Monday, January 26, 2015

THE SADDLE OF REFLECTIONS

The goat of Capricorn is on its way to slaughter.

In this January of tectonic shifts and stressful decisions, the birthday came and passed, dry as a devout Seventh Day Adventist.

The ensuing Spaghetti Marathon was not planned at all, but I did chase a few beers in the somber shadows of a familiar wooden house while nearby, a frantic neighborhood tried putting up a float for the next day's Charter Day parade.


I thought I could invite solace in Gerona as far farmers grappled with the riddle of climate change but a brief interlude at the parish church stirred the memory of a cute girl from long ago, her deformed arm hidden by a blanket but her beaming smile visible through the cover of a green mosquito net where she convalesced from measles. Her parents were in Guam and my mother said I should marry her someday. What if I did then?   


As options and scenarios spawned and collided, I saddled Ariel Guieb Tangilig to nowhere which brought me to a hidden waterfall somewhere in the foothills of Lupao. Somehow, discernment came as I stared at the waterfall's dry season trickle. And as me and Kuya Darwin passed along the hills made infamous by a massacre of the innocents in 1987, a decision was finally made: I'm not going to Eastern Samar or any other place at all. Everything was suddenly better after that.  



The next day, I did some mental calculations on how much I must raise every month to cover what I need to do as I ride Ariel Guieb Tangilig to Minalungao National Park. Abet of Almaguer was walking to there too some 20 years ago packing a box of canned beer and watching the lost Wating trek in his office suit. Roma cooked rice in a bamboo tube while Ces and Tolits tried salvaging a flotilla of illegal forest products that got detached from its mooring after we tried using it as a diving platform. We followed Oyet P. inside a cave where I encountered a giant mosquito and we got smothered by the smoke from the torch of our lead spelunker. 


On the way back to Fort Magsaysay, I scratched General Tinio's old Sto. Cristo parish church from Ariel Guieb Tangilig's list and wrote the formula of surviving unemployment over it. 


Ariel Guieb Tangilig and Lupo Domingo Quilban payed homage to a famous prison, and I again can take on the world!

1 comment:

  1. Isn't that the St. Catherine church in Gerona? That's my hometown! Yay!!!!

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