Arctic Beetle

Isang ungol ang bumasag ng aking panaginip
Malamang si Bantay iyon, ang aso namin
Awoo, awoo, awoo, ang kanyang pag-uulit
Sikmura o dila kaya niya ang may nais?

Dumilat ako at dumalaw sa kulungan
Ilang iglap akong nagitla sa tagpong tanaw
Bakas ang hirap sa panginginig ni Bantay
Daing pala ay ang maselang umbok sa tiyan

Di kusang naging saksi ako sa pribadong yugto
Ng nakapanghihinang pakikipagbuno ni Bantay
Para at laban sa laman ng sinapupunan
Upang makasapit sa isang mainam na areglo

Malaon din bago umusbong ang punla
Maliit at kapos sa proteksyon, subalit kumakapit
Sa kanyang mapag-arugang yapos at dila
Na hindi natitinag na katiyakan ang hatid

Gunita ang nagdala sa aking mga paa pabalik
Sa silid na matagal ko nang hindi nabisita
Ipinagkasya ko ang sarili sa espasyong para sa isa
Ngunit kailanman ay hindi naiba sa akin
Naalimpungatan siya at nang may bahagyang ngiti
Binalutan ako ni Ina ng kanyang init
At kami ay nahimbing sa malalim na gabi

——

Nakaupo ako sa inidoro (mahalaga at kailangan talaga ang detalyeng ito) at nakatitig sa kawalan nang bigla kong maalala na may isinulat nga pala akong tula noong isang semestre na mailalapit sa okasyon ngayon. Makailang beses din ako nagrebisa at nagsumikap gumawa ng tugmaan kaya kung pilit pakinggan, pasensya at ipasaaiyo mo na lang pagkasuklam. Tulang pambata dapat ito para sa isang elective ngunit sa makailang-ulit na paghagod ko ng pagbasa, parang lumalabas na teenager ang persona. Bata pa bang maituturing ‘yun? Ewan ko lang, sa palagay ko kasi, iyon ang mga taon na tumutulay sa patlang sa pagitan ng pagkabata at pagiging mayor-de-edad.

Wala akong espesyal na nagawa para kay Mama sa araw na ito. Hindi ko siya nasabihan ng “I love you” at ni hindi ko rin siya pinaretiro kahit ngayon lang sa mga gawaing-bahay. Sana, sa kabila ng aking sinabi na hindi ako komportable sa pagbisita niya sa aking blog, ay mapadpad siya rito para mabasa ang mga katagang pupunan sa hindi masambit na paghanga at pasasalamat. Happy Mother’s Day!

Note: I had originally intended this to be a character portrait of a certain cousin until I realized that what I’ve typed below is too lengthy for an introduction.

Unlike everybody, I can state with a good deal of certainty that I am not close to my cousins. It is a kinship I would most precisely put into words as amiable, but likewise inert and distant. The prevalent gap in our ages would in all likelihood be the closest reason I could attribute this aloofness to. As I was growing up, most of them were already in their college years, and so when I eventually recognized how unusual our relationship was, they were already living lives apart from the scope of a family. The few ones whose ages are near mine dwell in the province, affording us little time to create tight-knit ties.

If anything, I never sought to distance myself from them. Were that distance to be quantified, it’d be apparent by a healthy margin that I am friendlier to my cousins in my maternal side. What perhaps largely contributes to this inclination is the generation overlap between me and the daughters of my one particular auntie. We don’t talk often yet when I come by their place, they make sure they engage my attention by having me in their bedroom while the grownups catch up on the lost time. What the small talks fail to bridge are filled in with the sounds of the television tuned to the channel they think I would have opted if I spoke more openly and comfortably to them. This happens as frequent as a child dares to curse in front of her parents, so one can easily imagine how it fares between me and the rest of my cousins.

As it happens however, I am the sole one with a case like this among my siblings. One would have thought my middle sib, who I’ve written about a handful of times, as an exception because of the limitation posed by her disability but I think it is highly-relevant to the matter at hand that I note that she is held fondly by my aunties and cousins. My eldest sister (which much to my current surprise, I haven’t mentioned not even once in any of my entries), on the other hand, had grown up warmly with some of them, landing her on a floor a league atop my small talk level. I was a kid who played with tea sets alone within the confines of our home, so though we used to live in a compound with my paternal cousins, they were strangers to me as much as the kids living from across the street.

Family gatherings are substantial wells of idle time for me. In fact, they are generally fun but I wish the future ones will exceed the stale enjoyability of the previous. If I am not seen fulfilling my duties in eating and gracing pictures with my presence, I am likely found roving my gaze while awaiting for a cousin whose interest for a short chatter I will rouse. I was never at the questioning end of a conversation and I had mastered my role so well that my prediction for how it’ll proceed had never been wrong– or rather, it has taken the same path everytime. They would ask about my course in college, then my family and finally, leave to search for a more meaningful conversation. Yup, they forget my course every single time, of which I am actually glad since it entails further seconds of zero awkwardness.

If you were expecting this entry to boil down to me saying that I yearn to be close to them, I won’t. I don’t see how its materialization at present would bring change to the past seventeen years I grew up without their fond regard. But just so you know, never did I shut my mind off at the idea.

Up to this point, yesterday is indistinguishable from that magical day of May I set aside writing for the global welfare. That is to say, I did not merely wallow in inutility during the months I was not seen because as far as the humanity is concerned, the counterintelligence measure used against the recent unpublicized zombie attack in Manila is my brainchild. It was rough both physically and mentally, and if you conceived an inquiry having come across the word zombie, then allow me to verify it: fancy schmancy plants do not stand a chance against zombies; however, a brilliant brain does. Superb story to compensate for my 1 year absence, yes yes?

In the first few weeks of the update deadlock, a “creature” (I’m pretty sure it was Smeagol’s brother) had come to my presence and informed me that my blog is under the surveillance of my parents. My dear parents, I’d appreciate it greatly if you’ll give me at least the comfort of not being reminded of the reality where its URL is no longer strange to you. Immunity from the unsealed dinner time discussions is one of my motives when I started this. Nonetheless, I assure you that the deficiency in kinetic energy of this webspace is exclusively dependent on the variable I dub procrastination.

On another note, it appears to me that my hit counter had recently gotten a generous kick of nitrous boost, thanks to my auto-refreshing browser equipped with the ability to switch IP addresses anytime so I may also be under the impression that I have unique foreign visitors. My cheap statistical means of dividing the total hits over the total number of days the data was collected suggests that my browser refreshes this blog at a rate of 2.73 hits/day. This figure surprisingly coincides with the recent trend in my daily hits. I take it to mean that this general direction taken by the cosmos is plainly a consequence of the strong foreboding given off by my heroic return.

You should bear in mind, perchance you clamor for more updates, that  I put the well-being of the humanity above all else. It should be out of your anticipation that updates are to follow thereafter this for zombie scourges are anything but timed and proverbial.

Cheers for the upteenth start of The Arctic Beetle.

I seldom remember my promises, much less keep them. Breaching what I told two entries ago is too brusque but for something of this gravity, I cannot let it fall out unacknowledged either. My sister is trouble-philic and what she got herself into this time, if not the most huge, yields more suspense than getting seven to eight girls gang up on her in a very shoujo-like manner. How does someone who hasn’t taken a step beyond our doorway since February manage to pull in trouble? By getting death threats. Surprised? So I was but I bet your oral cavity made the larger O.

At the back of my mind, I predicted that it was a type of threat I can brush off as pointless notwithstanding the case’s high probability of occurrence. The string of messages we found in her inbox came out to be  implicit offers stating that a wad of money amounting to 20, 000 PHP can (but not almost instantly) be an immunity necklace against possible deadly offenses by “Tau Gamma”. Or at least that’s what I understood from the texter’s intellectually-overwhelming Deaf grammar. Tau Gamma’s background is a haze I wish to direct none of my researching or inferring abilities on since it’s evidently a prop added to make the threat fall into the flair category.

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Me, I KILL YOU.

As with any action film, there has to be a “great escape” of crucial relevance to the rest of the story: her’s entailed leaving the bounds of our home in stealth mode sometime last week. That would have been the plan most susceptible to attack so in supplement to her mind void of shrewdness, we (the sidekicks) stopped her.

We had suspects, of course. Logically, she shouldn’t have a lot of enemies since her irrationality is ultimately selective towards people within her immediate sanguine relations. In her lifespan, there has only been one person who indicated the likelihood of resorting to such means to harm and that’s Krista, the same girl who arranged the aforementioned mobbing. As it later turned out, our conjecture is positive while the rest of the threat is but a flimsily-weaved story that can be made tattered by the mention of  the words police, catch and jail.

For a moment, I was frankly scared. Experiences like this one cause me to rethink whether the line “I live a normal life.” applies to me.

It’s been days since I recognized why being sent to the world beyond purgatory is a disaster. The heat coupled with the dark environment and lack of electric fans sounds more hell-like than suffering something equivalent to my sins. It’ll be like prancing around Manila in midday with only your everyday get-up or, incurring death unknowingly via heat stroke.

The daily thermometer readings inside my room average to 35.8 degree Celsius; that is approximately 1.2 units away from the normal human body temperature. Being off from the reach of nearest source of air, may it be hot or cold, for 2 seconds can make my sweat glands active as the most hyperactive child you know. Even when I take a bath, it seems to me that the rate at which my body produces sweat is in equilibrium with the speed the water from the shower hose gushes. I am more and more inclined to think that I am probably losing an appreciable amount of fat due to the weather. On the downside, the situation of my face hangs variably between being chapped and excessively sebaceous. Gross, yes.

A 5-second exposure to the sun can cause my complexion to turn two or three shades down the gradient. The sun’s visible affection for my skin is more fiery than a kiss and is suitably named as sun-burnt. Calling out to all the artists out there, my wide array of skin tones is open for palette-referencing.

There should be a primary cause to this and right now, I am trying to think of reasons less lame than global warming. Then again, Philippines is a tropical country.

I need an everyday supply of buko juice.

Being useless is a choice and while it is a common human logic to have an inflated feeling of self-importance, my sister has long voluntarily taken the path of a bum. It may be fated for the hearing-impaired, at least here, to join the pack of the unemployed after college but they definitely have the option to try. Somehow, I think it is the only way to make the authorities aware of the need to legislate bills that will give them priority over the able. I’m not giving that assurance anytime soon, especially with the retrieval of election funds that’s gonna materialize right after the Presidential Elections. I don’t mind starting on this topic but that’s not the point I’m swerving at. Long introduction short: the pebbles in our lawn are evidently much useful than my sister.

As I put my pouts into words now, she is probably in her bed dozing like Snorlax whose potbelly is more plump than ever. In her dreams, I assume, is her fairly new 50-year old boyfriend affectionately snuggling her– yes, another old bloke from US. Roughly five hours from now, she will rise to tame her stomach that now emits sounds which resemble a frog croaking in screamo. The highlight of her day comes when she turns on the computer to launch Camfrog and have a lovely conversation with William (the boyfriend) from 7 am til 4 pm. Dinner, sleep, breakfast, PC and the routine is fixed on loop again. Everyone’s idealistic notion of exciting, is it not?

Before you pull a grimace at my irate mockeries, if it’s any comfort to your moral sense, our family has tried proposing businesses she can handle alone despite her disability. She was actually pretty cool with everything until we mentioned that the PC she’ll be using at work is exclusively for the purpose of getting her tasks done (read as no 10 hrs/day video call with William). To her, the idea of supporting herself with her self-earned money is petty to the thought of not seeing the man she talks to every single day of her potentially-opportune life. I no longer try to figure out whether she thinks of her future because she obviously does. Her future as a deaf married to a man based in US has been in her mind and all along, her life has been purely dedicated to achieve that end. What a waste of a solid educational background.

Before she turns 23 this June, I wish her daily iterations would encounter a “break;” somewhere. May she finally outgrow her glam American Dream as well.

—-

PS: Now that I shuffle through my entries, they are mostly about her. I promise to stop this series soon.