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rubber calories
stove top burning
outside inside
what do you seek

moving bursting
crashing changing
when are you riding
where will you be

talking running
laughing finding
everything something
open eyes do not see

laughing dying
silence slicing
noise full of nothing
startles me free

April 5, 7:00 AM – - Manila, the Philippines :  This was playing as the driver, Kuya Ton, and I wove around Quiapo, old Manila’s China Town (where I was born), then Tondo on my way to visit grandparents some of which are too sick to travel/go out.

My brother in law’s SUV was sometimes a speeding/sometimes lumbering winged-elephant, darting from one lane to the next amidst groggy herds of jeepneys, sidecars, jay-walking masses, Black Nazarene devotees, and tricycles. Through the front passenger window my childhood & teens flashed by one street at a time. Kuya Ton mumbles along to “White Wedding” as we unsuccessfully looked for disposable cameras (lithium batteries conked out & my spares were nowhere to be found, dwendes/dwarves at fault?) in the kiosks of Quiapo en route to Tondo — it was early morning on Maundy Thursday and save for wet market vendors with their wide eyed, shiny rows of silver fish + bare foot kids & a few early risers milling about, the usually throng-swarmed rows of soot smeared shops were in plain view – - a rare sight – -  were closed. Kuya Ton drives me to the very first SM Shoemart in the heart of downtown Manila, but it too was asleep – - its garish peach-orange make-up glowing under the hazy, humid, half-awake sky.

The older I get and the more chapters of my life I write, the more love for the Philippines I have: lust for life and love for fellow-men/the other coupled with the relentless determination to live can be felt everywhere, beamed from the warmth of the Filipino spirit.  Sincerest of smiles greet you like falling leaves: from the stretches of mountains embraced by pristine sand to tops of steaming piles of garbage that sadly, some of my people call home. It is in these islands you can find an abundance of genuine generosity — that which comes from those who have very little, almost always nothing, to spare.

From inside my black, air-conditioned cocoon I tried to tickle Manila’s underbelly with vibrations of love and gratitude, while sheepishly asking the tired buildings and proud trees lining Lawton if they remember me. I was a bit shy to have come back without much to offer, comparing myself to Efren “Kuya Ef” Peñaflorida, and I whisper to her a promise I intend to keep. On her ribbons of road I look back on where I have been and  brim with hope for where I am going, all too aware that it is what I do now that will get me there.  I said goodbye to the streets where with her, I braved floods, wind, rain, sun, silent laughter, innocent love, loss, little victories and sometimes loud tears through hours and hours of my solitary daily commutes to university.

My birth city has given my spirit such depths of color and song which I so want to the world to see and hear, hopefully through me, through things I have yet to paint and draw and words I have yet to share in music and perhaps more importantly, in how I decide to live my daily mundane life. Make Rizal, Mabini & Bonifacio, homeland heroes, proud. Manila, like my biological mother, has given me heart, has taught me to love.

If you ever visit the Philippines, I hope that you will find what I experience again and again, from the time I lived there and even more so now, as an adult with a  second home: the Filipino spirit cutting through the difficulties, gross realities of  the material realm, giving a glimpse of what is real and essential in this earthly life. A smile from a street kid a valuable lesson on what it means to be human. As they say,  the dhamma, the Lord, the Universe of whatever else you may word it, is closest to those with broken hearts.  I had this verse in mind before I left the bay area and funnily enough, the responsorial psalm at the baccalaureate mass where I was asked by my high school to give the commencement speech was just that: ” The Lord is close to the broken hearted”. Different paths on the outside, at the core, one destination.  Here is the full text from an audiobook/e-book I recently got from Pariyatti.org:

“The dhamma is closest to those with broken hearts,

Only when your home has been burned to the ground can you see the stars,

Do not throw away your suffering, is the fertile soil which grows the flowers of truth,

Embrace your pain, share your pleasure,

Pain is the teaching, release is the graduation.”

From “The Moon Appears When  the Water is Still” beautifully narrated by Ian McCrorie

Release, letting go, goodbyes just mean future hellos. My heart is heavy  — as heavy as the 17 lbs. of Filipiniana books I had to leave for now due to extremely overweight luggage :D.

One of the books I had to leave (it weighs a good pound!) is “Kapwa: The Self in the Other” by Katrin de Guia. “Kapwa” is a Tagalog word for just that: seeing one’s self in the other. I can not recommend this book enough to those interested in understanding the Filipino psyche. I am slapping myself now for not hiding it under my sweater or something. Thankfully, my pilot friend (Philippine Airlines yeah!) and former classmate from the fifth grade (!) has agreed to shuttle some of my books on his next MNL-SFO flight. (Salamat Marvs, hopya ko ha? Kapal! Haha)

I will be back with more than extra batteries rattling in an empty suitcase (more room for books and pastillas) very soon.

Fifth hello, here we go!