A Day in the Life...

San Beda might have been somewhere in my past memory if only memories were so affirmatively credible every time. The minute I went there, I thought I had known just how those Gothic buildings would have looked like; as if I had previously walked those high-ceiling halls before, where my shoes would click and clack like horses' hooves. I felt a little de ja vu as I roamed those halls with their handsomely checkered floors. I must have loved temples and mansions in my past life. So much of the past was in my mind. I burned candles for nearly four months in order to refresh my grasp of those mountains and mountains of law books, as if I had any grasp at all. I rented a room less than a kilometer away from San Beda and for most of my stay in Manila; I must have walked the length between the law school and the boarding house a million times over. I felt comfortable the minute I stepped into my boarding school. My room was overlooking the busy street of Legarda while facing t...

I want to be with you always While I continue to live for you, Your innocent eyes strike me Like warm lightning from the sky. The sea is now a landless scenery But your wind is present and I am comforted, Further much to go, I want you by my side. If the sky hides the sun This darkness abhors the wind, When every sight becomes near Each sound I hear is deafening. I am afloat this wooden raft my sweet child, I want to sail but I move slowly The water that carries me Contains a huge fearful creature. When the sky is in thick gray oil paint, The sea is icy solid water. How I want you near me; I want to be with you always.

Once I had asked my grandfather about my grandmother's weakness and general immobility. He told me that it was indeed because of a disease that afflicted her and that she would not be able to speak so well anymore. What I really wanted to asked him was why she would scream at times into the midnight that everyone in the house would be awaken. What kind of disease would let one scream into the night was the thing I wanted to inquire upon. But as a toddler, I bet there are things that we do not even know how to ask, when vocabulary would not be enough to elucidate our inquiry. Everytime she was attacked by such "disease", Uncle Mameng and the servants would come and help my grandfather calmed her down, to reassure her that everything was all right. She was always murmuring about some person she was afraid of; a one she calls "the jinn". "There are no jinns. You are just imagining" my grandpa always assured her while she would lay there wide-eyed ...

Not only in these moments that I have pondered the possibility of writing a long overdue requiem for an old friend that had already gone to the netherworld, but also in many other instances before. Maybe I just hadn’t had the time before or maybe the time wasn’t just right. And so now I shall speak of him in the best of manners and as far as my remembrances of him could take. Aziz Vernon Mustapha was closer to me as a brother than as a friend. I met him during our first years in Ateneo de Zamboanga, in a time and place that was etched in my mind like mildew on a rock. He was sweating so furiously one sunny afternoon when he appeared out of nowhere and suddenly sat beside me without any prelude in a Religion 101 class that we had both attended. He kept on scrubbing the area around the back of his neck with a handy towel and that made me a little uneasy. It was the first week of school that year and I panned around the entire length of the room for any familiar faces, as well as ...