Think. Thrice.

“What we do in life echoes in eternity,” so said Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, general of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius, father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife, and I will have my ven—whoops! I have to stop. I’m imagining I was in Russell Crowe’s shoes—or sandals for that matter—already. Gladiator always does that to me. Gets me carried away.

Anyway, what I was trying to say is quite serious—or as they say, heavy [read: “hivey”]. But as you can clearly see, I’m not exactly in serious mode this time. Still, let’s take Maximus’s one-liner apart. Let’s tear it apart, chew it, and swallow it like a piece of old bread. Echoes. Yeah, that’s what it does when I’m channeling Chester Bennington in the shower. But would it too in eternity? Do MJ’s hits reverberate in eternity? Is Tita Cory’s motto being chanted in the beyond? Is Walter Cronkite’s baritone still broadcasting up there? Is Ted Kennedy rejoining his brothers in their own shining Camelot to say to them, “I did it. I carried the torch”?

My favorite uncle seems to be skeptical. He believes that what we have now is all we got. When we breathe our last, he says, we’re gone as a pillar of smoke puffed away by the soft noon breeze. This does not however take away life’s beauty or meaning, according to him. This “fact” makes him appreciate each day, each second that he has. “That’s why this life becomes more enjoyable than ever. This is all you have. Make it a big and beautiful fireworks display in a clear black night, better than the ones they do in the Olympics. Make it as good as it gets, or you’ll be the only loser there ever will be if you live your life in drudgery. Work hard. Enjoy life. Make every moment meaningful. Because once it passes, it’s gone, really gone. A lot of people waste their lives away because they think that there’s another one waiting for them. That’s how suicide bombers think,” he says.

That’s his own version of Tuesdays with Morrie perhaps.

All these reminds me of Achilles’s line in Troy—“The gods envy us. They envy us because we are mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now, and we will never be here again.”

Yes, indeed, life is fleeting. And eternity is, well, eternity. We will never know what it is like until we get there, if we ever will. I think what is important is not only our echoes. An echo will never exist until one makes a sound, a click, a shout. What we do here, what we do now takes up all the essential things. We may never have our moonwalk, or a yellow revolution, or a powerfully trusted baritone, or great legacies of statesmanship. But we just have to make do with what we have—ourselves. So what are we doing now? Would our deeds here deserve an echo? Or would it be better if they won’t make a sound at all? Nevertheless, in one way or another, in some sleepy valley or another, they will be heard. Somehow we will make our marks in some streak of sand somewhere. Would our echoes then be as beautiful as music? Would the hearer smile at the sound we will leave behind?

There will never be another Ari in the whole of existence no matter how much of a settling dust I am compared to Brad or Russell. There never will be one who will live my life, think my thoughts. There will never be another you. Wherever we’re going, however we’re going to get there, Robin Williams said it best in Jack, “Make your life spectacular.” And Bill Cosby, in the same movie, adds, “[Be] a shooting star amongst ordinary stars . . . It’s wonderful. It passes quickly, but while it’s here, it just lights up the whole sky—it’s the most beautiful thing you’d ever want to see. So beautiful that the other stars stop and watch.” We all know Sue did.

And then we rest.

That’s it now. Enough of the movie quotes. I think I’ve said much for a third issue. I’m just crossing my fingers that this didn’t sound too much like a homily. I had enough of that, I’m certain.

Summer Laments (or Champagne Supernova)

As a kid, summer months spelled endless afternoon bike rides exploring unchartered dirt paths. They usually ended up in afternoon beach dips. Adolescence brought some change—I now had a motorcycle instead of a bicycle. I discovered the thrill of buzzing past girls, my hair fluttering in the wind.

But these all changed when I got to college. There were no more bike rides, and the only motorcycle fun I had was exhausting the throttle to the limit on highways on my way to and from parish errands.

Now, in hindsight, the Summer Apostolate was by far more fun than summers in the corporate world. We don’t get the whole two months after all. If we’re lucky, we get Maundy Thursday and Good Friday off. Aside from paid leaves made around these days, summer is just a couple months of enduring the heat. Try sleeping during a prickly day. If you share the same hot fix I am in, you won’t be so lucky as to have an AC coughing up artificial cool air, and you’ll have to change sheets every other day, if not every day. The scruples of the adult world.

Sometimes it all makes me wish I was a kid once again. When I get a whiff of that errant cool breeze, it seems to transport me to after-lunch hours eons ago. You see, summer had cool breezes back then—lesser CO₂ in the atmosphere perhaps. All I had to worry about was how to fool my aunt that I already took my mandatory siesta so I can go out, grab my bike, and look for a Y-shaped branch, a piece of old-shoe leather, and some length of rubber so I could have a brand-new slingshot.

If my uncles were in the mood, we’d take the outrigger canoe out to sea. Schools of big danggit abounded not too far out, and it all took a length of net, some thrashing of the water, and a dive for an up-close encounter with the teeming schools to scare away the fish toward the net. After the first haul, we would have them on the floor of the boat trying to jump out back to sea. I would usually have a small jar half-full with vinegar mixed with some salt. I’d take some wide-eyed fish, hack off the head and tail, and cut the body into three. Dumping them into the salted vinegar, voila, I had instant kinilaw. I’d munch on them, my feet dangling contentedly from the boat side and into the water.

If it weren’t slinging birds and snacking on raw fish, there was the idyllic kite flying. If the elementary school grounds were closed, boys would troop to the beach and show off their personal colors and banners. They were our own coat of arms, and we flew them with honor. When naughtiness mixed with precocious chivalry, it was time for the battles. Drawing and maneuvering our strings, we would have the fluttering badges of courage against the blue sky turn and dive into each other. Nobody even thought of evasive tactics. Yep, we went right head on. Luck, skill, or the strength of the strings determined whether you still had a taught string or not. When your line slackens with a jerk, your kite drops a foot, floats left and right for a moment as if to wave you good-bye, and sails away with the headwinds. With a shrug, you blame no one else. A promise to get a better and stronger string runs in your thoughts as you walk away.

The birds had better hide by the time you notched your slingshot. Five dead sparrows could be a good trade for a good string. A handsome, slightly injured hawk would take a better deal.

It all faded away with the advent of higher learning, schedules, and . . . crushes, especially crushes. Oh, well. As the sophist Heraclitus said, “One cannot step into the same river twice, for other waters are ever flowing on to you.”

In the end, the rains would come, as they are coming in torrents now. But our hearts are warmed. Warmed with our memories and for new things to come. Perhaps a champagne supernova in the sky.

2010 Additions

I just revisited this site today. “Kuya, you have a WordPress blog, right?” my girl friend’s sister reminded me.

Oh yeah, that’s right. That site must still be there. I haven’t done any blogging lately. Over a year has passed, I think. In fact, I haven’t done any writing for ages now. Except for sporadic snippets here and there on Microsoft’s Notepad and required articles for the department newsletter at work, virtually nothing flowed from the back of my head to the tip of my fingers. Yes, there may be ideas shifting somewhere in the waters of my head or the shallows of my heart. But they remained ideas and thoughts. There were never paragraphs or one-page articles. And that coveted full-length historical fiction thing is still nowhere near the horizon. “Ay, me!” the old masters used to say. Ay, me indeed. I have lost touched of my inner self. These coursed through me in a nanosecond.

“Yeah, I think so,” I finally said. “But I haven’t been there at all this year or even the past. I haven’t done any writing. The juices are not flowing. Or perhaps I abandoned the garden thoroughly.”

“So why don’t you post those newsletter articles you told me about,” she said. “As a start maybe.”

“Hmmmm . . . Maybe . . .”

And so to indulge Cri, and hoping that this too is a bid to get back to where things where supposed to be, I am heeding her suggestion.

So here they are—they follow this post. Two articles for two issues. The first, “Summer Laments,” was an attempt to introduce people to where I come from. It was also an attempt to get in touch with those free days. So free that it may be my golden years. Not these current days of voluntary servitude to the corporate world I got myself into so that, like other people, I can have some livelihood by which to pay debts and bills so that I could acquire more debts. It’s a crazy world. And the times we live in are just as insane.

The second article—“Think. Thrice.”—is one of those involuntary reflections prodded into our head by some unfortunate incident. In this case, a death of a co-worker. In life, we are cars in a freeway. We go to where we need to go. Then back. Then back again. Worker bees behave better than us. But for some instant shove, we wouldn’t even stop and look to the skies and think where we are leading our lives to.

still burning

We start where everything starts. Potency. A block of wood. Plato spoke of it. Mr. Magorium made use of it. And it was where Ms. Musical Molly realized that she had what it takes, that her fingers’ “quirks” are really up to something.

We all have blocks of wood. We are all stumps of wood. And it is up to us to sculpt ourselves. Or to sprout little new verdant leaves.

And yet.

As with everything in life, there’s always a catch attached. Today’s would be that this beautiful fact of potencies—dreams, so to speak—is easier said than done.

When you were but a young sapling, you felt that staying strong and unbent in the face of the world and its mighty winds would be doable, or easy even. As a sparse-feathered sparrow, you ventured an inch off the nest, and you thought that you were an eagle ready to conquer the azure realm.

And yet.

The first gusts threw you down on your feeble roots. You looked up to the heavens, and a prayer escaped your lips. It’s tiring to face the world. Mother Nature’s first push was also your first fall, your first crash landing. Thump. It’s a harsh forest out there.

And yet.

You did not long for the protecting arms of the Ents. You did not pine for the comfort of the nest. No. You believed that you were strong—you could take the next winds, the eager hard earth. Failure was the material that could take you up among the hard elders who makes less than a creak. It would take you to the clouds so that you can look down upon the earth with the eyes of a conqueror.

And yet.

You turned out to be just another jester’s material. Fit for entertainment. You remained the block of wood that you are. The potency longed for the act. It would have been even nicer to have someone cut you down and sold you to some sculptor. You were a fine wood, after all. You could have made a glorious statue for everybody to gawk and be amazed at, shake their heads, and wish that they could be as grand. But you could also have been a mere paperweight on an ignored table, gathering dust. Do you want to trade for the bust by the corner? He may have been some great personality. But you could have just been that—a bust, a recreation for some ancient has-been.

Even then, it could have been a good existence. You would want to be a bust than some firewood.

At first, you laughed at the glorious statue. He was getting old. His fine contours were cracking, smoothness was roughening. He was drooping, disintegrating. Should have been better to have moss clinging to it. You also mocked the paperweight. It couldn’t breathe anymore, much less cough up the dust that became his rags of a clothing. Secret holes inside were making him weightless. And the bust? Oh, that poor bust was anything but. He could hold anything from coats to bowler hats. And then his polish ran out. His nose fell off.

At least you were a firewood. There was some warmth in you, some light, some fire. Yes, you could help a great big pyre fit for a mighty king. Playing small, you could still cook something. Yup, now you’re cooking. Food for the brain. Nourishment for the soul.

Even as just another piece of fuel, you made your tiny licks and left your marks. You smiled as your warmth provided for the creation of some things more than a simple wood—paper and the ink blots that posed as words and thoughts. Ink blots. More like a child’s doodles. But it was all right. It’s good, I’m good, you told yourself. There will be master scribes on my way. Oh, and how you burned! You burned with the eager fires of youth! Every little thing that you touched burst aflame too. Hot! That was what you were. Blazing!

Until.

You realized that you could break off even just a splinter of you. Some charcoal, and you could be a pencil and do your own doodles. Hell, you could make more than some blots!

But.

It was too late. Everything around you was nothing but embers already. Every fucking splinter. And so you burned and you burned. You discovered how it was to feel burnt out, but you added more meaning to the term. How is it to feel burnt out but still burn? For Christ’s sake, how! It was all you could do for a prayer. But you prayed even more. For Death. Ashes. For even though you could feel every fucking inch of you sting with the flames, you gave off no warmth. Sunshine on a gray and cloudy winter day.

Man, oh, man, are we not just exaggerated bovine creatures? We trade our souls for some cud to chew on all day. The one thing that sets us extremely at odds with those four-legged, five-stomached mooers is that we grow our own grass in the summer and make our own hay for winter. Fucking overrated!

Spit for some futile act of defiance, will you?<

0115 hrs

 

a step farther

It rarely comes easy. Rarely, or not at all. So where would you go? And what would you do? Something in me says that it is a fool’s endeavor to go on seeking easier things, an easy world. You gotta roll with the punches, man. Trudge on. Wearily maybe, but trudge on. And yet, to where?

In twenty-four years, I have begun to stack bricks up, seeing to build towers of dreams. But today, what do I have? One-paragraph manuscripts, a half-baked degree, unfinished dreams, unrealized goals—all things unfinished. In the world of successful men, one must at least complete one journey to have a name, to make it—big or small—or risk to be a mere shadow of the gods.

You start with clay, mix it up with some straw, form it into bricks, and let it cake dry in the sun. The next day, you stack it one brick on another with some mortar to hold it in place. Higher. Higher. And higher. Then consult your blueprint to get your bearings. Sweat trickles down your eyebrow and into your eye. The sun beats down on your bent back. Go, struggling man, go. Pause for some water. But do go on for chrissakes . . .

Then you realize that your bricks are not cooked enough, your blueprint not grand enough. Sit down in the shade, dear brother, and think again. Think. Think. Think. Measured by your own critiques and weighed by the perceived biases of the world entire. Not enough. Wanting.

You discard your blueprint and dig your heart again for more spectacular dreams. Dreams of conquests and laurel wreaths. But this time, dig deeper.

Now comes the thought that you do not want to tinker with bricks and mortar after all. Too primitive. You want to try and plant an orchard. No, raise sheep. No, make strong bows and sure arrows and head for the forests of the unknown. Too hard. How about wait for a flight of geese, shoot one down, and make quills from the feathers? Yes, a scribe would be grand.

I could record victories of men great and defeats of the lesser folk. I could tell the world to come of laws and legends of the ruins and the freshly painted edifices of today. The wakings and sleepings of men and their stories could propel me to my own awakening in the world of struggles. And if great men and vanquished folk run out, I could create my own tales of heroism.

One word, a clause, a sentence, a paragraph. “Why does it not read like the work of a master?” you ask yourself next. “I cannot do this,” you tell yourself the second moment. “I’d leave the geese in their flying.”

Another dream quashed before its infancy. Abortion. Murder. But who carries the guilt? Who is the culprit? “A dream can only be killed by the dreamer,” a master scribe once said. Heavy chests accompany guilt. But what could you do? Whine? A whine is a whine—it does not accomplish anything. Even whining about whining itself.

There are new dreams to make. And more to kill. But the heart is weary of chugging them out only to be rent by the uncertain mind. The stomach cries out for food to fill itself. And the soul is disillusioned for belonging to a fickle man. A fickle man creating a field of one-brick palaces, a sea of ruins. Learn from the resilience and the determination of a dog, why don’t you.

And so you take the path yet again for a dogged trudge. Doggedness. Trudging. Then again, quo vadis, seeker?

gotta do more gotta be more