Moses

I am sitting here in a lounge chair just outside the ICU ward where my father is currently lying in one of the beds.  It’s my second night on duty and I have been waiting for hours for the cardiologist to tell me the 2DECHO test they did to my father this morning.  It’s almost 1 am. The results are in my bag. 

Thickened mitral valve leaflet without restriction of motion; mitral annular calcification… Thickened right and non-coronary cusp without restriction of motion; aortic annular calcification… Reversed mitral inflow pattern indicative of Grade I left ventricular diastolic dysfunction… Mild mitral regurgitation… Mild tricuspid regurgitation. 

Words that form sentences and that ramble into ribbon of spells like some witch concocting a curse of some kind. I had to Google every word to understand the whole shitload of words and piece them together like some puzzle.  I have an idea already of what my father’s condition is.  I just need to talk to the damn cardiologist.  I can’t blame him – the cardio guy.  He seemed nice and straightforward with somewhat of an affable personality when he delivered the preliminary prognosis to me at 2 am yesterday.  “Your father has difficulty in breathing…  possible solution would be angioplasty… still need to run some tests… before we can wean him off of the tubes." His delivery was effortless, with just the right pinch of bedside manner.

Drinking what probably would be my fifth coffee for the day; I stare at the electric fan on the ceiling and think of its rotating blades, and wonder how many times it rotates in a second.  

My father is sick.  And I’m here in a hospital waiting room on New Year’s Eve waiting for the doctor to tell me when they can take off the tube in his mouth. All I could think about is going home with my father and tell him that he’ll outlive me and he can be the prophet he always claimed to be when my siblings and I were mere kids. 

I used to hate him, my dad.  Loathed him even.  My coming out party was on 9-11 and I punched a cabinet door just to prove a point.  He hated my gay guts. I hated his philandering gonads (at 63!).  I stormed out of the house that night, stayed with my best friend in another city and came back home after 6 months when he had a stroke. He survived a fatal one.  He was damn lucky.  I had to wipe his ass for one whole week.  

Truth be told as much as I hated my father, I love him in my own weird and dysfunctional way.  We were dysfunctional to some extent, our family. We’re a Filipino family in the ghetto with the portrait of the Marcoses in our hallways. He is Catholic by choice, I think; but his parents were Seventh Day Adventists. And every time he’d be in one of his saviour moments (those times when he would be thinking that he would be the new Moses or something), he’d make his children sit in the living room and proclaim the gospels for hours.  We’d be sitting there, me and my older siblings, looking at him standing in front of us, one hand holding a very worn out  Bible, the other hand gesticulating while he spurts out the Gospels with such gusto and bravado like those televangelists we see on TV.  He’d be in that mode for hours, thinking of salvation and rapture, while my mom would be by the kitchen door shaking her head thinking what a nut job my father was, while me and my siblings would be thinking of dinner.  Anything, but this, would do. We could eat paper with mayonnaise and we’d be ok. I’m probably not alone in this, but back then, whenever he was having his salvific moments, I was thinking or even devising of ways to avoid fire and brimstone that was about to beset the sofa where me and my brother and sisters sat.  I was thinking if I could fake shitting in my 6 year old pants and my mother would save me from Leviticus and Revelations.  My brother and sisters were prolly thinking of faking a seizure or something.   The living room sermon will all come to an abrupt end when my mother would finally announce dinner. Then we’d go scrambling to the kitchen and eat as fast as the Marcoses could say Honolulu.  That’s my father, the new Moses. 

I spent this Christmas in our house in Caloocan.  The house is different now.  The house in 4^th Avenue has lost its old charm.  It’s worn out now, despite the repairs my mother commissioned.  It pretty much looks and even feels like my father’s worn out Bible.  Me and my father, we’re tight now.  Age (both his and mine) became the catalyst of our father-son bond.  He doesn’t care that his son is a homosexual.  He prolly doesn’t remember.  But my mother tells me that he knows and he’s ok with it.  I can hug him now, I can even kiss him.  He gets teary eyed whenever I do that.  He never spurts the Gospels like a garden hose but he never fails to give his fatherly wisdom:  “You take care of yourself… Eat right… Exercise… Stop smoking…  Work hard… “I nod and say the customary yeses and uhums every time he says these things.   He walks with a make shift cane, made from some polished tree branch with like hundreds and hundreds of rubber bands on the handle so he can get a better grip of it.  From a short distance he did look like Moses to me. 

Three days later, the whole family (including my father’s siblings) agreed to confine him in the hospital.  He had a heart attack at 3 am.   I was in my box sleeping and only found out at 7 in the morning.   One of my nieces left a message on my phone telling me that Tatay was in the intensive care unit.  I closed my eyes and counted backwards.  I was thinking of the last thing I said to him last Christmas that he’d outlive me… that he’d live to be a hundred or two.  

It’s my second night at the hospital.  I told my family that I would be staying with Tatay till Sunday so I can talk to the doctors. With all the medical jargon they tell us I didn’t want my mother to have an aneurism just trying to understand what caused my father’s heart attack.  At least I have Google and some episodes of ER and House for some references.    I’ve only seen him once since yesterday.   He has this tube in his mouth which helps him breathe but it looked like it hurt.  It did, according to the doctors that’s why they gave him some sedative.   Tatay’s still lucid.  He wanted the tube taken off.  He wanted to drink and he wanted to eat.  He wanted to go home.  He prolly misses his old staff.   Like some clichéd line that was pulled out from some Emmy Award winning series, I told him that we were going home once he gets well.  That he needs to listen to the doctors and not threaten to punch the nurses (he did according to Nanay) and that he should not make Nanay worry and that he should not  write “I Want To Die” on paper.   He was still strong, I said.  He was still gonna outlive me (he waved off his hand at that remark).  I held on to his knee and said those words over and over again.  It was effortless in my part.  He gestured something, he wanted the blanket over his legs.  My sister and I put it.  I patted his knee.  My sister kissed his cheek.  I kissed his forehead.  Put the customary sign of the cross on his forehead and told him that we will be outside. 

My sister had tears when she went out.  I didn’t.  My eyes were dry. Did I want to cry?  Hell yeah.  But I couldn’t because I had to be strong for now.  I remember reading somewhere, or someone telling me or some shit that came  in a dream or something that in a room full of people crying, there’s always somebody mopping the floor. 

I remember that story in the Bible, when Moses was holding the magic staff with his arms outstretched for hours while the Isrealites were fighting of whoever they were fighting off so that they could pass the desert and go to the Promised Land and Moses was getting shit tired because his arms were outstretched for hours and hours.  There was a person helping him, supporting him (I think it was his brother Aaron or some dude named Joshua) so that the Isrealite army would go for the win.  They won.  I need to be that guy for my father right now.   I need to be his Aaron and his Joshua and his devil’s advocate for now.  I need to wait and pester the cardiologist to just lay down the cards to us and for the damn 2DECHO results to be interpreted by a person not by some search engine.  And to be honest, I need to rant and rave about mortality and the human condition and all that crap that I learned in Philosophy school.   I need to channel Nietzsche or Moses or some dead writer.  In the end after one thousand four hundred and sixty five words, I realized that I am my father’s son.   I embrace it.  

All Souls, Saints and Sinners…

 

photo credit: badongski

The streets are quiet tonight.  I can even hear the quiet under the music playing in my digital player.  I’ve been running for over 30 minutes and I don’t feel like stopping, but I know that I have to stop in a while.  Just a few more meters, I tell myself.  Forget the rain, forget the strain in my legs.  I just need to stretch it out a little for just a few more meters and then I’m good. 

The light drizzle, softly touches my skin and blends with my salty perspiration.  I quicken my pace a little as the rain begins to build momentum. I am practically running in the middle of the street.  Not a lot of cars tonight. only a lonesome sedan or taxi and  a desolate jeepney  every twenty paces.  

I stop for a quick breath in a street corner, in front of a closed restaurant.  I bend a little just to so that I would not lose balance.  My tank top is drenched with the salt of my fluids and the rain.  I lick my lips to rid of the accumulated sweat.  They are very salty.

I need to sit down so I sit by the curb to rest a little.  I turn off my digital player and just sat by the curb watching some people and cars pass by.  There were people passing by, mostly hobos and the occasional hooker and hustler.  The hobos stare at me as they push their cart pass me, while the hookers and hustlers give me the sideward glance.  Nobody bothered me though.  They probably thought I just another crazy person running in an ungodly hour like tonight. I try to read each of their minds when they look at me as they pass me by.  I don’t have the powers to do it but I try all the same.   I wonder what they were thinking.   They prolly thought I was some pervert looking for a trick, or some killer looking for a kill, or some runner practicing for an upcoming marathon,  or probably just a nobody trying to get noticed.   Who knows…

As I take the night’s silence, I notice something different tonight. The lit candles outside the doorsteps.  In fact there was one a few meters away right beside where I was sitting.   I remember now.  I though IU have forgotten because I slept most of the day.  It’s the First of November – the Feast of All Saints.  Tomorrow would be the the Feast of All Souls.  

In the Christian Tradition, November first is for the commemoration of all the holy men and women who have dedicated themselves in the service of Christianity, The Feast of All Saints.  The rest of the departed are remembered the day after.   In this country, people forego the commemoration of the saints and go right to remembering their dearly departed. I think that it  is just fitting. Why would one bother remembering someone he does not know, who has no relevance or significance in his life?  I am not one for holidays.  I enjoy them because I get to not work.  I slept most of the day because I figured that this was the only day that I get to sleep in.   Fuck’em saints and let me sleep a little.   I’m pretty sure they’d understand.  

Today is a national holiday.  People go in throngs to the cemeteries and columbaries and ossuaries of this country to clean their departed’s tombs and light candles and pray and even sing karaoke (they do, and this is how we roll in the Islands). 

The irony of the matter is, I never went to the cemetery today.  Reason is, I didn’t want to.  Not just because I slept most of the day, but mostly because I didn’t see the point of going just because it was a day to commemorate dead people, albeit it’s actually the day to commemorate holy Christian people. 

I’m prolly making excuses to myself, being the asshole and cynic that I am.   I look at the candles burning bright and I could smell the wax and burning wicks.  Another hobo passes by and gives me an odd glance.  He’s prolly wondering why I’m looking at the candles with such diligence of a schoolboy.  He prolly thinks that I was going to steal them. He prolly went to the cemetery today.   He prolly bought his own candles and matches.  Or maybe he just borrowed some matches from another hobo. 

I don’t get it sometimes.   Why do we have to light candles in front of our doorsteps when we’ve already lit the candles in the cemetery.  Would it make any difference if we place lit candles in both our dearly departed’s tomb and our doorsteps? In the the greater scheme of things, it probably serves a purpose.  It probably gives us a certain level of comfort or security.   That they may have passed but us left behind who bear the bittersweet yoke of remembering must assure ourselves more than the departed that we will never forget.   This is probably the reason why nobody remembers the Feast of All Saints.  Because in the microcosm of our own universes, they never mattered. They mattered to those that knew them.  But then again, they are all dead. In the end, it’s all about the souls and not the saints.  We are all sinners in our last breath. 

I snap out of my reverie and stand up and start my run again. 

……………..

I continue southwards.  I go to the park where I usually run in the mornings.  I haven’t ran in a long time.  I have been mostly busy with work and trying to stay afloat.  I’m sweating again and I like the feel of it.  I try to quicken my pacing but gravity humbles me. The rain is building up a little and  I do not mind. I cross the elliptical road, not bothering to use the pedestrian underpass since there are not a lot of vehicles tonight.  Once on the other side I circle the park three or four times till my legs begin to give in.  

There aren’t a lot of people in the park tonight.  Most probably because of the holiday or more likely because it’s a Monday.  There are couples in benches, kids playing frisbee in the grass, hookers and hustlers roaming around looking for their Johns and Johns looking for their tricks and security personnel trying on the look for the unsuspecting John caught in the act.   The amusement park is closed.   Some kiosks are open (prolly trying to break even or something).  Nobody’s buying though. I only saw a couple of people running like me. It’s a bit of a relief to see that I am not the only one running at this time of night. 

In the middle of the park is a monument, three obelisk like structures, with an angel holding a wreath sitting on each structure while appearing to be gazing downwards.  The obelisks are connected by three horizontal beams that forms into a triangle if you stand at the center of the structure and look up.  Below are three powerful headlights that change color every 3 minutes or so,  each positioned on each obelisk which kind of gives the viewer an ominous and foreboding feeling when one actually gives time to look at it from below. It does look eerie if you sit on one the benches and try to look at one of the angels.  I once did that in one of my morning runs and I could faintly see that the angels have their eyes closed or seem to be asleep.  Sometimes I wonder if they ever open their eyes when people are not looking.  

The monument is actually a mausoleum that houses the remains of a dead president.  It is rather ironic to think that I did not want to go to the cemetery today and light candles and shit because I wanted to sleep in, only to end up running around a supersized tomb.

I stop at the foot of the monument, sweat and rain and all.  I head for home as I take that realization as a sign. I maybe a cynic but I am a cynic that believes in palpable signs.    A cynic still, albeit a superstitious one.

…………..

I took the jeepney going back.  There were only a handful of us inside the jeepney.  Most of them probably went to the cemetery as some were carrying a bag of candles and flowers and all.  As I was going back to my apartment, I began thinking of the people I’ve lost that actually mattered to me in one way or another. They are not many, but there are some.  And they mattered to me. 

I came into my box apartment and took out some candles and incense which I “borrowed” from my upstairs neighbor.  I lit them.  I placed some candles in my room.  I placed one outside my door by the stairwell.  I placed the incense outside.  Should I say a prayer?  I don’t know.  But instinct or something inside me told me to light the candles and burn incense.  I do not know if it was guilt for not having gone to the cemetery or because this was a selfish act of self preservation or because of some divine or cosmic mandate that I should revere this day.

But “something” told me to light and burn tonight.  I have never forgotten them, truth be told.  They remain in my thoughts.  They remain in certain places, in certain books, in certain food, in certain things, in certain films and songs, in similar situations, in other people.  They remain.  And I bear the bittersweet yoke of their memory not because I of tradition, but because they mattered. And to this sinner,  they continue to be significant. 

looking for Omar…

I think I may have lost myself. It’s been over a year and I, for the most part of my life here in the Coconut Republic,  have been silent.  I haven’t written anything in more than six months.  For whatever reasons, I haven’t written anything in a very long time.  I blame myself.  My only passion and I let it go because I needed a  “career”.   It’s not as if i didn’t try writing.  Honest to God I did many times.  But I couldn’t seem to “force” it.  It’s not as if I ran out of ideas, in fact I had many.  I just couldn’t.  Like a fish out of water, I was out of my element…  I have lost myself.  I guess I’m doomed. 
I feel as if there is a need for me to regain myself.  At least pick up the bits and pieces and try to make myself somewhat of a whole again.  I need to write.  Anything.  Anything worthwhile, stupid or mundane.  Anything.  I don’t have the liberty to choose now.  I must write. 

So I have decided that for the next seven days I will write anything that comes out of my skin, my bowels, my loins, my pores. Anything.  May the cosmos help this sinner.

Technorati Tags: Omar,universe,metaphysics,writing

For St. James...

Know that life is in front of you - smiling and embracing and waiting...

Know that someone is proud of you - of your endeavors, of your hopes and of your dreams…

Know that you are always in someone’s thoughts - always hoping the goodness to come out in you and flourish…

Know that you are good. 

That no matter how you may always think you are not, you are a wellspring of what is good and true and pure. 

The universe declares so, my friend. 

And the universe is never wrong.

Know that you are strong. 

Violent forces may touch you, defile you, harm you, cripple you until it all may seem blur, greyish-black, biting the thing you call your soul, summoning forth the darkest edge of reason beckoning unreason… 

But still you stand panting, bleeding and wounded yet undefeated. 

You are david in the desert. 

Your heart is your sling. 

Your soul, your pebble.

Your will is a trebuchet…

Know that you are loved. 

That there are people who care for you and think and hope the best of you. distance does not exist…

Know that you are embraced. 

Know that your past is absolved, forgiven, consecrated…

Know that now is what matters. 

Now you are here… 

Now you are strong… 

Now you are loved…

Know that you are becoming. 

That what you were and what you are now are together, embraced, post-coital. 

That tomorrow will be another you and the day after tomorrow will rise forth another you… 

And the day after that and the day after that… 

You are a lovechild of tomorrow’s tomorrow’s tomorrow. 

Therefore, 

Be-come.

The universe loves you, my friend. 

I love you…

Know that time is a patient lover. 

Ever constant and ever faithful…

Know that it doesn't matter how long it takes 

Or how many pit stops you make or which road you take. 

Or even if you actually get there… 

What really matters is that you are taking the journey…

Tomorrow patiently waits for you, my friend .

Seize it.

February 23, 2006

A Letter to St. James

Wathcing this right now...

January 9, 2010 - some thoughts

The POTUS, Edward and Bella

Many people think that Obama is the next best thing ever since sliced bread. Perhaps he is.  I mean, if I get to hear my mother say "African-American" instead of saying negro when pertaining to people of color who happened to have African origins or basically to anybody who had dark skin, then Obama must be the next best thing since sliced bread. This happened when I came back to the Philippines January of last year. I arrived in Manila the day Obama got sworn in as the 44^th POTUS and the first ever person of color to be elected to the highest seat of office in any Western nation. The whole nation was tuned in to their television sets and their radios. I wasn't expecting this kind of reception towards Obama's victory. When I arrived home, my whole family was watching TV. Scratch that, the whole neighborhood was watching TV, switching between two channels to see which one had the better view. This was big, I surmised. It was like another man walked on the surface of the moon or something. Then I realized that this was definitely big when I heard my mother use the word “African-American” in a sentence. When I asked her about the sudden paradigm shift on vocabulary, she said:

"Anak hindi politically correct ang magsabi ng negro patungkol sa mga Amerikanong itim." (Son, it's not PC to say negro when pertaining to African Americans).

I almost keeled over when my mother answered that with a straight face, sash and crown and all. All she needed was to walk on stage and wave to her adoring fans.  You see, Filipinos, like any other race in this world are naturally racist. A sad fact about Filipino society is that we tend to lean more on the fairer and whiter side of the color spectrum.  As much as I hate to admit this, we have a color preference. Put it simply it all boils down to this - If your skin is white, you're beautiful, you're hot.  If your skin is dark, you're not. If you are kayumanggi (the natural color of many Filipinos), then you are common and your skin tone has to at least border on the fairer side.  If you're sorta dark or just dark but used to be white (that's the operative word there) then you have an amazing tan.  Filipinos take skin tone very seriously. So seriously that it has spawned a multi-million dollar enterprise  here in the Philippines that's being pushed aggressively by the cosmetic, pharmaceutical and advertising industries. Turn on the TV and you can't even see a naturally colored Filipino model in most of the ads.  The majority of the actors working in the film industry have fair to white to really really freaky white skin.  TV ads, movies, billboards along major roads, you name it - they are all fair, white or sorta tanned. It's like the Filipino has a big sign on his/her forehead that says, I AM WHITE. Or I need to be white.

It would be really easy to blame all of this to four hundred years of brainwashing from our foreign colonizers. The fucking Western Imperialists.  It may well be true that most of our color insecurities stem from the fact that we were colonized by two Western powers and one Asian power in our history; but it would also be way too easy if we put everything into that categorization. I think it is an important factor but its not the only one.  I don't know all the answers and I don't know all the reasons but what I do know is this - our nation is obsessed with achieving that "perfect, white glow," like that vampire guy Edward Cullen and his chick Bella. Almost everybody wants to be Edward and Bella these days. I'd prefer Jacob but he's way too young and bulky for my taste. The truth is that no matter how many soaps or creams we use, we can never be white. We can never be that vampire guy who doesn't seem to need a shower or that stalker girl perving over that unwashed vampire guy. Yet we still search for that coveted whiteness like an El Dorado.

At the risk of sounding too preachy, I would like to believe that I am writing this piece with an inspired tone of voice. Perhaps there is some sort of force out there that is telling me to be a better man and go help change the fucking world with my words and shit. Perhaps I am just intellectually masturbating. I don't know, but I think I need to write this out.

My Quiapo 

 

Two days ago, I was in Quiapo, Manila for the feast of the Black Nazarene. It was my first time to attend the yearly festivities that gathers a crowd of millions to revere and celebrate a life-sized statue of a dark skinned Jesus Christ, carrying a cross in a semi-kneeling position and clad in crimson robes. It is one of the most celebrated Catholic feasts in Manila and perhaps in the whole Philippines. The story behind the Black Nazarene, its beginnings and the miracles associated with it, is quite mythic. The statue was made by an unknown Mexican artist using a dark brown colored wood and it was brought to Manila in 1606 from Mexico on board a Spanish galleon. The ship caught fire during the voyage, which damaged the image and caused its dark color to turn black. Because of this, the image came to be known as the Black Nazarene. Through the centuries, the image of the Black Jesus Christ of Manila has become embedded in hearts of the Filipino people, perhaps partly due to its color, but moreso on the stories of miracles and of conversions and of lost men and women returning to the Catholic faith.  A little over 400 years old, the Black Nazarene has been an iconic symbol of Quiapo, it's third home. “It was initially enshrined in the first Recollect church in Bagumbayan (now part of Rizal Park). On September 10, 1606, the church was inaugurated and placed under the patronage of St. John the Baptist. In 1608, the Nazarene image was transferred to the second bigger Recollect church of San Nicolas de Tolentino built inside the fortress of Intramuros, the part of old Manila where the Spanish colonizers used to live and govern the whole country. But Fate would have it that the Black Nazarene would be moved to it's third and final home, Quiapo, a district outside Intramuros where most of the non-Spanish – the Indios, the Chinese, the Muslim, gather and exist together in not so perfect but somewhat pristine ecology of race, belief, color, economy, status and condition. If you think about it, not much has changed really. I think in some ways it has something to do with the Quiapo Church (which is less popularly called as the Basilica of St. John the Baptist, it's patron saint). More importantly, it has something to do with the Black Nazarene which has managed to survive countless troublesome times in Quiapo's and the nation's history.

I have to confess that I love Quiapo and it's surrounding districts – Sta. Cruz, Escolta, Chinatown, Divisoria, Avenida and Recto. There is something about the place that has me connected to it. It used to be the Manhattan of Manila, where all the glamorous and the famous gather and congregate. I knew the stories from my mother but I never came to know about Quiapo and her sisters in their glory days. What I know about Quiapo is that it is the working class and the mercantile section of old Manila, where all people gather to trade – legally or otherwise. Quiapo is a jungle and it's a beautiful jungle abundant with its own flora and fauna. She is vibrant with all her colors and sounds. She is magical with all her places of worship, her shamans and fortune tellers. She is a cornucopia of sights, sounds, smells, old buildings and faces. One is mesmerized by Quiapo, by it's uniqueness and by it's rough, rugged and unrefined urban landscape.

I fall in love with Quiapo every time I encounter her in my journeys. I once brought a Serbian friend to buy souvenirs in Quiapo and she fell in love with the place.  She could not compare it with the urban landscape of Makati with her majestic towers and sculpted lawns and carefully planned roads.  I tell her that Makati is another country, another realm of thought and dimension.  Makati is the dream, and Quiapo and is part of the bigger reality that is the Philippines. The Filipino dreams in the Technicolor and the Surround Sound of the sculpted modernity of Makati but wakes up in the Urbania of Quiapo's arms. Love it or hate it, it is what it is and I choose the former. Among many other things, she is about self preservation and survival. To many, Quiapo is known for its prostitutes, beggars, criminals, smugglers, quack doctors and drug dealers. To me, she is poetry. Quiapo alone celebrates the human condition. She is my Urbania, my Quiapo.

Following the Dark Skinned Jesus of Manila

Perhaps its because of these stark realities why the Black Nazarene has ended up choosing Quiapo as his permanent home. Quiapo is one suffering lady as the Black Nazarene is one suffering deity. The men and women of Quiapo, and to an extent, most Filipino Catholics, were able to see themselves in the image of the Black Nazarene. They were able to relate to a Jesus that was non-Caucasian and was working class, not to some white deity that was unfamiliar to their sense of reality and contingency. God may have created humanity in his own image, but the Filipinos have fashioned the Jesus of Quiapo Church in theirs. The Black Nazarene is their very own Son of Man of the working class – the Jesus of Manila. This was my realization as I joined the city's celebration of this Jesus of Manila last January 9 as he was paraded throughout old Manila for 2 million people to see up close.

I was never fond of religious images, especially statues. I was brought up Catholic, but I never liked the idea of kissing statues or touching them or even venerating them. Its not really because of the interpretation of the Bible or anything (I really wouldn't care); its just a personal thing. Perhaps its because of their faces; the look on their faces that exhibit so much angst, pain and suffering. I mean, why would you look at what already is obvious?

Out of curiosity, I decided to join some of my closest friends for the annual procession of the Black Nazarene through out the Quiapo district on January 9. And like with religious images, I was also never fond of joining religious processions. One of my friends has been going to the annual procession for 4 straight years. My nephew, whom I was also meeting that day, has been doing this since he was 9 years old. Compared to them, I was basically a tourist. I told myself that if I was going to be a voyeur about the whole thing, I wanted to have an open mind about it. So I did. There were times when I just took snapshots of people and observing their faces. There were even times when I went along with the flow, going where the procession is going or shouting “Viva!” and singing the first few lines of the Black Nazarene's anthem: “Nuestro Padre de Nazareno...” I even attended mass in Quiapo Church. I probably heard mass four or five times. The last one, we were fortunate enough to be inside Quiapo Church. It was around lunch time, and we were able to find an opening and were able to squeeze ourselves inside the Minor Basilica. I was being a voyeur to the truest sense of the word. I was observing every movement, every song they were singing and every prayer they were chanting. I was trying to capture every face that was within my range of vision. I was even surprised to see that my companions were praying fervently. Looking around, I felt out of place when I realized that I was the only one not praying. Trying not to let it bother me, I listened instead to the bishop's homily. He was talking about the Nazarene, of course, how this Jesus was a suffering king. Indeed he was. Suffering was operative word. Throughout the day, I've seen so many grotesque images of Jesus, crucified, carrying a cross, beaten and the like. You have got to hand it to the Catholic Church for successfully utilizing these images as forms and means of social control. For hundreds of years, Catholics saw and understood these images as a clear message that their God was to be feared because he was an angry and punishing God. And for Filipinos, he wasn't just angry and punishing, he was also foreign – a destroyer of other beliefs and practices. The Black Nazarene is perhaps the only exception as the Filipinos were able to form a special bond with the dark-skinned Jesus.

I saw that bond in Quiapo that Saturday of January 9^th. People, men, women, young and old came to the minor Basilica with the hope of touching his hands or his face or a tassel from his vestments or even the rope that pushes his carriage forward. I keep wondering why would people, as many as 2 million, would eagerly wait for hours and even the whole day even just to get a glimpse of their Nuestro Padre de Nazareno. It was for this reason why I came to Quiapo in the first place. I wanted to know why. The only way I could get an answer to this question was for me to follow the Black Nazarene's procession throughout the forgotten streets of Quiapo, Manila.

So follow I did. I went with my friends and followed that elusive Black Nazarene throughout the Quiapo district of Manila. The 5 kilometer procession from Luneta Park to Quiapo Church would have only taken a couple of hours or even less instead of a whole day if not for the millions that gathered for the festivities. This long, arduous and oftentimes dangerous procession is what makes the January 9 a special day to millions of Manileños and Filipino Catholics who gather in Manila's Quiapo district.

I have to admit that I was excited. It was my first time to participate in such an event. Although popular religiosity (or any forms of religiosity for that matter) had long since stopped having an appeal on me, I was still looking forward to everything that was going to happen. It was probably the tourist in me (I did see a lot of tourists that day). I shouted “Viva! Viva!” when the crowd was shouting “Viva! Viva!”. I walked forward when the crowd walked forward. I allowed my body to let go itself and just go with the flow of the crowd. It was one humongous moshpit. I've never experienced Mardi Gras, and I kept wondering that this what must Mardi Gras feels like – being engulfed by the crowd and getting lost in a sea of faces. It was a natural high, like drug of some sort. I didn't care that I was walking the dirty streets barefooted with a bleeding toe. I didn't give a rat's ass if I was coughing like a dying Bohemian with TB. And I sure didn't give a fuck that I smelled like a rat and needed one serious shower. All I cared about was being there. I was there and I was in some sort of trance. We were all in some sort of trance. It's no wonder why people come here every year – not just to get their prayers and petitions answered but to experience this, this joyful feeling of being gone from the world.

Back in the church I saw their faces – they were all clearly looking for answers. Answers for their prayers, as to why they were suffering and as to why they had to endure their own sufferings. If I had superpowers and I could access every person's mind in that church, I was sure as fuck that I would be hearing the same things. Help me. Save me. Cure me. Take this away from me. Don't take her away from me. Let him live. Let me live. Give me another chance. Help me get this job. Why him and not me? Why me? A part of me has always believed that selfishness is a virtue. We pray to higher power for our selfish reasons – some good, some not so good. I did pray in the church. I prayed for my own selfish reasons. I prayed like any person would pray. I prayed for all the people I loved. I prayed for my non-existent career. I prayed for peace (yes I did). I prayed for AIDS, for cancer, for hunger and death. I prayed because I was selfish. And that humbling act of selfishness through prayer made me feel proud of myself.

I lost my cellphone in the process, and so did one of my companions. Somewhere in the middle of crowd in Plaza Lacson while we were in that trance shouting “Viva! Viva!”, some unsuspecting guy in the crowd in Plaza Lacson needed more money and took our cellphones (inexpensive ones, just barely a hundred dollars' worth). This took me and my friend back to reality. We were no longer shouting “Viva! Viva!”. We were thinking about the names and the number in our cellphones. It was a good thing that I filed most of mine in some file online. In the end, in all my reflection and pseudo-intellectual ramblings, I was still a voyeur, just passing through. Fucking tourist. In a way, I was glad that I was one.

In search of a Jesus Figure 

 

Interpreters in all spectrum of the Judaeo-Christian Tradition, in one way or another speaks of a personal Jesus that lives and breathes and becomes significant in a person's own history once that person accepts Jesus as his/her personal Lord and Savior. Interpretations vary, but the message of having that personal relationship with God is the common underlying thread.

I think this is what drives people to go to Quiapo every Friday and every January 9 to encounter the dark skinned Jesus of Nazarene. The Black Nazarene is personal to many Filipinos. It may be a 400 year old piece of burnt dark wood but it is personally significant to many Filipino Catholics. Aside from the personal prayers of each person (including mine) who came to Quiapo, Filipinos are asking for something else, or rather someone else. I think there hasn't been any demigod figure in my nation's history after 1892; and the people are hungry for some sort of messiah or savior. The Black Nazarene is not an Obama who speaks of an audacious way of hoping for a better future. Nor is he a Gandhi who helped a nation realize that freedom is possible without carrying arms. He symbolizes an idea of suffering, of being contingent and limited through one's personal cross and trying to rise above and celebrate the humanity and irony of these contingencies. The image of the Black Nazarene isn't an image of a Jesus fallen, it is an image of a Jesus with his head up trying to rise with his cross. He still suffers painfully mind you, but he is focused, he is not without hope, he is resilient and strong. In my opinion, this is the something or that someone that Filipinos are looking for – some sort of demigod figure or Jesus figure that doesn't have to be like him, but needs to have the basic qualities of a Jesus figure – he suffers, he saves and he suffers more.

One obvious reason why Filipinos have this fervent devotion to the Black Nazarene is because by far, he is the only one who has been consistent from the very beginning. He suffers like his people suffers. He may be clad in royal crimson robes, but he always carries his cross like his people always carry their sufferings. Unlike the nation's past leaders (no exception), he doesn't change policies out of whim. He's not a landlord. He's poor. He is not comfortable. He doesn't complain. He is, like his people, suffering from a daily basis. Albeit wood, but he is consistent. The Filipino people look for consistency in their leaders – their word becomes their bond and if they break their word, they break the bond that ties them to their people. For non-Filipinos and for many non-Catholics, the Black Nazarene may be just a piece of 400-year old wood, but the 2 million people who went to Quiapo last Saturday, he is much, much more. He is the suffering working class. He is the disenfranchised farmer and worker. He is the single mother. He is the industrious father. He is the OFW. He is the jeepney driver. He is the gay beautician. He is the AIDS patient and the cancer patient. He is the unemployed graduate. He is the cigarette lady across the street. He is the young boy or girl in the streets of Manila who dreams of becoming important one day and changing the world. He is an idea. He is a good idea.

My Jesus of Urbania

It may sound that I do not believe in Jesus Christ. In fact I do. As fucked up as I am, I believe that Jesus moves in my own personal history. Apart from MacGyver, he was my first crush. It's ironic to think that he also used to scare the shit out of me when I was a kid (that's another story). He was my debate partner when I was in college. He was my teacher. He taught me important lessons in life, lessons that I hold dear to this day. He taught me compassion. He taught me love. He taught me hope. He taught me poetry. He taught me about my body. He taught me how my actions ripple in the pond of my own microcosm. He taught me that I was a priest, a prophet and a king. He taught me not to give a fuck to what other people would say. He taught me the benefits of consistency. He taught me that I am his reflection, a flawed reflection not striving for perfection but striving to be better, to rise with my contingencies and celebrate them and perhaps one day share them. And most importantly, he taught me that I alone could save myself and no one else. 

He is my Jesus. And he is real. 

 

My Weekend... Bow

As promised, I'll be telling you guys what happened with my weekend.  See here, my two friends from high school, Betty and Wilma (their real names), kinda coaxed me to watch the new Vilma Santos flick, "In My Life" because they thought that I could prolly relate to the movie. The story is about a Filipina mother who decides to go to New York to live with her Filipino gay son who is currently dating a Filipino gay illegal immigrant and how the three yadi yadi and life yadi yada and the tribulations of illegal immigrants in the US yadi yada yadi plus the issues of parenting and gayness yadi yada yadi yada true love in time of prostate cancer yadi yada. The movie sucked ass (and not in a good way mind you). It wasn't that I was hoping for a full frontal nudity from both of the actors or even from Vilma Santos (although a full frontal from Vilma woulda been nice), but the movie was just too commercial that it didn't even pretend to be a proper film.  Don't get me wrong,  I'm okay with gay themed films, I'm gay after all.  I'm just way too tired of films purporting to be gay because of the following reasons:

1. that there are gay characters in the movie.
2. that these gay characters would either be a gogo boy, a hustler, a drug addict, a psycho or a priest.
3. that these gay characters would have a full frontal in the movie or...
4. that these gay characters would suck faces in the movie like "normal" people would suck faces
5. that these one or two or all the gay characters would die at the end of the film
6. that these gay characters are not really gay but they're doing it because a gay role does boost ones market value in the business

OK. Just to get things straight (nyahahaha), I don't mind the nudity.  I'm comfortable with nudity.  But it seems that there is a current trend in Philippine Independent Cinema that an indie gay film would always involve nudity in all scenes.  I've seen some films wherein I was absolutely sure that the frontal nudity, oral and anal sex was used because they didn't have any idea what to do with the scene.  Like, OK, there's still more film before that gogo dancer character OD's and dies, so why don't we have a blowjob scene between the breakfast table scene and the dinner table scene and an anal sex scene between the morning that he wakes up scene and the night that he realizes that he was the son of his regular John scene? There we have it! Voila! Gay film 101.  I'm not being a hypocrite.  I like those scenes alright, but they have just become waaaaay too trite for my taste.  ITS ALL OVER GAY INDEPENDENT CINEMA?!?!?! CAN'T WE THINK OF SOMETHING ELSE? I'm sure you guys can Google something up.  The funny thing is, we {me included} know that this movie is gonna suck but we still wanna watch it because this up and coming model something something is showing his dick or getting blown by someone. Let's lay low on the dick show a little and focus more on developing the plot.  Some of these films that I've seen are even story worthy but the problem is its way too underdeveloped. I mean dudes, if yer just gonna fill up a scene with dicks and asses then I've already got  BADPUPPY and SEANCODY and BILATINMEN and BROKESTRAIGHTBOYS and BAITBUS {OK I'M WRITING WAAAAY TOO MANY PORN SITES NOW} for that.

"In My Life" sucked ass for two reasons:

  

One, the title sucked.  I think the executives just thought of a title that their singer baby could sing in the whooooooole goddamned movie.  The soundtrack sucked.  It was all midi.  An independent film could've done better in the soundtrack department.  Two, the plot was trite and waaaay too predictable.  It's like, haven't I've watched this before in the Hallmark Channel?  I paid 160 pesos for this? To see John Lloyd and Lucky Me brush lips for .5 nanoseconds?  OK I didn't pay, Wilma did. I did like the way Vilma Santos acted.  I love it when she acts her age for a change.  Although there was a lotta shouting which gave me a headache.  

Here's a thought.  Why can't we make Filipino gay films...

• wherein there are no gay characters in the movie?  {is it even possible.  YES, I think it is. Eversince Moulin Rouge, I think anything is possible}
• wherein nobody would die of AIDS, cancer, accident, natural calamity or sheer boredom
• wherein the characters are actual people NOT commercial model beef cakes
• wherein the characters are actually gay? 
• wherein the plot is not copied from another gay film?
• wherein the title didn't come from a song?

Honestly my gay brothers and sisters in the film industry, we could really do much better.  Say that Maximo Oliveros movie about the blossoming of a 12 year old gay kid growing up in the slums of Manila, I liked it.  Sure somebody died in the end but it had all the right elements.  It had the right mix of comedy and drama and struggle.  AND THERE WASN'T ANY SHOUTING OR NUDITY INVOLVED.  

Nuff of that already.

The highlight of the night was not the movie.  Actually there was two.  

First was the chicken that I ate in Don Henrico's. It was AWE-SUUUUUUUM. If you ever eat at Don Henrico's in Manila look for the Captain Crunch Something something Chicken. I think I ate about 10 or something.  Yum.

Second was because of what happened after the movie.  See, my friend Betty loves and jizzes over John Lloyd Cruz although I don't know why but she just adores him.  He's not a bad actor by the way.  Anyways, I was telling her throughout the entire film that John Lloyd looked like one of our classmates back in high school, Paul {not his real name}.  You see, Paul here, is supposedly a closet case.  Now I don't care if somebody's a closet case because I was once in there myself.  Whatever floats yer boat, I always say. It's your business to be in the closet because maybe you have an ample amount of closet space or maybe you're closet value has gone up two points and it's worth a timeshare.  Good for you!  But it infuriates me when some people in the closet mind OTHER PEOPLE'S CLOSETS {straight or gay}. You see, Paul has an attitude.  He likes to OUT people who are not in the room. Like one of my good friends in high school who got pregnant early. She's an intelligent and independent woman who just happened to get pregnant before she got hitched.  We had sort of a highschool reunion in one of our classmate's house 5 years after our graduation.  During that get together, he started talking about her being pregnant and all like it was something vile and to be despised at. He was talking as if he was standing on top of Mt. Fuji or something. Then there was another recent incident wherein he said to a group of our former classmates that another former classmate in high school is gay. The person in question was not in the room {of course}. He delivered the "news" in such a way to illicit a booming reaction from our male highschool friends who reacted like this:

"LIKE WHOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA MC SCRUNGY IS GAY?!?!?! WOHOHOHOHO. WHODATHUNK DUDE?!?!"

then they went on drinking their beers and pissing in the wind and shit.  

I'm glad I wasn't there at that time or I could've said an expletive or two {maybe three}.

OK.  So it appears that I don't like Paul.  OK I don't like him.  Well so does Betty and Wilma.  So while we were watching the suckfest movie that was IN MY FRIGGEN LIFE, I kept commenting to Betty how John Lloyd looked like Paul and like a true John Lloyd fan, she kept defending his honor.  So yeah, the banter went on the entire movie until the movie finally FINALLY ENDED WITH SARAH GERONIMO SINGING IN MY FRIGGEN LIFE! Credits.  Lights on.  AND LO AND FUCKING BEHOLD WHO DO I SEE ON OUR SAME ROW ACROSS THE OTHER AISLE!?!?!??!?!?!?

ASHTON FUCKING KUTCHER!

ANDERSON FUCKING COOPER!

WALTER FUCKING CRONKITE OH HE'S DEAD

KANYE FUCKING WEST WHO CARES!

BARBARA FUCKING WALTERS YESSS BUT NOT REALLY!

Paul! 

Fucking Paul. 

And not only fucking Paul! 

Fucking Paul with a fucking guy!

THE UNIVERSE RULES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Little old humble me was not only flabbergasted but in times like these when the Universe decides to reveal one of her little secrets to lowly persons like me, what does one do?

I PANICKED GODDAMNIT!

Here's what I said on verbatim

"Paul?

..... Paul?????.....

PAUUL!!!!!!"

Mind you, I did all this with my right pointy finger pointed at him.  I think I pointed at him three times like with every name there was a point. 

 "Paul? (point).... 
Paul???? (point) 
PAUUL!!!!!! (point point) 

OK. It was four.

I should've called him Blanche at that time because he was as pale as a mayonnaise when he saw not one, not two, but three of his former high school classmates watching the same  gay film that sucked ass, in the same movie theater, and seated in the same row with him and his "companion". Now Betty and Wilma were a bit slow on the uptake and thought I was still joking. But when they looked at the direction where I was looking they were both......

gleeful.  

If you would've seen the look on their faces it was like they were in  a MasterCard commercial. 

Whereas I, was in total panic.  You see, I was still so overwhelmed that the Universe had decided to bless me with glad tidings on that night that I didn't know what to do!  I hate this about myself.  Fuck I screwed it up. Well, said Wilma and Betty.  I think I did really.  Wilma was about to throw Paul the bone laced with cyanide while Betty was about to cheer her on {they were both friends of the preggy girl that Paul decided to broadcast to our friends years back} when I kept talking and talking and talking.  Honestly I wanted to laugh like laugh that sinister laugh that would ring throughout the walls of that cinema so I could vindicate all of Paul's victims of his Kanyeistic acts back in high school and after but I couldn't because I might die of so much rapture and bliss and as much as I would have wanted to, I couldn't because I still had to write my Great American Novel which is about a Gogo Boy from the Bronx who decides to leave his night job to help poor people in some Third World Country so he could find meaning in his life and thus end up finding the love of his life who happened to be his father in two previous lives. (How do you like them apples?!?!? Huh huh!)  So I kept talking and babbling just so I wouldn't laugh.   

Fuck me hard till Tuesday.   

I screwed it.  

I still hate myself for screwing it. 

Wilma and Betty made that known to me a number of times during the night and they decided to play a practical joke on me by changing one of my contact names on my cell {I think it was Wima's} to Paul's name.  I still hate them for doing that.  

Still, I had fun that night.  See, the funnest part was after Wilma and I got out of the cinema.  We were waiting for Betty who was in the ladies room because of the impending flood that was about to come gushing out between her legs.  As we were waiting outside, Paul and his companion were coming out {no pun intended}.  See, Paul took his sweet time to leave the cinema thinking that the three of us have already left.  What he didn't know was that Betty drank a whole gallon of iced tea at Don Henrico's and she just held the floodgates during the movie because of John Lloyd fucking Cruz.  So Paul and his companion were there.  He definitely saw Wilma and me. Well I waved to make sure that he saw us.  In a panic, Paul and his companion didn't know whether to turn left or right thus they ended up bumping each other then turning right before giving the two of us a quick wave goodbye. 

So that was my night with my two highschool friends, and with the highschool classmate that we didn't like and with the Universe telling us that life is really worth living sometimes.   And by the way, Paul doesn't in any way look like John Lloyd Cruz.

for Carmen.

photo courtesy of Fernando Panoso

BEAUTIFUL.

She died at five fifteen Friday morning. I came to know about it four hours later.

Her body, ridden with cancer, finally gave out and expired in some government hospital in Japan. A friend called my mother about her passing.

How should one feel when a person close to him dies? I honestly do not know the answer. If I had known the answer I wouldn't be writing this. Am I sad? Probably. But I am not sure. The thing with me is that I am never sure of these things. Emotions are very tricky. You can't reason with emotions. You cannot quantify them or dissect them into little compartments so that you can analyze and utilize them to suit your every need. I was never good with emotions. I do think I possess them, but I can't seem to summon them like other people do. I guess I'm wired differently. I am more like her in that sense. She was also wired differently, like me.

She had a gutter mouth. She can be arrogant when she wants to be and she was never apologetic of her actions. She'd do everything that was contrary to other people's expectations. My sister, Carmen. Carrie as we called her.

I learned my first lessons in life through her. She was one of the first to get married in the family out of the desire to escape my father. Back then, my father ruled our household with an iron fist. With two parents and seven siblings and a nephew, our household in one of roughest places in the city was like a banana republic and my father was the dictator. We were raised Catholic but he was Bible-trained by the Seventh Day Adventist through my grandfather. We were all afraid of him, even my elder brother and come to think of it, even my mother. All except my sister Carmen.

I still remember when I visited their home when I was seven. She just gave birth to my niece a month before and I decided to drop by their house out of curiosity. She was so happy to see me. Her husband had just woken up from siesta and he gave me a nod as he passed by me to go to the makeshift kitchen to make a cup of coffee. They lived in a small space, like a box apartment. The wedding gifts were placed in one corner of the room, some still have remnants of wrappings. I looked at them intently and examined each one. Most of them were all the same traditional Filipino wedding gifts consisting of cheap china and crystal, electric fans, picture frames and an assortment of Tupperware products. They all looked like they were bought in the same store.

She offered me lunch and I accepted even though I already ate lunch before going to her box home. It was adobo made of water spinach. Like any other kid I didn't like eating vegetables back then and she knew that. She was a bit embarrassed when she offered me the food. I could tell. I could also tell that it was also their dinner the other night. I couldn't picture her living in that space. At a very young age, I could tell that she didn't like living in a box apartment with a husband and a kid. And somehow, I could also tell that she knew that I knew. I ate the adobo, and I even lied that I liked it and told her that I would ask our mother to make it for me. I left an hour later. I went back home with the knowledge that my sister wasn't happy. I was sad that she and my niece had to eat like that and sad that she had to live in a place like that. She told me to come and visit her and my niece whenever I like. I said yes like I said yes to lunch. But she knew. I learned my first life lesson – don't get married for the wrong reasons.

Two months later she was back at our house. I woke up one morning and found her with my niece and with all her wedding gifts of cheap china and crystal and a plethora of picture frames and Tupperware products in our living room.

She left for Japan later that year. I've never seen her look so happy. The last time I remember seeing her close to this being happy was when she was with her friends. She had a lot of friends, my sister. She always loved going out. She laughed so hard when she was with her friends. Probably because of the fact that my father wasn't present when in those occasions. She loved anything that involved being out of the house and out of my father's gaze. Ever since the wedding and then the divorce which prompted her to go back to our house, my father has been constantly breathing on her neck about failing to sustain a marriage for even a year. It seemed that her plan to get married so she could get out of his dominion didn't work out so well. Being married to a man with good looks wasn't enough to sustain a family. She only realized later that a backbone was more important than facial features. Albeit late, she packed my niece and her things and all her wedding gifts except the electric fan back to our house that morning. I've never seen my father gloat so much. It was like the Marcoses were back in town and the Filipino people were trying make amends for booting them out of the islands. My sister, true to her being wired the way she was wired didn't take it lightly. She enrolled herself to dancing and singing lessons and had managed to get herself a ticket to Japan. When my father found out, it was all too late for him to do anything. It was a sucker punch that me, my mother and my other siblings never dared to do. She won the battle that day. And somehow, she won that battle on behalf of my mom and my sisters and perhaps even my brother and me.

I never knew what she did in Japan. I never asked. When my mother and my sisters did, she would always give sketchy answers so I figured that she probably wanted it that we know little about her life in Japan. What I did know was that her life in Japan was hard. She got married to a Japanese guy that she met in the pub where she worked. He was a pencil pusher. He was handsome like her ex husband was handsome, but like with the first, the marriage didn't last. He gave her a son though. She formed a greater bond with her son than with her daughter that she left in the Philippines which was to be expected.

She did not communicate with us for almost three years. The letters and the phone calls just stopped. We all thought she was left for dead by the yakuzas in some gutter. At fifteen, I could hear my parents talking about her in the other room. Even my father was worried. I was worried. I heard stories about Filipina women in Japan working as entertainers, I already figured that she was one years before.

Then she called us. She said she was going home. I was already in college by then.

She once told me told me that if there was ever a song that absolutely defines her, it would be “Never Been to Me” by Charlene. One night that song came up on the radio and I told her about “Priscilla: Queen of the Desert” and it turned out that she had already seen it. She turned all serious and quiet and just listened intently to the song. She was never usually serious about anything when she talked to us. My conversations with her usually included a sex joke and a cop a feel (she did it to everybody, including my parents). We were smoking that night. When that song came up, she just let the cigarette burn while she quietly hummed along in her head. I didn't know what to say because it was the first time that she was like this to anyone of us. I came to realize that the woman in front of me. The woman I was smoking with that night as we were listening to a cheesy song was not my sister. I've always thought that my sister was this beautiful woman who walked the earth with an arrogance of a bullfighter waving her red flag with such bravado telling the world to bring it on and give her some more. The person in front of me was totally different. It was like being seven again, only this time there were no more allusions or second guesses. This time, truth revealed itself plainly to me like sunrise. This person was not my sister. She was just Carmen, revealing her naked loneliness behind the misty fumes of the fag that she was smoking. And when the cigarette slowly died out and the song started to fade, I saw her face and realized that she was the song. And as much as I didn't want to learn another one of life's important truths that night, the universe decided to reveal itself again through my sister. The sad part was, I was already grown up enough to realize that there was no more “home” to go to to escape this truth.

Our relationship became more profound when I was in China. She never mentioned about that night at our house in the Philippines and that song. We often talk on the phone. She would call me in odd hours from Japan and we would talk about guys and their dicks, blowjobs, anal sex, her skin regimen and more guys and dicks. Call it superficial, but that was how I related to my sister. That was how we talked. The serious issues we never discussed in depth because she reasoned that they would still be there after the discussion – that they would still be unresolved issues. She avoids them like a plague. Perhaps, I do too. I never called her ate (elder sister in Filipino) after that night. I always called her Carrie or Ayrak. She liked it and I liked it too. It was a silent agreement between us that we wanted to be both in equal footing. She would always say that she was the most beautiful child in our family. I'd play along and tell her that t it was usually the youngest who had the best qualities since the genes that were passed on the child were already fine tuned. We'd go on for minutes just outdoing each other. I'd tell her that her breast needed augmenting and then she'd tell me that even sex change wouldn't solve half of my problems. Good times. I never realized that my sister who was miles and miles away from me would actually turn out to be my first fruit fly.

She can be impossible at times. No, she was impossible most of the times. She made so many wrong decisions that affected her life and her children's as well. I didn't speak to her for a time because of that. I wanted her to get her act together and be a mother for once. We didn't talk for a 6 months. I was angry and apparently so was she.

It didn't last though. It only took a phone call at an odd hour. Although we both knew that we still hated each other's guts, we both still wanted the engagement that we have established for it was genuine. And like us, it was beautiful.

The last time I saw her was about five months ago. I had to ask a five day leave from work just five days after I came back from my summer holiday in the Philippines. My bosses understood. I packed like lightning and flew back to Manila. I went two days ahead of them. My sister who was in California went to Japan to bring her to the Philippines. It was a one way ticket for Carrie. I saw her at the airport. She lost a considerable amount of weight and one could tell that she was sick. She walked in very small steps like she had her feet bound with those Chinese shoes. I could hardly hear her voice. When I hugged her she started coughing and didn't stop. My sisters and my mother and even my father who has aged and mellowed through the years were shedding tears. I wasn't.  I was counting the people in the airport. Counting airplanes arriving and departing. Focusing on certain colors like blue, red or green. I wanted to be seven again. Life was too simple when you're seven. You could always go home. But when you're thirty, you're old enough to realize that a home isn't always a safe haven. A home can be intruded by hatred and violence and madness and by sadness. By cancer. When a home is intruded, one asks himself where to go. At thirty in a balmy afternoon in an airport in Manila, I was trying very hard to be seven again.

She managed to get herself a ticket back to Japan. She said that she would return and she would want to go back and spend more time with her daughter and her granddaughter. Yes, she was already a grandmother. The look on her face when she saw her grandchild. It was pure energy.

She refused to believe it was cancer. She refused chemotherapy. She said knew what to do, she would get well and that she would work again. For the first time, the family really talked. All of us. It was a first time that I've seen my brother teary eyed. I finally did cry, over the phone talking with my boyfriend. I didn't want her to see me like that. I knew her well. She didn't want a pity party. She didn't want people crying when they see her state. She wanted a sugar coated reality. And I provided it for her. I told her to make herself well before I left. I told her that she would need to live 25 more years so she could watch her grandchild grow up and get married. I told her she needed to beat whatever it was that was afflicting her. She was a bullfighter and she needed to vanquish the bull in front of her. She liked my version. Somehow, she knew that I understood.

The song came up again on my last night in Manila. I think she may have forgotten that we had this conversation years before. I didn't tell her though. I just listened. This time, she wasn't smoking a cigarette. This time it was all her. No masks. Just her. Carmen.

How does one feel when a person he loves dies? Does he cry? Or wail? Or lament at the life, precious as it was, that was stolen. I honestly don't know.

But I am happy.

Because my sister can be beautiful again.