First day of 2010...spent most of it in bed, tired and sleepy after last night's maniacal explosions, revelry, unbridled inhalation of a very potent mixture of burnt gunpowder fumes, carbon monoxide, soot, dust, and a thousand other evaporating poisons adrift in the thick, smoggy skies of new year's eve. It has been said that what greets you on new year's eve becomes your fate for the rest of it. I abhor the thought of spending the rest of 2010 vicariously swimming through snoot and smog. But then, it's just a saying. And I had already spent a good three decades and four years of my life breathing toxic fumes in my beautiful Manila so it's not really a cause for alarm or undue consternation for me anyway. It actually is already a fact of life. It is a part of me. It is my ecosystem. You bring me to the countryside where the sky is blue and the grass is green, where the air is crisp and the water sweet, where nights begin early and mornings begin even earlier...I convulse.
So back to my bedside, throat still stinging, eyes in pain, refusing to open. I struggled to stand up and walk to the fridge for a glass of cold drink. An eerie silence enveloped me. I am alone. I am all by myself. There's not even that usual scratchy sound from the bread box near the kitchen counter, little mice gnawing furiously on the hard, plastic edges of the bread container. There is just me here this afternoon. Me and the silent world all around me. The quietness of it all is strangely not unlike that of a monastery. It was a silence that invites. It was a silence that calms and reassures. That brief moment of walking from bed to the fridge suddenly felt no different from the excitement and rush one experiences in a pilgrimage, particularly the Quiapo or Makati to Antipolo one that I used to participate in annually, as it nears its end. It was one, short, purposeful stride.
I sat down and thought, "It's 2010 already and I had just spent 3/4 of its first day snoozing and now having a drink." I am still here. I am still breathing. I survived Ondoy. I didn't sink with some WWII vintage ferries south of Manila bay. I am nowhere near the deadly 22km killer radius of the now regurgitating Mayon Volcano. I am not one of those innocent freedom fighters and beacons of truth whose simple, noble lives were summarily snuffed out by the infernal beasts called Ampatuans in Maguindanao ...I am still around. And I have so much to be thankful for in being so. I am still here, and this is a responsibility.
So back to my bedside, throat still stinging, eyes in pain, refusing to open. I struggled to stand up and walk to the fridge for a glass of cold drink. An eerie silence enveloped me. I am alone. I am all by myself. There's not even that usual scratchy sound from the bread box near the kitchen counter, little mice gnawing furiously on the hard, plastic edges of the bread container. There is just me here this afternoon. Me and the silent world all around me. The quietness of it all is strangely not unlike that of a monastery. It was a silence that invites. It was a silence that calms and reassures. That brief moment of walking from bed to the fridge suddenly felt no different from the excitement and rush one experiences in a pilgrimage, particularly the Quiapo or Makati to Antipolo one that I used to participate in annually, as it nears its end. It was one, short, purposeful stride.
I sat down and thought, "It's 2010 already and I had just spent 3/4 of its first day snoozing and now having a drink." I am still here. I am still breathing. I survived Ondoy. I didn't sink with some WWII vintage ferries south of Manila bay. I am nowhere near the deadly 22km killer radius of the now regurgitating Mayon Volcano. I am not one of those innocent freedom fighters and beacons of truth whose simple, noble lives were summarily snuffed out by the infernal beasts called Ampatuans in Maguindanao ...I am still around. And I have so much to be thankful for in being so. I am still here, and this is a responsibility.
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