Summer 08's last gasp

It’s six in the morning and the geckos are calling.  A family of kingfishers has been silent for a few minutes and wild ducks are emerging from their nests (taking off like airplanes with beaks extended and leading their way).  The other birds are waking up and my ears are assaulted by all sorts of sounds I never hear in the blighted city.

Pom is still asleep.

An officemate-friend is already brewing coffee in the kitchen.  A creature of a few horrid habits he will light up his first cigarette as early as his first dark cup.

I’ve been trying to connect to the internet but I can’t, which is just as well.  I’m having a rare kind of morning, the kind I wish would stretch for a long time.  I wish for the clock to stop counting and allow me to sit here listening to my wife’s low snores, the birds, the geckos, the last of the crabs scampering into their sandholes.

I myself am waiting for the coffee.  A cup would make me move bowels and then I could start thinking about breakfast. It’s itlog, kamatis, at tuyo sa sinangag na kanin today.

After breakfast, I am sure Pom would be among the first on the water.  I would typically drag my feet but I will be joining her shortly.  I have to say hello to the fishes and slugs we got acquainted to yesterday afternoon.  It’s a wonder some of them dare stare at us when we were wearing snorkels and goggles that make us terribly ugly.

We are at a private beach hundreds of kilometers outside of Manila.  We are doing our best to make appearances we are normal people—the kind that go to the beach in summer.  None of us, except one, had been to the beach all summer and so this last hurrah.

These past two months have been spent giving tributes to great men both living and dead—Ka Bel, Ka Romy, Ka Dan and Ka Nes.  The tributes to the living were scheduled and happy events; the tributes to the dead were sudden, unexpected, numbing.

And these past four weeks have been emotionally and physically shattering for me.  Looking for a forcibly disappeared and, when found, learning he has been severely tortured are not what I call fun summer.  The road trip we took last weekend, it was fun in some parts because I spent time with old friends but there was something fundamentally sad about it.  And I’m not talking about my driving for three straight days because that only taxed me physically.  What saddened me really was seeing my friend inside a cramped and humid provincial jail being watched over by armalite-wielding soldiers.

And so this trip.  I looked forward to this for such a long time—three years in fact.  And while I can not admit how excited I was, I betrayed myself when I again did all the driving from Manila.

It’s sulit naman.  At dusk yesterday we were greeted by one of the reddest sunsets I beheld so far.  Ang ganda ng Pilipinas talaga. 

Where was I?  Ah, yes, the fishes.  Pom and I will be swimming with them shortly—a state I want to be in for a long time.  I would rather be thought of by the fishes as ugly rather be turned into fish food by the military.