when mastering the multiplication table was yet of the most significant import in ms. causing's grade 111 math class, i used to wake up in the mornings to this man talking, just talking, on the radio.
my room's window faced the backyard of a preternaturally early riser neighbor, manong kaling. and at five or thereabouts in the mornings, he would start his day grooming his not-so-pedigreed fighting cocks, listening to this man droning on the radio.
i must have tinkered with my alarm clock in my sleep for i woke up to an avuncular voice of a courtly man - a rarity in american radio -babbling about everything: the lying karl rove, the metropolitan museum's new $50 million painting acquisition, the provenance of brad pitt's viral meningitis.
how many years have i been in this strange city? and yet, i still grope my way around. but sometimes, just like today, something out of thin air mantles me with a mastery of things. (or is it just the comfort of the familiar?)
instead of rushing to work, i allowed myself to laze just a tad longer in my bed, listening, just listening to this man on the airwaves. and i was comforted by the thought that somewhere in this city impossible to be fully mastered, someone else still trying to get his coordinates right was also listening to this man talking, just talking into the smoggy air punctured by prickly tall buildings, his voice bouncing against the gleaming glass windows of skyscrapers, echoing like the sweet remembered sounds in the deepest valley of my heart.
