my island people, so our laundrywoman used to tell me, once belonged to the race of angels. and i believed her.
our people were so serene, so beautiful then, so manang soling said, that they felt no need for sunrises as the light that emanated from each of our ancestors' haloes would out-iridesce the most effulgent of all daylight. and at dusk, no one would notice the end of day, as the whiteness, this extreme color of greatest lightness of our ancestors' wings would illuminate even the deepest of coral beds under the pacific lagoons.
but when i asked her what happened to them, manang soling would lave our clothes ferociously as if intending to tear them asunder and sighed "they all stopped dreaming."
last night, i awoke up from a bad dream i couldn't recall now. all I remember was waking up to this curious urge to call a not so close friend who was currently vacationing back in the country. i asked him if everything was alright and he, after expressing surprise over my unexpected call, said, "nothing is ever alright around here." no two ways about it, he was harping about the current political turmoil in the country, the rumors of another impending coup d'etat, a harbinger of more harrowing losses to our already moribund economy.
these days, i've been watching a lot of ugly, but quite compelling, images on my philippine cable tv. mostly about personalities full of themselves, tearing each other down, each respectively claiming to be talking from the higher moral ground. and often, i despair.
but sometimes, like today, i just found the courage to just turn off the tv and dream. dream of those sweet days when manang soling, our loquacious lavandera, would regale me unendingly with stories that required the strongest of faiths from me.
the story of a gallant man who, by the pureness of his spirit, grappled open the jaws of a vicious alligator and gloriously retrieved an untainted grey pearl that the larcenous reptile had appropriated for itself. and that of a flying-horse-riding woman who, by sheer pluck, outdistanced the invading sea pirates thus warning beforehand the coastal residents to take shelter on higher grounds.
and once more, i hear myself, egging manang soling to tell me more, more, more. and loudly, i hear myself uncontrollably clapping, my eager hands beating together like angel wings flapping freely in a pure sky.
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ipod shuffle
irony seems to be trope of/for my life. (duh, just like everyone else’s, i suppose, in this modern/post-modern/post-post modern world…, but you know what i mean already.)
when i was young, it felt like the world, the universe shimmering in front of me proffered me with infinite possibilities. but then, my psyche was completely shut in, impervious to the crackling capabilities of things.
but now, my mind unshackled from paralyzing parochial concerns from living, i am, to a completely horrifying degree, benumbed to the possibleness of things. it seems that at times, my greatest worry is nothing more than shuffling the same finite number of songs in my ipod.
