Miriam Ming Mia

She decided to be called Mia when she became a teenager, or perhaps a few years before that, sometime during high school; I do not now remember. Her legal first name was Miriam. Her parents nicknamed her Ming. She was born on May 14, 1961. That would make her now 50 years old. I don't know what she now looks like, as it has been a long time since I have seen her. She might not even be using any of her old names anymore. I have known her to love music. She learnt the piano when she was young. A private teacher used to come to the house in Novaliches to give her lessons on the Steinweg. Actually I was jealous of this. I also wanted to learn the piano but I didn't get any lessons. I did muck around with it every now and then, banging the chords senselessly, or pretending to play some Santana music, testing out Chinese sounding notes on the black keys. I never really got satisfied the way my big fingers awkwardly navigated the piano keys, even when I thought I could sing "Dahil Sa Iyo" to my own piano accompaniment. Mia played many pieces on the piano. Her performance was much admired by her father who would often request "Somewhere My Love" from the movie Love Story or "Lara's Theme" from Dr Zhivago. I learnt the humble guitar instead. Every pimple-faced boy in every corner seemed to be learning it at the time. I got my first guitar from Mactan, Cebu. I remember my father remarked with sarcasm, "You don't know how to play the guitar, so why would you buy one?" I answered, "How would I learn if I didn't have one?" After coming home to Novaliches, I started practising like freaking mad, a minimum of two hours every day, teaching myself the guitar with a little book called NUDES which had chords of some popular songs, punishing my fingers till calluses thrived. The first song I learnt to play was a mushy Sonny and Cher song called "Just You".

With his big brown eyes he came my way
I didn’t know then what he had to say
I could tell that he felt bad
By the way he looked that he felt sad, oh yeah.

And that was because it only required the D, Em, and A chords. So I played and played much to the grim annoyance of the rest of the household but I didn't care. In three months, I could manage most chords all along the frets of the guitar neck and sing and play rock and pop with my drinking friends in the neighbourhood with Tanduay rum, lambanog jungle juice or pissy beer. But soon Mia also learnt to play the guitar. I taught her some chords and how to strum in general, mesmerizing her with some of the fancy tricks I had learned. In no time, she became adept. Her father would then request her to play the guitar and sing "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1970s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. Sometime during her teenage years she fell in love with a boy next door, which didn't please her parents. I don't really know the whole story, and all the emotions that surrounded it. This was around the time we migrated to the land of Oz and contact with the family became more or less feeble due to the distance. There was big trouble and unabashed bitterness between her and her mother. Eventually, she left home, never to be seen again. Her father was deeply devastated and got so traumatised that he wanted to be run over by a passing jeepney. Mia had two degrees from the University of Santo Tomas. Her parents had great plans for her as you could imagine. But I cannot be a judge, and I never will be. I don't exactly know what happened. I just hope that someday she might have the heart and courage to look up her bereft family on the internet, for nothing much is hidden nowadays - just google the name. I hope that she will finally come to her senses and reconnect and possibly meet her mother who still lives in the land of Oz, freezing her fragile bones from the bitter winter as I write, perchance wanting to obliterate the memory, but alas that will always linger like a creeping, menacing shadow. I don't know where Mia my sister is. She could well be a good friend or a neighbour of yours. Maybe she has related some vague bits of her past hidden life and the jigsaw puzzle pieces somehow fit with my short account here. Please whisper something in her ear. Tell her that the eldest brother is asking for her and for her not to be afraid. I just want to hear her sing again.

Fátima Bus Trip

I didn’t think I had enough time to do this trip. But in the end I yielded. I took a bus from Madrid, departing from the Avenida de Americas station. I paid a little over 80 euros for my return ticket to Lisboa. It was a night Avanza bus with its formidable white horns which made it look like some kind of highway beast. What was good about these buses were they had seats on the right side which were just single seats. You’d think however that was a big waste space. We departed around 9 or 10 pm. I paid about 80 euros for my return trip to Lisboa. We arrived close to 4 am at the Estaçao do Oriente, which was a massive place combining stations for buses, trains, and metro. It was one of the best designs I have ever seen of a station. It was architected by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. It had a roof of glass and steel made to resemble a row of trees. The place was close to deserted. There were guards of course. This wasn’t really my destination. I still had to take another bus going to Fatima. I asked probably about 4 guards. They said that I could get information at around 7am when the ticket offices open. How could I wait that long? I asked about the toilets. They were closed. This one, I could not understand. How could it be? The most beautiful station I have ever seen and there are no toilets I can use. I have seen the worst station in Spain in Valencia and I could go to the toilet at any time. I waited there for three hours for a 6am bus going back to Madrid. But Lisboa, no. I was wondering how much longer I could hold my urge to pee. More than three hours would be a long time to wait. I asked another guard, who told me that the buses to Fatima would not be from the Estaçao do Oriente. I had to go to Sete Rios. I could wait for the metro going there, it wasn’t very far. I got a metro ticket from one of the vending machines paying less than 2 euros. I found the directions confusing. Anyway I decided later on to just catch the cab to Sete Rios. I was there in seven minutes. At that Sete Rios bus station, there was no problem finding the toilet and there were some people waiting around. I think I had to wait till 6am for the ticket office to open. . But I couldn’t even get my colacao drink as the coffee shop was not open. The sign said they’d open at 6:30am but they didn’t. I got a return ticket to Fatima. Arrived in Fatima around 8:30am on Easter Sunday 24th April 2011. It would be the beginning of a wonderful pilgrimage. Perhaps more later.

Reaching Santiago

19 April 2011. I finally arrived at Santiago de Compostela with a heavy sigh of relief. God knows how many times I asked people on the way, '¿Cuantos kilometros más para Santiago?' Now, I have arrived. Ya llegué. I didn't really know what to expect. I only knew that there was the cathedral and that the remains of St James lay there, has been for a long time. I sniffed the air of Santiago; perhaps there was something different about the air. What I was seeing on the road seemed to be transitory, fleeting, like this was not quite my destination but I was almost there. Yes, I was in the city, I just needed to get close to the cathedral. I was dead tired and could barely move and couldn't even huff any longer to catch more precious oxygen into my lungs. I had the backpack hanging on my shoulders, my wooden staff on my hand. I had picked it up from the bush and had shaped it somewhat. It was a fallen branch, covered in mud and moss and probably some tiny bugs. I scraped the bark off it, broke the narrower part of it, and later on I shaved off some more of the surface with a sharp piece of stone. I looked at the humble staff, which had helped me find my balance in the bush. I didn't think before that it would help me walk the Camino de Santiago but it did immensely and to great effect. I found the coquettish sidewalk inviting me to sit down and rest and I could only gladly agree with the least resistance. Even my tired aching feet and screaming legs agreed. So I plonked myself down on the sidewalk mildly oblivious to the passing traffic but still conscious of my safety from the passing cars and pedestrians. I sat on that corner, gazing at the gray sky, threatening to rain sometime soon. I had five days of clear sunny weather, starting my walk from Tui near the Portuguese border. You could see Valença from the other side of the river. Five days of clear sunny weather. My lips even got burnt black by the harsh sun. I had a poncho raincoat in my backpack, together with my sunscreen, a toothbrush, a toothpaste, soap, needle and thread, vaseline, rubber thongs, safety pins, two changes of shirt, briefs, shorts, a pair of pants and a long-sleeved black shirt reserved for my visit to the cathedral. I only had just a little plastic bottle of water left. It didn't much matter anymore. I sat down and pondered, my brows forming a painful knot. A few more steps perhaps. I asked a passerby, '¿Me dice para donde está la catedral?' The answer came back, '¡Por ahí!' I continued my walk for another half an hour through the town centre. I stopped for a cup of chocolate - un colacao con leche - at a bar-restaurant, also to use their amenities. I asked for directions for the albergue but it seemed that it was another 2 kilometres away. I spotted a hotel close by, with the cathedral not being far. I checked in, and I was shown my room. Five minutes after checking in, the rain decided to fall. It couldn't hold any longer, and there was no reason to, for my adventurous trek has finished. The next morning it was still raining, softly but it gave the impression that it would be raining for a few days. I bought an umbrella, black and heavy and sturdy for a very cheap price of 6 euros. I made my way to the cathedral, rested, relieved, relaxed, passing through restaurants and souvenir shops with the proper staffs and conch shells with the red cross painted on it. I have truly reached my destination. A woman was kneeling on the side of the walkway. She had a note before her saying she needed help for her kids. She was just there quiet, ignoring the rain, waiting for some generous hand to drop a coin. I fished out 2 euros from my pocket. I asked, '¿Señora, cómo lo puede hacer en la lluvia?'. She only answered with a meek 'Gracias'.

Brutal Dejection

I think that in my old age I will terribly miss my kids. I miss them now profoundly with my own foreboded pathos. Everybody seems so apart but I want them to be connected by some kind of invisible yet palpable umbilical cord that could never get severed, but rather would become thicker and stronger with the silent passing of time. Would I be like man who desired the end of his life because the umbilical cord had lost its palpability? It had been hacked away mercilessly, chopped and minced viciously into minute indiscernible morsels, thrown as trash, compacted by garbage trucks, dumped into some smelly, smouldering Smoky Mountain with all the household discards, rotting fish guts, ravenous, squirming, insatiable maggots, rusted cans and flattened non-biodegrable plastic bottles. Perhaps a future site of a housing development in twenty years time, when all the rubbish will be forgotten, along with entombed memories, lying under 3-storey houses and an artificial lake masking its putrid history.

There is something criminally violent about being alone: rated R, replete with unadulterated brutality; dimming, dumbing, and stunning all sense and fragile sensibility.

(Thoughts from 7 January 2006)

Tummy Ache - Part 2

These are additional thoughts to the same story. I suppose that that night I could have died and it would have been a sad story indeed. The death of an eight year old with a big tummy ache, that came too late to the hospital. He waited too long to complain about it. After all an eight year old should be able to fully express what he is feeling. Did I hold back at all? I think that I had been brave that night. I think that I tried to hold back the pain and believed that this was something that would pass in good time. Unfortunately it didn't. I was dumb silent for most of the night, even at the birthday party. I was glancing at everybody else, most of them my childhood friends who are now in different parts of the world, in the Americas. But I was then silently and stoically keeping the pulsating pain to myself, somehow treating that as something normal in the regular course of life, especially for an eight year old, even with the silly heavy bag he had to carry to school every day. But it was my body that was eloquent, thank God for that. The violent shaking of my bed was mimicking my own body's uncontrollable shaking in reaction to the extreme cold that I felt because of the fever. I don't know how high my fever was, but it would have been very high. I was wondering, we were Catholics, and always have been, but we went to a hospital that was owned by the Seventh-Day Adventists. Even the doctors, I believe, were Adventists. But they had a good reputation, or so my parents believed. My mother must have prayed a lot that night, clutching her rosary asking for the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The operation went worryingly far too long for what should have been a simple and quick intrusive operation. But it was hugely successful. The fact is I live even to this day, and yes even as I write, for dead men don't write. I would not have seen the light again on February 9 of that year if my body didn't express that unmistakeable message that something had gone wrong big time, and that made my parents to speedily act, and at the best possible time. I thank the Lord for the blessing of life and giving me a chance to live out my life even to this day. That day I was reborn.

Tummy ache

I was eight when I went to my neighbour-friend's birthday party. We shared a common wall, living in a tenement housing. All my other friends were there, we were all small, not knowing much about the world. Most of us went to the same school. But that night something made me uneasy. Some persistent pain in my stomach. We were just having fun. I told the hosts that I had tummy ache. My friend's mother quickly gave me something to eat, thinking that I was just hungry and couldn't hold off any longer. I ate that pancit or whatever it was. Something prevented me from enjoying it. The pain persisted and I also had clammy hands and felt a great unease. In the end I excused myself and went home, which just meant going out the door, walking down the steps, going to the next door portal, walking up the steps and entering home. I did that in 2 minutes flat. Tatang Tutuy was there and rubbed garlic on my belly while I sat on the toilet for some time. They were thinking that I just needed to relieve myself and everything would be all right. I still felt terrible, like there's something inside me that is consuming me and I couldn't for the life of me know what it was. That night I lay in bed feverish. I was on the bed with the T rod for hanging the mosquito net. That night I shook so much because of the cold that the T rod was shaking. They My parents brought me to the hospital. After doing some tests, they decided that they should operate on my straight away. Appendectomy. Ruptured appendix. My frail little body was being poisoned I would have died if I were brought two hours later. General anasthesia knocked me out in 5 seconds. I woke up with my appendix taken out, after an hour of surgery, and a stitch three inches long. Normally, with appendix operations, you would only need a short cut, but they needed to clean me out. I got better. The week after I was back at the hospital to get them remove my stitches. This was one experience I would never forget. My parents blamed my heavy school bag for the onset of appendicitis. I don't know if that was it. After a while, I was carrying the same heavy bag. Even nowadays, I still usually carry heavy bags but no appendix would need now to be taken out. I'm free.

Dear Watcher (the critic in me)

Dear Watcher (the critic in me), I know that you mean well, to correct me most of the time. But really you slow me down. You've been telling for the past year and many months that writing for me is just dead and buried and will never see the day of resurrection. You discourage by telling me that there are better and more important things to be done, and many others that are really important that have to be set aside for now. You tell me basically that I am really an idiot and do not have the skill to write nor will ever have the inclination to. Not even with an outlining or mind-mapping program. Is this my fate and destiny? Limited to wishing but never ever coming to the realization of my dreams? or at least to whip something out with whatever God has given me or this brain of mind controlling the keyboard, not comfortable as it may be to bang on? But hey, I want you to be quiet for a while and just let me be and let me do. I believe, that without your critical spirit and your nasty words, the creativity in me will fluorish and eventually as this person is accustomed to this deed, then perhaps one day, with the continuous sharpening of the blade of creativity, one day I will be a writer. And I believe even now, that I am. And you cannot stop that. You cannot tell me to wait and stop and pause and think more about this, consider this and consider that, and develop your words with the utmost care, think about the grammar and misplaced punctuation because they might look really ugly and unprofessional. So there, be quiet.

When I write

When I write, I take a deep breath every now and again. This gives me oxygen to keep the brain fuelled. Or maybe I thought that inspiration has the word breath in it, and the the more I breathe, the more inspired I become. When I write, I lose myself a bit. It is not really me. Or maybe the real me comes out and expresses itself. The real me is suppressed most of my conscious time. It screams out but cannot be heard - only muffled whispers are intimated sometimes. But the waking mind does not listen. It just keeps on with the business of the moment, that activity, the typing on the keyboard, the google search, the reading of a section of a book, listening to some news, reading the sordid news of smh.com.au. Writing somehow frees me and I become occupied with that occupation in a zen-like type of way. This is the real me, screaming and shouting in the page, jumping up and down, left and right, like a convict that has escaped out of prison and is now dancing in the freedom of the forest, with the afternoon light piercing the leaves and branches, with the soft rain softening the ground, with the sound of birds with their ostentatious chirping, singing, and mating calls. This is freedom, this is me that is born again, gasping for the new air after being stifled for a season. I have always envied writers. I have always wished that I would be able to write but I have not really started except for a few neglected blog entries, and lame entries in a community forum. What have I really written? I should watch out. Is it really me talking in that piece of writing? Or is it some sinister side of me that was waiting in the wings, hoping for a chance to be heard and even seen. I do not know. Maybe that also is a part of me, the good with the sinister, the sinister with the good, like Janus with his two faces. Should I embrace the two equally as being parts of me? I cannot deny them, for they speak and sometimes they shout in my dreams and nightmares, painting images surreal and sometimes frightening, especially when they are vivid and seemed true at the time they played in the stage of the sleeping mind. When I write, an energy bursts out of me, like many hands and limbs creeping out of a tiny bottle. The feat may seem impossible, but they manage in a eerie sort of way, oozing out of the thin neck of the bottle. The constricted neck didn't matter. Nor did the sharp cracks at the edges. All that matters is the action of coming out, sort of being born in agony and concomitant joy.