jet_effect

Part 2

Peter turned on the ignition key and his Honda City purred like a stirred kitty. His hands held the steering wheel, as he sits undecided if he should go or not. He fished his cell phone from his shirt pocket and opened the message inbox. “Are we still on for lunch today?” read the message from his wife. He glanced at his wristwatch and saw it was half an hour still before 11am, enough time to think about it. Peter replied with mixed hesitation, but mostly anticipation, “m sori hon, hav emergency miting at d ofc.” He bit his lips slightly as a breath of prayer slipped past his teeth.

Peter put his car in the first gear and pulled out from his parking lot, and out the exit gate.

Michelle placed the check she had just signed neatly under a pile of paper on her desk. She had been signing checks the whole morning and thought maybe lunch would be a good reprieve. Her watch said it was 10:36 in the morning so she took her cell phone from her purse to read a message that had just come in. it was from her husband, telling her how some meeting at the office made him unable to fetch her for lunch. She had anticipated this, as she would have been wont to do, since her husband is a very busy man.

Michelle picked up her desk phone and asked the building bellhop to get her a cab. She grabbed her purse, her jacket and hurriedly went out of her office room, and down the elevator to her waiting taxi.

Peter cruised smoothly on the highway; he wasn’t in a hurry. Traffic on Edsa seemed to be cooperating today, he thought, so there’s still a lot of time. He carefully opened his date planner and rechecked his scheduled activity for lunch. It said 11:30am, but he knew it was something they use to buy them some time together. An early lunch would mean two hours with her.

Peter steered the car towards Arnaiz Avenue and parked in front of a flower shop. He thought maybe for a change we’d surprise her with some Tulips. She likes tulips, and had hinted on him that she’d love to get some on her birthday. A few days ahead wouldn’t hurt, Peter thought, he’d still give her another bouquet of tulips then.

Peter saw through the glass doors of the shop a taxi almost sideswiping his parked car. He hurriedly went out and followed with his eyes, helplessly, the speeding cab. “Hey!” he shouted.

Michelle sat impatiently on the back seat of her taxi. She amused herself with mental notes on what the insides of this cab have, and lack. Frankly, it needs a makeover, she thought, but what can you expect from Philippine taxis. She felt uneasy being in the back; she felt uneasy riding cabs in general. The normally short drive from her office to Pasay Road seemed to take a lifetime today, what with the taxi driver being extra careful, as he had said in his just-listen-to-what-I-have-to-say chatter.

Michelle politely told the driver to speed up because she was in a hurry (to get off your stinky car, in her mind). Perhaps feeling insulted that his extra carefulness in driving wasn’t fully appreciated, the driver jerked the taxi to overtake on the right lane, with hardly an inch left in avoiding hitting a parked Honda. Michelle looked back through the taxi’s rear windshield to catch the receding image of the Honda’s owner and read his lips shout “Hey!”

Things have a way of getting themselves entangled in painfully frustrating bottlenecks. James is slowly becoming a swell of emotions as he looks through his glass of Talus, and sees Nikki’s smile develop into a blur. She is looking at a couple on the other table, seemingly observing them with an enchanting pair of deep-set eyes. He wondered what her thoughts were dwelling on, or perhaps if he was any part of them. From across the table, James straightened in his seat. He was ready to talk to her, if only he knew what to say.

Nikki smiled, and took a sip of her wine. James watched in detail as her lips parted to make way for the red liquid into her mouth. He wished that he were that glass, upon which Nikki’s lips were pressed. He imagined his lips in contact with hers. And how marvelous that would have felt. James took a sip of his own wine, and found sanity to calm him down.

“Would you like more wine?” the waiter politely interrupted their séance, and when the pair nodded, poured more of the red intoxicant into each of their glasses. It was a pinot noir, particularly chosen by James to try and impress Nikki, to which she was, and complimented him on his fine choice. Nikki said it was the smoothest wine she’s ever had, and James knew she was flattering him, because she didn’t have many. Nonetheless, she joked that she could finish a whole bottle with him, and James was pleased with the “with him” part.

“Why do you like me James?” she asked with a smile, the kind that expects a cajole. James was tempted to oblige, but seized the moment to cautiously unclog the emotions swelling up inside him, like a policeman directing traffic at a busy intersection.

“I don’t really know why, Nikki. I guess if I did, then that would mean I like you only for that thing. But I don’t.

I don’t like you for your smile, which surely melts me every time you give them to me.

I don’t like you for your eyes, which surely sees my soul no matter how deep I recede into myself.

I don’t like you for your touch, which sends me into the greatest ecstasy that I have ever known or will ever know in my life!”

James placed his wine glass to his right side, away from the center of the table. The red rose that was set on the small wooden vase complimented the glitter caused by the wine glass from the light overhead. Nikki’s eyes were glistening, because they were near tears. She didn’t expect a barrage of sweet words from James, and the way he had said them had her eyes filled with the exuberant tears of bliss.

James reached his left hand out in front of him. The table was wide, and Nikki met his hands halfway through. He gave her a light squeeze, gently telling her with his hand the rest of what he wanted to say. James looked straight into her eyes, and she nervously looked back. Nikki loves James, and up until now, she was the same swell of emotions that he is.

“I like you, Nikki, because you’re you. I like you for everything that is you. And everything that is you, makes everything that is me complete. And I would give everything that is me, to be forever in love with everything that is you, Nikki.”

James felt the alcohol and the adrenaline in his blood being pumped rigorously into his brains. He wondered for a moment if excessive mixtures of both cause cardiac arrests. His sight blurred for a second and his consciousness became hazy as he heard himself speak sincere words.

“It would be a great honor if you would have me in your life, Nikki; if you would take me as your boyfriend and you as my girlfriend…”

Nikki bit her lips softly, unsure of what words to use. She has in her head a conundrum about how she would respond. She wanted it to be special; she wanted James to feel that she too, is in a billow of emotions for him. With her right hand clutched in his left, and the disinhibitor called pinot noir that she had just taken, she decided there were no sweeter ways to tell James.

“Yes! I would love to have you in my life James, and it would be my honor too, as it is yours!” Nikki uttered in a single breath, chest tightening with the excitement of this new development. She heaved a contented sigh, and gave James the sweetest smile she could ever give, and James melted like butter on a hot day.

James stared into Nikki’s eyes with the look of a happy man, and she looked back at him full of anticipation for a new chapter in her life. They both emptied their glass of Talus, just as the check arrived.

The date was March 27. It has always been since.

My niece was happily singing a garbled-up song this morning, something she probably heard her mom sing in the shower, and now she’s imitating in her own garbled-up language. She was running around in front of our house while her little brother watched her jealously. She is four, and her brother is just almost one.

I envy her. She could sing with misheard lyrics using phonetically similar almost-words of her own making, and yet people around her just think she’s cute. She gets away with it, with impunity. There are no people to please, no criticisms to endure, no one to emotionally hurt.

Sometimes I wish we would just remain children forever, free from the chaos of the adult world. Sometimes I wish that we never have to forget our child-like traits, and not trade them for maturity and accountability.

So why do we ever need to grow up?

After a while, you start to miss things. After several while’s, things will find their way back to you. And then it hits you hard, right where it hurts the most. Andt then you start blogging… again…

7 months. i didn’t think i could last this long. but i did. and i didn’t.

i guess the well of ideas has sprung back into life…

“…let me tell you how it will be, there’s one for you nineteen for me…. ‘Coz I’m the taxman…yeah, I’m the taxman…” - The Beatles, Taxman

In one of my sober moments, I had the displeasure of having a calculator on one hand, and my pay slip on the other. Apparently, I figured that this isn’t such a good combination. As I perused the contents of the said pay slip, I came across the tax deducted from me as income tax, and my geeky self immediately decided to compute for the percentage. It turned out to be 28% of my salary for that pay period.

That’s almost a third of what I earned!

I sheepishly, yet with hatred building up ever so constantly, consulted a friend of mine who is knowledgeable in the law about it. I wasn’t really going to discuss what was written in the revenue code with her, but simply to understand why it was so. Out of the discussion we had, I understood one thing - the Lifeblood Principle. As I gathered, this principle summarily says that the State, being the society that I belong to as a human being, needs the monetary contribution of its constituents to subsist. It simply means that the State, or this country, or whatever country that has an organized form of governance and society, needs its people to pay taxes for its expenditures. Fine. I concede. Without money, no form of organization can exist. That goes for the government.

But why income tax?

Apparently, she argued, that it is every citizen’s duty, mine included, to pay a certain amount to the State for the privilege to earn. And this really burst my bubble. Further, it is postulated that it is because the State allowed one to earn that one must, as a matter of obligation, be taxed for the same. The word that struck my chord was “privilege”

It is NOT my privilege to earn; IT IS MY RIGHT!

I am an individual, with specific talents that I am willingly and unselfishly contributing for the welfare of this society, and subsequently, for the State. I could have very well joined the bandwagon and exercised my talents on some foreign soil benefiting some foreign people. But no, I chose to remain in this country, and I still choose to remain in this country. My talents and skills are being used and abused for the benefit of MY State. It is therefore NOT my privilege to earn. Rather, it is now the State’s responsibility to compensate me for the service I am doing. This is my RIGHT to earn, that remuneration that I must be getting in return for my skills and talents. The State must recognize that it is the one in debt to me, and that I have no debts to pay.

Yes, I concede, taxes are important in that it brings life to the State. Tax me for buying liquor, tax me for dining out in some fancy restaurant, tax me for using the roads that the State so boisterously claim to be well maintained, tax me for all the luxuries that I can spare in life. I have no qualms about those; I can survive without those things. Those things are my PRIVILEGES, brought about my capacity to earn, in exchange for the skills and talents that I have so unselfishly sacrificed for the good of the State. Those are PRIVILEGES, not needs nor rights. Tax me all you want!

But my income, that is my right! I have worked painfully for it. I had toiled countless hours for it. I would have bled for it if I were only given a chance to do so.

Collecting income tax from the people is like asking them to pay the State for allowing them to serve the State. It is like asking them to pay more than the blood, sweat and tears that the people are already paying. Must a slave pay his master for letting him serve?

I am not opposed to the collection of taxes; taxes are the lifeblood of the State. But tax only those activities that the people enjoy because of the State. I am only opposed to income taxes. It is not a privilege. It is an individual right.

I had been vehemently convincing myself that my talents and skills are better put to use serving my own countrymen. I don’t know how much more I can fool myself.

“…tuesday came and went, as quickly as expected. I didn’t notice that I needed it to stay…”            - Gabriel Mann, Lighted Up

A friend asked me in a serious tone, what love is, and I replied, wholeheartedly, what I think love is.

Love is a choice.

I remember, as it seems now a lifetime ago, I had been in a not-so-sober discussion with another close friend about how he and I differ in our views on love. Ah, love. That proverbial entity that seems to permeate every insane individual’s mind and heart. He argued that love is a choice, much to my naïve understanding of the word. He postulated that anyone could fall in love; bathe in its seemingly never-ending bliss of infatuation and that sordid state of bliss, where one can, inadvertently, overlook the other’s shortcomings and failings. He pictured love as that state after that passionate boy-meets-girl encounter, after all the glitter of he’s-so-cute or she’s-so-damn-sexy stage has waned. It’s that time after all the blindness has come to pass, when one sees the truth about the other – his oversized beer-belly, or her incessant nagging. It’s when the curtain of being in love has faded away that the clarity that is love becomes obvious.

I had argued otherwise.

But now, I seem to have shifted sides. Sober and abstemious, I now share his view on love. Love, like that blasphemous Savage Garden song, is just a collection of chemical reactions in one’s brain. Love is indeed a decision, that state where one decides if one is capable of handling the chaotic state of waking up with the same person everyday for the rest of his or her life. Love is that decision of accepting the other for everything and anything that he or she is, both the good and the worst part of his or her person. Love is that decision of being patient; love is that decision of being kind. Love is all the decision of being everything that that Bible phrase tells what love is all about.

Being in love is a wonderful feeling, and no one can be denied of that. It is most commonly the beginning of loving. As it would have been stated by now, being in love with someone and loving someone are two very different things. And how the latter differs from the former is by no means measurable by human standards.

Being in love is being blinded naturally, by that ever-guiding cosmic retribution thing that seems to favor the occult. It is like the uncontrollable urge to be with someone, like the animals in spring. Being in love is like the unwritten law that compels one to brush his or her teeth in the morning, or to use underarm deodorant. It is that forcefully being blind to the bad things that the other is doing, and the complications that it brings. It is that thing that stretches our patience to infinitesimal lengths, that we don’t even know we are capable of.

Loving, on the other hand, entails a conscious decision; a mind that is cognizant of all the consequences of that decision, emphasis on the all. Loving is a deliberate act, one that involves acceptance of the flaws of the other, as opposed to just being blind to them. Loving involves doing things because you actively want to do things, and not just simply being told to do such things. Loving involves limiting one’s imperfections, not desperately trying to change them, as a result of self-stimulation and perseverance. Loving is a selfish act.

I had been in love. It’s a wonderful thing to be in love. But I am past that stage, and I have decided to love someone. I have unconditionally devoted myself into loving this special someone, beyond the realms of infatuation or enthrallment. Yet, unexplainably, I believe I am still in love with her. And the irony that is of a conscious being in love with her, I firmly believe, can exist. I know. I feel it for her.

I am in love with you. And I promise that I will always love you, no matter what.

To my friend who asked me what love is, it seems that I do not know after all. Yet I do.

It’s Christmas day, and apart from the several relatives that came to visit, I feel the same. I am dressed as I would on a normal workless day, when the toils of everyday life stop for an infinitesimal second that masquerades as a day. I am in my comfy sleeveless shirt and cotton shorts. If not for the abundant food on our table, albeit the leftovers of yesterday’s Noche Buena feast, and the children that run around the house happy to have new toys from their ninongs and ninangs, I would have declared this day a Tuesday – a  happy vacation Tuesday.

From the neighbors come the discordant tunes of weary videokes that had labored through the previous night. It seems that for one day in a year, unpleasant singers are given a license to belt out their hearts content with impunity, as I fall a helpless victim to their incessant crooning. The revelry does not come from a single source. As there are four corners in our house, it seems that there are also as many videoke units from our neighbors. I have yet to decide if these are from different houses, or if one household has difficulty deciding who should sing first that they have each their own videoke units. Should I even care?

As I was brutally awakened this morning by the raucous singing of our selfish neighbors, I was also held in pity for our canine housemates. Yuki and Haru, our two less than magnificent dogs, are continuously barking in pain. It must be very hard for them to take the booms and bangs of firecrackers joyfully lighted and thrown by street kids, what with their highly sensitive sense of hearing. This makes me very thankful that I wasn’t born a dog. I coo them softly, helplessly trying to explain to them that they can’t do anything about it, and neither can I. In my head I am wishing for a very bad thing about the firecrackers and their throwers. You know what I mean, you sheepish little devil you.

From across the street and even further down it, I catch a glimpse of male individuals congregating around a wooden table, haphazardly laid down where the first felt like laying it down. In the middle of that table sits Johnny Walker, black label, and still unopened. It’s now 3pm, and the continued celebration from the previous night is about to start for yet another night. To their right on the ground lay the patron saint of alcoholics, San Miguel. I tried to no avail to avoid them, but there is only one street in our village, and to get to the store I must pass them. So shot after another shot, I went to the store to buy myself Coke, to be used as an after-shot chaser for the trip home.

Like I said, today is a Tuesday, like any other workless Tuesdays in my life. The godforsaken singing, the rowdy and noisy street kids who never fail to find ways to annoy, and of course, the ever flowing alcohol that is measured by the gallons. Today is a Tuesday, and it’s Christmas. What they do today, they do in moderation for the rest of the year.

Merry Christmas everyone!

The old adage goes, “life is a journey, not a destination.” I could have sworn it was Steven Tyler that said that. Looking back, I must have been born with this thought in mind.

I love to travel. My birth certificate might as well had come with a passport to save them the trouble of identifying me. My favorite documents include boarding passes, plane or boat tickets, and tollway receipts. Travel, by any means – land, sea, and air – seems to be my curse, or blessing.

My first conscious travel happened when I had the chance to repair a machine in Roxas City, Capiz. That was my first travel alone, in a (domestically) foreign land. That was the first time, I remember, that I had to bring out my diplomatic skills in interacting with a different culture, one that is apart from the chaotic one I am used to in Manila. It turned out well, and I came back alive, thank God.

Since then, I have had the chance to see the beauty that is the Philippines. I had been to, or did almost all the items mentioned in the proverbial Department of Tourism WOW Philippines campaign song. “Tara na, biyahe tayo…”

Yes, I had been to the Penafrancia in Naga, been up to Antipolo, but sadly I have yet to dance in Obando. I bet Sharon Cuneta hasn’t either. I’m not unusual.

There are only a few other places in the Philippines that I have yet to conquer, but someday I will. I love being a tourist, a local one at best. And I take the best chance that I get to be an international one.

My first step outside of the country happened a few years ago, when business matters warranted me to go to Singapore for a week. The word “alien” had a whole new meaning for me, and the adrenalin surged in my travel-hungry self. There I had the chance to experience “chicken lice!” a meal of warm white rice with soy chicken toppings. At first I thought of the little ticks that I squish to death from our chicken farm of old. Fortunately, something was only lost in pronunciation.

Singapore was followed by Melbourne, Australia, and then by Taipei, Taiwan. Four times had I been to Shanghai, China since then, and the place is getting warm for me with each visit.

And, now this. I am writing this blog from the pre-departure area of the airport in Guam. I had just spent three days here, after four days in Majuro, Marshall Islands. And my plane is about to board.

I guess the continuation will be in Manila, when I remember to write more. I thank the man upstairs for all the blessing of travel, and I pray that I can return the favor in some way within my capacity. Until then, I wonder what the in-flight movie will be…

Of late, I had been musing myself with the past – the have-been’s and the should’ve-been’s. I had been digging up recollections of what life used to be twenty long years ago. I had been transporting myself back into that time when khaki brown shorts, white polo shirt and white knee-high socks covered in black shoes were my daily fashion. The scent of a sweaty child freshly baked in the hot afternoon sun was my standard aroma. And the life of a child in grade school was what I was living.

Looking at that almost faded photo, I could only laugh at myself. How did I survive those years looking so scrawny and feeble? And along stride my then classmates, I could only laugh some more. It was just like yesterday, as the memories of the fun I had in grade school comes showering back like a faucet on a hot tub. It steams.

I went into grade one in 1984, which gives the math geeks out there a chance to instantly compute my age. I only have sporadic memories of that grade level, but I’m sure the stress of the first day in school was nerve-racking. I never went to nursery or preparatory school, so grade one was literally my first day in school. I was so afraid of being alone in a room of strangers that I followed my mom who was buying books at the shop four blocks away. How she was surprised to see me come up to her when she was thinking I was in class! I guess that was the first time I ever cut class.

Then I met friends. And playmates. And more.

Grade school was Tom and Michael, two kids I considered best friends. I never did understand what it is that brings people to be friends, nor did I bother if they’d consider me the way I’d considered them. Doesn’t matter now. Ours was friendship of developing souls, caught at a time when grade school mattered. I could almost swear we were always together, but that’s just me. They might have remembered things differently. Tom introduced me to Fra Lippo Lippi. I can never forget that. We were laughing at him for always bringing up this new British pop act that none of us had ever heard of before. Then, about two months after, the pop duo hit big in Manila. Séance?

Grade school was fear of third grade, where the teacher has a notorious reputation of punishing students, even to the extensive imagination of pre-puberty kids that she would do all wonderfully hideous things to naughty students. I can still remember how her voice sounded as she screams “you get out-chide! now!”, and that’s not a typo.

The rest of the grade levels were the awkward stages. I remember this was where boy met girl, and (probably) the birds and the bees, although I fought myself really hard to use that cliché. It was a time of first crushes, of second ones, and false heartaches. It was a time of misunderstood understandings, misdirected and yet innocent affections, the prototype of love. It was a time of stupid foundation days where someone with a handcuff pairs you with the one you have a crush on, upon paid instructions by your so-called friends who’d let you be dumped into the snake pit. It was a time of volleyball games and basketball tournaments on intramural days where one can show off to impress the opposite sex. It was a time of educational field trips where each would jockey against the other for the seating arrangements inside the bus, hoping one would get seated next to his or her crush. You might think that I had done all these. Yes, go ahead and think that way.

Sixth grade was probably the most difficult of all. It was a time when one had to make a choice – of staying a child, or facing the reality of growing up. It was this decision making time that defined us. It was a signal that grade school is over. And the fun that came along with it must also bid us farewell. Old crushes would give way to new ones and new friends would replace old ones in high school. And the memories of those I knew in grade school slowly drifted towards the back of my mind, as I had occupied most of my brain with the new challenges that beset me. New challenges – mature decisions, tougher tests, life itself – became my priorities. I had to live life now, not only as a mere spectator, a child with cotton candy on one hand and a G.I Joe action figure on the other, but as an active participant.

Then came the pictures, the silent frozen reminders that I was once part of grade school. I see them now, and I relive all the moments that I had unknowingly saved in the corners of my memories. I see my old friends’ faces, some of them I have no name to put on. But most of them, their names are still intact. I see old crushes; some of them have families of their own now, with loving husbands and a horde of squiggly kids. Others have remained single, yet blissfully content. Some have gone to greener pastures, as that stupid cliché goes, in foreign lands, where I hope they’re not alone. Still others have stayed in the country, either by choice or by lack of enthusiasm. I have stayed because of the former.

I have not seen most of them for twenty years. My last recollection of some of them was on that last day of sixth grade, the graduation day. All of them were smiling, happy to have conquered six years of childhood humiliation and utter academic terror. We had given each other our contact details, and the promise to stay in touch after grade school. Apparently, none of us was keen on fulfilling that promise, so much so that twenty years have passed and yet none has attempted to contact each other, save for some.

I will see my old friends soon. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology and that social phenomenon called Friendster, I had found some of my grade school friends. Soon, when the vectors of chance are again aligned in favor of us all, we shall have the opportunity to reminisce together the times we had spent in grade school. Because we have our own lives to lead, reminiscing is all that is left for us to do.

That is all we can do.