Once there was a boy who hid himself one day inside his parents’ wall cabinet. Within that newfound lair, he discovered a wooden chest he took as treasure trove. Excitedly, he pulled it open and rummaged through the loot. To the boy’s consternation, he discovered no candies or toys but these sad mementos: a bundle of mooted hopes; two stacks of mistaken joys; an array of anger; three nice rolls of regret; a neat sheet of tragedy; some stocks of depression; a deck of distrust; two packs of pride; four canisters of sorrow; a thick envelope of disappointment; a bottle of bitterness; six purses of pain; and a heavy bag of guilt. The boy, perplexed at his find, emptied the chest and filled it with broken innocence. He grew up long time ago, but the child is in continual quest—collecting boxes of love and cans of forgiveness.
As she softly recounted the tale of their speckled love, he listened like a man on vigil; the night solemnly stood still as heartaches diffused like the glow of the shaded lamp on the nightstand. As more words floated and tears flowed and dried up on crumpled napkins, he imagined hope between gaps of her gasping where truths lie like a brimful glass of red wine spilled over her chest. He imagined it like a caldera about to burst and spill more burning sulfurous words of life’s pain. As their eyes get fixed to each, sudden memories of guilt tangled; the door of silence bolted shut. Her delicate hands wrapping the white bed sheet trembled and wrinkled the linens of hope and despair. Inside that dim cramped room love lasts into eons, but still too short a bliss. Just as they caught their last words with their lips, they knew they would soon speak more of life’s stains.
Every day, we caress our emotions like broken homeless people, carving hope in the cold pavement we erringly call home, when in fact we’re just passing by. We can’t hold on for long to something untenable even if it feels so perfect; we just can’t stay at the same place forever. Human journey is just as far as we can hold on breathing. Much of it lies at the notion that at some point, when some of us reach a crossroad, our hearts turn numb and our minds get suspended at a pendulum of expectations that swing our hopes nonstop, only to hurt us ineffably until we shrink at the backdrop of our own frailties. Some things bind us tight on the belief of life’s arbitrariness. Each moment becomes a gambit and we cast our dice uncertain of what fate has in store for us. Never mind what color of thick layers of blinders we put on our eyes because our defeatist self is always ready to embrace false percepts of reality. Thus, we follow the lead of the crowd along the fences of our own self- imposed limits; the flow of structured life: frigid, dull and distant. Just look around and see how people make shovels out of their weak spirits and dig their own graves. Hopelessness abounds; pessimism drumbeats the agonizing message of unhappiness. Sadly, this is a piece of tragedy destined to haunts us all each time. We are, after all, mere humans; no single juncture in our life is actually meant to be the same or eternal. So, we walk on. No one really dares to stop. But here’s one truth about life: even if a destination is a made-up lie, we’ll get there still and find it real. Our will keeps our fortitude; our decisions in life make us who we are at the end. But it wouldn’t’ hurt to be bold and pause for a while amidst humanity’s procession in life’s narrow path. For I tell you, desolation is home even for the fools who halt the journey to appreciate a rose by the roadside.
I dreamt I was a lost ancient warrior, garbed in bronze helmet and leather body armor. I saw myself seated on a boulder, shaking off dusts and dirt beside a stranger’s flower bed. For a while, I thought the carnation and roses gave me the scent of peace. As I gazed at the green pasture from afar, I saw the dancing shadows of clay pot-makers along the sandy riverbank. Then everything went dark and silent. I heard a short bip, then a blip. I saw afterward glitters of freed bubbles as more bips dragged on. A metal chinked. Then I woke up—still in yesterday’s work clothes. Drowsy, I hastily dragged my feet and lowered the window blinds. Outside, I only saw congested concretes and sparkling metals whizzing past. Beyond my windowsill, the world was running wild. Just as some beasts of steel slithered through a neighbor’s garden, I rolled back to bed, defiant against the sun that rose proud. I knew the clock turned 10 AM as my phone rang. But the warrior is long gone.
Life is a heavy load, they say. But so is death, literally, for six men who took the brunt of a 42-ton steel scaffolding that plummeted down their heads at the forward dry-docks of Keppel shipyard in Subic. After that ramp crushed their tired, scarred bodies, one has to ask if those damaged lives were less heavy or more impaired than the 22,650-ton container ship they tried to repair. I wonder what their last thoughts were at 10:20 AM on that fateful seventh day of October. Do you think they have thought of a hug or a kiss from an expectant wife or a sweet embrace from an excited child? Nah, it was a cruel death; no room for romance. But life ought not to get snapped out in a split second. True, life is scaled to find its worth at some point. By what measure? We can’t say. An utter despair! Here’s what was left from that industrial carnage—just mere body count and scattered limbs. A message to the Philippine government and Singapore’s Keppel Shipyard Limited: get sucked up on your excuses, but reserve silence for the bereaved.
The night was dead and the moon grieved at the foot of Sierra Madre. As crackling shots and screams logged to our brains, we knew more bodies fell. The nightly dirge of sudden shrieks, wails, and cries brought in more ghosts of fright—exigent storm about to devour the land; the life. Every sharp strike of mattocks to some parched grounds bore graves—numbered cliffs of unmeasured pain. Gone are the nights that entreat rituals of laughter and reverie at the golden field. Those nights when after the hard days of work, humble fathers pride the fruit of each outlaid sweat, while the children dart soft trails of the rich rice field; mothers behind in joyous pursuit of a kiss. Gone are those nights except for the nightly procession of dead kin who nourished the land. Indeed, gone are those nights, extinguished like the children’s mirth. The summer reaping was delayed, but the land is waiting. Soon the sickle will slash the mighty wind around the robust mountain.
Beneath the thick green foliage of Niger Delta, some tall, sharp blades of grass vowed to a short hush of wind just as the monsoon rain showered the Indonesian Metawai Islands. Down at New York Central Park, balloons popped in the air while a flock of Arctic Terns in the North Sea flapped their wings. Millions of miles away, an old stem broke at a garden in Sao Paulo, Brazil while a long procession of logs passed through a stream 150 miles north of Canadian Border. Two hours passed and dark clouds formed above the fertile earth of the Kaghan Valley in Northern Pakistan at the same moment when a patch of soil eroded in Iroha-zaka in Japan. As a moth slightly moved in a sanctuary in Tajikistan, a tropical cyclone developed over the tropical Northwestern Pacific Ocean. With a maximum sustained winds of 130 kph, it crossed at 260 km East and dumped heavy rains. CNN reported: “Powerful Typhoon Nesat hits Philippines.” Over 7700 miles away down at Cambridge, a yellow butterfly fell dead on Edward Lorenz’s grave.
I once created a work of art—just brown hand marks splattered on a giant paper mache ball. I installed it one Sunday at a vacant lot beside the schoolyard. Every day since then, students would stop by my workshop to ask me what it was. I didn’t tell. I just smiled and shooed them off to class. Soon they would know, I thought. The curiosity on my masterpiece did not wane a bit. For some reason, a group of students started doing techno-rituals around my giant paper mache ball. Funny how children can get so weird. I didn’t see it coming, but things have gone south of good. A fortnight ago after that, a petty quarrel ensued at my classroom. It involved members of the already cult-like club of the giant paper mache ball. The incident hurt one student who accidentally stepped on a loose spike I owned. I was eventually fired on the charge that even school officials cannot spell right. That was bizarre to be honest. In one spat, suddenly I was the fly. I think it just took all the oddity of the whole affair. Before I left the school, I thought of bringing with me my artwork. But then I decided to just leave it. Heck, it was just a giant paper mache ball. Every day since then, students would stop by my house to ask me what happened. I didn’t tell. I just smiled and shooed them home. Soon I would know, I hope.
Happy World Teachers’ Day!
Allusion to colors—the world remains blind as millions of visions skewed to lie. Though we have different colors of skin, there’s no reason that white folks be the noble stock and the ill-fated rest are those brown, yellow, or black. It’s not mere retinal confusion but a disturbing racial myopia. Yes the soil is brown and the Earth will always be green, but there’s only one true color of men. Even if we are in a grayscale world, our blood will always be red. We live as we blend; we die as we bleed.
The old plaid board atop the merchandize store swayed as the lark swoop down and rested its feet to the board’s jagged edge: the sod of its ancestor’s flock. As the bird perched, it gazed at the storm of dusts that blazed like a dark fog out of the earth’s crust. Below, echoes of chaos numbed the stifling air as metal centipedes crisscrossed against iron beetles’ flair. Soon after a silent prayer the lark flew free to a place far away. For many years, this lark sat on thousand checkered boards yet it can’t still find the Tree. The plaid board already freed of the bird’s weight swayed and swayed and swayed. It sways until today.
Spoiled milk, spilled drinks, and the tiled wall seemed about to close in through the liquid’s flow. A call from deep slumber sank in the stream of dream and was sipped back through. As the early sunlight flared and filtered through broken glass panes and softly soothed the cramped sleepy sweaty bodies with the humid summer heat, the old shafts and dirty bed sheets stirred like a plowed brown earth. Just as the rooster’s lazy crow was heard, the burdened chests and starving mouths heaved and shooed the crumpled paper plates on the rusty creaky bed. The room seemed like a barren scene if not for the swinging crib. Then an infant cried; a siren wailed from the street. The clock clicked at six. The room stayed still. Indeed there are dreams we cannot leave.
Once I met an old fisherman who told me a life’s secret. He said, “The only way to keep this world moving is to always do something. I tell you this son, keep up with the tides of time—swim if you can, float if you want, or crawl if you must; just don’t stop. Soon you will hurdle debris of human failures and pass through broken shards of dreams, but still, don’t stop. I’ve done a lot in my lifetime, and though things are only getting worse, I don’t stop. I still hope for something good so I keep moving son…I keep doing things.” Puzzled at these enigmatic words, I asked, “But what is it that you do?” The old man sighed and said, “Living young man, just living.”
