i slept, like yesterday, an entire gorgeous spring afternoon once. and all i did was not dream, not dream at all.
all i did, if i could still remember it right, was talk, talk to my self simply unwilling to get up, oh so heavy with sleep. and i remember asking me, the part that cares yet to listen, the one that was still willing to haggle with the world, wouldn't it be lovely, wouldn't it just be sweet to just stay in bed all day, all night, all week, most of the time?
and i remember, someone from somewhere, some crazy sounding voice, like that of a rusty hinge, that if it could talk, squeaking, squealing right into my right ear, the one that was not covered by a pillow, and telling me that sure i should do it.
do what? i wavered. but the screechy voice just eased back into the ephemera. like somebody suddenly oiled the hinge and dumbed it, muting forever its sweet hoary secrets.
yesterday, as i thrashed about in my bed, i was just reminded how one summer afternoon in manila, i and some friends, decided to rent out what was promised to us as an old but really coltish western. the one with monty clift, clark gable and marilyn monroe. and boy were we stunned.
i remember the three of us intermittently dozing at various parts of the movie and asking each other, at least the one that was still awake when one woke up, what happened before. i remember waking up to the part where marilyn's character was asking clark's about his life in then staid reno.
she was asking him like what does he do with his time there. he replied, just live. she asked back how do you just live. then he countered, first you sleep, then you get up when you feel like it.
i was raised always to feel guilty, to reproach myself when i overslept. and to bear this crushing need to explain myself very judiciously whenever i did that as if i've been discovered in a place i should not be.
yesterday, as i tossed and turned in my bed, i did not hear my mother, frantic and demanding. but yet, i could not stop myself from composing an explanation for my staying in bed the entire afternoon, a rationale for not being able to just live.