fullman*

Archive for the ‘Essays’ Category

Today I decided to stay put and hunker down. The year has just ended, and in a few days I am turning 32.

You have to admit that 2009 was a strange year: it had 3 arms, an extra face, a 13th month that had 365 days. It was as if each day is always bent on eating the next one, each week cannibalizing the entire month, scattering red entrails on the floor: typhoons, floods, immorality, backhoes, Gloria, an almost eruption.

A pause then is important. 2009 deserves a proper burial. A comma is not enough, this year demands a period, a full stop.

From where I am I can see an ant pursuing a scent. It has no other agenda, no flash flood to worry about, no relief goods to pack. No Zen profundity to its movements, just the single-mindedness of a line.

We need to treat this year as if it were a line that unravels. Last year was a border.

I stretched and my feet touched China. A physiological feat, but what for? We only need to look around us, stare at each other, to know that we carry our own Great Walls.

Last year, I urged a few friends and some kindred spirits to pluck their hearts and wear them on their sleeves. I did. There was blood trickling down my arm, but it didnt give me love. Instead, my heart was yanked away, and all that remained was a bloody scribble on the pavement: I was here.

But who cares. Take it away, the heart doesnt grow still anyway. When excited it cavorts with the throat. When cold, it clenches itself. When broken it doesnt smash, it implodes and eats itself. When lonely, it wanders. Lonelier, it logs in, uploads, and updates its status.

Quote me if Im wrong, the heart is never still.

Last year, you jumped and I didnt follow. When I finally did I was already on my own. So dont blame me if I didnt welcome the new year with a jump: Id rather begin with a full stop.

Somewhere in Nueva Ecija, townsfolks dangle clear plastic bags filled with water in their windows to ward off flies. It obviously doesn’t work; even the local people I asked about the practice admitted as much. It somehow reminds me of a rural belief allegedly propagated by a UPLB professor that homosexuality is a product of pesticides. In short, Martial Law babies like me turned out to be gay because of Masagana rice. I really can’t explain why the notion persists.

Going back to plastic bags with water, I think I can offer several explanations:

The first one is from the Wile E. Cayote syndrome. Wile E. Cayote is, of course, the other half in the Roadrunner and Wile E. Cayote tandem. He is a fanatic and would resort to everything just to get the utterly monosyllabic Roadrunner (Beep beep). He would employ various ACME devices, deploy ACME gadgets and explosives, lay down elaborate traps, and still he keeps on failing to catch the rather quick bird.

Anyway, the Wile E. Cayote syndrome (or WECS) states that we all have a little Wile E. Cayote in our hearts. Some pesticides – natural and artificial – can kill some houseflies, but not all of them. So some folks just have to be ingenuous: they hang plastic bags with water and pray that with sheer luck and with a little help from gravity the bags would fall and squash the hapless housefly innocently taking a quick rest just below our simple folks’ weapon of choice.

My second theory involves an idea that I harbored since childhood, which in retrospect is admittedly a little sick. I am scared of dogs. I was bitten by what seemed to be a friendly canine when I was still in pre-school. I wanted to pet it, but it bit me instead.

I believe, or rather used to believe, that the best way to ward off dogs is to get a puppy, boil it, and apply the broth to your body – just like a lotion – to repel dogs. Of course I never implemented this idea, but I honestly believed that dogs would find the scent of the cooked puppy repugnant. I think I began to dismiss the idea when I saw a dog eating adobong aso. But it still might work with houseflies – so all it takes is to catch some flies, boil them, put the cooled broth in plastic bags. Hang the bags in windows to prevent flies from entering your house. (Let me warn you, though, that when applied to humans this formula is completely illegal and that animals, too, have rights).

The last theory is based on one of the Baguio jokes that was taken seriously. The joke supposedly explains that the reason why flies and mosquitos are rare in Baguio City is that in cooler places they find it hard to fly because have to wear heavy sweaters or jackets. Thus, they’d rather stay in hot nd humid Manila.

Anyway, the plastic bags were actually cooling devices, at least in their previous state. They were actually – or formerly – the yelo (from the Spanish word hielo) that you could easily buy for one peso in your suking tindahan. People would hang them in windows to 1. cool one’s house and 2. warn houseflies that the house that they are about to enter is cold. Since we were at the heart of a rural community and buying yelo is difficult, they hang plastic bags with clear water instead, hoping that it would be enough to fool the common housefly.

Send me an email if you have other theories.