Frogs

It’s both startling and astonishing how the weather behaves strangely nowadays. In the initial days of March, when summer was supposed to be ushered in gradually, the rains came pouring in, like an unexpected visitor whom one does not know exactly how to receive—-had it came for a bountiful afternoon chatter over bristling cups of coffee or had just got to stop by due to a vital intent?

And now while May slowly loses its days to another month, the rains are hard to come by and the temperature rises even when night falls so deep into midnight, when it is supposed to be cool and breezy outside, and of course in the living room.

Strange weather, really.

So the ground are so dry nowadays that some afternoons ago I decided to weed out the backyard with unwanted growths, having no troubles whatsoever with muddy soil that get stuck in the slippers I wear. I had once popped the idea of landscaping the whole area with Bermuda grasses to my wife—-about a week ago—- but even I had scoffed when she mentioned to me that it would cost nearly ten thousand bucks to have it done by gardeners from the plant store across the highway. What do you actually call these establishments that sells plants and flowers in pots. I actually have no idea as of this moment.

So for now, the bermudas or carabao grasses would have to wait and I’ve got to contend myself of laboring towards manually eliminating the weeds for now (which can actually grow towards knee level when left unattended for so long) and my oh my, it was so painstaking an activity that my muscles ache all night long after that, and when I woke up the next morning, I could barely walk.

When I was scything the weeds, I had discovered that frogs were ensconced tightly in some nooks and corners of the waterless ground. I noticed this sight immediately for it was certainly a bit of an aberration to see frogs while water is so absent in an area. Frogs means water or rain. And rain means tadpoles and croaking reverberations in the night.

I then wonder how these amphibians can keep up with the arid surroundings even when I know that usually they soak themselves in cool water almost all the time. To be sure, it must have meant that frogs have developed adaptation schemes to combat queer weather situation and atypical habitats. Now perhaps there comes the answer to the momentary query of where do frogs goes when the rains haven’t come for a long, long time. They hide themselves in darkened nooks and crevices in the ground, behind and under mossy stones and shady plants, over misty soil where sunrays could not dry up thoroughly.

This reminds me of an episode of one of my favorite television show when I was a kid, Life On Earth. One unforgettable discussion there was this very strange looking fresh-water fish who can survive for months and months to come even when the ground become so dry that the soil is caked all throughout, like in a span of desert that is so cruel to any shrubbery.

I remember how the host Mr. David Attenborough—-he with the effervently musky voice—had dug about a couple of feet into the dry ground and grabbed a morsel of mud formation which he then dropped into a huge basin full of water. And then lo and behold, the pack of solidified mud started to move and slowly a funny looking fish swam away like it was just another day in the river.

It was so amazing how a water creature could survive for so long without water, breathing dry air and being stuck in cakes of mud like a frozen caveman; in order to wait for the rain to finally come and when the water rises again, the strange fish wiggles away into the world where it usually thrive on, and start another cycle in its life span.

Could you imagine a fish surviving out of the water for far too long, like half a year at a time? I couldn’t. But I remember that there was one fish that could actually do that. Therefore presenting an exception to that famous euphemism of being a “fish out of a water”, like I am so miserable now that I am like a fish out of the water.

Amazing survivability this fish has. And also those frogs in our backyard.

Frogs v.2

I have some thoughts that I haven’t had elaborated in my earlier post entitled “Frogs” and I can’t seem to get still without scratching this itch, these questions left in my mind. In that previous post, I have pondered on how frogs and other water-loving creatures survived when rains does not fall for a lengthy period of time; this upon observing that frogs actually deposit themselves in shady areas like spongy crevices underneath fairly size stones and behind leafy plants located in areas where the sun could not penetrate that much.

I see them frogs laying still and unmoving even if I make some hushing noise, apparently determined to hibernate as they read the climate so well—-no rains, therefore we stand still. Amazing tenacity they have for to stand still is to perish where to us humans, we need to move to survive, we could not stand still or else we fail to survive. But frogs could stand still and still survive. In this manner, they could be a better specie—-than we humans.

Now I kept thinking that the frogs I see on our backyard while the rains haven’t come are exactly of no use to me that despite the fact that they aren’t what we could consider as pest—-like locusts ravaging the ricefields or mosquitoes rummaging on our blood—-I had thought of getting rid of them completely, hauling them one by one from the shady places they hide themselves and throw them out of the fence.

Yet I felt that I could be completely unfair to them since they aren’t really a pest in the purest sense except that I do not like them leaping and creeping around the pathways when I am navigating the areas in the backyard. Their dark and slimy skin seems to be an odd sight to me.

I had pondered if in fact frogs are really of use to us human beings. They couldn’t be foodstuff except for some specie plying cleaner locations like ricefields and natural ponds. They can’t also be pets for only stranger individuals had kept frogs as pets; like the ones I saw on Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!

Although I know for a fact that they eat or lick mosquitoes in through their all-too-lengthy tongues and one can say they could help control or regulate widespread mosquito infestations in our environment. But why do we need them when we can just hie off to the nearby grocery store and buy Baygon insect spray or we can just light up a mosquito repellent that we can buy in the sari-sari store across the street. Maybe in the ancient days when the Germans hadn’t yet invented Baygon, that could have been the time that we needed lots of frogs in our surroundings.

But now, I wonder why they are here, croaking at rainy nights and serenading songs that we ain’t really pond of.

In our elementary days, we are given basic scientific lessons on the web of life. I remember that so well including those charts that exhibits different food groups that we need to consume in order to live a healthy and well-rounded lives; you know those rhythmic annotations that says “ang itlog ay pampabilog ng mukha”, “and gulay ay pampakinis ng kutis”, such and such thing.

And in the web of life, we are taught that every creature is of importance to nature and to earth’s existence, that trees could help strengthen the soil and thus prevent erosion, snakes could help minimize rat infestations in the fields, plants spew much-needed oxygen into the air, birds and butterflies can spread seeds for them to grow in a more widespread manner, anteaters help plow the ground in order that seeds could easily grow, fishes give food and nutrients to mankind, and mankind….and mankind….oh by the way, I forgot how mankind could be beneficial to nature; I hope someone could remind me.

And so that’s how the web of life goes; and intermingling process of creatures that could be helpful to each other and to nature in general; that could be conceptualized also in that lesson we are taught as “food chains”—-frogs eating mosquitoes, snakes eating frogs, eagles eating snakes, man eating eagles…such and such thing. I wonder how eagles really taste. Must have been just like chicken.

Now let’s go back to frogs—despite that they could help minimize mosquito infestations, we all know by now that Baygon could be better regulators. Have frogs lost their importance in this world? Are they the vestiges of an old and obsolete web of life, that now we have a new form or web?

Snglguy had once stated that frogs are good barometers of our environment. But what if man could one day invent highly-advanced equipment that could monitor our environment with razor-sharp accuracy, like missile guided Tomahawks that George Bush have? Then, frogs would simply lose every bit of reason to be croaking ugly night songs when the rain comes. Maybe modernity have started to creep into the web of life as we know it, that machines and equipments is starting to dictate another form of system in this world we call Earth that just like in the movies we see, machines could one day rule the world.

It is a scary thought sometimes. But it is just a thought.

Dreams

Tonight I felt very tired. My body is in a state of general malaise. Maybe I was exerting too much effort in the past days—-driving the kids to and fro from school and then blogging vehemently when nighttime falls, staying so late in the process, and then attending to other family concerns. Yesterday, an uncle died and I was in the funeral along with my mom. The weather was scorching at that time and so while we laid our uncle to the ground—to where he would be bound—-I was sweating profusely that a cousin could not help but notice how sweat had embodied me so well that afternoon. May his (my uncle’s) soul rest in eternal peace.

So instead of watching television till past midnight tonight, I just put on some music and tried to relax. I put on Sting’s The Soul Cages and felt so relaxed and my mood was efficiently smoothened by the sublimity of the music, especially the melancholy of this particular record—-allegedly made as a requiem for his dead father and judging from all The Police and Sting records I have acquired over the years, it is to me the best ever recording made by Sting; either as a member of a band or as a solo artist; and could be one of rock music’s all-time best.

In one song (When The Angels Fall), Sting was singing about dreams that he said “perhaps the dream was dreaming us”. I was wondering if actually a dream could ever dream by its own—dreaming a dream while it is a dream in the first place. Could that be possible and logical? Does it make sense at all? Yet I know that in lyrical songwriting and as well as in poetry, there is no rule to language, there is no restriction to language or composition. One poet or songwriter can say what he want and write what he intends. He could even say, “perhaps the dream was dreaming us” and no one could complain and say that it is of no cause or propriety. That’s why every poet is a free spirit and this is possibly be the freedom of language that we wish to be similar with human conduct; freedom from limitations and from every inhibitions.

I am a guy who always dream of dreams. Some of them I have narrated here—-quite starkly. Some believe that dreams foretell of the future. Some said they explain what had happened in the past. But there is just no telling.

I do believe in dreams. In dreams, we live another life, living within another elemental existence and despite the complications and surrealism they present, dreams could mean so much to us. It is a manner of communicating into our inner self, and even towards another level or dimension of existence. Dreams alone are supernatural by themselves. To this day, not even the brightest scientist could explain fully the nature of dreams and what they all mean to us. But we—-as ordinary individuals—-know that they do happen and occur, and recognizes it’s existence as a way of life.

In dreams, we are introduced to another form of existence and another world and in dreams we become not merely ordinary occurrences but also supernatural beings. And therefore dreams are so significant to our lives that Sting should be excused and was probably right when he wrote that “perhaps the dream was dreaming us”.

So dream a little and do not complain.

We Could Pay Up 5% Of Our International Debt

I have not minded yesterday’s SONA by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo although I was aware of it as early as Friday last week. This is somehow very unexpected of me since in years past, I have always been mindful of every SONA speech given, even as early as the Aquino administration. In fact, I had made it a point often in the past to be at home near the time when the speech is about to begin. But this year, I just woke up this morning and as I logged in to surf for the news, I was a bit surprised at myself upon realizing that in fact, yesterday afternoon, when President Arroyo had given her SONA, I wasn’t mindful about it. I could not easily explain why upon such realization, I felt some weight taken out of me, like a thorn snatched from my inside, just like perhaps how one alcoholic feels on the very day he or she had finally kicked out excessive drinking (a bad habit), or any drinking of any alcoholic beverage for that matter. That is, I felt lighter upon realizing that for this year, I haven’t got already the inclination to watch a speech that many says is merely full of promises, but empty in action.

So this year, I felt like I kicked a bad habit and did not watch the SONA live for the first time in more than a decade. It used to be that SONA watching had even became some kind of a ritual for me, like bird-watching or whale watching, making sure every time that I’d be home early in the afternoon and cancel whatever itineraries I have, those that weren’t ultimately urgent, and I would fix myself a sit in front of the television, and the boiling water always constantly heated and reheated for an afternoon tv watching marathon with mugs after mugs of hot black coffee, anticipating how the whole nation would be glued for an annual speech many says is merely full of words but empty in action, and seeing in my mind’s eye the costly gowns the ladies would be wearing, like it was Oscar awarding night, and how the men would be clapping at every pause or slow respite in the president’s oral masturbation, or how they would pretend to be clapping.

In every SONA event, I always have that feeling that if someone—-perhaps, the sergeant-at-arm on duty for that day or the head security—-would take a sack (or sacks) and carry it around the SONA audience—-around senators and congressmen and congresswomen, governors, mayors, generals, heads of offices, colonels, tycoons, media bigwigs, pharmaceutical company executives, political advisers, political minions, exporters, importers, university professors, franchise holders, athletes, world boxing champs, actors and actresses, holymen…no…not holymen—-and collect all Gucci bags, Rolex watches, Bangkok jewelries, diamonds, Italian leather shoes, Italian leather women’s shoes, Armanis and any other thing that glitters and worn for that day—-I have a great feeling that we could pay up about 5% of our international debt right on, at that very moment, or perhaps build-up a huge housing project for ten thousand families, or feed all the hungry children living in the streets—-right here, right now….RIGHT ON THE SPOT.

BUT RIGHT NOW—-just allow me to enjoy this newfound feeling of being able to escape a bad habit; of listening to a speech many says merely full of words but empty in action.

Know

Know one’s self. Know thyself. I have heard or read about this saying, principle, advise, or guiding words a myriad times before yet this afternoon, it was one main major point of discussion that I had with a friend that had came over this morning, and the conversation lasted till early afternoon that I felt like it was old days once again. Family life and work had somehow stave away extra time from our routine like for example this friend who had been camping in a tent for nearly half a year now somewhere in the mountains, about 400 miles away from here, supervising over a harvesting of Gemilina trees that his olds had planted several years ago.

Tony is pretty sharp on these things, ruminations about facts of life—-just as I am perhaps when my mind is clear.

The way to unravel the secret and happiness and contentment he said is through “knowing oneself fully” and then being comfortable with it. The others become a mirror of the self that in every moment that one speaks or interact with another individual, there lies the reflection of the true identity of the converser and thereon—-through this mirror effect—-is the means to find the true self.

If one carries a lively disposition when one speaks, the other communicator becomes lively as well—-most of the time at least. If the first speaker interacts in a lonesome manner, the other person becomes forlorn as well. This is the mirror of the self, according to him. The individual becomes the reflection of the other, and by this means, one would be able to find the true self.

When you are happy, I am happy as well. If you are down, I am down as well. So therefore, he says that if we find ourselves in the other people that we speak to, they become a reflection of our selves and therefore lies the path towards “fully knowing ourselves”, a one good step or means to unravel the mystery of our own being. For in fact, even in high school we have been inculcated with the “four windows” principle of the self, where one window is the “self” as the individual himself/herself knows it, the second one as the “self” that others know about, the third window being the “self” that everybody knows about, including the individual himself or herself, and the fourth window being the “self” that no one really knows, not even the individual himself or herself.

I for one had conformed to this idea—-to know our true selves wholly in order to gain happiness—-even when I believe that the pursuit of happiness is never-ending because for one, how would contentment persist if one does not know one’s real self in the first place. Who am I? What do I desire? What do I intend to attain? Where am I going?

Yet, I digress for a while and have forwarded a countering thought to this idea of “knowing oneself” in other to gain happiness because in the first place, happiness is a very relative fact. Rich people are happy but they can be unhappy also, perhaps for reason not of lack of things, but by lack of meaningful activities.

Poor people are often thought to be full of discontent but they could be happy and contented as well even if they have lack of things, for they might have more meaningful activities. And happiness I said to Tony is a force or fact of life that could not be put under the control of man, that not even the brightest scientist would be able to get a full grasp of it, and state empirically and powerfully that “Voila! Eureka! Omigosh! I finally found the formula for instant happiness!”

Unlike instant noodles, happiness could not really be had by just adding hot water into a small plastic contraption and stir it gently until the noodles are soft and tender.

Sometimes I said, to know our true selves even becomes the instigator of discontent. If I know myself, myself wants this and that. My real self wants to drive a Jaguar in the stony streets of Zamboanga. If you ask me really what I want, I want to have a huge dollar account and be sipping piñacola in Bahamas all day, all night—-all year round. Of course, this is superfluous and I am just half jesting when I say this. But if you survey the population, perhaps 90% would respond that their idea of happiness is to have great fortune and then have great meaningful activities—-like sipping fruit juices in a Caribbean shore.

So it’s better that I readjust my knowledge of my real self so that I could readjust my aim for happiness. At times, we need to shove our real selves under the carpet or kept inside a cupboard, to be taken out when needed.

But hey, if I’ve got to readjust the level of aims I need to have, I need first to find my “true self”.

So therefore, Tony is right. To know oneself is the way to contentment and then have happiness. Not exactly. To know one true self is “one” way to unravel the secret of happiness. There might some other way, you know.

The River

This is a poem I’ve written five or six years ago. It’s about the unity of man, as a sublime idea. Whether or not it is achievable—-in a world full of discord and disharmony—-is a question that waits so ardently for an answer. And I hope it to be answered in the most positive way.

The River of Mesopotamia

In the ancient valleys of Tigris,

in the days of still molt and rock;

a river sung the serenade

of the beginnings of life,

as it moved in crystalline fluidity,

to brim with sparkles and light,

and come across upon a rock reckoned in time,

it is a moment set forth as a matter of design.

And the river became two,

the great parting of waters

in the dawning of the Earth,

to thread two different roads

and two different eras,

one found in the East,

another in the West,

to spread further and further,

until the sound they hear were

merely of their own

and nothing more.

Rushing in vigor and strength

each alone in the wilderness,

among the great wars of the world,

through the ashes of kingdoms burnt,

the mischief of kings and emperors,

through scorched earth of conquests,

of kingdoms and empires

both the fortunate and the inopportune;

as they run feverishly,

one oblivious to the other,

welcoming merely the beatings

of their own hearts

and of no other,

and every other beating of the heart they hear

was of the enemy and the enemy merely.

Amidst the rage of their marathon,

seemingly unending and without destination,

and with a ferocity so great that

even rocks of great prominence

would crumble into dust—-

by the sheer strength of their pursuits,

or by the wave of their hands.

As another time was set forth,

where for once they looked heavenward

the journeys they threaded

finally found a single star,

to speak the truth in their own hearts

that in their own glorious runs,

no matter how magnificent and forceful,

still the Heavens are their own navigators,

upon the comets and constellations,

so that the rivers would find a path to travel,

a road set forth from the beginning of time

while they go nearer and nearer,

they begin to hear the same beat

that is not merely of their own separate hearts,

but of two hearts moving as one

running faster and faster,

like stallions in the hills of a desert

where in the beginning of time

there is only one river

that became two,

and then becoming one again.

The Pond

One night in 2001, some months after my last job in the government was terminated, I was stuck in bed gazing at the ceiling and was in deep thought on what to do then with my life. I had a job offer from a friend but the pay was way too low compared with my last paycheck that I much rather tried some other options then, like taking the bar examinations the following year. It was hard turning down that job offer especially when the offer came from someone I knew too well. What if he had needed my services that badly? But then, I had a future to take care of and so I had to inform him quite honestly that I was preparing for the bar that summer and it wouldn’t be in my best interest to have my hands full on an accounting/marketing job. I had to take some risk I had decided then and go for the farsighted plan that could offer me probable long-term benefits than be stuck with a dead-end job.

Perhaps it was too much of youthful diffidence in me that at some nights I had shivered just thinking how the realities of existence is not what many of us had supposed to be when we were much younger, that the world is at times a dog-eat-dog existence where one must claw up the ladder just about every time, even to the point of elbowing others and stepping on their shoes just in order to find a semblance of meaningful existence.

That particular night, the weather was so warm that even when the electric fan hummed at its fullest, I had perspired so monstrously that I could almost hear my sweat dripping from my skin. Drip…drip…drip…I turned on my stereo and listened to an aria of Andrea Bocelli and the coolness of his voice made me feel a little better. Conte le partira, Paesi che non ho mai…Vel dutto ver sutto conti….Conte le partira…

And then I fell into a sleep that wasn’t like sleep at all for it felt so much like I have just glided from one dimension of existence to another. Unbelievable as it may seem and yet those who believe in parallel existence may just sympathize with me on this. Perhaps you’d start to think that I have become so much of an inexhaustible dreamer that I started to live more of my life in dreams than in the real world. I won’t blame you for that for sometimes I feel that way already.

In that dream, I found myself suddenly bursting into a barren landscape where the ground was red all over and the air was smoky as yellow smog floated like grimes on the atmosphere. I gazed around and I could see a nearby hill gradually rose from the ground and I could see wide plains and gray mountains from afar. The sky was red, like a bleeding wall to my sight. I could see no bushes or any form of greeneries around and if you’d seen some photographs of Mars, then you might have the best of idea of how the place appeared to be. The air was so still that I could hear no sound whatsoever that every step I made I could clearly hear. I felt my feet a little harassed by the crackling ground below me, those plates of mud solidified by too much dryness. I decided to walk further until I reach a point where the smog cleared and in a sudden I saw a small pond just in front of me, with a leafless tree standing along its shoreline. The tree reminded me of the guava tree that I used to climb when I was a child. I could remember that guava tree only too well because I had fallen from it twice before and it was there that I saw a strange creature of the night, a huge manlike being with the head of a horse, with some burning object flickering from its mouth, perhaps a giant cigar, just like what our elders had always said about kapres.

I stared into the pond and saw that the water was a familiar blend of yellow and green, like dew, and it was so calm that its surface didn’t moved at all. That was how I reckoned that it was a very deep pond by just looking at it. Shallower waters are always fragile to the eyes.

The water in the pond looked so inviting and it seemed to have spoken to me like it had a life of its own. I went to my knees and smelled the water. The scent that it evoked gave me a mild exhilaration of emotions that it became all the more tempting for me to dive into the water. I touched the water again and a small amount of it in my hands was enough to quench the waterlessness of my body. Still, I was hesitant to go into the water as its depth intimidated me so much and I wasn’t a good swimmer. Suddenly I heard some rustling noise behind me and I immediately turned to look at the direction of the sound. As the smog cleared, a women in a white gown appeared and she initially smiled at me. It was a little unusual that I never felt any kind of fear the very moment that I saw that floating woman even though as I write this particular passage, I have goosebumps all over me. I stared at her and wondered what’s the purpose of her calling me into this dream. I wanted to ask her why she wanted to meet me but spoke nothing instead. In that dream, I did not remember uttering any words; in fact not a single word was spoken by anyone in that dream. I really had initially felt that it was the woman who had called me to that dream and that she had some important message for me.

I wanted to express so many things to the woman hovering just in front of me but I struggled to mumble even a single word. After a while, the woman stared at me so intently and it was a little strange for me to realize that she could actually speak to me by just merely looking at me. And slowly I had also realized that I could get all my thoughts across to her even without uttering any word. She told me through mind talk that there was something that I should know and some person had called me into the dream and not her. Then she moved slowly towards me but as I thought that she was coming closer to me, she actually went farther and farther from me until she disappeared from my view. It was a completely spellbinding distortion of distance and space.

Then my gaze was turned towards the nearby hill that I had mentioned earlier and there appeared another person that was also in white gown, just like the woman had worn. I thought at first that the woman and the person floating above the hill was one and the same person but as I examined more carefully, the person on the top of the hill was actually an old man with a white flowing hair that was too long; too long in fact that I had mistaken him for a woman in a glance. He had the face of a very old man and to tell you quite honestly, the old man looked like Leonardo da Vinci, the one most of us had seen in many self-portraits of the legendary Italian artist.

The old man caught my eye and without saying a word, he ordered me to dive into the water. I hesitated at first but the old man was too insistent that he kept on pointing towards the pond. Again, it was sort of a distortion of space and distance that despite of the distance of the hill from where I stood, I could see the old man quite so clearly like he was just nearby.

As if the old man had suddenly gained control of my body and mind—-even from a distance—-I slowly took steps towards the tree and climb it, this despite my clear wavering. My climb was swift like I was a trained scaler of trees. As a child, many of my playmates teasingly dubbed me as “Monkey!” for I had always loved climbing trees when afternoon came. On a period of the day when most kids in the neighborhood took their catnaps, I go play by my lonesome instead and climb trees. My favorite tree to climb then was the Datiles beside a small fishpond that bore so many ripe fruit that I picked and gobbled in my mouth. I have grown to like the sweet nectar coming from the Datiles fruit. The guava tree on the one hand does not bore any fruit that we kids rarely climbed it. There was also a Chico tree about five thousand feet farther from the Datiles and it is where most of us kids love to climb the most and where we play catch-me-if-you-can games atop that huge tree, would you believe. It was so dangerous to play games while hanging on branches because a simple mistake or a broken branch would surely send the unfortunate kid plummeting down to the hard ground. It was so risky but as kids, we did not realize that.

Snakes In The Mountain

Let us be reminded for all times that a man without his prayers is like an ant lost and wandering in the middle of the Saharan Desert. He is alone and grasping for direction, he has no compass in his hands and the road ahead does not tell any clue about his destination. He has no map in his keeping and the path that he threads is dark and winding that no signposts would assist him in his journey towards Eternal Life.

Our religion and our practice of faith are part of our spiritual life that without the benefit of its ethical codes and guidelines, we would meet the hardest of times in coping with the disputes of the modern life where in every corner we turn, the temptation to sin and to do wrongful ways are ever threatening. Our faith is the sieve that shall purify us out of our impurities.

When daylight comes into view, we must remain before Him in thoughtful prayers for a new day is about to come and we need the beacon of his never-fading light, His ever-permeating wisdom and guidance. When dusk appears, as we ready ourselves in bidding farewell to another passing of day, our prayers shall be in gratitude for the wondrous gift of life.

While we know in our hearts that faith alone could not save our souls, it is of no wisdom to dispel completely our practice of faith and to disregard the power of our prayers. We must conform to the habits that give meaning to our pleadings before the Lord. We petition Him in many ways and our faith shall provide us the avenue for our supplications. Faith and works shall go hand in hand like hammer and nail for without the other, one alone would be fruitless at most.

We must seek the calmness of the churches and the temples at least once in a month so that we do not forget faith. We must establish regular prayers in the conclaves of our homes for to forget the practice of faith would redound to forgetting the Lord God and the things He desires us to be. We must not harbor apostasy for the flames of the unending fire shall await those who procrastinate.

Our act of faith is also our language of obedience. As we attend the ceremonies of our churches, we are declaring in effect that we are in full obedience to the Lord. How else could we show Him our greatest of faith if we just sit in the corner of our room, without prayers and without seeking the harbor of the churches and the temples?

Our path towards the Kingdom is often fraught with the many traps of sins and errors that whomsoever says he or she is without need of the churches is one who trek the perilous road, without a map in his or her hands, without a lamp that shall light the ways.

Without our prayers, the heart becomes inundated with discontent and sorrow that Satan knows always when to take the proper opportunity. When we are at our weakest, it is the very moment that the demons come to disturb our minds, and take advantage of our human frailties, to examine and study carefully our desires and wants, and then to reward these desires if we commit folly and mischief, upon their commands and biddings. When we are the weakest, our hearts desires the most things, even the things that we should not desire.

The demons come into us like water into a vessel. The moment they notice a man whose spiritual conviction is weak, they tempt him like a child reaching out for a candy. They would notice a desirous soul miles and miles away, like snakes in the mountain who seek their prey in hills miles and miles apart. There is the imbalance in a man that makes him an easy prey to the demons, and makes him fall on the wayside, and that would be the end of his spiritual balance. When a soul moves farther and farther away from the churches and from the harking of the priests and the preachers, the soul languishes in neglect of faith and becomes the slave of wanton desires and would be the most fragrant prey to the snakes in the mountains.

When the demons come, we often do not notice them for they come in the name of deceit and their masks are not easily uncovered. We only realize their grievous influence when it is already too late, when remorse finally fills our hearts. If they come often because of our lack of faith, there would come a time that the hearts does not feel remorse anymore that the soul and the demon becomes already one and the same, and salvation of the soul becomes the farthest.

We must shield ourselves from the snakes in the mountain for even if we are miles apart, we could become prey to these demons if we are the least in faith. We fortify our stronghold through our habitual practice of faith. The more we become closer to the men of God we become shielded the more. We must hear the preaching of the knowledgeable ones, and we must strive to fill our hearts with the verses of the words of God and be strict in our obedience. We must read the words frequently for they are like balms to our wounded soul. We must gain our shield against the menace of the Darkness and we must fortify our faith. In daily prayers, we are brought into the most righteous path and we shall not be like a lamb lost in the wilderness.

Religion, and the practice thereof, is like a sieve upon sandy water. It sieves away the materials that make our hearts impure. We go on sieving the water again and again in order that that the sands may not stain the water we drink. Is it not that the more we sieve the water, the more it becomes pure?

In our journey towards Eternal Life, we must be vigorous in sieving our souls, to chase away the many impurities that haunt the spirit. No one escapes sin and therefore no one shall boast that he or she will need to sieve no more. Our acts of faith are our compass, the maps in our hands. If we are without the signs that lead our voyage, we are easily led astray into the darkness of sins and soon our path would lead to the lake that burns with an unending fire.

We have faith that is why we do works. We should have no faith alone or works alone. We must have both faith and works. We must do both for the two must come like hammer and nail.

(This is part of a work-in-progress work in the past.)

Freedom

(An edited version of an article I wrote some years ago, a discussion on ‘freedom’.) 

A slab is a piece of slab. You run your hands through it and you would know very well that it is a piece of slab. You would feel the contour, the roughness or the smoothness of the surfaces.

And then you smell it and to be certain it would have the same wooden aroma of any piece of slab you have ever hold.

But freedom to us is freedom without the sense of sight or the sense of touch. Freedom is never always freedom when it is not susceptible to a very particular sense or meaning, but always floating in the air. You would never smell it nor touch it. You would not be able to see it also.

It is invisible to the eye and what is invisible is always a mystery. It is aside from the forces of our senses, even outside the power of our wills.

Freedom has gained its own masters and its own set of philosophers-to be defined and classified in so many words and terms—and yet it remains that men kill and die for their own kind of freedom as against another man’s freedom for the freedom of one may not be the freedom of another. For at times the freedom of one man means the detainment of another.

There is that kind of freedom that is harbored by men of ardent philosophies-adventurous and complicated-to reason out that man should be left alone to determine his or her own fate, to be responsible for its own action, to be independent of thought and will, to the extent that they defy not only the norms of man but even the dictates of our God Almighty. Free will had become their sole reason for being and being for them is merely to lavish themselves with the dictates of their instincts-to the most mundane and to the basest. And further on, they trample upon every reason in order to free themselves of natural inhibitions and lavish themselves in improper pleasures of the mind and of the flesh, for they say they should be left alone; for they say man is born free. They are blind to the nature of things.

They are the ones who would travel the ends of the world just in order to unearth every loophole in any man’s law and that of the laws of God. They would scream and shout invectives if they are caught upon for they deify freedom like a religion and their religion is merely their own will and that of no one else. They are like beast in the wilderness that, once caught in their own traps, would gnash with the most ferocity at their captors, frothing in the mouth, unyielding and defiant.

They do not overcome their own will, they let it flow unhindered and spoil their own souls. They open the floodgates of excesses that they do not only become merely excessive but they take pleasure in wicked things. They introduce themselves into conducts nearly bestial and diabolic. They wallow in the flood of lust and violence; truly they are wickedness reborn.

Indeed, man was born free, to be able to have volitions and independence of thought and action. Freedom is the greatest gift of God to man. He is born free so that he would savor with delight the beauty of life here on Earth and yet freedom was not given for man in order that man should defy Him. Freedom is for man to live an eventful sojourn in this temporary world.

Even as a child grows into adulthood, he realizes that he has the power of self-determination, to steer his mind and body towards the ends that he desires. And yet, he also realizes that despite the independence of his will, there are many things that he could not do. He realizes that he is susceptible to many limitations—-both seen and unseen. He is hindered by the forces of nature just as when he could not stay dry when a storm pours down on him while he is walking on an open field. He is also hindered by other men, that he could not for example take anything in sight lest his possession be at risk of being taken.

Despite of freedom, he could not be underwater for long less his breathe is sucked out of his breast.

Despite of freedom, he could not lift himself above ground like birds do.

Despite of freedom, he could not spit on another man’s face lest he be at risk of danger.

He could not do violence less he be violated himself. He could not take lest his possession be taken also. He preserves his things. He could not as easily speak against anyone less he be spoken also in the darkest of manner. He could not kill for he would be at risk of death himself.

Man therefore has freedom but he is not free to do all things. There is no freedom absolute.

And yet many deify freedom like a religion. They cry freedom like they were in battle and their lives were on the line. In the name of freedom, they lavish their flesh in strange lust and in violence. It is false freedom that they speak of.

Let us see the man who simply walks the streets and then he meets another man walking towards his direction. For this man, it is freedom for him to just pass by and ignore completely the man he meets. It is freedom for him not to address him nor offer comfort to that other man even if that man would be dying of starvation. There would be no law or ordinance that he would violate. It is also freedom for that walking man to greet the other man, feigning a pleasant façade, to welcome him and give him comfort even if he is at the least of discomfort. There are just a lot of things that the walking man could do in such a situation, a lot of space for freedom.

And yet despite freedom, that walking man could not just spit into the face of the other man for he would invite havoc and mayhem possibly. He could not kick or trample him unless he be trampled himself and kicked towards the ground. It is not freedom for him to shout invectives and insults and accusations lest he be insulted himself.

Men may do many things but there are things they could not do.

Freedom is beauty to mankind and yet its unhindered use is dangerous. It is like upon salt that a pinch shall add taste to the viand but a horde of it shall suffocate the eater.

Would you be the one who is impatient and to wallow in the muck of wickedness and in temporary pleasures, only to lose everlasting peace and blissfulness in the Afterlife?

What would you gain if you gain all the treasures in the world and yet to lose your salvation when death comes calling?

Would you be the rabbit who sought pleasure first and let pass his destination for long?

Or would you be the turtle that labors with every step and be the one to reach destination first?

Do not be impatient and overcome your will against the temptation of wealth and of the flesh for the rewards of the righteous is enormous-an Eternal Life in Heaven-while the punishment for those who defy shall be the torment of the Unending Fire.

The beauty of freedom is for us to savor the beauty of life; to breathe the breezy air; to welcome the warmest of sunrises and sunsets; to bask in the most effervescent of daylight; to be enthralled by the flowers in the garden; to be endeared by the singing of robins in the summertime.

They say to love is freedom. That freedom is love and that love is freedom.

But a man loves the whole and not merely the superficial. To love is to give and not to ask. It is to love the wholeness of being and not merely the superficiality of things.

To love is to seek the person as a whole and not merely a part of him or her.

To love is never merely to seek the flesh for it is never to love when lust is the primary purpose of adoration—it is an abuse of person. For it is to love to seek the gain of the other and not merely the benefit of the self.

Many seek love in the name of freedom that they result into excesses of the flesh.

They say it is freedom for man to seek the flesh for man is free and so he is free to be blissful. They seek wickedness if they only know this, for man is created apart and above those beasts in the wilderness.

These are men and women who see another person as merely objects; as merely tools and weapons in order to pursue their selfish and improper intentions.

Let us seek the proper freedom so that we may be guided towards the Light, towards the goodness of things and not to wallow in wickedness.

Those who are excessive shall never sleep tight in the night for their own shadows shall bother them and they always realize these things too late.

Be free and yet be patient.

Can We Be Honest Even For Just A Moment?

This is a very interesting tag from Gypsy and it’s about ‘Honesty’, the one that is not an easy word.

But hey it’s the 21st century, we can be as honest as much as we want to be.

Before anything else, here’s some rules for the tag:

Can you fill this out without lying (it’s not hard)? You’ve been tagged, so now you need to answer all the questions HONESTLY. At the end, choose at least 8 people to be tagged. Don’t forget to tag me!

To do this, copy this entire message, then go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, start a new note, paste these instructions in the body of the note, delete my answers, and type yours. Easy!

Next, tag people and list their names at the bottom. Have fun!

1. 
   

   What was the last thing you put in your mouth?

   
   

   Macaroni salad and mushroom.

   
   




2. 
   

   Where was your profile picture taken?
   Cebu – the one on my Facebook profile.

   
   




3. 
   

   Can you play the guitar?
   Pretty well. I was in a band when I was college.

   
   




4. 
   

   Name someone who made you laugh today?
   One of my student.

   
   




5. 
   

   How late did you stay up last night and why?
   About midnight. Watched television.

   
   




6. 
   

   If you could move somewhere else, would you?
   Yeah, I would like to. Somewhere where there lots of fresh rural wind.

   
   




7. 
   

   Ever been kissed under fireworks?
   Not yet. Is it possible?

   
   




8. 
   

   Which of your friends lives closest to you on Facebook?
   Uhmnnn….Veepee Elago.

   
   




9. 
   

   Do you believe ex’s can be friends?
   I could not imagine. Haven’t tried it before.

   
   




10. 
    

    How do you feel about Dr Pepper?
    It taste like medicine.

    
    




11. 
    

    When was the last time you cried?
    About last week.

    
    




12. 
    

    Who took your profile picture
    My wife.

    
    




13. 
    

    Who was the last person you took a picture of?
    My kids.

    
    




14. 
    

    Was yesterday better than today?
    About the same.

    
    




15. 
    

    Can you live a day without TV?
    No.

    
    




16. 
    

    Are you upset about anything?
    Yes.

    
    




17. 
    

    Do you think relationships are ever really worth it?
    Yes. Otherwise, I won’t be in any relationship.

    
    




18. 
    

    Are you a bad influence?
    No. I don’t think I am.

    
    




19. 
    

    Night out or night in?
    It depends.

    
    




20. 
    

    What item(s) could you not go without during the day?
    Watch.Clock.

    
    




21. 
    

    What does the last text message in your inbox say?
    We are on the way…

    
    




22. 
    

    How do you feel about your life right now?
    Just okay.

    
    




23. 
    

    Do you hate anyone?
    Er…sometimes.

    
    




24. 
    

    If we were to look in your Email inbox, what would we find most?
    Facebook updates.

    
    




25. 
    

    Say you were given a drug test right now, would you pass?
    Yah. Right on.

    
    




26. 
    

    Has anyone ever called you perfect before?
    I think once.

    
    




27. 
    

    What song is stuck in your head?
    Halfway To Crazy by Jesus & Mary Chain. I just listened to it after along, long time. It was one of my most fave song from college days, and perhaps of all time.

    
    




28. 
    

    Someone knocks on your window at 2:00 a.m., who do you want it to be?
    A lotto representative…lol.

    
    




29. 
    

    Wanna have grandkids before you’re 50?
    Well, if my kids are pretty stable by that time.

    
    




30. 
    

    Name something you have to do tomorrow:
    Wash my car.

    
    




31. 
    

    Do you think too much or too little?
    Too much.

    
    




32. 
    

    Do you smile a lot?
    Not so much or I’d be insane…

    
    

For this tag I am tagging Buffwings, Wileyes, Hazel, Bambit, Sam, Miss Luchie, Splice and Barrycade.

Wong Kar Wai and the Meaning of Life

( A repost from April 13, 2007 )

I was walking the downtown streets some days ago, feeling a little bit restless for reasons unknown to me specifically, at least to the one or those that I could not pinpoint to with reasonable certainty. Perhaps this is one sort of a malady that I have read about once before in some old decrepit medical book stacked in my mother-in-laws deteriorating wooden cabinets, those that were partly eaten by termites, looking so fragile that a simple disturbance on it would let spew a handful of mashed-up and grounded wooden particles—-which I find to be so repulsive knowing that they were the end results of some crawlers’ eating frenzy.

This malady is sometimes called depression or anxiety problems (they go by many names depending on the author of the medical book I read) and once in a while I retreat into this state and like water, I just have to let go of it for I could not rein it in my hands—-no matter what.

I passed by the new barbershop just in front of the old Ever theater—one that had seen better days—-and I thought I might get my hair done. I stared at a glass partition from a nearby store and had an inkling that my hair wasn’t as disheveled as I thought it was. I even saw it to be fitting to me despite the general rugged look and I had thought then that moviestars have lengthy hairs even if they were males, having that blown away look. I was a little worried that if one sports a blown away and rugged crown of hair and at the same time not being a moviestar, one might be easily taken for a madman walking the streets at high noon. But that sidewalk mirror was good to me and I felt that my uncut hair would be fit for a star. Some mirrors are good to me ; mostly they are not—-especially those in my bedroom.

So I passed with having a quick haircut that day and hoped that the blown away look would be fitting enough for me for quite a number of days more. I then strolled farther down the city sidewalks and came towards a crevice full of DVD stalls and I felt a little blown away after seeing so many titles available and on a dirt cheap prices at that, considering that for 80 bucks, one can get a DVD disc that contains 8 to 12 movies in it, and most of them were blockbusters and of very recent release. Some of them were not even shown yet here in local theaters. That’s how tempting it was for movie aficionados like me. I could not say now that I haven’t had scored myself some pirated items before (I had been smoking a brand of cigarette smuggled from Hongkong when I was in college) and of course, it would be unthinkable for me to not have seen a pirated movie before. I had of course.

But while I was glancing on stacks and stacks of DVD disks, my mind was swinging between the forthrightness of not buying a pirated item and having a devilish pleasure on filling my hunger for movies at throwaway prices. I could always remember that video clip that goes with every movie I rent from video stores and the loud, thundering reminder that says: “You Don’t Steal A Car! You Don’t Steal A House! You Don’t Steal A Movie!”, and somehow my inner conscience is disturbed by such that whenever that clip goes in every movie I rent, I wanted to shout at whoever that guy behind the thundering voice and belch, “Stop It! I Heard You. You Don’t Have To Remind Me That All The Time. You’re Not My Mother!”

My inner conscience had gotten the better of me that time so I just slowly walk away from stacks and stacks of salacious movies and guilty pleasures. I then remember that a new Video City branch had opened just a block away and I headed immediately towards it. The moment I had gazed through the available movie titles, I felt an immediate surge of gleefulness inside me since I hadn’t expected that the new video store could offer such voluminous number of titles, especially of recent ones. The video store where I usually get my dose of movies is so miserably lacking in inventory that I guess I won’t be visiting it from now on, except perhaps in some momentary lapse of reason in the future.

I felt like a child lost in a sea of movie titles and I almost picked up every disk that had caught my eye, until I reached the “Drama” section and there in front of me was a copy of Wong Kar Wai’s “2046” and I was excited to high heavens. It had been much talked about in the net world about how good it was and for a long time, I was trying to get my hand on a copy of it, and for a while there I thought I wouldn’t be able to see it for it would be unthinkable that it’d be exhibited in local theaters considering that it was released about three years ago. And I haven’t had seen any trace of it in every video rental store I went before.

I had anticipated this movie ever since I have grown a special fondness for oriental art films, especially those of the legendary filmmaker Zhang Zimou, whose film “Farewell To My Concubine” was so wonderfully entertaining and had primarily introduced me to other notable movies from China or Hongkong. Before that, ever since I was in high school, I had been delighted by the magic of Akira Kurosawa’s masterpieces like “Ran” and “Dreams”.

And so “2046” was about a writer who had become so engrossed about his own written piece that he saw himself being dragged into it, and feeling the pains and longings of the characters he had made himself. “2046” was a work about a train that once in a while travels towards the year “2046” and no one who goes there ever came back, except for one, the male protagonists. It is said that those who journey towards this strange destination are those who are longing for love, perhaps a kind that could not be found here at present, for how come they have to travel towards a point of no return just looking for it? What love is there out there that some have risk even their own mortal existence just to gain it? It was written by the writer that nobody actually knows how long for one to get to “2046”, for some it would be faster, but sometimes, to those unlucky travelers, it might take so long that they would start to lose their senses and sanity while inside the rain, having nothing to do except sit down and wait for the arrival time, one that is not definite and without any sign of coming. The main male protagonist in the novel had such kind of journey, one that was so lenthgy and seemingly unending that he fell in love with an android, an artificial human being stewarding the train.

The writer had his own life in the movie “2046”, a life lived sometime in the 1960’s where according to him “he just found himself to be in”. He earn his meals by writing columns and kung-fu stories for local dailies and billeted himself in a room with a door number that states “2046”. That was where he had sourced the title for his novel, a number which in his own mind had taken his fancy and unusual interest.

Along the way, he met a wife of another man named Bai Ling, who had runned away from her husband for having another woman and had rented a room just across his own. They slowly fell for each other and started a torrid affair filled with nights of passion and unhindered bliss. Until one day the woman asked him if ever he wanted to stick it out with him. But the writer wouldn’t agree to be exclusive to one single woman and stressed that he was seeing other women while he was having an affair with her. Bai Ling was furious and ended their relationship with tears flooding from her eyes and agitation painted all over her face.

They both started seeing other people and whenever they passed each other in public gatherings, they both pretend not to know each other and according to the writer, it was difficult to pretend and not notice her. It was clear that it was more difficult for Bai Ling to pretend and it showed so much in the utter sadness that found harbor in her teary eyes.

Six years later, the writer was in a relationship with a woman that had a similar name to a woman he had an affair so many years ago. It wasn’t Bai Ling, but another one who had resembled Bai Ling’s general appearance, a circumstance that had led me to ponder whether or not Bai Ling and Su Lizhen was one and the same person. The new woman eventually left the writer for some undeclared reason for she said, “she just have to go away”.

And inside a car—-drunken and weary—-the writer finally realized that he is starting to lose ‘the meaning of life’. He was thinking to himself and thought that six years ago, he had a chance to find the meaning of life when the beautiful Bai Ling offered herself to be his long time partner. But he had other ideas and now regretted it.

He met Bai Ling for one more time but the feeling was never the same aagain and it had seemed that in the end, he had entirely lose grasp on what in his mind was “the meaning of life”.

The movie “2046” eventually ignited in me the question about life and its meaning. I try to see myself in the writer’s own predicaments and evaluate if I had what he call as “the meaning of life”. Have I lost it? Or I am living it? Or perhaps, the meaning is just not clear at all.

One way or another, we all are trapped within the world we now dwell, sometimes embroiled in raucous routine everyday conducts, sometimes just swaying to where the wind blows, and often forgetting that at the end of the day, we might not be able to entirely grasp the so-called “meaning of life”. What’s in store for me when I grow old? Where am I heading? Am I happy or am I miserable?

Am I that sort of individual who would jump into a train and head to “2046”?

These are just questions and I hope that this momentary bout with depression would vanish like thin air. And then I’ll have in my full grasp the so-called “meaning of life” by then. Whatever that means.

The Worth of My Coins

I remember walking the streets of Manila one early morning so many years ago, heading towards my preferred destination that day when I chanced upon a sight that I thought only existed in movies and in the news broadcast that we see on television.

In a parked utility vehicle were two children of about two or three years old, perhaps brothers, playing giddily after waking up, as children always do when they wake up together with their siblings from night sleep. I had questions again in mind similar to the ones I had when was in the jitney with the old man wearing unpaired slippers. This questioning mind runs always in times like these.

Was it their vehicle that they were using as a roof in the coldest of the night? I examined the clothes they were wearing and they were dirty and tattered and the things upon them were likewise. They could not have possibly owned that costly vehicle.

Why would they sleep on the streets? Are their parents with them? I looked around and I could not see any older person around. I looked further and I could see a woman in tattered clothes also, about fifty years old in age, walking towards my direction and I proceeded to go about my concern. It was so early in the morning that the streets were not yet filled with people going about their daily chores and duties. As I walked away from the children, my mind was still heavy with questions. Why would they really sleep in the streets? The answer was of course very obvious—they do not have the proper roof on their heads. They are so poor that they could not afford to have a respectable shelter, so foolish of me then not to see this fact so quickly.

Deeper went my thoughts that I reckoned it is not merely the absence or presence of money that we ask why there are still people living in the streets. Why are they asserting themselves in urban areas when there are so many rural lands to settle and where there would be enough soil to grow food from and water is ever flowing in streams, and there would be natural materials to build a house made of natural resources, like that of thatches?

I could say that a house can be made of things that are made of wood and/or thatches and if money is more than substantial, you could build a house from concrete and steel, a more pleasant one.

Or you could build a house completely on thatches. There are materials that grow from the ground, the abacas and coconut leaves grow from the soil and this Earth has them in abundance. Soil is not like gold or platinum, minerals that are so rare to find. They are so common that in every step we make, there is soil. Where did all the soil go if there are people who could not grow their own food and harvest the materials to build a house? When there is soil to till, even if it comes in lesser mass, no one could go hungry. As the Chinese adage says, “I have one mouth to feed and two hands to feed it”.

Perhaps, many lands today (the arable and accessible lands) have become the dominion of some and not of the masses like they were centuries ago. We may castigate the poor for asserting themselves in urban areas—in languid and filthy slums, where jobs are scarce and life is too difficult—just like the people living in the streets. But where would they go if all the lands were already of dominion of some merely, where a single person or family owns sometimes thousands and thousands of acres of arable land. Where there are those who call themselves farmers does not even have a farm of their own. The children I have witnessed sleeping in the streets were creatures of urban life that perhaps they would ask themselves “To where would we go if we leave the streets?”

In the days of old, in the era of many ancient tribes—of the American Indians, the Neanderthals and the Maoris—where the concept of land and plants and animals comes all as God-given, put there by the Creator for all to live by so that no one would die of hunger—- men hunted in packs. There was the hunting leader and there were the rest of the packs. They moved as one and reaped the fruits of their pursuits as one. They approach the prey like a pack of wolves or a herd of lion. They also plant in great coordination that they have developed an agrarian scheme that is so systematic that many scientists believe to this day that many of these ancient people had attained a high level of civilization during their times.

The Indians of Old America hunted in groups, to lead a herd of bulls towards a cliff, in order to harvest the most amount of red meat. And the bounty is brought to their camps where colourful tepees decorated the broad wind-swept grasslands, and aromatic smell of burning herbs emanated throughout the prairie lands that they had dominated once before. Their women, their children and their olds would welcome them with great merriment and celebration and paeans of songs and dances would grace the night in order to honour the cunningness and virility of their men—the hunters of the clan. Most of the old men who wait for them were hunters before but have retired due to weakness of body.

While they hunt in packs, the old members of their clans, the women, the children and the sick could still be able to eat despite their inabilities. The weakest members of the clan are being carried at the back of their more virile brothers. They hunt in packs so no one is abandoned and left to die on in an environment that were at times unkind and punishing.

And yet we say at times that we live today in the zenith of human civilization—- as men today are already able to conquer space and developed human-like machines. And yet we say at times that the Indians and other ancient tribes that have roamed this Earth before us were backward and uncivilized. Who is truly the more civilized is a question we should ponder upon now.

What if water is already the dominion of the few? Would there be people living without water just as they live without land of their own? What if air would become the dominion of a few fortunate men?

The children sleeping on the streets drew heavily upon my thoughts that instead of proceeding with my own concerns, I took some time to pass by a bakery and fished ten pesos out of my pocket and bought six pieces of tasty bread. They were not so tasty but at a cheaper price, the bread came in larger sizes. It was the hunger of the children that was primordial to my mind in that situation and not their taste for good food.

I proceeded to the vehicle and slipped the bread into it while the two children looked back at me with the usual astonishment one finds in the face of children as they stared at a stranger who just came suddenly out of nowhere. If they were glad or not was not among the questions I had asked that morning; even after I had been able to slip the bread into the parked vehicle. It was enough for me to be rest assured that their hunger was satiated that morning.

It is no secret and certainly not a mystery to you anymore that the ten pesos meant so little to me. I am not rich but if I lose ten pesos or if they fell out my pocket, I would not mind them so much. I would look for it but would not despair so much if my search fails. But to the children who I found living in the streets, they meant the food on their breakfast table. I know how poor people are. I have been so poor before that the pangs of hunger have battered me before. I know their kind of hunger and I am familiar with the specie of hunger the poorest of the poor suffers. They ate on breakfast and sometimes their hunger is satiated until afternoon that my ten pesos would have been half of their daily need for food.

What is the worth of ten pesos to me? They meant my half pack of menthol cigarettes, my jitney fare for that day, my twelve-ounce soda, or a stick of chewing gums. But to the children and to the old woman, it was their food on the table.

Such is the worth of my coins.

( From my unfinished book “The Night of Angels” )

The Democracy of Good Deeds and the Communism of Bad Deeds

Goodliness is the absence of ugliness. It is the idea of the basic goodness of man, in order to attain a harmonious co-existence among men in this material world—- where violence and other forms of evil are ever permeating.

It is often said that to err is human. Indeed the man is said to be imperfect that it is almost impossible to see in your mind’s eye the perfect goodliness of man. It is in fact upon these premise that I seek to push the idea of a mode of action I shall call now “The Democracy of Good Deeds and the Communism of Bad Deeds”.

It is upon the point of imperfection of man that we should find motivation to improve ourselves for indeed to be human is to be imperfect. Let us not tolerate however the idea that “I am human therefore I sin”, but rather “I am human and therefore I err”.

Is it human to err so gravely?

It is not that we should demand upon ourselves to evade every mistake (it would be unrealistic), but it is for us to deviate from doing deeds that are gravely wrong. There are deeds committed by men that are so grievously abominable that there is no room for reasoning out that they are merely mistakes or errors of judgments. It is purely evil where men take great pleasures from the indiscriminate lavishing of the flesh, without regards to responsibility and consequences.

Just as so to the very greedy businessman who takes all the wealth for himself disregarding the labour of his workers, to undervalue the fruits of another man’s labour, for a man may have hundreds of acres of land but without workers to help him produce wealth from such land, it is virtually useless to him—he might as well sell it.

Just the same with the government official who routinely steals money from the finances of the government; for the act of altering accounting records is not a mere error of judgment anymore.

The idea that I am promoting here is the concept that men should always be conscious and cognizant about every major action or words that he make in his everyday life; to be fully aware of its effects to himself or herself as well as to others; for every action has a two-pronged effect, that is, the effect on the self and the effect on others.

If I speak these words, how does it benefit me and how does it affect others? That is the basic question that should be inculcated in each and every one of us, as if to allow such mechanism of thought to be already a second skin to us, a habit that could not be easily broken—to have that perpetual questioning mind and heart, the very spirit of the inner workings of our consciences.
One may argue that this concept of constant awareness to every word or action may curtail the spontaneity of human interactions. We must not however be very particular about this disadvantage, for indeed there are many words or actions that we could do without the questioning heart and mind.

The act of drinking coffee or tea, whether to sing or dance, or whether to read or write—these are actions that do not demand proper guidance of the questioning mind and heart so that men could still flow with spontaneity in their daily conduct.

But whether or not to appropriate this money knowing full well that it is not yours is an action that requires proper contemplation especially when it is already of sizable amount.
Just like the act of whether to seduce this woman or not?

The same as to the question of whether or not to gossip against another person or not, just the same as to the question of whether or not to help a man with an empty stomach lying on the side streets. These are deeds that demand the guidance of our questioning minds and hearts.
The concept of the democracy of good deeds is easier to illustrate and understand if every one of us treats the self as a body of government. For indeed every government is democratic or communistic, proletarian or authoritarian. Either, or.

“So what is my form of government?” you might ask. What is best suited for me and most beneficial to me? What form of government could enhance my spiritual self?

A purely democratic government, where there is an unhindered flow of freedom, is not ideal for as I mentioned earlier, everything in excess is scoffing by nature. Absolute freedom results to wantonness and excesses.

A purely communistic government is at the same time not ideal for it would strangle us and prevent us from experiencing a meaningful life. A suitable government for the self therefore would be a well-balanced government, not purely democratic but also not purely communistic.
It should be a government that is situated somewhere in the middle of two extremes.

This form of government, if we relate it to the government of the self is what I call “The Democracy of Good Deeds and the Communism of Bad Deeds”.

It is a concept of self-government that in its truest form is the propagation of all good deeds and if possible the curtailing of all bad deeds. If this concept would be attained, we would attain a certain level of goodliness that exacts the very idea of how the Creator had intended man to be—righteous and enlightened—entirely fortified in his resolve to struggle against the piercing menace of evil, and then of temptation.

In the democracy of good deeds and the communism of bad deeds, it is ideal that man should propagate good deeds democratically, that is without hindrances in so long as it is possible while on the other hand, bad deeds are curtailed by a government with an iron hand, a communistic attitude towards mischief and waywardness.

If we say that man is of no perfection as we all should admit, then we must recognize always the possibility of sin that in this context, man should be about ninety-five percent good in his everyday conduct and five percent bad, this five percent are for those mistakes that are committed unknowingly, a sort of a margin of error, for indeed no man is perfect.
Is this concept attainable? That is the million-dollar question. It is a question that every man should ask himself every day and every hour of his life.

For certain, if one would hold this concept of the democracy of good deeds and the communism of bad deeds as proper and acceptable guidance, one would more or less feel a sentiment of enlightenment and of awakening of the self.

Our Sin Is Like Upon A Deceitful Serpent

In the scorched ground of the desert, one must walk not only having in mind the harshness of the blistering sun or the ever threatening sand storms that always brings havoc in the cold night. To journey upon the desert, one needs an extraordinary care for something that is often unseen yet the most fatal. It is not the danger of the scorpions or the treacherous snakes that I am speaking of but the lethal trap of a quicksand.

The man walking through the desert must watch out carefully for any hint of soft sand along the way. There is just no other way to foresee danger brought about by the quicksand except by the keenest of foresight. When one is caught in it, the fastest to any hard ground must be sought otherwise the sand would soon eat up towards the level of the knees. When the sand goes up to the length of the knees, others must throw a sturdy rope to the sinking man so that the sand may not reach the level of the waistline. If the waistline is already sunk into the perilous sand, a mule must be had in order to pull the man out of his quagmire. If the neck is already threatened even the might of a camel might not be able to save the sinking man.

Our sinful ways is oftentimes like upon a quicksand that the more we get sunk into it the harder we are able to pull ourselves from certain perdition. Like the man sinking slowly into the sand pit, the sinner must free himself at the earliest possible time for any wasted moment could mean the end of life.

This is the nature of our sins, they often start as trivial matters and ends up us grievous infractions. They are propagators of habit that the more we wallow into the irresponsible pleasures they afford us, the harder we could stay away from them. There are even those among us who thrives on sin that without sinning they become restless and impatient. It is most wise and ultimately the most prudent to anticipate every sin even when they are still farthest from us, that long before we meet could them along the way, we must change our courses immediately and evade them. It is of wisdom to be farthest from sinful ways even from the beginning.

When something wicked comes along the way, we turn the other way lest wickedness may abuse our weaknesses and we become wicked ourselves. If our eyes are threatened by indecency, we must cover our eyes for a little while until lewdness has already passed us by. We see no evil if we turn farthest from it. In the days of old, Jesus had once said that if one would look upon another person with one left eye and lusted upon that person, he or she has already committed adultery that it is better for one to pluck out the guilty eye rather than all the members of the body be thrown into the fire.

If men along the way shall speak something harsh, it is better to cover the ears for a little while until wicked tongue have already pass us by. We hear no evil if we refuse to hear or heed the words spoken by evil men.

If along the way, we at times feel the desire to speak evil things against a fellow man, it is better for us to close our mouth for a little while until the indiscretions of our emotions have already passed away and then we evade the inanity of gossips.

There are times that we become the child who drools upon a candy after gulping down a bagful, and our elders would reprimand us for our excesses. Thereafter, we would speak like our words become engraved into stones and promise not to take another candy. And yet, the stone cracks easily when no one is already watching and we break our promise as we go right back again into the forbidden ways.

At times, the sinful ways is like the huge ball of rock that Sisyphus had earnestly push towards the top of the hill over and over again only to fall back flat towards the ground every time he nears the peak of the hill.

For at times our sins starts like a ball of snow falling innocently from a steep Himalayan mountain until the kindly looking ball of snow gains more and more mass and weight and grows into a deadly avalanche.

There are grievous things that we do that started merely as daily errors. As we repeat them they grow into an avalanche. We often hear about the man of many small sins who one day finally committed the most heinous of all transgressions.

The thief would surely feel the heaviest of remorse the very first time he commits such grievous sin of taking away another man’s possession. The second time he commits the same wrongful act, the remorse may still be there but it becomes less and less in weight. When he repeats the act over and over again, remorsefulness would finally become a stranger to him that his conscience had already become stunted. Until the day that he takes the largest of all sum and feels no remorse whatsoever. He is the thief that is caught in the quicksand of his soul.

And so is with the grave murderer. The first time he commits the act of taking away another man’s life, he would turn in his bed until dawn comes and sleep would not visit him for a great number of nights. And yet, the second time he commits the same transgression the heart would feel a little less of remorse. And when the act becomes repeated over and over again, the remorse would fade away and become absent and his heart slowly becomes not that of a man but that closer to a wild beast.

And so is with fornicators and those who are adulterous in their passions, lavishing themselves in the irresponsible pleasures of the flesh. The man would wallow in lust for the first time and he would be like a child wounded in the heart and his eyes would be a little bit teary eyed for remorse would remind him heavily of his misdeed. But when the call of lust comes harking again, the man forgets his previous remorse and goes right back into the irresponsible pleasures of lust. When he becomes lustful at all times and always fail to heed the call of his conscience, remorse would become absent completely that committing these lustful sins becomes merely commonplace for him. He is already trapped in the quicksand of his bestial instincts.

For sin is a like a deceitful serpent that approaches us from the back, under the cover of darkness, while the wind is very silent in the stillness of the night and we are deeply lulled into sleep. When we become caught in the promise of a sudden but temporary onset of pleasure, the kind that our sins could provide, we become like upon a moth caught in the spider web or a journeyman who is caught in the certain peril of a quicksand. If we do not become heedful and vigilant, the sand may go towards our neck and we may not be able to get ourselves back into harder grounds and our souls would meet its certain perdition and lose the promise of Eternal Life. We must repent while the sins are lighter still, for the heavier the sin the harder would be the road towards a fruitful repentance .

Read more on “The Voyage“

The Universal Jesus

In these days of Lent, I share the occasion with our Christian brothers and sisters, as I likewise bring myself before the solemnity of faith, in the manner that I see fit. In this connection, let me present to you an article that I have read some years ago in an issue of Newsweek Magazine. It was titled “The Other Jesus” and was written by Kenneth L. Woodward in the March 27, 2000 issue of the said magazine. I have been a voracious reader of many periodicals in the past—-both local and international—-and of all the articles that I have read, this one turned out to be the most memorable for me and the one that I have especially kept not only because it was about faith and religion (which magazines like Newsweek and Time rarely venture into), but mainly because it was a very informative and insightful piece of writing. There is something about this article that I could not point to, which is the reason why I always go back to it every now and then, every time I go rummaging through old issues of magazines and newspapers. I don’t know why I always do these things. Delving into old papers and documents had become an annual ritual for me that without doing it even for once, my year is not complete. I like the feeling of going through old things that I have piled in boxes and huge envelopes because they almost always remind me of past things that endear to me, that I could go all day excavating through old books and photographs and the dust coming from them gives such a unique and amorous scent. This year, at this particular point in time, when the kids are mostly home for the school break and summer provides a lot of empty hours for empty pleasures, I went backtracking again, through piles of old magazines and found this one magazine that contained the article that became my favorite of all time.

Due to copyright restrictions, I won’t be able to present here the verbatim content of the article “The Other Jesus” but I am giving you the synopsis, as best as I could. The online archives section of the Newsweek Magazine have this article stacked but it isn’t free. If you have online subscription to it, you’ll have free access to past issues.

In Catholicism, Jesus Christ is revered as the Son of God, the most recognized member of the trinity and He is the Redeemer of Mankind. In Pope John Paul’s own words, “Christ is absolutely original and absolutely unique…” The Gospel Christ is the most well-known personage of the Messiah and many of us had learn to know Him as the man who was born of a virgin, who healed the sick and made the blind see; One who brought back to life a man who had already gone dead; who once walked on water and calmed the storms in the sea; and who gave His life to humanity in order that the sins of the world may be taken away.
But Jesus Christ is by Himself a universal icon that is also accepted and embraced by many other religions of the world.

For instance, Jesus Christ is one of the most revered prophets in Islam and His name is mentioned in the Quran in the most respectful of manner. Moslems fully believe that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary through a miraculous birth under a palm tree and that he had already spoken words when he was still an infant to the effect that He was indeed sent by God. What was a little unusual is that when there came a time that many doubted the birth of Jesus by a virgin, many Moslem scholars came to the front in order to defend and affirm this miraculous birth. If in the Gospels Jesus Christ was crucified and died on the cross, to resurrect three days later, the Quran on the one hand declared that He did not die at all and was in fact saved by Allah before He was crucified and was ascended directly to heaven. Moslems of all sects believe that Jesus Christ is the one prophet that will come back when the end of the world becomes near and will defeat the anti-Christ. To them, among all prophets and messengers, only He and Mary were untouched by Satan.

In Bhuddism, many Zen practitioners see both Jesus and Buddha as brethrens in their quest to spread the teaching of “universal love”. Parallels in their lives are reiterated as they were similarly born in a miraculous manner to chaste women, and both left home for the wilderness and were tempted by a Satan figure. Like Jesus, Buddha also work wonders and preached compassion, selflessness and altruism and had challenged the religious establishments pertaining to his time. A Russian anthropologist had once postulated that Jesus had one time in His life paid a visit to a Buddhist seminary in Bhuttan and His short sojourn there was even recorded in one of the documents written by monks there. These “findings” has gone largely unconfirmed of course, but this was clearly an attempt to inculcate the person of Jesus Christ into the context of Buddhism.

In Hinduism, Jesus takes the form of a legendary shaman that once journeyed to India and learned the ways of attaining god-consciousness. Many Hindus are drawn to the figure of Jesus as an image of compassion and non-violence—virtues that are taught in Hinduism. For them, Christ-consciousness, Krishna-consciousness, and God-consciousness are one and the same thing. If Jesus Christ had propagated the singular teaching of “Love thy neighbors”, Hindu philosophy adheres to the notion that says, “You and I are the same things.”

Jesus Christ as a revered icon is a more complicated affair in Judaism because for one, Christ had challenged its very norms and principles when He was here on Earth. For generations, the teachers of Judaism had tried to isolate Jesus Christ as a trivial revolutionary that spoke of heresy and religious rebelliousness and had caution every Jew to distance from Him. But in time, many reformists in Judaism had started to accept Jesus as an “admirable teacher” and one who personifies the sufferings and redemption of the Jewish people, through many struggles like the Holocaust and statelessness. And besides, Jesus Christ was a Jew Himself and that fact is undeniable by itself and therefore, Judaism remain to have a claim on His greatness.

This is the “Universal Jesus”; a figure that transcends not only geographical partitions but also penetrates the restrictions brought about by the differences of faiths in this world. He may not be seen in the same exact breath by every religion in this world, but a closer examination shows that He had become so revered by many that not only Christianity has a claim on Him, but also Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and even Judaism. All great religions of the world embrace Him as a religious icon, one way or another, in their own respective ways.

The Pond

One particular night, the weather was so warm that even when the electric fan hummed at its fullest, I had perspired so monstrously that I could almost hear my sweat dripping from my skin. Drip…drip…drip…I turned on my stereo and listened to an aria of Andrea Bocelli and the coolness of his voice made me feel a little better. Conte le partira, Paesi che non ho mai…Vel dutto ver sutto conti….Conte le partira…

And then I fell into a sleep that wasn’t like sleep at all for it felt so much like I have just glided from one dimension of existence to another. Unbelievable as it may seem and yet those who believe in parallel existence may just sympathize with me on this. Perhaps you’d start to think that I have become so much of an inexhaustible dreamer that I started to live more of my life in dreams than in the real world. I won’t blame you for that for sometimes I feel that way already.

In that dream, I found myself suddenly bursting into a barren landscape where the ground was red all over and the air was smoky as yellow smog floated like grimes on the atmosphere. I gazed around and I could see a nearby hill gradually rose from the ground and I could see wide plains and gray mountains from afar. The sky was red, like a bleeding wall to my sight. I could see no bushes or any form of greeneries around and if you’d seen some photographs of Mars, then you might have the best of idea of how the place appeared to be. The air was so still that I could hear no sound whatsoever that every step I made I could clearly hear. I felt my feet a little harassed by the crackling ground below me, those plates of mud solidified by too much dryness. I decided to walk further until I reach a point where the smog cleared and in a sudden I saw a small pond just in front of me, with a leafless tree standing along its shoreline. The tree reminded me of the guava tree that I used to climb when I was a child. I could remember that guava tree only too well because I had fallen from it twice before and it was there that I saw a strange creature of the night, a huge manlike being with the head of a horse, with some burning object flickering from its mouth, perhaps a giant cigar, just like what our elders had always said about kapres.

I stared into the pond and saw that the water was a familiar blend of yellow and green, like dew, and it was so calm that its surface didn’t moved at all. That was how I reckoned that it was a very deep pond by just looking at it. Shallower waters are always fragile to the eyes.

The water in the pond looked so inviting and it seemed to have spoken to me like it had a life of its own. I went to my knees and smelled the water. The scent that it evoked gave me a mild exhilaration of emotions that it became all the more tempting for me to dive into the water. I touched the water again and a small amount of it in my hands was enough to quench the waterlessness of my body. Still, I was hesitant to go into the water as its depth intimidated me so much and I wasn’t a good swimmer. Suddenly I heard some rustling noise behind me and I immediately turned to look at the direction of the sound. As the smog cleared, a women in a white gown appeared and she initially smiled at me. It was a little unusual that I never felt any kind of fear the very moment that I saw that floating woman even though as I write this particular passage, I have goosebumps all over me. I stared at her and wondered what’s the purpose of her calling me into this dream. I wanted to ask her why she wanted to meet me but spoke nothing instead. In that dream, I did not remember uttering any words; in fact not a single word was spoken by anyone in that dream. I really had initially felt that it was the woman who had called me to that dream and that she had some important message for me.

I wanted to express so many things to the woman hovering just in front of me but I struggled to mumble even a single word. After a while, the woman stared at me so intently and it was a little strange for me to realize that she could actually speak to me by just merely looking at me. And slowly I had also realized that I could get all my thoughts across to her even without uttering any word. She told me through mind talk that there was something that I should know and some person had called me into the dream and not her. Then she moved slowly towards me but as I thought that she was coming closer to me, she actually went farther and farther from me until she disappeared from my view. It was a completely spellbinding distortion of distance and space.

Then my gaze was turned towards the nearby hill that I had mentioned earlier and there appeared another person that was also in white gown, just like the woman had worn. I thought at first that the woman and the person floating above the hill was one and the same person but as I examined more carefully, the person on the top of the hill was actually an old man with a white flowing hair that was too long; too long in fact that I had mistaken him for a woman in a glance. He had the face of a very old man and to tell you quite honestly, the old man looked like Leonardo da Vinci, the one most of us had seen in many self-portraits of the legendary Italian artist.

The old man caught my eye and without saying a word, he ordered me to dive into the water. I hesitated at first but the old man was too insistent that he kept on pointing towards the pond. Again, it was sort of a distortion of space and distance that despite of the distance of the hill from where I stood, I could see the old man quite so clearly like he was just nearby.

As if the old man had suddenly gained control of my body and mind—-even from a distance—-I slowly took steps towards the tree and climb it, this despite my clear wavering. My climb was swift like I was a trained scaler of trees. As a child, many of my playmates teasingly dubbed me as “Monkey!” for I had always loved climbing trees when afternoon came. On a period of the day when most kids in the neighborhood took their catnaps, I go play by my lonesome instead and climb trees. My favorite tree to climb then was the Datiles beside a small fishpond that bore so many ripe fruit that I picked and gobbled in my mouth. I have grown to like the sweet nectar coming from the Datiles fruit. The guava tree on the one hand does not bore any fruit that we kids rarely climbed it. There was also a Chico tree about five thousand feet farther from the Datiles and it is where most of us kids love to climb the most and where we play catch-me-if-you-can games atop that huge tree, would you believe. It was so dangerous to play games while hanging on branches because a simple mistake or a broken branch would surely send the unfortunate kid plummeting down to the hard ground. It was so risky but as kids, we did not realize that.

Let’s go back to the dream. And so I was finally atop the leafless tree looking downward to the small but deep pond below me. I had gained enough balance on top of it that I virtually stood upright like I was standing on a diving platform. The height of the tree was a little mesmerizing to me, about the same height of a two-story house and this had made me more hesitant of jumping into the water. The particular inhibition I felt when I was atop the leafless tree always gets back to me as a familiar memory every time I was in the same circumstances in the real world, even when I was still a child. This dream of the pond happened only about four years ago but some scenes in that dream came to me as a form of déjà vu even when I was still so young and fond of bathing in many rivers and oceans that are found in Zamboanga. Perhaps just like any locality in the Philippines, Zamboanga has just too many places where one could enjoy the water, from the beaches in Cawa-Cawa (its so polluted now that bathing there is prohibited) to the gushing riverways in Pasonanca, far deep into the forest. It’s sort of a strange distortion of time and space when the scenes in a more recent dream came as déjà vu in my childhood days.

It took me some moments in deciding whether to finally jump into the water or not; until that final moment I held my breath so steadily and immediately dived into the water. I felt those moments while I was on the air, as if in a slow motion, as my body plunged right into the water. I felt those feeling of free falling again, like falling from cliffs and beds in my other childhood dreams. Finally, I hit the water and heard the water splashing just as I was entering it. I found myself inside the pond looking upward to the surface. Above me I could see a ray of light while down below was complete darkness. The water was so cool to my body that I felt a sudden elation and regretted for a while why It took me a while to decide to jump into the water. I felt a general happy feeling, an indescribable feeling that made me forget all those previous fears and hesitations I had earlier. The water was solid and thick like it wasn’t any ordinary water at all and I could feel them strongly on my skin. I did not sway my arms or shuffle my feet in order to stifle my fall into the pond for mostly, I had enjoyed being inside the water that as I fell deeper, while I just let my body gradually settle into its depth, the more feeling of elation I had felt. My body went deeper and deeper into the pond and I did not fight my fall even though there was some moment that I realized that the pond may be a bottomless pit that even while I was getting deeper and deeper into it, I could see nor feel any ground below it. Worry started to descend upon me when I could not still see the bottom of the pond. I started to panic but before panic had taken hold of me, I felt some hands grabbing my shoulders and suddenly I saw two persons pulling at me and steering me towards the surface of the water. The three of us swiftly returned to the surface of the water and once I came out from it, I paddled my legs so furiously to stay afloat and see for myself who were the two persons that pulled me out of the water. The two led me to the shore and I climb towards a drier area and stared back into the pond. I examined the two men who remained afloat in the pond as I realized how strong they were for they had pulled me out of the water in such a swift manner; they must have been learned swimmers. They remained afloat the water and yet I could not see them move their hands or feet. It was a cunning way to swim I thought then and I concluded that they were not just ordinary swimmers, but extraordinary ones. I gazed at the faces of the two men in the pond and then I started to realize that they both looked alike and that they may as well be twins and that they both looked like me although they had longer and much muscular body. I mistrusted them for a while for they seem to be mocking me by pretending to look like me and my distrust had become more emphasized when the two men maintained stern faces all throughout, like they were soldiers, like it was illegal for them to smile or show a gentler countenance. I turned my gaze towards the hill and wanted to ask the old man what was going on and I saw him still hovering and his white dress flowing steadily from a passing wind that I did not feel or see, as my immediate surroundings remained so very still and not a single sound could be heard.

The old man stared at me so meaningfully and then I could see how he had the gentlest of faces, one that evoked great love and adoration that I immediately felt assured that he won’t lead me to any harm or injury. He had seemed to be so fatherly and I could feel his great warmth even from a distance. He signaled with his hands to me once more and urged me to dive into the water. This time, my earlier hesitation and uncertainties had already vanished and I climbed the tree with great confidence. I dived once more into the water. I heard the water made the splashing sound again, a noise that was refreshing to my ears and once again, I felt the elation that remained indescribable; a certain feeling of sudden joy, like a narcotic perhaps if one could actually know how this element works.

I floated again inside the water and all around me was the thick yellowish-green hue of the pond and I could see no walls nor bottom but the water was clearly refreshing and my soul was lifted again. I still did not fight the gravitational pull of the bottom of the pond, which actually appeared to be without end, as if it goes on and on until forever. I had wondered what the bottom of the pond looked like and what it had to offer me. Maybe there was a lost kingdom down there or a secret hideaway that could give me more joy and elation. The feeling of elation was so addictive that I wanted to go deeper and deeper but the two men who looked like me appeared again in the scene and pulled me out of the water. This time, they did not have to grab me as I rose with them towards the surface of the water and I had risen on my own accord—-they just had to notify me this time that I was already getting too deep into the water. I remade and remade my dive into the pond and clearly I had grown ponder of it all the more that with every splashing of the water—-as I break into them by a nose dive—-the feeling of elation gets more and more emphasized. The last time I went into the depth of the pond, the two men did not have to grab me anymore for I have already decided on my own to rise to the surface of the water when I had reckoned on my own that I was already so deep into the pond. I was left alone the moment I finally gained enough discipline and patience not to go too deep into the water.

The last scene of this particular dream was me standing on the edge of the pond and watching the old man swaying his arms to and fro, from east to west, from north to south, like he was dancing some sort of an exotic dance that was completely unique and never heard of. It was a ceremonial dance it had seemed. As he swayed his arms from side to side, the wind move more dynamically and the yellowish tint of the atmosphere vanished gradually but swiftly and became clear like the atmosphere that we have now. And clouds in the horizon suddenly appeared and moved like there was a swirling storm until they settled over the hills and mountains. The old man was apparently controlling the weather and he was making the environment more and more pleasant to the sight. The brown hills became green and grasses and bushes started to grow from the ground until all around me was thick with lush greeneries and there was a forest just nearby. Then the sky became blue from its former hazy shade of red and I could see winged creatures gliding through it and everything became brighter and sunnier.

That is why I have said once before that when I saw an angel dance in the Manila sky in the year 2002, while I was there preparing for the bar examinations, the dance of the angel was so familiar to me like I have seen them once before. Now I can now point only too well that it was in the dream of the pond that I had seen the dance first. Nights after I saw that dancing angel in the sky, I was alone in the boarding house where I stayed in Manila (the boarding house was named BH Boarding House, a former office building that was turned into a students’ lodge, and it is just right beside a catholic center named after St. Lorenzo along Legarda St. in Sampaloc, Manila) as the other occupants went for a weekend getaway. It was nearly midnight and I was still awake reading law books. I felt the urge to drink some coffee so I went to the kitchen to prepare hot water. As I entered my room, I felt that someone was following me and I turned immediately to examine my back and for a split second, I saw the image of the old man hanging just above the air, right at my back and he looked so much like the old man in one of my dreams, which is this dream of the pond, and no matter how I saw that apparition, the old man looked like Leonardo da Vinci with a very long white hair, sharp noses and a very old face. I should have scurried away out of fear of the apparition but it was strange that I had felt no fear whatsoever in that particular moment. It was a span of days in my life that angels started to appear in my view, whenever I stared at the night sky and shadows on the wall and a bearded man on a huge throne that perhaps, the sight of the old man hovering just above me was not that surprising to me anymore, that I just disregarded it and proceeded to read my law books that night.

In the morning right after I had dreamt of the pond, I immediately went to search for a pen and paper so that I could write down the details of this vivid dream. At that time, I hadn’t still an inkling that I would be seeing angels in the future but I had felt so strongly then that the dream was too real for comfort like it was a story by itself, complete with plot and characters. I had in fact written down the details of that dream that morning and even typed it in several coupon bonds in order that I may be able to keep and preserved it. The way I wrote down the tale of the dream was in the form of a short story.

What did the dream meant to me? Perhaps you might ask this question. For me, it was a dream that foretold to me so eerily of the things that I have to encounter in the future and how every dream of mine has a certain singular thread in them that every one of it evokes important messages to me and to humanity as a whole.