of self-overcoming. I jog my memory now and realize how it’s always been the role of the runs to create these metaphors.

I made several milestones this year. Last March – I’ve reached the elusive sub-2 on a 21k run. The mantra for that run was to execute the rhythm spontaneously instead of fussing over the linear details of a plan. To truly run, not to chase, and to be flexible enough to change.  I didn’t even think I was stronger, or that my training was better than the last couple of organized runs where I attempted a sub-2 21k PR. The training was only more rigorous because I made it an outlet against a big blow to D. and I – there was the miscarriage. She had to endure more. Looking back to it now, that’s how the run felt: to run strong is like speaking the truth with conviction. But I wouldn’t carry my own chair too much, because it was a literal sprint to the finish. I’m only sub-2 by 9 seconds (chip time). Nevertheless, it is what it is, and to speak the truth with conviction you have comfortable with who you are. Right after that race, while I can still feel the cramps, I was decided on running a full marathon.  

Last June – I ran the longest run of my life (thus far), completing 32k in 3:32. The mantra was to conserve yourself, run at your pace. And while that was going through my mind, I enjoyed the irony of running along with the 3:05 pacers up until the 25k mark towards Makati and Ayala Avenue. There was a contagious positive vibe among the pack, like you belonged. It felt even better than having a seat in the conference room of a high-level meeting. But even after three energy gels, I didn’t have enough, and I knew I didn’t have enough steam to follow them through the finish. So I run at my own pace, the same way I have to collapse my own walls and staggered on my own to the finish line. This way, running is a joyful emptiness as opposed to a proud accomplishment. The former is preferable.  

Now I’m Training for a 42k. The gun start is in about three weeks. For the last four months of training, while limited to running twice a week I added at least 243 km under my belt. The real training, the metaphors, was piped in since 2008. I imagine they are all more solidly ingrained and flowing into my life now.

I bought myself a new GPS watch. Little I. asked if we could buy him a pumpkin.

Sure I recently did some pretty stupid stuff too. I bought the Brooks reflective hat that lights up, another pair of pure project shoes that “hug-every-turn.” I bought a new Garmin GPS watch that doubles as a fitness tracker, since my old one’s battery won’t last four hours on GPS. I’ll expect to finish the marathon in over 5. I’ve already selected the flavours of my energy GU gels for the marathon: Salted Caramel, Peanut Butter, Chocolate Outrage and Espresso Love. It’s a dessert menu that I’ll stick to my belt while running. This reminds me that I also scored the second hydration belt of my life. I got the Fitletic one with silicone grippers to eliminate the “bounce.”  Congratulations, Capitalism, you’ve ruined the earth and you’ve ruined running. Capitalism is the real wall we need to collapse.

I didn’t stop drinking alcohol, sometimes bingeing, with no radical changes on my diet. I shed and earn a few pounds, within BMI but could precariously and easily be off if I lose control. Sure, it all sounds stupid, but I couldn’t say it wasn’t any fun.

I’m excited about creating a new metaphor for the 42k. It’s shaping up as we move to the final stages. It’s going to be brilliant. But for now, it’s really just “Fuck you, Monday, I despise you.” 

Now We're Lightyears Away

Before we go to sleep, we are astronauts. The bed is our spaceship. Wrapped in the sheets, a flashlight spinning on the top of our heads, we count to blast off.

Here with you, we didn't need to go very far to be in outerspace.

In the moon, we have a picnic. We brought tomatoes and sandwiches, until we realize we can't take our helmets off.

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A week or two ago, we saw a blue moon. A few months back we saw the blood moon.

Last July 1st, there was a conjunction of Jupiter and Venus. Best we can, we told you about the scientific view of orbits and conjunctions. And then we told how mighty Jupiter, coming from far away, crossed our galaxy to gaze at the beauty of Venus. That evening, we saw the planets waltz in the night sky. That's how our world moves us, we told you, to persist in finding what fascinates us.

On your fifth year on earth our fascination is fueled by planets, the constellations and the cosmos. We often sing songs about the planets in our solar system.

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Sometime last July, the New Horizons mission reached the edge of the solar system, surveying Pluto, the farthest its been 10 years into its journey. We had real time updates and high-resolution pictures as we scroll through smart phones and tablets. How only some years ago, Pluto was a planet, then science contradicts itself saying Pluto is no longer a planet. Earlier this year, re-analysis suggest that previously declared uninhabitable planets are now potentially habitable.

Our knowledge only seems vast.  Our lives are really just minuscule. But the love under our sheets, in our pretend spaceship, I am certain that it is infinite.

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We always go back home.

It's Okay I'm Asian (Too)

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
By Yiyun Li
Paperback,  205 pages

Why is it that award-winning books by non-American authors are often about patronizing America? Or even stories about non-Americans in America are always patronizing (Recently read – Dave Egger’s “What is the What?”) And it's easy to see in movies, too easy to see in films that win the Academy Award's foreign-language category.

An author, it appears, will have a fatter chance of getting published if they are biased towards American culture by nurturing an anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-middle east, pro-American agenda.

Yiyun Li is undeniably a gifted writer who wrote a charming collection of short stories for her first book, regardless of her agenda. She has the ability to comfortably and swiftly glide the reader through one generation to another, crossing the gaps, telling in a wonderful clarity instead of preaching or judging. She can swing you from one perception to another. We relate to her stories in the way we are renounced, and then redeemed. In the way we all thought that our parents did stupid things until we do these stupid things ourselves.

Outside the school gate, Sansan finds her mother leaning onto the wooden wheelbarrow she pushes to the marketplace every day. Stacked in a it are a coal stove, a big aluminium pot, packs of eggs, bottles of spices, and a small wooden stool. For forty years, Sansan’s mother has been selling hard-boiled eggs in the marketplace by the train station, mostly to travelers. 

There were a lot of sacrifices told in her stories. Stories about families, uncles, husbands and wives, our parents and their seemingly inscrutable reasoning.

This writer is most remarkable in the stories that heartfully explores and precisely describes the sibling-parent relationship. Even if we choose to fall far from the tree, forces find a balanced way to mend.

No matter how non-American authors appear to patronize America, the more insightful and forward-thinking of us will see through it. We will see beyond what many in the West sees as happiness. We will do right by those who came before us, of how self-centered happiness is not the only life-affirming legacy.

Patronizing America is a writer’s sacrifice.