"but why?" i asked her. this after she told me she was flying to the philippines tuesday. she, being this always sharply dressed african-american osteopath who is preternaturally attuned to what's hip. she just aced her residency in our hospital thus, this gift of an extensive asian travel from her parents who made good at microsoft. a tad earnest though, she was tone deaf to the wryness in my humor.
"i only have a day in manila," she said. she'll spend more rubber time in the lazy mekong delta. "where should i go," she asked, "to get it?" "get what?" i asked back. she said, "you know, of being true philippine?" i find it charming of her not to learn yet that the nurses she worked with in the past year prefer to be called filipino than philippine. sounds too close to philistine, perhaps.
told her to go to quiapo. "wow, is that the soul capital?" she asked. i nodded earnestly. a kababayan who overheard our conversation refused to contain her snort. later, i thought of paging her to tell her that was all a joke. but i didn't. and i now wish that this doctor have not asked another philippine for a second opinion.
for i wouldn't want to rob her of the chance to be blown away by a typhoon of sounds as soon as she gets off her temperature controlled cab in quiapo. i want her to hear a muezzin calling for midnoon prayers from the grand mosque just an earshot away from a catholic cathedral that shelters a mute black christ which is just blocks away from the dozens of confucian temples filled with chanting monks in chinatown. i want her heartbeat to fibrillate to the sounds of hard rock, rap, r & b, sappy pinoy pop songs, movie soundtracks blaring from the giant sound systems of the purveyors of pirated cds and dvds. i want her to hear the laughter of the jeepney honks, the familiar earnestness of videoke singers, the cough of a 12-year old boy smoking on the sly some of the contraband cigarettes he is hawking. i want her to listen to a mangy street kid, who seeing his first black person yell at her, "yo, yo, yo," thinking all black folks talk in jay-z and 50-cent rap. i want her to ask him what's his name and then listen to him singsonging sweetly "yo, yo, filipino, yo."
