Beginnings

We're done with the rituals of welcoming yet another year. I personally feel that a new year starts off as somewhat sluggish, probably from the daze and hecticness of the holidays that immediately precede it. Then, it slowly reclaims its lost pace, the swiftness by which the alternation of night and day becomes mechanical and unforgiving, never stopping for love or happiness or death or grief.

Time's unstoppability exacts a toll on my dreams. I have finite time and limitless dreams. I know I should move faster and do more, but while time moves forward in a straight line, dreams, or mine at least, flit and glide and fly to each and every direction they please. Chasing them sometimes throws me off-paths, and occasionally I get lost, losing precious time in the process.

I begin another year because time commands me to. I breathe under its dictates. It allows me bits of pleasure, though: Reminiscences of moments of love, moments of inexplicable insight and joy, of faith and hope. It'll keep me in suspense each day, bringing both strange and wonderful things to my doorstep. It will, at least, allow me beginnings.

Closure

This Christmas season should be missing out on the joys of holidays past, for my dear wife and their family, and for myself as well. My mother-in-law has been diagnosed with colon cancer in its advanced stage.

Events unraveled rather fast. I recall minor complaints of physical inconvenience every now and then; but nothing that would have made us even remotely think that a serious threat to her life was underway. We all went about the happy, deprived, problematic, and humid business of living our intertwined lives. We fought, argued, criticized, hoped, and dreamed; we loved each other nonetheless.

Then, as suddenly as lightning can strike on a clear, sunny day, the hibernating, frightful disease woke up from within her. It commandeered everything she had available: Her strength, her appetite, her lifespan, and her unfinished business. She now lives on shorter borrowed time and, although we don't discuss it, our common feeling is that this holiday season is the last she'll spend with us.

I share in the pain of everyone who loves this marvelous, simple woman: She who always hopes for the best, but contentedly settles for least and mediocre things. It takes little to make her happy.

I miss the liveliness in her eyes now. She has the look of resignation on her face. In all likelihood, she feels pain, but she does not speak to us about it.

My wife took after her. She perennially endures the indignities of a life lacking in material comforts, the outcome of my restlessness and imprudence. And if one day she will fall ill like her mother, I surmise that she would also be as resigned and uncomplaining.

It's all in God's hands now, as everything really is. Science can only offer to cure physical wounds, soothe some of the pain; love, kindness, and compassion prop up the spirit; but all life rest in The Great Arbiter.

Dream

This morning I woke up from a strange dream: I was cleaning a house in preparation for moving in. Then I noticed a figure looking out a window of the house facing my house. I was dreaming, and so I abandoned my task, proceeded towards that house in front, and entered it.

It was bare, devoid of furniture, the walls blank and faded yellow, save for a waist-high, dark-brown wooden cabinet with drawers. I opened the topmost drawer; it contained old photographs, some tattered, some almost crumbling, and all of them faded. They were of kin and friends I knew, and who all have passed away.

Suddenly, the people in the photographs were there, filling the house with chat and commotion. Some smiled at me particularly; one was noticeably insouciant, and while also smiling, she just went past by me. I kidded her about that. But dreams are so free-wheeling, no?

I then woke up (or was awakened by something), and had the urge to write the following poem -

Life is here, Life is
Now, a part of it is
Yesterday; but certainly it is not
Tomorrow;

Death, its kin,
has countless tricks
up its sleeves;
we outpace it each day,

Or so we think:
We eat, drink
and are merry;
we traverse many roads,

Some to great finds,
some to naught;
some to the loveliest of places,
some to the saddest of those;

We walk, we run, we fly,
straight towards coveted,
obscured goals; and oh, so fast!
Around a corner, Death waits, and smiles.

Talking God

These days I find myself questioning my faith: I may have been had; that it has always been merely a superb piece of literature; that all good things are wonderful coincidences, dissociated from earthly plans or divine intervention. Or it could be that faith is a ruse for very profitable business ventures, and that this life is all there is, and there is nothing more beyond it.

I keep score of life's inequities, and I always end up feeling that I have more than my just share. My arguments are strong. The unanswered questions are many. I cannot be faulted for being limited only to what I can see; it is man's nature to be puny and proud. I keep up appearances, and maintain the trappings and fixtures and rituals of faith, not so much out of love, as for the primeval fear of the unknown, and also superstition.

I could use a talking god right now, like I could use love and hope and courage in my time of distress. I am discontented with merely the adornments of faith and veneration. I need miracles!

Lifeline

One day my son asked me whether it's true that each person is a lifeline to another. An insight to marvel at.

How very true. No matter our station in life, somebody looks up to us as a source of happiness or inspiration. We may look at ourselves in an unkindly way, but to some hapless soul, we may be the whole world. We may think of ourselves as worthless, but sometime, somewhere, someone may be thinking that we are an indispensable cog in the wheel of life, an essential element in the universe.

Each one of us is a lifeline to another, and so we are bound to move on, to persevere, to stand up when we fall; if not for ourselves, then for the dreams and hopes entrusted to us. A tall order which leaves no other option other than preserving the integrity of the lifeline.

Seething

Are you
deaf to my pleas?
Are you
merely cut stone?
Lifeless.
Or you
can also be
simply borne
out of
the desperations of men.

I knock
on your door
each day,
spread out my plans,
and then
I go,
sometimes
I linger
and listen intently:

If you will growl,
or else
send me a rainbow,
so that I may be
on my way,
unmindful of
dying dreams.

Good People

Meet Rey. If Willy Wonka were a Filipino, he would be Rey. From a mobile contraption of a store mounted on a motorcycle, he sells stuff children's dreams are made of: The latest trinkets and novelty items; small toys; every imaginable kind, shape and colour of candy; action figures; tiny cars, planes, trucks, and ships; girls' and boys' jewellery and accessories; etcetera, etcetera. Rey makes the rounds of almost all the schools in our town of San Pedro, aware of their respective break and dismissal times (for obvious reasons), hopping efficiently from one school to the next like clockwork.

I have this admiration and respect for Rey, and all the others like him, who earn meagerly but at all times honestly. They are the good people in our midst, the ones who convince me that decency remains alive and well in this impoverished archipelago, made poorer with each passing year by rampant corruption. Whereas, in other still-fortunate places, those who are caught with their hands full of ill-gotten wealth are either banished or made to literally die of shame, in this country we elect them to public office, so that they can all the more acquire ill-gotten riches and flaunt these in our faces, by way of their mansions, expensive cars, and private militias. My faint clue, as to why this is allowed to happen, is either plain and simple idiocy or gullibility.

Rey has been in his trade for, I calculate, almost ten years now, starting out with a much smaller mobile store contraption connected to a bicycle. He has a wife who helps him eke out a living via this amusing, itinerant trade, but it is Rey who pounds the streets of our town rain or shine. He has two children (or maybe three), which he sends to two private schools, with the eldest set to graduate from high school in a few weeks' time, and already having obtained a college scholarship through sheer academic merit!

Rey and his family have this enviable acceptance of their fate and their role in the world. And with their seeming tirelessness and composure to go about their unvaried routine day in and day out, an unquestioning faith that they will persevere and prevail is very apparent. This accomplishment is beyond the reach of many others who are better-heeled and educated. At once, Rey has let me in on one of the secrets to happiness: The absence of too great or too much expectations.

Rey might be unaware of another thing enviable about him. He is assured of a special place in the pleasant and beautiful memories of all those children who patronize his store of dreams. Rey has made me recall some of my own schoolchild memories: Ka Conching's eatery for students, with its piping-hot, home-cooked meals; the Nectar ice cream man and his sweet, multicolored popsicles; Ka Domeng's Kabayan ice cream and buco sherbet; noodle sandwiches; deep-fried pork rinds dipped in spicy vinegar; Rey has opened the floodgate of memories, all of them pleasant and from times that held great promise.

The domain of childhood memories is sacred ground. It defines the man. It sets him off to his journey in life. Depending on the quality of these memories, they either provide solid anchoring or shaky foundation. Good people like Rey give to society the former. Not too many people may lay claim to this achievement. I can't. I most probably will be remembered as a moody, cantankerous man, an impractical dreamer, given to fits and episodes of rage, desperation and elation. My only consolation, however, is not being lumped together with the greedy, the murderers, the corrupt. As politicians are.