Flight.

Leaving for Cagayan de Oro in a few hours. Have long detested stress of early morning flights, but disaster of missing a late night one months ago (due to, among others, grave naivete re: military time) had rendered whole thing utterly scary: unpredictable traffic, scary-antiseptic airport environs, thought of documents jumping off bag to stay in bed, etc. So will be in CDO for a grand total of 22 hours, owing to (most likely) sadistic assistant who made travel arrangements and deemed it too much for lowly writer (moi) to have at least a few hours to, I don't know, sleep at the hotel? Funny when you recall that also flew to Cagayan in October last year, a lovely sojourn that included, among others, staying in Philline's durian-smelling solar-powered house and driving to Bukidnon to live with Lina Sagaral-Reyes for a few days. Think there shall be no solar energy or poetry in this trip; only cooperatives and credit bureaus (don't ask). Now, germane (and criminally emo) conversation with Andy, spread over a few days since we're so subhumanly busy:

A (Mon AM): Let's leave, G. I want to live somewhere else. I want a new life.
G (Mon PM): Hi, A. I want to disappear. Now.
A (Wed AM): Why the choice of the word 'disappear'? Why not 'go away'? Or is that my mind on overdrive.
G (Wed PM): Because I've been feeling that I'm ready to implode at any moment. Location can't change that. Hence, disappear.
A (Wed PM): Yes, because we bring ourselves wherever we go.

I think, I think, you never know when it's that bad until, well, it's that bad. What I'm doing now (in school, and career, and relationship, and life) is essentially trying to avoid all manner of regret once things are over, prevent any Revolutionary Road- or Incendies-type breakdowns later when one realizes things are lost and irreparable and like a 6 AM flight to the south: stressful, seemingly important but really just something that deprived you of sleep.

October.

I welcome October with arms aching because they're so outstretched. With the yearning of an upside down umbrella. The smile of an open manhole. The one-two punch of August and September now hopefully over, and so today: errands (drop off letter at Chancellor's office, look for lost library book), acads (start with Gemino paper, revise Charlson story, think of topic for Tope paper), love life (re-watch/blog about Hable Con Ella, download prescribed films, think about him), work (say yes to a raket in Cagayan de Oro next week, transcribe two interviews, write one press release), writing (send Charlson story, plus one more, to bunch of magazines), and self (think about point of everything, text random people about how writing and literature no longer, at this point, bring happiness).

Lately have questioned soundness of long-running thesis re: Awful Months (arbitrary, illogical, convenient), but how do you knock it when the first day of October brought such astounding bounty, in producitivity and prospects alike. (Of course, can be self-fulfilling prophecy, and Mobius strip-type tautology is useless argument). That said, kind of relish the celebratory mood October brings, if only to pick self up from proverbial rubble in the aftermath of August and September. Someday might find real reason for the invisible weight, i.e, other than retrogrades and ghost months. And if it really is bogus, what of it? We all tell ourselves such lies to survive. In this light, have obviously lost ability to be straightforward. Yey.

Dark place.

Stuff:

• Years ago, Kuya ID at the registrar's office (then located in that huge evacuation center near Math Building) asked me if I was a freshman. I was 22. Suppose I did look young(er); 7-Eleven cashiers would ask for age before handing Marlboros.* That was before. Earlier, went to get my ID again, first time in grad school. No such question. But my head, I found out, tilted slightly to the right. Explained a lot of things: lopsided glasses, lack of balance, right shoe never fitting, etc.
• MA, once enthusiastic outlet of Things, now in ruin.** (Though possibly temporary or MA just surrogate of / scapegoat for Other Things in Disarray.)
• To cheer self up, have been meeting up with people. Last night, dinner with Alan then beer and movie with Om. Earlier, dinner with Melane. Three more this weekend. Preoccupation. Production. Also, bought books from UP Press (though one purchase, by long-admired author, proving to be mighty disappointment in predictable same-tricks-over-and-over variety). Food of the world, watch out.
• Creeping realization of late: mediocrity.*** And obsolescence of borrower's card in library transactions.
• Haven't written anything in weeks. August and September delivering a one-two punch, as they always do. Comfort to attribute discord to misaligned stars and planets or similar, and expect cloud to move / break apart once October sets in. Hope so. But as arrived at in poetry lecture to college kids in St. Scho few days ago, thing with waiting, with passing time, they change people. They are never the same again.****
• On that note, have started this blog!

* Could be load of bull.
** OK, slight exaggeration, but all vigor now lost in light of advice from former professor. Buoyed, too, by frustration in paperwork/bureacratic snakes-and-ladders due to long-ago oversight.
*** Of being tiny trout, meaningless.
**** Highlight of week. Was invited by CEGP. Vaguely remembered why checked Secondary Education in UPCAT form, culprit, in the first place, in all these, i.e., Kung Paano Tayo Umabot sa Ganito.

Delusions.

This morning, memories of high school, when, after a quiz or exam, teacher would call the roll and class would need to shout grade one by one. How stupid: imagining the 14-, 15-year-old's holding their breaths for Diaz, top of class and typically highest, when they were obviously not, not remotely. A legend in own mind. A veritable clown, more like. A clown with a big bag of jokes that ricochet as quickly as they emerge, into nowhere else, into no one else's backyard, back.

--

--

Prayer.

To you,

After typing then revising then backspacing through entire sentences and paragraphs -- needless curlicues, you'd chastise -- I will go straight to the point: it pains me so much that I cannot share in this anxiety, that it is not a load we can divide, that it is at once a fear and anger that I can only understand through you. I hope you know that in this tiny way I share it, if only in the ardent desire to partake in it, to rid your life of anything that can power those restless feet toward a direction I would rather not imagine. For sure this is impossible, but even as I picture you, walking, alone, to a distance beyond what I can see, there is nothing more I would like to do than take those quivering fingers, give them a little squeeze, then lace them with mine, like a homecoming.

Love,
B.

Infirmity.

I have a feeling I still lack platelets. The heaviness that had long accompanied my movements is nothing new, but dengue, which made me lose some weight, feels like it instead inserted a seven-pound bowling ball into my core. It is something that is hard to explain except in literal terms, mainly because the appetite has been back and, save for a new fear of drizzles and mosquitoes, I would like to think I am (relatively) healthy again. Belatedly, I am just happy to not be connected to an IV bag and feeling like a pin cushion every morning because of all the blood tests. Hospitals are grim places when you're alone, which you have to be at some point, in order to appreciate the gravity of, well, life, and teetering solitarily on its edge. I have no groundbreaking epiphanies about being sick except the usual variety that being bedridden (with a lovely, lovely view of the hospital parking lot) brings. That is, I am actually afraid to die, art is unable to console, and really, I need to get fucking health insurance soon.

--

Pamimintana.

Balay Champaca, Lazi Convent (Siquijor), Dumaguete-bound Fastcraft

 Grand Regal Hotel (Davao), Philline's (Cagayan de Oro),La Gracia (Bukidnon)

 Kule office, Ormoc-bound bus, Dumaguete-bound bus

 Los Baños, Manila-bound Super Ferry, Hotel Henrico (Baguio)

Sison.

The parking lot is now paved, I told him. It was raining in Sison. We were in Baguio over the weekend, and the Pangasinan town was the first stop on the trip back to Manila. He nodded. The last time we were there, the summer of 2009, we were on our way to Pagudpud. There are things that have obviously changed over the years.

Sison will always be special to me. You see a story of mine has a scene set in that exact roadside restaurant. Romantic exaggerations aside, I had long imagined returning to the place to find Carolina and Reynaldo still there, sipping instant noodles and getting to know each other. I have reread and revised that story a thousand times. To me, it is reality.

There is something happy-sad about rest stops. In another recent trip, after the bus had slowed down in a small roadside lot in Gumaca, Quezon, I joked to the same person, wouldn't it be nice to do your thesis in a place like Gumaca? There had been three more stops in that trip, but 30 hours on a bus is not good for the brain; my mind, after the first 12 hours, had shut off protectively, and I no longer remember the rest.

I have been on the road (or water or air) for around three-quarters of May. In a restaurant near Burnham Park, a lady took our orders then asked the counter, "Naa pang bibingka?" Uttered in Ilocano country, the shouted Visayan sentence absolutely dazzled me. And so apart from a realization about the deplorable state of transportation infrastructure in the country, I also learned, maybe even embraced, for possible dalliance in the future, a thing or two about beautiful transience.

Places.

     In Iligan, an empty bus terminal at 9 in the evening. There is rain, but indecisive. It is pitch dark. I consider knocking on random doors nearby, to mutter a half-hearted Visayan phrase asking for directions to MSU (or maybe a spare room for the night). I consider sighing and walking in the rain. I consider sitting on the wet pavement and waiting (this fortnight's grandest lesson). My bags are heavy with clothes and books, all useless to ward off the croaking of frogs, or to rally the night, its sluggish completeness.

     In Allen, a playlist featuring songs from The Carpenters commences in the bus. Top of the World. We've Only Just Begun. A Song For You. Rainy Days and Mondays. The view, lit amber by 8 o'clock sun, alternates between mountains and the sea. The road sometimes zigzags. The trip nearing the one-day mark, some body parts are grumbling for respite; my stomach, my butt, my back. Uprooted from Luzon, I sit back and take a lungful of air. I had needed this distance. Wide awake, I think of opening a book to read.

     In Ormoc, we think of these plains being covered in water and mud once. We joke about the word "landslide" being taboo here. We sit by the seawall, buy too many packets of peanuts from kids idling away the last rays of sunlight. In the distance, possibly Cebu, possibly some uninhabited island. The port is gray under the clouds. From the plaza, from speakers as big as a credenza, a tune from a life that now seems so distant. "I heard / that you're settled down, and you've / found a man and you're married now --"

     In Bacolod, I sit on the foot of the bed and watch him sleep. I consider planting a kiss on his right cheek as my way of saying good morning and welcome to this day, to this beginning. Welcome, and I hope you will enjoy your stay. In Silay, we walk the empty streets an hour after finding out we had missed our flight. He calms me down, and we sip coffee and watch the late night news. Protests against an upcoming concert, an oil price rollback, a truckload of bananas abandoned on the side of a road.

     Somewhere in the Sibuyan Sea, he jokes about this trajectory - of so many joys, so many little joys - having rom-com potential. At the end of the ship's duty, when Manila's leaden panorama - derricks, clouds - slowly sweeps into view, we hold hands and watch the scenery unfold from one of the ship's rectangular windows. Under our feet, the floor continues to grumble, almost imperceptibly. There is talk of books to read, movies to see, places to go, eventually; can I wish instead for a moment's infinity?

     In Dumaguete, "We asked so little of the world. We understood / the offense of advice, of holding forth. We checked ourselves: / we were correct, we were silent. / But we could not cure ourselves of desire, not completely. / Our hands, folded, reeked of it." (Louise Glück, Arboretum)

--

Delays.

The all-encompassing lesson in this trip so far has been delayed gratification. Not completely inadvertent, I suppose, because Om, who did the itinerary, agreed that it had been a rollercoaster ride between harshness and comfort (an ongoing harsh!-bet!-harsh!-bet! cycle). Why else would we endure grueling transportation options then search out the town's most luxurious accommodation? Arriving in Ormoc, for instance, after a religion-testing 30-hour bus ride through several provinces and a thankfully peaceful strait, we checked in at the Hotel Don Felipe, a seven-story anomaly in the modest city, whose Spanish-style facade juts out of the tin roofs of the marketplace. And two days ago, after another half a day in transit - this time, six hours in a ferry from Ormoc to Cebu, then three hours in a bus from Cebu City to Toledo, then another two hours in a ferry from Toledo to San Carlos - we chose the town's most expensive restaurant which, incidentally, has six or seven double rooms for rent. During our first lunch, we ate until our bellies (mine without contest prouder) swelled from under the table (although, really, this sort of unbelievable gluttony, of ordering a feast for a small community when there's just two of you eating, is just as normal in Manila; I'm looking at you, Alan). Alas, the Days of Uncomfortable Travel ends this afternoon. Three to four hours in a bus to Dumaguete now seems like heaven-sent commute. In Dumaguete, will spend another two nights (originally booked for five; have completely forgotten about Iligan!) before taking another ferry to Cagayan de Oro en route to MSU. After the workshop, will take a ferry either back to Dumaguete or straight to Bacolod, for flight back to Manila on Monday. Who was it who said that suffering purifies? Not sure about the doctrinal accuracy of the pronouncement, but between that and the bliss of watching Poetry on Om's laptop while munching on chocolate-covered polvoron, I will be hard-pressed to choose the former.

News.

Om and I had been eating home-made chorizo for breakfast in a Bacolod pension house last year when Angelo Reyes shot himself in front of his mother's grave one sunny Wednesday. As pathetic Manileños are wont to do, we learned of the news because we next brought our laptops to the dining area so we could go online and check things. We were probably on the 20th to the 25th hour of the bus ride to Ormoc yesterday when, in his window seat and verdant mountainside alternating with wide blue seas in the background, he started giggling. "What does 'offloaded' mean?" he asked, and I told him, "Ha?" after which he giggled some more. Funny that there was giggling at all in the trip, when half the time, I was imagining the hotel bedsheets and longing to sleep, for a change, in a horizontal position. Thirty hours, count 'em, and, of course we questioned the soundness of the plan. When I woke up somewhere in Catbalogan, he said I just missed the San Juanico Bridge. "Tulog ka kasi ng tulog e." I looked at him long enough and fervently enough, then I grabbed his phone and saw the tiny blinking dot on the map that was still a centimeter or two away from the country's longest bridge. Longest, which is to say this route. We half-joked about the silly ways we could turn this into a story. The Longest Route to Ormoc, I said, and I imagined the scenes inside the ferry, with all the (assertive) commerce, including but not limited to the many magtatahos and manicurists onboard. The characters presented themselves in the motley crew of our fellow passengers, such as Ate Assertive, Ate Assertive 2, Ate Mag-Isa, Bibong Konduktor, and La Familia, who, the bus hardly gaining speed in SLEX, took out a bucket of fried chicken and started eating, turning the bus air greasy and our erstwhile suspicions of this being a long trip from literal to also quite figurative. What was the real news in the trip so far? That I can withstand grueling 30-hour bus rides with fewer complaints than my tummy. That Filipinos are a beautiful people. These, and that Om can always have the window seat.