A Ward

The rather dilettantish occasions I had showed up in and will come to at the Instituto Cervantes Manila near Taft Avenue were obliged to be interjected in between with a less sophisticated visit to the Philippine General Hospital, which is along Taft Avenue. We’d decided, you see, that grandmother needed urgent medical attention.

Last weekend I made an unfashionably late entrance to the cultural center for the World Book Day Open House, and tomorrow I am scheduled to see a concerto by a classical trio from Taiwan. (I am convinced that the best things in life are free!) Today, however, I – along with family – had to drive yet once more to the student-populated area of Manila, an area noteworthy for its ugly and beautiful honesty. Of course, traffic today was terrible as usual, and the buses belched black smoke as expected.

My first impression of PGH, upon our arrival, was that it didn’t look the same as before – ‘before’ meaning about two, three years ago when I went to visit a terminally-ill aunt; thick tarpaulin banners (all congratulatory) now hung about the edifice, large old-fashioned murals decorated the walls, old plaques were wiped clean and new ones, installed. Even the windows were now of multi-colored stained glass with round patterns, as in church, or perhaps really after the effect of church.

Did we enter an insufficiently-funded museum by mistake? I made these observations as I pushed grandmother on her wheelchair, ever so carefully, as if we were in an old park at which the renewed scenery was to be taken note of, if not admired.

And it was convenient (at least to my wandering eyes) that the Department of Surgery was located at the southernmost wing; strolling past the other units, I peeped at the slightly opened doors to see the Neurology ICU, where blanket-covered patients were sleeping restfully alongside their harboring IV drips; and the Plastic Surgery Department, where at the reception area was posted a framed painting of a naked woman’s back (very Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets); the psychiatric wing I didn’t need to witness.

Wheeling grandmother farther, I saw that the interior of the charity wards had now been painted with a very gentle caramel, and this sharpened the view of human figures lying on the white beds with their disfigured arms, throbbing heads, bandaged feet, and bleeding noses. Initially, I did mistake the renovated wards as the pay wards, though of course the overpopulation of the above-described patients plainly indicated otherwise. It indicated ‘charity’.

Grandmother’s checkup was scheduled to take place at the periphery of Ward Six. It was a separate wing, almost (before we passed I even noticed a red Exit sign glowing above): dark, isolated, with paint peeling off, broken schoolroom chairs, candy wrappers dancing with the yellow leaves on the cold floor, peanut shells, plastic bags, two stray black cats. (I have no idea why a hospital would have two stray black cats inside its premises, regardless of its being a government hospital. What if someone superstitious accidentally passed them by?) But everything was peaceful and quiet. Along the hallway, I sat dangerously on the steel ledge to regard the new playground below. They said it was a project of politician donors for specially-educated children.

Not long after, grandmother was called to one of the wing’s clinics, though she just as quickly emerged from a very brief consultation. She was finally to be confined. Resident doctor of Surgery Department was to be there shortly. Father made some phone calls while appearing to need a cigarette.

And so it was that we waited by this wing’s hallway for over four hours, waiting anxiously and furiously for a ‘Hazel’ to see to us and hand over grandmother’s admission orders, waiting as the sun set and the dirty wind blew, waiting while grandmother slept through the seconds and the minutes and the hours. For my own amusement, I had brought a book, but I fancied that it was a little depressing to be reading Dostoevsky’s The Idiot in such a setting. I managed only a few chapters.

And then at last! The papers! They had not forgotten us after all. Quickly we rose to find out where grandmother would be staying. Ward Six it was; another charity ward with caramel walls. Jorgen, my prodigiously athletic cousin, lifted our still sleeping grandmother to her new bed, and immediately her adult diapers were refreshed. Of course we had to lift a blanket to cover the scene: the patients’ beds were no more than just about twenty-four inches apart, making a tincture of privacy impossible and leaving between these short gaps a humble white table where one could put things and small towels perhaps damp with alcohol and such. As with others’, several tiny roaches slyly and rapidly crawled on grandmother’s table. She didn’t notice, though. She slept all throughout the initial admission procedures, with her eyeglasses on, as if it made her see her dreams more clearly.

Tomorrow, after the concerto at Cervantes, I will be walking to the hospital to tend to grandmother. I believe this won’t cause any inconvenience to any party. I will read, the nurses will be by their stations, and grandmother will sleep. I’ll enjoy her company. And perhaps I too will cherish imagining her dreams – come what may.

Hermogena's Twilight

From the red bed where she lay all day, she is being carried by my father and a housekeeper straight to the dinner table. Between both her armpits are the anchors of love. But it’s a discomfiting scene: an aged, wrinkled, silver-haired woman, in disheveled clothing and adult diapers; with a stainless steel cane on one hand and her beloved purse on the other; reciting rosaries in Latin one minute then denouncing her fate in a native dialect the next. Her pathetically feeble feet are all but amputated. I observe with a helpless gaze and listen from the shadows of the stairway.

This is my grandmother. Lola Nena. Her maiden name is Hermogena Saquing. She smoked cigars when she was younger.

They were once perfectly brown, her feet. But with the sudden siege of some debilitating disease – diabetes, blocked heart vessels, osteoarthritis, the toll of age, we still don’t know because the doctors haven’t completely figured it out yet – they had turned green. And then black. They resemble spoiled, hardened vegetables. The feet carry a heavy stench, too.

A wheelchair had been procured not more than a month ago, but we found out that grandmother was too weak to even allow herself to be lifted to the device’s seat. Her appetite has diminished; she has lost over forty pounds in less than half a year and the multi-colored pills seemed not to have helped any. All she eats is corn and cuchinta.

There have been nights when I sat here, at this very computer table, while everyone else slept, and she had cried out, Eddie, Eddie, help me, can you hear me, Eddie. It would be impossible for father to hear her, of course, with him sleeping upstairs and her managing only the faintest voice. Every single time I rushed over to her room, grandmother was sprawled on the floor wailing and waiting for Eddie.

Here now, here now. Are you going to the bathroom, Lola?

I was just on my way back. I thought nobody would hear me. Is that you, Eddie?

I’m going to carry you to your bed, okay? Then you’re going to be covered with your blanket and you’re going to go to sleep.

Thank you, Eddie. Good night.

It’s difficult to understand grandmother now, to say the least. The rest of us are embroiled in our attempts to make sense of her world. She asks for coffee all the time, always demanding a scalding cup in the middle of these summer days. And lately she has been having hallucinations, too. She had always mixed up her grandchildren’s names, like I went to become Francis and Josemaria became Miguel and so on and so forth as we eventually got used to. But now there’s an invisible child beside her daughter-in-law when they talk, and darkness in the brightly lit living room, and her husband – my late grandfather – appearing and waving at her during strange, esoteric moments.

Last week, on the morning of her eighty-ninth birthday, I saw grandmother sitting outside on a wooden bench under the shade of our tamarind tree. Just then a mustached taho vendor appeared, plying his trade in our street with an advertising howl. I bought a ten-peso cup, then stirred the bean curd, the tapioca balls, and the sugar syrup in much the manner of someone who meticulously wraps the only gift he can afford for a loved one.

Happy birthday, Lola. Now finish this here; it’s good for you.

Is that you, Miguel?

Yes, it’s me.

I greeted her again and ran my fingers through her silver hair. Using her free hand, grandmother took off her foggy spectacles. I saw that she wanted to wipe the tears that glazed her eyes. She appeared embarrassed. I didn’t know by what.

The sun in the morning of her birthday had diffused into twilight, and so, of course, as in the following mornings and those to come. Just as determinedly, however, I am not going to be counting her days.

A Baler Story

(All photos by the uncompromising Nykko Santos.)

Many, many years ago, maybe almost fifty years ago, before I was even born, a boy in Australia became quite adept at making straw hats. At the yard of his home west of Sydney, he gathered the leaves that fell from the dense palm trees, and he weaved them and pulled them, weaved them and pulled them. His name is James.

From what I gather, James then grew up to become a businessman. Real estate management or some such field. During this time he acquired middle-aged wrinkles, a belly, some Australian dollars, but no family. “Only Momma and Poppa,” he relays with a distant murmur.

James is older now, with an unflattering tan, weaving again, weaving and pulling again while seated on the edge of a concrete pavement that lines a grassy vacant lot beside the Bahia Hotel. He has spent some of his retirement money vacationing for two months here in the Philippines, “where the currency exchange isn’t shabby at all”. (He’s right: one AUD converts to nearly forty pesos using the current exchange rate.) Once he marries his Filipina girlfriend from Angeles City, Pampanga, he’d probably buy some property here in the forested coastal town of Baler. He tells me all this with a pair of supplicating green eyes.

Meanwhile, James scoffs at himself after a strip of foliage inadvertently pops out from a hole: “I seem to have lost it.”

Fifteen-year old Wilson Faraon then walks by. His hair is wet, his face is wet, his Sanuk shirt and sandals are wet, and the dark brown skin that covers his prematurely defined body glistens against the sunlight. From Bahia he’s going to where all the action is at: Bay’s Inn.

“Did you make it?” I ask, in reference to the surfing competition of which he is the provincial defending champion.

He says “yes” with a shy, polite smile. So he made it to the semifinals! One more round and he’d once again claim the Grommet Division title. He won it just two months ago, against surf riders from the provinces of La Union, Zambales, and Manila. His confident stride forebodes that he is bound to do it again, this Baler native with thick eyebrows, long eyelashes, rough cheeks, and a promising surfing career.

It was Aurora’s local lifeguards who taught Wilson how to surf a year and a half ago. Seeing the boy’s potential, an enterprising Australian named Bruce gave Wilson a surfboard before the former left the country. Kazu, a professional Japanese surfer, gave him a second one not long after. If he wins today, he’d be getting a third: this time a shiny Southpoint Epoxy Longboard worth thirty thousand pesos. That’s not so shabby.

Rising to my feet to follow Wilson, I offer my right hand to the boy who used to make straw hats in Australia. He shakes it. “Pleased to meet you, brotha!” he says, perhaps faster than I could have said ‘mate’. We simultaneously puffed at our Marlboros upon the parting.

Bay’s Inn is a two-minute walk away through the disheveled streets, but the heat of summer makes it seem farther along. Around this time, the municipality can suffer from as tough a climate as 30 degrees Celsius. The sun seems to have roasted the townsfolk like muttons, and as I casually walk past the bald wooden verandas plastered with politicians’ posters and the cheap tourist hotels advertising their happy hours, I feel trickles of sweat rolling down the back of my neck. The tag of my Media ID is all damp now; after all this I’m going to be darker than my shadow.

I catch Wilson talking to a pretty twenty-something girl in huge, white-rimmed sunglasses. She’s clad in a white skin-tight shirt and even whiter, even tighter denim shorts. Below her plump breasts hangs a Canon D-SLR camera, the kind professional photographers use maybe. She’s smiling all throughout her conversation with the glistening brown boy.

“Wilson,” I called, hoping to catch this lady’s attention. I take a few steps nearer them both, my ID obediently worn and swinging.

“Hey, where are you from?” she asks. My mission is accomplished. “I’m Elaine, by the way.”

“Hi. I’m Migs. Covering this thing here for a lifestyle magazine. What about you?”

“I’m covering for the Manila Surfer’s Association.”

“Really? That’s…that’s….That’s very, very cool.”

She nods approvingly, whereupon I stoke the conversation as if Wilson wasn’t even there. And so the boy decides he isn’t going to be there – he walks over to a group of teenage locals to join some obnoxious form of banter. Meanwhile, every part of Elaine is still smiling: her eyes, her lips, her silky hair, her body movement. She need not have told me that she was from the city.

I am told, furthermore, that she came from the same university as I did. Just a batch lower. We are both bachelors of the arts, communication majors, and isn’t it such a small world? Elaine has been into freelance photography ever since last year’s graduation, much like so many of my classmates and my bohemian acquaintances. I second her notion that independent portfolio creation is, nowadays, chosen over regular employment; Macbooks over stationary desktops; digital over analog; technology over tradition; and deviance over conformity. It’s a little sad and strange and it’s just the way it is. Now if only the damned waiter notices my signal for wines and spirits, our general assessment of the world could turn into a more grandiose discussion. But the waiter’s eyes are focused on the ass of a curly-haired girl in a bikini. Thus I instead make a mere cigarette offering, which Elaine accepts.

Moments later, flicking the burning butt away, she flashes one last smile.

“Good luck with your coverage, Migs.” And we exchange phone numbers.

Suddenly left alone, I decide to walk back to my room in Bahia. Of the unspoken grievances there is this peculiar weight I feel. A few larks are singing, and there’s that clinking sound of coins in my pocket. Other than that – silence.

I think, in a spasmodic order, about my impossible dreams of going abroad, of my short stint in college varsity basketball, and finally, of my religiously composed application to the National Writers Workshop, the results of which I am eagerly awaiting (a few days later, I will learn that my name isn’t included in the list of fellows). Then I think about what lies ahead.

I realize, however, that at this very moment, not elsewhere, only right here and now, I’m nothing more than a man who never carries more than a hundred pesos with him, by reasons amongst which the last is choice. I guess that’s my story in Baler.

Presently, James is now at his second straw hat. I see a swarming bee trying vainly to ruin his concentration. My forlorn shadow has extended to a patch of dancing grass over where he’s working, and James turns his head to nod at me. I reciprocate. After fifty years, this brotha has still got it after all.

***

Memories (Aurora Edition):

Mangroves during sunset over at Cemento Bay.

Reading on a rock.

Nykko poses with the Baler boys.

A surfer in Sabang Beach.

Red is love.

Palo Sebo, or greased bamboo climbing.

Wide-eyed with the children.

Luke Landrigan of La Union teaches the children how to surf.

Me with Nykko, Raya, Cory and the Sanuk team.

A family of three by the shores of Sabang Beach.

***

P.S. I would like to write a public thank-you note to multi-awarded writer Mr. Willi Pascual, who endorsed my essays to Dr. Tiempo for my workshop application. I know I didn't make it Willi, but your constant encouragement is more than enough consolation.

I am honored to have my work described by Mr. Pascual as follows:

"At 22, Migs wants to be a creative writer and honestly admits that right now, he stands outside the circle of the MFA’d, multi-awarded, published lot. The thing is, he can be remarkably good. Even capable of brilliant, transcendent moments. His urbane entries attract generous comments from bookworms, often noting his lyrical, peregrine prose - at times growing like full-bodied, voluminous hair that rivals a woman’s pretty face. He has several things going for him: 1) he knows where he stands – the outsider as permeable observer - and makes full good use of it; 2) he is a diligent writer; 3) he is willing to face hard choices and make sacrifices; and 4) along with other writers here and abroad, his Dad and Mom are publicly rooting and engaging him, leaving the most amazing comments in his blog. The last one involving parents is very rare among writers in blogosphere; among writers, period. It embarrasses Migs. But what can he do? Like me, the proud parents can’t help it. The boy wants to be a writer. He has scooped out his own pulsating sagrado corazon and placed it on the dissecting table. Basta sulat lang, Migs."

Don't worry. I'll do.

Aurora on My Mind

(Photo by Nykko Santos. More to be posted on the next entry.)

This is where they filmed ‘Anaconda’, I was afraid one of them would joke.

Amidst our silent passage the young driver JP said in earnest, “This is where they filmed Anaconda.”

We were walking the knee-deep waters of Cemento Bay in east of Baler, past an unwavering network of mangroves firmly planted underneath, through golden waves twinkling in the three p.m. sunlight then crashing against the rocky reefs. It was my first fashion shoot, I think. I’m not really sure. What I knew was that I was on assignment for coverage of the next day’s long board surfing competition in Sabang Beach, a ten-minute drive from where we presently were.

How romantic it is to be lost in an island!, I thought, almost stumbling over a crushed coral.

I wouldn’t say that our group was a concentration of modern Filipino stereotypes, but there we were looking like the simplified sociology of a people from Manila: Ray, a warehouse worker; Renato, a seasoned service driver; Ivan, a backpacking freelance photographer and independent filmmaker; Roel and Vangie, corporate managers with more than sufficient budget for media mileage, sponsorship, and public relations; Nykko, a freelance magazine photographer and full-time graphic artist; Cory, an Australian surfer, commercial model, and yoga instructor; Cory’s girl Raya, an international model, very skinny, fond of reading Coehlo; JP, the above-mentioned comedian who claimed to have had Japanese and Norwegian girlfriends; and yours truly, a writer frustrated with such “interruptive” out-of-town assignments.

Sunny April, I soon discovered from one of the locals, was already the start of the calm season. I wouldn’t have witnessed the fourteen-foot waves; none of that even after an eight-hour drive from the metro!

The trip had been rocky, literally and at best. Nykko and I were, uncomfortably, the only media invitees, and throughout the expedition, the convoy of which we were part was met by ominous mountains and their even more ominous cliffs, by unspoken fears of being held as urban hostages of the New People’s Army, and by the rigidity of courtesies common amongst strangers journeying together.

Upon our arrival at the destination, however, all unease was quickly dismissed. I saw that the Baler province of Aurora was a natural gem. The grandest vista of the Sierra Madre mountain range from a shore of sand; the youngest Filipino surfing prodigies; the brownest bodies I have ever laid my eyes on, of both sexes, and easily the most defined since my seeing the movie 300; the best second-language Australian, Japanese, and American speakers.

Bob Marley, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and ska boomed all throughout the preparatory activities; it was against this background that I did my first round of interviews. Then damning whatsoever the itinerary had decreed (if there was one at all), Nykko and I were obliged only to join the photo shoot because so many people had been lining up for the volleyball games. And I had wanted to find out what modeling entailed aside from…uh, from being beautiful.

But I got bored in the first five minutes of the shoot. So I found myself a quiet spot in the most secluded part of the bay: on the farthest solid rock, in the society of a shy seashell. There I read Evelyn Waugh and E.L. Doctorow until the sun began to set.

When we drove back to the main beach of Sabang, I paid no heed to the bustle and excitement for the morrow. Instead I made good on my resolution to watch, at least once a year, the starry constellation spread across the black above us. I noticed, too, that by the streets there were no lampposts – only fireflies over our heads, fluttering brightly.

Jicama

“Now there are three kinds of fart,” I said. “The first is called Loud and Proud. That’s the kind you don’t want to emit while inside the elevator. The second kind, meanwhile, is Silent but Deadly, which of course offers you the best opportunity to accuse others of what you yourself have done.

“Finally, the third…well, the third is the kind you wouldn’t want to ever expel, voluntarily or not, whether by yourself or in the presence of other people, no matter where you are, be it out in the open or in some closed space. It’s called Wet and Wild.”

At this, two pairs of the whitest lips on earth flung open. I had carefully watched these white lips to evaluate the kind of anticipation I was building, if there was any, and to what height. I might never be a deliberate comic, yes, but I know enough to understand that it hurts when my delivery of a punch line doesn’t tickle a single nerve.

My lips, by the way, were just as white as theirs; and during that aimless, lovely chat I was having with our two housekeepers Lisa and Ambay, I enjoyed my contributions to the conversations as much as they did theirs.

Everyone but the three of us had left the table after dinner, whereupon Lisa produced from the fridge a huge, unpeeled singkamas – popularly known as “jicama” in foreign soil; a creamy white, fibrous, juicy plant, the edible roots of which are slightly sweet and mostly tasteless. Lisa pounded the singkamas against the mat-less dinner table like an ancient gavel. “Anybody wants a piece of this?” she asked. Ah---loud and proud.

I had learned that in countries with climates warm enough for its cultivation – countries such as China and those of Southeast Asia – singkamas was usually eaten raw. And for the three of us Northerners (with common provinces in Cagayan, that is), nothing much was different in the jicaman tradition – except that after we’ve peeled and sliced and diced the spherical root and then poured crystals of table salt on it, we’d soon immerse the singkamas in a pool of vinegar. Apple cider would be best, but in the kitchen was only a fifteen-peso glass bottle of Datu Puti white vinegar.

Tonight, in a trance nevertheless best described as mouth-watering, we all watched those soft thin slices of an already very moist plant swim in our respective bowls, absorbing as much acetic acid in the vinegar as “jicamanly” possible.

The first slice – eaten with the utilization of a silver teaspoon so we could drink a little of the, ahem, vin aigre liqueur – was, as had always been, the most exquisite of all. It was perfectly salty; sour in the most extreme, gratifying pleasure. All the possible salivary glands were then at work. No one dared speak prematurely, certainly not among the three of us veterans, as the taste of singkamas dipped in Datu Puti vinegar always lingered in the most sensitive surfaces of the human tongue; made fiery downward passage through the winding tunnel of the esophagus; pierced violently through diaphragm to reach the stomach; and finally, provoked the intestines in a manner not unlike digging too deep to find molten lava. Ah---silent but deadly.

Sometime between our sipping one too many teaspoonfuls and craving for yet one more (“I swear this is the last!”), the discourse on the art of fart began. Ambay shared that during her early childhood days, their father would recklessly discharge intestinal gas despite the humility of their abode in the province. “The whole family would get out of the house, all of us covering our noses,” she said. “Only papa remained inside, probably enjoying the remnants of his after-dinner evening breeze.”

Lisa, slicing the last pieces from what remained of our shared singkamas, recounted: “There was one time when my boyfriend visited the house. I remember that mother was there to welcome him. Then I appeared, all twee and happy, when all of a sudden I felt this growl in my stomach. ‘What’s wrong?” my boyfriend asked. I ignored him and scurried into my bedroom and locked the door. That’s when I finally farted, farted furiously and with all my might.”

“I fart all the time when I’m in an elevator on my way to meetings,” I told them. “But come this midnight don’t let me see you two scurrying down the bathroom. Hot gas can be controlled by anyone with a persevering stomach, but this here,” raising my last slice, trickles of vinegar rolling down my thumb and index finger, “this here is all water.”

Ah---wet and wild.

The Talk of Manila

This Holy Week I have done nothing but read The Fun of It, a compilation of stories from “The Talk of The Town” in The New Yorker (edited by Lillian Ross). The book came as a gift from abroad with Ross’ autograph, so I’ve automatically attached a great sentimental value to it, reading each of the vignettes of life in New York as religiously as I am able.

Being – in all respects – the “sedulous ape” which R.L. Stevenson had so brilliantly described the ones under a sort of “self-regulated apprenticeship” and who would ape themselves to the qualities of the writings which might have struck them in any significant way, I immediately thought it wouldn’t be half as blasphemous to imitate the “Talk of The Town” tradition. (Imitate? Yes, imitate. I’ve been counseled more than once that “writers are basically terrible liars who don’t lie in public until they’re very good at it. And yet writers never lie. It is the great paradox of imaginative writing.” It was dispensed humorously, perhaps, but all in earnest.) I am presently dwelling on the infant hope that I’m not the only one interested in this possible project.

For The Fun of It, surely, was fun. It was written with intelligent humor and gentle refinement. It was eccentric, too. Which brings me to the possibility - isn’t Manila just as eccentric? And what does one lose when he experiments?

Maybe I could write about trivialities first, like whatever transpires in Quezon Avenue during late nights (for the education of the two or three people in Manila who don’t yet know). The piece will be followed by the miscellany of topics covered by the conversations of Burger Machine attendants. (Or how my favorite bookstore, Libreria, is now a Yin-Yang bar! With neon red interiors, dammit!)

Then maybe I’d produce a startling expose about the tarpaulin banner wars ongoing in Eastwood City 1800 Building between Dell and IBM. Or the competitive tourism efforts being initiated in North Luzon and South. The stories behind the facts, or rather the facts behind the stories: that would be characteristic of fine journalism, eh? It’s the essence of being a witness. I’m not, however, opening myself up to write about politics.

Stevenson admits to never having been successful in his ‘vain aping bouts’; given this I must think nothing will come but utter failure of my possibly aping Ross. However, this is not to say I won’t learn. Sir Robert Louis learned, and how. So in spite of myself I think I’ll be looking, during the course of the next few weeks, for the most appropriate medium.

Metroblogging Manila? Possible, if the administrators will allow me. People Asia? Unfortunately, I don’t have 24-hour access to the lives of Manila’s Trumps and Buffetts. Action and Fitness? But that’s an active lifestyle magazine, for which someone who smokes a pack of Marlboro Reds a day is supremely under-qualified to write. Philippine Chronicle? B. hasn’t gotten back to me about that travel editorial post after I missed our first important meeting (though I did call to say how unprofessional it was of me). Witness Lane? I would gladly take the liberty if the site hasn’t been for the longest time exclusively of the self-indulgent, self-referential genre.

My writer friend Diego Beltran, who plays percussions for the band Plane Divides The Sky, and who won’t, under any circumstance, disclose the address of his new online journal, suggested the sanest way to go:

“Maybe you should compile the stories first.”

So for experiment’s sake, pardon the hibernation.

Summer

The grey emptiness of Tarlac, a deserted land in Bolinao, the sulfuric waters of Taal, the quaint street of Espańa, the weary and ignored province of Quezon – I go to the strangest places, it seems, come summer time, and this season’s eternally changing itinerary appears to be no different. I must confess from the outset – I have never been to that which they call Boracay. Never been to Palawan or Puerto Galera. (Does that sound outrageous of someone who qualifies himself as “having been around”?) After all, I never needed a tan; never had the qualification to display a defined torso; never been curious about Ecstasy-energized neon parties by the shores of white sand. This also explains, perhaps, why I never have found myself “under the sun” – as they fondly call it – whenever the sun has risen to its most sizzling, most romantic height.

Do you know that last year I sneaked off to a karaoke bar hidden somewhere in the tiny province of Bulacan? It was for one night, not long after I had quit my second job. I went to the place for the beers that cost twenty pesos each and for the strippers not significantly less cheap. I remember simply straying out into the still of the night, away from the state of sobriety, followed by the shadow of sinful silence. I shared my bottle of San Miguel with a girl whose name I believed to be Samantha. Spontaneous summer stuff, it was.

Whether the year that went by has tempered my perversions remains to be seen. But again, the weak limbs of the tamarind tree fronting the house is deathly dry. Again, I have had my head shaved. Again, the emancipated grade school children are out playing in the streets with a frayed basketball, bouncing it against the rough asphalt which, I swear I’m not imagining, sometimes twinkles with a blinding glare. When the children are tired they’d devour their halo-halo and mais-con-yelo using frail plastic spoons. Everything, as it were, seems ministered to the supremacy of the sun. The only difference lies in how each generation celebrates.

While after the invariables, society will once again fill its pages with pictures of beaches and cocktails, I dwell in hope that this time I’ll finish mine with words and stories. My beat assignments are piling up. My first serious attempt at the short story is all but without an ending. My diary – a pretty little Mexican pop culture-themed notebook I bought in a visit to a discount bookstore – is slowly but surely being bastardized by my indecipherable jottings. And the pages of my books, gladly, are being turned at a pace far from “leisurely” (in the vacation sense of the word). What I’ll read or write tomorrow, I don’t know. It’s best not to be so presumptuous about what one does and where one is.

But tonight I certainly think that Bulacan is out of the question. Instead I will remain in my room, perched in corners either dusty or imagined – a happy shadow cast by the summer sun.