What I have been doing all along,
beginnings.
I’ve always hoped to become part of
the ‘writer milieu’ whatever that means, in this country, mostly because I’m
living here and have not been anywhere else. But the thing with writing is that
it requires a place to sit down and ruminate. However, all the ruminations I
have been doing have always been on the road, as I commute, or as I wait for a
cab, or as I line up at MRT then LRT and back. And when I sit, down, mostly to
eat – at any fastfood -- the rumination
stops because of blaring music and the mind-numbing cacophony of chatter in those places. And this is not a choice,
but a circumstance, the layout of my life. Cooking just adds up to a stressful
time management – so, Jolibee, Chowking, Mcdonald – and any of their kind – since
they’re immediately there – are my catharsis – like, I’m now hungry so I eat –
in the most routine, most pedestrian sense of hungry.
When I wake up,
it’s not the sleeping in but the hurrying up because I’d like to maximize the
time – you know – my class begins, and I’ve requested this, at 11 AM, but I
leave the house at 7 AM, so I can read, relax, ruminate, roam – imagining –
another life. I’m old, so this is my indulgence.
But that In a
sense, I am at a perennial search for a space where I can truly just stop, sit,
and write. Maybe, I’m always writing, that is, on the go, where my ruminations begin
to assume solutions, or in my dreams, answers, to simple struggles of living,
such as when I am at one point sitting beside a child with skin cancer on her
way to PGH. I am in the cart for
seniors, pwds, and mothers with little children – and I am none of the above – and
sometimes, all these vulnerables become more real in their vulnerabilities
which are just a breath away. And what can do? I think about reaching out, but
all I do is stare or avert my stare. And at one time a lump in my throat rose
and I suppressed my tears – the child was so small and yet bore so much
suffering. I got something from my bag and gave it to the mother who smiled at
me and said “Thank you po pagpalain po
kayo ng Diyos.”
Or when I am
standing on commute and then some really abrasive creature crushes me and in
such pressing brusko-muscular
pressure I shriek as a trapped mouse. And then the invectives, with all the Ps,
and ‘putchas’, and ‘if you don’t like to
be crushed, go take a taxi…. etc.’ exhale
all those bad, infectious breaths, and you can’t even cover your mouth because
your arms are no more. And nothing of those Freudian mumbo-jumbo can tell me
why this is, why this man, why this …this… soul is acting the villain. Our commutes
are the same,anyway, all harried
creatures, we all are. So why burden the burdened even more? But all I do is
grit my teeth and bear it, as so many more oppressed others do, until, an ellipsis of this country’s ills are pointed by seniors as
reasons for our common suffering.
Or when at home, I
try to think of where to go on a Saturday afternoon to escape the
toddler-versus-mother wars that begin at the time of my sister’s feeding her
son at breakfast and doesn’t let up until the child is exhausted at play.
Outside, I seek the cafes, and once inside, I request the servers to keep the sounds
low. Most of the essays I have written for my occasional blogs, and this one, were
finalized and edited at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf (Well, coffee is expensive
but train to Lasalle library and back will cost me half so this is the
compromise) or on one of those white tables of the fastfood restaurant in
Landmark in Trinoma (this one, the price of the coffee in Mr Donut is cheap ,
plus, it’s just ten steps away from my ‘white-table’). Therefore, I am like a
refugee without a chance of crossing over any boarder. At the end of the day, I
will have to go back home and sleep – and only sleep – and then the day ends.
I cry sometimes,
because of this, because I am always on the move. I’m fifty six and commuting
by train – should I stop? I should find another job which will afford me a
daily grab taxi. But on the other hand, I’m on the move, alone. I would rather be on
the move alone, than static in a
place, alone. Maybe, with the ordinariness of my ordinary life, moving is the
character which has made it extraordinary.
Which means that I
should probably take note of the simple places I’ve been. Which means they probably
matter anyhow. Which means I can ruminate about meaning in those spaces. And so
I made a pact of peace with this itinerant lifestyle. I still crave for a personal, private, space
to write, but it has become less an obsession. I’ve already bought two small
houses for this reason, but still, I don’t have this space. So now, I simply
tell myself, just write or you will regret it.
In joining this
collection of Taftique, I seem to have found another beginning toward this writing track, and this probably, is the
best way, at this point, somehow, to move on.
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