bluemango: fashionista. boydagat.

This past few days, as I was too busy washing my clothes and preparing the necessary things and papers I need to bring with me abroad, I had this sudden strange feeling, a mixture of fear and guilt I suppose, over whether I really wanted to go abroad or not.

I am confused, not really afraid, of how my life would turn to be if I am already there. I’ve been dreaming of going abroad, yes, but not this way, not because of this is my dream alone. The thought of living this dream and pursuing it the way I don’t really want to, and its repercussions make it harder for me. I should have thought about this before.

I took Bachelor of Arts Major in Journalism at UST, graduated last March 2006 with the help and mercy of God. With that four stressing but victorious years, I left my kind-hearted classmates with fine memories, and finally met my parents and my dream with bundles of new words and realizations at heart. At long last, I thought to myself, I would be a journalist, something that I myself had never imagined I would be.

But right now, as I wake up each day here in Manila waiting for our agency to inform me about the availability of my plane ticket to Kuwait— to work as a food server and a host at a restaurant— the thought of it makes my day and my future days too dark for myself, it as if night is squeezed inside my iridescent pot of dreams, and later blot even the redness of my blood.

My love for writing is just like a mother’s love for her son. Back in college though, (even until now) I find it hard putting words in paper the way my classmates do. I always praise them the way they use words correctly, or the way they invent them to look as if it really is the precise word or set of words to use. It amazes me how they write them as if they are talking and acting in front of you, as if you are physically present to the places they describe, and sometimes even convince you that the conventions you have are actually not the conventions that they know and respect. They are such powerful writers.

How much more the way they speak their brains and imaginations and rationality out! I used to stutter a lot during recitations— it is as if you are speaking live in front of a broadcasting network, in front of lawyers, that makes you forget the shape of the earth, that it’s better to give up or withdraw a scintillating, good orgasm in exchange of avoiding shame you will get when you have nothing convincing or something witty to say. (I know you won’t believe that the last phrase with that orgasm stuff is true. I am just exaggerating but that’s how my classmates actually are; they are halimaw-witted, but of course do not look like one.)

But that usually happens though. I just laugh the thought of it; it’s not that big deal in my case. I know my classmates are used to it. I always hide that envious feeling of being halimaw at speaking well if not with full fluency, of having those great and odd minds, the way they put life and reality in words, and give them life inside paragraphs. It even amaze me the way those tiny punctuations convey my classmates’ deepest feelings, the way they prick, the way they move themselves and the reader, the way my professors agree in utter admiration.

But now, I find it odd, ridiculous how I managed to choose to leave that promising job, and later find out that I also leave my closest friends who patiently search for those pastures we once started to discover, through bottles of beer, in front of videoke machine. We used to talk a lot about politics and the way our government leads us and I want my classmates to know that I really learned a lot from them. Add to it the sexual fantasies and student life’s ups and downs; tips on how to date women, or at least make them notice you. The spirit of opened beers and died cigarettes shared with my closest friends remind me how useless it is, if not totally regretful, to pursue and then leave writing— it is like catching those comforting whisper with your fist from your loved one, and sending them back to the air.

 

I can still remember that fateful night before I left home in Aklan last April 19. Everything is not yet carefully planned though I have anticipations of my need to go back to Manila immediately whenever the agency ask me to do so, to complete my medical exam and submit requirements. We are in the kitchen, the three of us; I was with my Mom and Dad. We used to talk a lot and as I can see it, they somehow agree with the things I say, or the things I am forced to say, or what I want to do— (after all, it is always they and their dreams for us that always matter to me. I had never dreamed a dream for myself alone; God knows how much I love my family more than I do with myself. I believe I had never been selfish to them.) — or maybe they agree to every thing that I say because they do not want to frustrate me, or maybe they avoid to say things against what I believe things are— that kind of conversation, a father-mother-son talk rarely happens; I used to live and grow apart from them.

Seated at the kitchen are the three of us whom I consider the king, the queen, and I, the mighty jack of the family. The king and the queen reminded the jack to always ask God’s guidance, that jack should always be careful because the king and queen could not bear a dying or killed jack. Bottles of beer and kinilaw shrimps laid before us can testify to how my Mom and Dad spoke their love to me. Their words are moving just like my classmates’— those words that seep inside you and inspire you to dream and try harder. I can even taste how the dying shrimps get carried away; I can taste the salt of their tears.

Before we bid goodnight with each other, not verbally though, I never knew that would be the last, that all I can do now, right now, is to hope for our mutual safety to see each other again. I hardly slept that night. I thanked God, I prayed to Him which I often do but for an unknown reason or intervention, made my tears stream, that I did not usually do because I had long been convinced that crying is only for kids, that adult ones should remain strong and hold their tears, their heart should be hard as steel. But I know that those lines of tears are special— they do not usually come out without reason. The next morning, my heart broke. The agency called, that same day, I had to go back to Manila.

With not too many baggage at hand, I left the place I hope I should have stayed longer; the home that I realize now, right now, I never had spent a half of my existence. I always long for its simplicity and being natural— cold when it’s raining outside, and as hot as Paris Hilton during summer, that even our rattling electric fan though working and somehow fanning itself still feels hot. There’s nothing too special with our family, we are just a typical family in the province who are used to adjust meager income of the parents for their family to sustain. It is just that ours is a big family— I should have ten siblings, but unfortunately three were already dead— so I have seven siblings left— I am the eldest and proud of it. The little ones, at their young age drink beer, and we usually do that (but not when there are a lot of people watching), with our numerous cousins whose names I sometimes forget.

Our home usually smells that of dried fish— that’s because fish is what we used to cook— we are mad to go fishing— me, my Dad and uncles, our cousins, and even our moms. We are “crazily” mad about fish and fishing. I am just too thankful to God that our family tend to avoid to be and to live like them, those fishes— who go separately when they are old enough to swim and discover oceans for themselves, that when they do grow and come back to where they are born, they no longer remember their past or their family. They even eat each other.

Our kitchen sink is usually smeared with sardine sauces, our frying pans with strands of noodles. When I was still in elementary and high school, I used to like them much— pale noodle soup, sardines, and dried fish during breakfast, lunch, and dinner. No complain is heard, only the clinks and scratches of forks and spoons, sometimes a shriek from any of my siblings because his/her part of the viand is grabbed from his/her plate. But I loved that scene— how I long now to have the ineffable feelings of that young age.

The sky was gloomy when Negros Navigation’s Virgin Mary, at 5pm of April 19, 2007, finally pushed itself against the waves. Waves are sometimes cunning, you do not know if they want you to go back or force you to go forth, just like the waving hands of a member of the family, or a friend left behind Dumaguit pier gates— they raise their hand to wave, the other hand to wipe their furious tears. Or if not holding to that position, clasping hard that glinting steel at the gates to control tears from falling, with utter sadness of shouting— be careful! to their departing loved ones, their weak but striving voices barely heard because of the waves’ splashing against the ship’s grinding engine.

--or barely heard because the one leaving, his faculty of hearing— just like I was then, is already occupied with his own sob. If only ships have feelings that can absorb and bear its passengers’ crying hearts, if only ships are easily touched with this dreadful and emotional scene— it would probably drown itself to stop families from departing, or probably trick the captain and his map to go back where it once docked.

That night, while still inside the ship, I observed things and people, as I believe they also did at me or at our fellow passengers. I figured out that every passenger had the same throbbing hearts, that we share the same sentiments, the same thoughts of our family, for our family, that we won’t see each other for so long, only voices over telephone or a limited words reflected from one’s phone’s screen. Those feelings of emptiness which are once occupied and satiated with their loved ones’ smile, or their favorite place’s welcoming warmth of air— the things that they can actually call their own, or their own.

It is sad to think that sooner or later, the next day, the day when the ship finally docks to Manila, the fresh wounds they have and the emptiness they bear will be emptied by time and be filled with new ones, beautiful and soothing at first glimpse and first touch— gradually, which will then heal those wounds and fill those empty spaces in your heart. A harder to accept reality is that sooner or later, the places we left, the feelings we both shared and the people we learned to love and abandoned, even our own true self will no longer be our own.

 
Someday, just as I see myself in the next days and the four long and struggling years in Kuwait, I shall see myself seated in a corner— not once but maybe hundred or thousand times— my body bent, my face resting at my knees, my hands clasping, embracing no one but my own. This I feel will surely happen to me, or to anybody I learned to love. In fact, I slowly feel it now.