Those two boys.

How could I write this without sounding uncomfortably bromance-y or, God forbid, Brokeback-ish?

Lemme try. You see, in those days, the pseudo words/adjectives previously mentioned did not exist. There were only friends, gang, brothers. And you were either one of the boys or, uh, girly. Those two boys sunt pueri pueri, pueri puerilia tractant. Whoa! Fr. Rector would be mighty proud that I remembered that Latin idiom! I can try and translate it, and if I can’t do it, there’s always Google. So here goes nothing: “boys are boys, and boys will be boyish.” Or something. I leave it to you to figure out if I just Googled it.

There were thirty twelve- or thirteen-year-old boys on that first day, a day that smelled of equal parts adventure and anxiety. First day the boys would walk away from the comfort of their mothers and the firm hands of their fathers into the much more-firm control of the potters, priest-formators to be less vague. Four of them boys were from some relatively far-off town. Three of the four knew each other and hung out together back in their old school. The fourth was a bit of a stranger and had an even stranger name. He had a determined walk, head forward, arms keeping stride, and shoulders evenly squared. It somewhat resembled a brutish stallion—or pony, in those days—that knew where it was going and wasn’t at all afraid. That stride earned him a peg as a leader. And when it was called of him, he did lead well. Mustang or not, you wouldn’t need bridle and bit to tell him where to go. He’ll take you there. In basketball, he possessed the same equine strength and drive that earned him the nickname. He had a fast staccato way of talking, but he struggled in Latin. And like that other kid, he sucked in Math, big time. He was all right in English though, and would write love letters to girls using the name of one of King Arthur’s knights. That was his sense of humor. It flowed easily around him, and his laugh was easy, hearty. He kept a level head though, his red emotions in check. His anger burst in public only but once. And when it did, everybody knew to keep more than two arm’s length away. Top man, as the Brits would say.

Two of the three discovered that he was from the same town they were from and told the other boy. This other boy now, I don’t quite know what consistency he was made of. He walked with a bit of an uncertain and hesitant gait, like a teetering pole, as if he’s not entirely sure if he has to go this way or that. Has, not will. He had tears in his eyes when his ma and pa walked out of the minor seminary’s porta mayor that first day, but he turned smiling and excited for what he thought was freedom. Freedom, my ass, poor ignorant kid. That excitement quickly turned sour on the succeeding days, especially on those quiet and breezy siesta times when he’d crawl in his blankets, despite the noon sun, trying to hide his crying and softly mouthing, “Mama . . . Mama . . . Mama . . .” He tried to be tough, that kid. Still does, and is wont to emulate guys with that I’m-a-tough-guy-so-you-can’t-touch-me-no-matter-what attitude. Hence the occasional irreverence and the rebel look. Sometimes it’s just a look. But sometimes, too, a terrible fury takes over that he becomes so tough he won’t even notice he’s already mortally wounded.

But, yeah, later on, the thirty dwindled. Some walked away themselves, needing the familiar scents of their homes, or not totally agreeing with the priestly scent. Others got themselves into trouble, academic or disciplinary, revealing certain properties in the clay that made the potters shake their heads. Thirty became twenty-five, and twenty, and eighteen in the final year.

Early on though, by their second year, those little-boy groups that freshies huddled themselves in were gone. The whole class rolled as one terrible mischievous monster. They chased girls together, evaded potters’ ire together, and did those other tasks and joys that boys normally had—still together. Yep, even that thing you’re thinking of right now. But really, those boys clenched their fists in the air in victory and glory as one. They also suffered silently or in howling, not as individuals. Essentially, they grew up together. As freaking one.

But just as an army is made up of corps, divisions, regiments or brigades, battalions, companies, platoons, squads and fire teams, the boys too operated as fire teams from time to time. That little teetering kid who tried to be tough as nails rolled with the level-headed one who was once a stranger. I think that was because they discovered books and stories and heroes together. First, Robin Hood came up strolling. Then Ivanhoe rode by. By the time they met Jason Bourne, it was clear that they’d work in tandem. When they shook hands with John Patrick Ryan, they were full-fledged smart operators. Rules that this pair of miscreants broke did not seem broken to the potters. Not a whiff of their exploits ever reached the sniffing noses of the potters. Well, save for that huge SNAFU. But that was just the other kid trying to be tough again. He burned the whole class in the process. That’s another story for another day though.

Those two boys were always hungry. So much so that when the school’s fruit trees became heavy with their load, they would indulge them. There were the caimito, which others call the star apple, the santols, the green mangoes, even the occasional coconuts. Recreation hours were the most time they were hungry. Allowance dough wasn’t all a-plenty. When it was all but gone and “reinforcements” were taking their easy times, that fourth boy would not lose his sense of humor. I think he invented that seminary joke, “You wanna know why my mother’s not sending me money? She thinks I’ve got a parish now to feed myself!” And when they couldn’t scrounge enough pennies from the pockets of old laundry for a quick bite at the canteen, the caimitos saved their scrawny bellies.

Recruiting two other classmates, they’d attack the trees. The “irreverent” kid climbed them—he had that love even then. He’d drop big ripe ones down one at a time to the “knight” kid who stood under the tree. He’d then roll each down to the grass. The caimitos were ever-greens, not the purple ones, so they were hard to spot. When they’d gather enough, and by enough I mean “enough to fill a big picnic basket,” they’d all retreat deeper into the back grounds and gorge up. But whenever one boy heard a whistling tune up the hallways, he’d do three calm claps. The boy in the tree would then know it was time to get the hell down like a scared cat. Once down, he and the catch-and-roll kid would engage in casual banter, a story prepped ahead of time. The whistler would, well, whistle still toward the baths, the clapper innocently jogging out to the grounds. The groundskeeper or the potter would see nothing. Clean little thieves.

The mangoes, those were easy. The fruits would be in bunches and so numerous, the branches would stoop toward the gutters. After lights off, a sly cat with a plastic bag and a cutter would climb down the windows, wrap the fruit bunch in the bag, and cut right off the branch. Smooth. They’d munch as much as much they could take well into the night. The santols, a different tack was needed. They’d be scouted first on an innocent afternoon walk, and just after supper, in the cover of dark, during that free time allowed to roam the grounds before a bell would herd them to study period, the fruits would be plucked by feel and memory. Easy. The young coconuts were snacks and Gatorade on weekend groundwork, but often a priest was there to oversee the work, so they’d swallow their hunger then.

I think that on a vacation, I could recount each little adventure those boys sailed on. When we’re stuck in an island, those stories could see us through. Somebody who can write better can do a book about it perhaps. Just maybe.

Not everything they did was pure mischief though. They’d have been caught eventually if that was all they did. But I like to recall those silly little rule bending more than the others. It was just plain fun.

But those boys, they were brothers right down to the bone. They stood alone together. Currahee. Friendship’s fire-tempered worth was forged in those halls. And when I hear or read Shakespeare’s St. Crispin’s Day speech—“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers”—I think of that bond between those boys’ band. King Henry V was talking about them even then. Yes. “For he to-day that sheds blood with me / Shall be my brother.” They were and are blood brothers, those kids. They’re men now, or at least trying to be. On different paths, they try to lead lives as well as they know how. The boy whose laugh starts out with a sniggering neigh is a priest himself now. The other one is still trying to be tough. Poor guy.

Sometimes when their little bell-ringers and schedules allow, those two and the rest of their brothers visit their old stomping grounds and spend a night or two raising tall glasses for the good ole days, clapping each other in the back in encouragement for the days yet to dawn.

I have a little bit of personal tradition before I read a new book. I leaf through its pages and just take in that, well, book aroma. But before I do that and write my name on the first page, I raise an imaginary tankard. Here’s to you, brothers of the Brotherhood of Evil Conspirators. Ut unum simus. And here’s to you, ’Nox, old friend. Here’s one for the Clancy boys!

BENEDICAMUS DOMINO!

Well, perhaps it’s just that the creative juices are slowly trickling to life too, ya know. You don’t have to have readers to write. Maybe you just write for yourself. Or perhaps you write just for the heck of it. Or—as the Westerosi are wont to say—“mayhaps” you write for the sake of writing.

Oh, you got that one from first-year philosophy, didn’t ya? “Knowledge for the sake of knowledge.” You could spew out total bull sometimes, ya know.

But whatever the reason is, it’s Monday and I’ve got a piece of digital paper on my screen. It’s mocking me, daring me to make something out of nothing. “Something out of nothing,” yeah, just like how the old gods used to roll. Except when they created you, poor slob. You’re still nothing out of nothing.

So, yeah, let’s do this. And write something new. Not your usual ramblings. Your girl has you totally figured out. She hammered that nail right on the head when she said, “You write well. But they’re usually of two kinds, really. They’re either (a) a rant or (b) a whine. If you’re a coin, with your two sides, you’d be a worthless mint.”

Oommppphhh! That was a straight and true arrow! So here goes nothing . . .

It was a frenzy of divine magnitude. Spittles of blood were making a drizzle over the earthen dirt path bounded by woods on its west and east sides. It was high noon, and the sun was on its peak. Vision, however, was obscured by the rainbowless crimson mist. There were hail blobs too of human meat. Roars and shouts and screams filled the air. Some were of glorious victory, or perhaps of timely relief, but others were futile protests of death and last farewells to mothers, wives, sons and daughters. Some called to whatever gods they swore allegiance to—for aid that would never come or in anticipative greeting, one could only guess.

Metal slashed through flesh and grated bones, jarring the hand that held it. Wood and leather stood in defiance in a moment of swirling struggle to keep fire-tempered steel at bay. In the collision, some failed and broke, accompanied by the sickening music of flesh violated. Some succeeded for the free hand to hurl its own instrument of death and blood. But only for a moment. A moment stood between Hades and Elysium, between desolate hell and the raucous hall of heroes. There was but an instant to deal death with death so that the second breath may be inhaled.

Such was the ferocity of that day when a Roman cohort was caught in a deft Gallic ambush.

Marcus looked around while dispatching his lying barbarian with a final lean on his sword. The Gaul chieftain was down, he saw, the almighty infantry gladius thrust in his side. He did not however feel that he almost stepped on the head of a masterless spear when he tried to stand. The dog, Marcus thought, what untamed courage does he have? Hesitation was however gleaned from Marcus’s nature the first day in the dusty training yard. Drawing his bloodied sword from the bowels of his last victim, he turned and made for the chieftain. The Gaul was trying to reorient himself, and when he turned his head, his wolf eyes recognized danger approaching. Yet he looked at danger as an opportunity, so he strode with those long legs toward Marcus. Marcus was running now and was almost a meager arm’s length before the chieftain lifted up his long sword. Opportunity, Marcus’s own eyes recognized. This will be your own undoing, slave! I won’t be firewood for your axe! He set his guard low and plunged into the waist of his ambusher. A quick thrust and stab did it all. Before a lightning can finish its streak, the barbarian was stripped of his princely position and tumbled face first into the centurion. Rising from the heap of extricated bowels, Marcus drove his gladius into the naked chest of the groaning prince and twisted it first before drawing it out.

His cohort was in disarray, he saw, yet they were fighting as soldiers should. For life or for duty, he knew that it was for the former. His sword was dripping slick with the life of the fifteen or twenty men he slew. And his arm was throbbing, not from pain or weariness, but from anticipation and hunger for more killing and death. Grim-faced he set out in a trot to his optio who was being engaged by three men. Terrentius was quite capable on his own, Marcus knew. But the barbaric soldiers were the closest to his circle of death. Leaping over a fallen Roman, he kept his sword arm abreast. And before his leathered feet touched the blood-mudded soil, a blond head—with shocked, wide-open eyes—flew up, chasing the wake of his sword. Marcus gazed at Terrentius for a moment and almost winked.

How’s that for a first page, first chapter? Pretty impressive, huh? Newp, not really. Except when you consider a trickle of rain impressing a salty veteran-of-a-thousand-storms sailor.

But how do we know this hasn’t been sitting in your notebook for years? How do we know this wasn’t sleeping in your “My Documents” folder for centuries now, and you’re just rehashing it? Or—here comes the kicker—how do we know that you wrote this years ago as part of a book you were trying to do and got stuck on the first page? If it was ever born, that book must have seen the axe long before it saw its first editor.

Whoa, my friend, back up a bit. Where are all these coming from? What are you getting at—

Newp, you back up. Okay, first things first, or better yet, let’s start with the second question. Where I’m getting at, we’ll get to it. Just bear with me a bit.

These, all these, were borne on the wings of Steve Steven’s slow electric riffs, vibrating memories of guys in yellow on a floating giant chunk of metal, those guys whose hand signals heralded irreverent mavericks and unflinching icemen. In fact, Top Gun Anthem is blaring on my headphones right now, sending impulses of energy to my brain and coming off my fingertips in the form of jumbled letters and words. The continuous loop makes my head heavy, as if I’m donning that uber-cool bone dome, visors down.

“Wingman, bogey eleven o’clock high,” I hear myself transmit. “Come right with me. Second element, break left. On three. Three. Two. One. Break.” A half a minute later, I raise the AWACS, “Eagle, Seeker. We’ve just overshot Sector 12-B, levelling at Angels 13. Confirm, Eagle.”

“Confirmed. Got your eyes.”

The third loop is fading, and so are the blue sky and the wispy clouds. The streaks of my wingman drift. The two shadows on my eight o’clock low blur away. Radio transmissions in my headset break up. And just like that, I’m back staring at my monitor when just moments ago it was my HUD. Stop trying to sound like Mr. Clancy, idiot. You’re not making sense! was the last thing I got from my fighter helmet. On the left panel of my desk sits my glinting silver Aviators. I stare at it wistfully for a bit. Take a lungful of air. And blow thorny raspberries.

Once, we were dead certain of what we’d be when we’d have to shed those childhood playacting.

I was in a rowdy gang back then. Our noses may have been snot free, but we were street urchins all the same. For rumbling Harleys, we had BMXs. For pieces, slingshots were slung on our necks. And we had no respect for the unknown, “respect” being “fear.” We owned the town streets and alleys. We heeded not the granny stories when we ventured into foot-wide dirt tracks leading to the woods. Smiling, we’d emerge on the other side of the town. Each and every one of us knew that those smiles weren’t the smiles of the brave conquistadors. Those were the smiles of relief. Yep, there was nothing more relieving than emerging into familiar surroundings after an hour or two of suffering the shadows of the woods, goosebumps popping out on the back of our necks each second. We owned it all—even those which were not ours.

Perhaps we knew that those afternoons weren’t slated for forever, for we drank it to the dregs, making the most of each moment. Or maybe, and closer to the truth, we didn’t have the slightest idea. We just did it the way we did it, which in looking back, I realize was just the perfect way. But we, and I most certainly, didn’t know that the unknown was going to eat up what we knew.

We knew what we dreamt of, and we knew that we were going to get it. When I was walking back and forth to school, the other kids whizzing past me on their bikes, I wished for a bike. It wouldn’t come for a year or two, but on each of those walking days, I knew that however late it would be, I’d get that bike. Same thing happened with the rollerblades. And with the PlayStation. And with the Jordan XIIs. So when Maverick and his F-14 Tomcat came into my consciousness, I knew what I was going to be. It would take a long, long time, but I’d get there.

Life, however, has this great way of bursting your bubble. And it’s called life. Yes, that cocksure. After first lifting me up to the heavens by allowing me to dream of the heavens, it slammed back to the hard-packed earth. It really does not matter what happened. What does matter is that it seems that life has a totally different plan. Maybe that’s why I bought into the whole determinism concept when I got into college. I just hope I don’t sound too fatalistic. After all, I still subscribe to the free will illusion.

So where have all those Vulcan cannons and screaming Phoenixes dreams come to?

Dead. Cause of death, limits.

And what am I really saying here?

I could make a whole thesis of it, just as I did with that Tolstoy one-liner. But it’s simple really, one that didn’t require a thousand words. In one moment or another in our adult lives, we sometimes find ourselves going back to our childhood playacting. And then in the middle of it all, we attempt to talk to that little kid a bit, ask him a few questions maybe. Most of the time though that kid will most certainly look into our eyes and say, “Mom says I should not be talking to strangers.” He’ll walk away without looking back.

Steve Stevens is still blaring out my headphones, but the jumbled letters and words it produces are becoming too difficult to decipher, right up to the moment that they might as well be hieroglyphs. I have to stop. I have nothing again.

Oh, and one last thing, if you didn’t get what NZTs are, and what they have to do with blinking cursors, you’ve got to watch Robert de Niro and Bradley Cooper’s Limitless.

Dang, I’ve used way too many conjunctions here.

We are defined by what we do. And now, be prepared for—no, not a barrage of philosophical gibberish—the movie quotes again. My apologies, I just can’t help it.

Again, we are defined by what we do. Max (Joe Anderson) in Across the Universe refuted this, and I’d like to agree with him. “No, Uncle Teddy, who you are defines what you do. Right, Jude?” But this only largely happens in the movies, or to those who are either incredibly lucky, brilliant, or stubborn. So lucky that they invented the clover and the horseshoe. So brilliant that they showed everybody in the cave that there is a sun out there. And so stubborn that they made the sun move across the sky, imposed that the earth is the center of the universe, and hanged-slash-burned the brilliant ones who said otherwise.

For the rest of us poor souls, we are defined by what we do. (I can’t believe I stated that thrice.) Think Frank Langella in his immaculately airy, cross-legged mien chastising the waitress who spilled ice all over his table in Sweet November. “You know, sweetie, we are what we do in this world.” No need to go on and quote his stoic coldness, I think. Hence, there are waitresses, clumsy or not. There are fishermen, with a boatful of catch or broken nets. Farmers breaking up the earth for sleeping seeds to sprout, or harvesting weeds. Bakers revealing the secrets of the grain and making bread, or burning them. Teachers guiding or ingraining—or whacking palms with those evil-looking rulers. Leaders and kings ruling or abusing. There are also keepers of stories, fact and fabricated, and they are storytellers and historians. I can go on and on, but Leonidas in 300 had it right through the bone, booming, “Spartaaans! What is your profession?!” His boys were the real thing as they were soldiers first before anything else, simply because soldiering was what they did.

Now, let us ask our little selves—our little Gollums or Smeagols lurking inside our souls—“What is your profession, my preciousssshh?!” After the initial roar of harrooo!s and oorah!s, you’ll know what you do and, consequently, who you are.

But perhaps you will not agree with me. I think that man is wired up in a certain way that his very first reaction to things is skepticism. What! No! Really now? Are you sure? If you still do not agree with me that we are all skeptics, you are being one now. And if you still refuse to believe, you can go and ask the one who is called the Messiah why he had nails and a spear pierce him to the point of despair.

Still, protests will ring the air most certainly:

“What then am I? Am I to be boxed in merely as a supporter since all I do is support?”

“What I do does not really define me since I do a lot of things besides this one! Call me Jack, if you will, since I am a jack of all trades!”

“I am an artist first before a sales agent! I cannot be just a sales agent!”

“I am a free spirit! You cannot box me in!”

“I am a dad—that is who I am!”

“I am mother to my kids and wife to my husband. I am a woman first and foremost!”

It is outrageous really, isn’t it? For you wake up each day, turn the shower on—or check on the kids first, if applicable—dress, eat, then off to work. You light up your PC, raise someone on the phone, and whoosh goes the day. Out of your focus, you see that the keyboard’s emitting a grayish tint, and your mouse is a little hot. So you raise yourself up amazed at how good you do your job. Yeah, ain’t I just good! you think. In between your narcissistic self-worship and your honest-to-goodness toil, you now put on your other beings—a friend, a food connoisseur, a smoker, or a Coke slurper. And at the end of the day, you become the dad or mom that you are again, or the boyfriend or girlfriend, or the movie buff, or the book devourer, or the sleeper if you may.

But the sun rises up again the next day. And so you become the many yous, the many selves that you personify, as the sun—or the moon for that matter—takes its predetermined course in the sky. You are this way for the rest of the week. Then the weekend comes. And then another week. A month. A year. Until one moment in the middle of all this great play we call life, you stop dead on your tracks, look into your own eyes, and ask in a voice as loud as thought and as silent as a whisper, “What am I? Who am I really?”

Whether your answer is an aggregate of all your beings or if just one stands out among the rest, it is yours to keep. Ooorahh to you!

As for me, I’d love to have the courage, even the temerity, to say, I am a wordsmith —following Orlando Bloom’s “I am a blacksmith” parting shot in Kingdom of Heaven. But with my sense of decency or honor or false modesty, if you will, I’d just say, I think I know what I do and who I am. John Rzeznik sang it. “I am a question to the world, not an answer to be heard.” First and foremost.

Often before taking a plunge, we test the waters. We dip the tips our feet a few nanometers into them to see if they’re just right. We judge the depth. We screw our eyes in concentration to try and discover if there are unknown monsters lurking a little bit below the surface. And then if the variables are of the right measures, we take a deep breath and we do that yawp that Professor Keating in Dead Poets’ Society was talking about. Exhilaration follows exhilaration, and then there’s that moment of peace, a second of death. Our eyes open to that aqueous, dreamy reality. Bubbles. Hundred of them. There may be that smile, or dilated pupils of awe perhaps. And before that bestial instinct of taking a lungful of breath kicks in—and this is the moment where I switch to the first person—I sometimes ask myself, So where do we go from here? Do I stay here and see if I could, by sheer force of human will, stay a little bit longer, exist in the muffled peace a heartbeat longer? What is up there in the world while I’m down here? Are the waves still racing to curl up in a moment of perfection only to crash down on the shore to its ordered chaotic destruction? Are the cliffs still holding strong the trees? Are the branches and leaves still dancing to the harmony of the salty breeze?

Unless my plunge heralded the end of the world, the answer would be all in the affirmative. Yes, they are still doing the things they do every day. The sun and the stars are still trekking up their course in the firmaments. And, yes, life happens still in the world. Even without you. (Another person shift here.)

So what makes you so special then?

Nothing really. Not a damn good reason. Except perhaps those that you’ve put up and built. Or perhaps it is the opposite—up there, they’re rejoicing for a hair breadth of time that you’re not tearing anything apart.

So life happens without you. It’s as if you’ve never even existed at all, I think. Are your thoughts swirling up there in the clouds still? Are your dreams still hoping above the surface? Newp. You’re where you are, my friend, and so are everything about you.

Why go up for air then? Why?

Because you’re a man after all, that’s why. A beast pretending to have control over what he does, what he cannot, and the overall outcome of the aggregate of all his did and didn’t. Men have to claw out from the hole they made for themselves to create yet another dent in the world. Let me digress a pip—“the genius of the hole: no matter how long you spend climbing out, you can still fall back down in an instant.” That’s from a computer game, by the way. Now back to the current thought.

Men having to have to something done is the general assertion in order for everything to make sense. To create. To destroy. To etch their names on walls, be it even just a slab of rock, a tombstone. Like pissing dogs. To leave memories on the minds of those who have known them—their parents, their brothers and sisters, their friends, their wives and husbands. Or if they’re lucky, to put themselves on the pages of books and echo for eternity, that is, depending on the paper’s lifetime and their fellows’ inherently fickle minds.

Is that all there is? Do we just have to make some point or other to the general mankind or to our individual relationships and then just vanish, violently or peaceably?

I’ve always thought that questions are more beautiful than answers. They have the curves of the question marks anyway. But really, they carry much force for they carry possibility, or potency as we called it in Metaphysics class. Answers just provide one with a dull period that could be mistaken for a smudge, or an angry exclamation point. They’re not even sufficient enough to stand on their own most often for they lead to tons of other questions. You may think that this way, answers can give possibilities too. Right you may be. But there was a question before the answer, and before the question was nothing—or something that led to the question. Chickens and eggs, anyone?

So why flail your arms and desperately kick up your legs for air? Why not just melt away then?

What the hell is the point in making a point? Point for the sake of making a point? Or is it making one for something else? What’s that in the something else that makes it a big deal then? Sense? Meaning? Meaninglessness?

Eternity? Why play for something unknown then? Because it is grander than playing for something known, like a mere championship ring or a million bucks?

Difference? What’s wrong with sameness? Because the difference is an improvement?

Betterment? How is it that we simple men crave for the complex? Because tile is better than mud?

Why not just plain unbridled love? Or loathing for that matter?

But why are you in the world when it would still go on spinning without you? Without Newton, the apple would have fallen on someone else’s head most likely. Without Einstein, another mind would have “relativized” everything. Without Russell, another soul would have “analyticized” philosophy. Without me, perhaps it would be you writing this.

Isn’t all of these just so?

Please note, however, that this is not a death wish or a suicide note. No matter how much I walk around personifying agnosticism, my upbringing and education succeeded in ingraining the unavoidable Catholic guilt. I’m just asking a question while submerged in the world’s dreams and hopes and thoughts.

And I, yet again, managed to deliver the final note with a period. Ain’t that just grand? Fuck. (Oh, wait, that was a question mark before I cussed. I should cuss less. Damn.)

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.

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.

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.

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!

0115 hrs

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?