His Blind Side

Holding out a blue cup containing the hearts of those who have passed by and noticed his soul, he was situated under a post with his back leaning on its pole. Nestled between his tired legs is his little kid with big brown eyes, innocent by age, devouring a small cob of corn while wishing that it could sustain and fill his empty basket in the middle of his fragile and young body.

The old man, skin dark and wrinkled with age, portrayed a face that speaks a life lived with love and content amidst the mishaps that have shattered his being. “Ang bulag, gapangita tawo. Tawo man kita, gamiton ta ang ulo ta.” Mang Ernesto Inocencio, 59, said.

On 1977, his world blacked out, at the young age of 22. He was fishing on that fateful day in Carles, his hometown. Under the scorching heat of the sun, salt-aired ambience, and the pangs of misfortune, he met his Waterloo. Mang Ernesto was eager to bring home a good catch but instead, he brought home his body- minus his sense of sight. He released the dynamite into the open sea but tragic as it is, the dynamite backfired and left him a remembrance embedded in his face for all throughout his life. But mang Ernesto is bulletproof and God has other plans for him.

During his lightless manhood, he married Remedios who bore him 5 children. After she died, he married Linda and they were blessed with 4 children. After Linda died, unable to bear the loneliness and losses in his heart, he married again! Fearing that his heart would go stale, he found Ninette and together they promised eternity. She bore him 5 children to take care of but eventually, God took her away. “Tanan sila masanag kag ambot kun ngaa nagkalamatay sila.” Mang Ernesto humored the air with his way of words describing those who could see as “masanag”.

It was 1992 when he married Criselda. Together they raised 9 children; one of them is still finishing the cob of corn in his hands. “Ah, si Criselda, dulom to siya iya. Pareho kami.” Together they live in La Paz, contented with the simple life that they have as long as they can eat three meals a day, no longer minding what the food is or how little is available. “Love is blind.” He quoted, thankful about the past love affairs he has, with all of his 3 desceased wives accepting him as what he is. “Siling sang Diyos, go and multiply. Gina sunod ko man lang ang Bibliya.” Mang Erenesto’s youth may have stayed with him.

            For a few moments, Mang Ernesto would pause as the passersby would look at him, battling inside their minds whether to give or not to give him a little of the rattling coins inside their purse. He is thinking, perhaps, about the life that he is living in, thinking about what would happen the moment he leaves this place to pick up his children from school so that they could go home together, bringing with him his bag full of things like a clock and a flash light.

            How would he manage to do that, given that he is a handicap? Perhaps 37 years of a life deprived from light have taught him things that people who can see are blind enough to learn and realize? Maybe Mang Ernesto’s blind side had made him understand that the priceless and beautiful things in this world are not for the eyes to see but only for the heart to be felt. 

Other World

Traveling in the Other World is something that I always look forward to. It is an open space, secluded in secrets, and a place that can shell me with full-fledged possibility that I no longer necessitate for a ticket, a passport, or even a single dime just to crossover.

I can travel there.

Yeah, no doubt that I can.

In almost any time of any day, in any week and in whatever month and year, I can always reach the Other World. Without any restraints or the need for me to bring along my identification card or traveling permit, I can enter the portal to the Other World. I can even stay there as long as I want to, feel like home, without having to face reality based limitations and drawings of law from This World. I can do almost anything there, live a life full of freedom, and say anything that I want to say.

I love living in the Other World.

I love the wind that splits through my salt-skinned body like how I love the wind when it blows my dark brown mass of hair which covers my head and as it flows, windswept, I can breathe.
I love how my stale heart can feel deeply every single sense of emotion present around me, heightening my six senses and allowing me to feel even the strangest feeling there is.
I love how my pale lips can utter the words that I cannot even hear by my own ears, how I can speak without even realizing that I am talking to a complete stranger or someone from This World that I haven't even spoken to before.

Today, however, I have been trying hard summon my sense of sagacity for me to remember even the darkest and unpleasant experiences that I have from the Other World. Right now, I just can't. I cannot fathom even to think all those mishaps and sad occurrences, not to mention that I will have to find a way to best describe them and put them out to words and this would entail the sharp bottles of my memory to recover even the nearest emotion that I have felt during those times of trouble. I cannot bear to think of facing them and looking them in their eyes once more, reminding me that I have never even tried to face and defeat them instead of surfacing into the portal, succumbing my body to return to This World with my eyes wide open, shocked.

I feel that I can no longer share the darkest of my stays in the Other World for these are the still events of chaos and loneliness deep inside me. The Other World have failed to deliver the things that I wish would happen to This World. It is a disappointing truth, a sad trail of reality, echoing with my footsteps, in the dark of the doom.

--from Two Lives. part 2

Two Lives

I am salt skinned. My eyes are big, brown and expressive. Sometimes they would look like they are shinning, so light and full of bliss but most of the time they would look dark and black, utterly indifferent of what is happening around me and when my eyes are in the state of wonder, then anyone would know that I am currently living in the Other World.

My hair is brown as well, short but straight with uneven lengths. Sometimes my hair is soft, smooth, and shiny. Sometimes my hair is damp, dull, and dry, depending on the occurrence of the humid and on how I have combed it before going out of my house in This World.

I live and breathe in both worlds simultaneously. I legally exist in both, not considered an alien who got dropped out by a clan from another nowhere. I speak the same language used in both worlds. I live by the rules within the community I'm currently in.

Both worlds exist.

They do.

They Just do.

THE OTHER WORLD
I like living in the Other World. Life is crazy, perfect, scary, and most of the time life is enigmatic and confusing. My life here would usually appear blurry and quite hard to comprehend. Sometimes I would meet strangers and feel as if I have know them all my life. I am with them, interacting and living life as if I really know each of them. Sometimes, I would meet my friends from This World in the Other World. It's comforting to be with them somehow, knowing that they can still exist and live in the Other World. I know it's very difficult for them to crossover just to be with me while it is also hard for me to be with them all throughout my stay in the Other world.

One life in the Other World that I could best remember is the one where I was in an unknown place, sitting on a high rock. I can still remember the splashing of the waves from the ocean, crashing into the stone, spraying salt water into my face. I can still remember how the wind blew that day as well as the color of the sky. I can still remember how hidden the place i was in was, the position of the rocks and how big they are. That day, my life appeared in gray, blue, and white and it was something I could somehow remember whenever I feel sad. I can still remember how I felt after I have traveled back to This World, how my longing to return to the island swelled into my soul for a couple of days, leaving me restless as I toss and turn in my bed each night, how I struggled within as I hope to return to the place. I have been there for only once and I don't have any idea if one day I might find myself there again even just for a moment.

When i was in that marvelous place I was with someone. He was with me, sitting on a rock. I never got to see his face but we were talking about something serious. We talked and it was blurry. I know what was going on but I cannot seem to comprehend what we were talking about. It's not that I have forgotten what have we talked about on that fateful moment but I can remember that I do not actually know what we were talking about. I'm confused all the way but all I know is that we were together, happy, and alive. All I know is that it was one of the best days of my life in the Other World that even after more than four years I can still remember it, I can still remember him. He was wearing white and if only I got the chance to remember or see his face clearly. If only I got to hear how his voice and laughter sound like. If only I can see and draw in my heart how he smiles and the color of his eyes. If only...

Life appears in black, gray, white, dark blue, and blood red whenever I am in the Other World.

--part 1.

Bang Bang: Apostacy

Faith is a rational weapon, more powerful than any implement of war ever made by man. A mass of dead people are walking in this Earth, eating with me, living with me, laughing with me, conversing with me. My thoughts about this matter are beyond words. I am an apostate.

I believed. I yielded. I learned. I deviated. Am I to be considered dead as well? i was raised as a Catholic, papers and act. I came from a family of devout Catholic believers. I was educated in Catholic institutions. I went to Catholic events and took part in its religious practices. I saw the Redeemer in my dreams. I talked to saints in my dreams. Then I became an apostate, a turn-coated rat.

Now I find myself extremely liable for my own accounts on whatsoever that is veiling this huge and revolving breathing sphere. Noticeably, I just earned myself a label that will soon provide no significant memory as each day would pass and die. As an apostate, what will become of me? A quisling capable of ruining my own youth?

Rotting in hell is a rational and sensible thought to give me the creeps for a moment but then, what comes next? If faith is rational, then so is fear. A biological being I may be, wandering this world with auras of things and emotions that my eyes cannot see, am I still subject to feel fear? Am I not exempted t be saved when the so called Rapture is transparently roving the face of this momentarily living planet? 

I am an apostate, self-proclaimed. I lie. I laugh. I trick. I fool mt own self, utterly lacking the beliefs that was presented to me by my family, my alma matter, my mentors, and the last priest who heard my awful deviation during my last desireless and regurgitated confession on the holy grounds of a sacred and antiquated Catholic colony.

I looked up, today, at the crying sky and saw a big man looking at me. He had a gun and he pointed the weapon at me. Bang. Bang.

The Borrowed

In a trice she opened her eyes as they grew in mass, falling down from the lightless sky. They fell down together, armed and heavy, crunching on the roof.

Blink.

She looked directly straight at the blank ceiling, eyeballs steady. She blinked again and parted her lips. A line of yellow light appeared under the door, illuminating a small part of her room. She blinked and exhaled silently. The cold air entered her nose and filled her lungs, heart thumping, taking up speed.

Blink.

She blinked and her fingers trembled underneath the pillow beside her. The warriors from the sky grew thick, drumming hard on the earth, waking it up. Shards of the West Warriors flew through her window and entered her room, painted it with an eerie and cold air. She tried to hear her heart but it was drowned by the evasive enemies that have recently arrived. A West Warrior howled and she heard the trees shake in terror, stained with what was falling down. She heard a new sound.

Blink.

She turned her head at the door. Lips now closed, breathing hushed, she looked at the ceiling, confronting her own self. A hand touched the cold doorknob, she heard it, she felt it. She closed her eyes, tossed to the opposite side as inaudible as she could. She heard the cold ball turn clockwise, then countered.

It stopped.

She pressed her eyelids together hard, shut, wary. Another West Warrior howled and its comrades rushed through her window. She felt them through her hair and her lips trembled once, then again.

A second.

Another second.

The last second.

A creak.

A turn.

A crack, a two, and the door was apart.

It allowed a line of vertical yellow light to seep through the gap. The light grew and grew. She opened her eyes.

Blink.

She moved and faced the shadow, surrounded by the light. There came warmth but the West Warriors fought it. The shadow walked in, one foot after the other.

Creak.

Creak.

Creak.

Creak.

She saw her own eyes looking at her, her own lips smiling at her, her own body, in front of her. Abruptly, what was falling from the sky halted.

A Lightning.

"Who are you? Why are you in my bed?" the standing girl said.

The lying girl tried to compose herself upon hearing her words. She sat upright, trembling inside her clothes. "You will never be me."

The girl smiled and the thunder roared. "I am now, silly." She moved around the room, barefoot, light, as if she contains no soul at all. "You no longer exist so stop pretending that you're even alive."

The girl stood up from her bed, undecided. She screamed, words bouncing off the four walls, howling with the wind. She opened the window, tears pouring down, and jumped off. She stopped feeling the damp air, she cannot even smell the earth, but she can only feel her body dissolve in pixels, and her heart thumping down.

Blink.

She crashed on the ground.

Bloodless.

Soundless.

Massless.

Nothing.