the city mouse and the country mouse

i wake to the full volume shrieking from the house next door of, of all the music from all the musicians in all the world, air supply's greatest hits album... for the Nth time, where N is approaching infinity... at 6am in the friggin' morning. my cellphone alarm hadn't even rung yet. i get up, i grumble, i have no choice. then i remember, it's friday the 13th. a good sign. i zip through my bath, my breakfast, my dressing up: a zombie, a machine, a robot. then i step out of the house for my commute to work.

not yet 20 meters away from the door, there is a shrill beeping behind me: a habal2x driver in a hurry. but the already tiny street, made even tinier by the jeepney driver who considered our tiny street as free parking space, is just too tiny for the both of us to pass through comfortably. the driver has no choice but to let me pass first. i continue walking.

i pass through, the habal2x behind me, still beeping. it passes through, and the driver hits his breaks in front of me to block my path. he tells me he was blowing his horn. i tell him yes, i'm not deaf. he tells me maybe i am. i tell him to fuck off. he glares at me, i glare back, then he goes on his way, beeping away all the other pedestrians in his path. my words startle me; did i just say that? i continue walking.

the street is pockmarked with potholes and littered with dog shit and random pieces of trash. to the left, the smells of buwad (dried salted fish) frying and plastic burning mingling with the decay of dog shit. to the right, another house arrayed with giant speakers near its gates, this time pounding the eardrums of all residents within a 200 meter radius with that most infamous staple of mid 90s diskorals: the macarena. and walking toward me, a grimy woman dragging her own grimy son, who is bawling out with all his lungs, and the mother threatening the boy with a broom. ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my neighborhood.

i finally emerge at the eskina, a tricycle waiting to transport me from the hell of my neighborhood to the hell of my office cubicle. i hop on. the driver, not yet satisfied with his passengers, waits, the tricycle's engine humming its impatience all the while.

a man emerges. his hair is wet, combed back and clean. he is wearing a clean blue polo, cleanly ironed jeans, and cracked leather shoes brushed clean. but on his astringent clean face is the bewildered look of a lost man.

in his right hand, a clear plastic envelope. in it, sheets of bond paper, and on the top sheet, a pasted 2x2 id picture, and in big black bold letters, the word 'BIODATA'. he approaches the driver.

in a singsong bisaya spoken in dalaguete and southern cebu, he asks if we were going to the highway. the driver tells him to hop on. he looks at the tricycle like it was some alien spacecraft, unsure of what to do. he takes his seat in the sidecar. the driver revs up his engine. off we go.

it's starting to get hot, and the traffic is running slow and heavy. with the driver deftly negotiating the obstacles of the road, we reach the highway. the bewildered man asks the driver to stop so he could get off. but it was a still a 'no stopping' zone, and a traffic policeman was standing in a discrete corner, a wolf waiting to pounce on its unsuspecting prey. the driver tells him, 'sa unahan' (a bit farther off). another 10 meters, and the bewildered man again asks the driver to stop so he could get off. the driver answers him again, 'sa unahan', his annoyance now ringing clear in his voice.

we finally reach our stop. all of us passengers get off. i hand my money to the driver, mutter under my breath a 'good luck' to the bewildered man, then proceed to the jeepney stop across the street. it takes me a full 20 minutes to get my ride. as our jeepney fights its way through the traffic on the highway, a metaphor for the sad realities of living in the city presents itself to me.

there laying on the highway, under the growing heat of the sun: the raw, bloody, mangled carcass of what had been a dog. and no one thinking it worth stopping for: the jeepneys and cars on their morning rush, the trucks and vans going on with their deliveries, the pedestrians on the street waiting in vain to get their ride, the cigarette vendor anticipating the traffic to slow down so he could peddle his goods, another traffic policeman sitting under the shade of the nearby bakery, idly watching the rest of the world on its senseless turning. and no one coming to clean the mess up.

our jeepney finally finds open road, and the driver steps on the gas. the wind in my face, i reflect over the dead dog. then i remember the bewildered man; i hope he doesn't end up as roadkill.

the necessity of storms

an old essay i sat on for a couple of weeks... took me some time to polish, but here it is... #################################

saturday morning dawned cold, wet, and windy. evening had been terrible. the storm signal no. 2 winds drove the rain to seep through the windows, drenching half my bed. the whole night my blanket and my pillows were all giving me moist reminders of my misery as the wind howled outside. some water had even engulfed part of the floor of my room, and i had to enlist the help of all the rags and old, torn t-shirts i could muster to stem the deluge. but at least, this morning, frank's worst had already passed us.

but then frank had not yet totally left. it was still too rainy and windy to make any trip outside comfortable. and my room, already a mess before frank came roaring, was now a disaster area. books stacked higgledy-piggledy to avoid getting wet, scattered stacks of yesterday's news, various pieces of plastic that used to hold old purchases, random papers and magazines. piled on my little table were receipts of long ago transactions, old electricity and credit card bills, empty deodorant and rubbing alcohol bottles, more pieces of plastic, expired mcdonald's coupons; in short, the beginnings of a mountain of garbage. to top it all off, soaked rags all over the floor, the curtains dripping wet, and on the corner of our roof, a loose iron sheet moaning its fragility.

and not just the state of my room, but also the state of my head; the rain had not just seeped through the windows to drench my bed, my pillows, my blanket, and my floor, it also flooded my brain, soaking my bones, drowning my lungs with helplessness. there i was reduced to a distraught shivering wreck, desperate to escape the disaster of my room, yet too scared to face what remained of frank outside. something had to be done: defy nature to escape my more immediate horrors, or fix my room. the answer was obvious.

as to how i allowed my room to reach this state of desperation, i can't really say. or maybe i'm just too ashamed to admit. this time, driven to the edge of insanity, i was forced to fight back one way or another. since i was no match against nature, it had to be my personal mess that i should confront.

first off, i had to wipe off all the water that had overrun the floor, then take out all the wet rags. my floor now reasonably dry, i turned my attention to the most visible mess: my books. after sorting them into three tidy stacks, it was on to sorting everything else: the magazines and the old newspapers, the old receipts and bills, the little pieces of plastic and trash, each in their own pile.

but sorting revealed a new problem: i had no more space. the contents of my crowded shelves were just groaning with the effects of overpopulation. a revolution was inevitable: i had to throw things out. now came the hard part.

first the old receipts and pieces of plastic, the expired mcdonald's coupons, and the empty plastic bottles, all had to go. these little pieces of trash were the easiest, yet, ultimately inconsequential: i still couldn't create enough space. i had to throw the old newspapers away.

i had to be careful though. some of the issues here had my articles printed on them, and some with memorable essays that i had formed an attachment to. an ardous hour of sorting and checking, separating what to keep from what had to be thrown away, and i was done. my trash can couldn't have been any happier.

i ponder over the contents my trash can, and over the stack of old newspapers. why is it that i hang on to all this trash for so long? why is it so hard to just... let go?

my room finally having achieved a semblance of order, my body sweating, my hands dusty, the tips of my fingernails blackened by the dirt that i scraped off the skin of my arms, and yet oddly, i felt clean: as clean as having taken a thousand baths, as clean as emptying my bowels of all literal and metaphorical shit, as clean as having all my sins forgiven. no wonder they say cleanliness is next to godliness: the act of cleaning up is, in itself, a religious experience.

i sat on my chair (which had also been cleared of its own share of chaos) and surveyed the restored glory of my personal sanctuary, then thought to myself: let frank blow what fury it has left my way, i no longer care. i had my room back. and it took a storm to make me look inside and clean up my own mess.