A Day in the Life...

  * (A repost from 2005) What do you know; I’ve got another vivid dream last night*.   No angels though yet I feel it’s worth elucidating if only for reason that it is such a lucid chunk of visions in my head while I slept so deeply and it may evoke some meanings for me or for the lives we all live. The dream started on a steep hill; in a place that I have never been before in my entire life—but it felt like it was in Antipolo, as the rolling hills reminded me of the place called Cherry Hill, the site of a famous landslide disaster some years back and which I was able to have a glimpse of on television and newspapers. I asked in my mind what was going on since there were a lot of people outdoors watching some neighborhood event, out in the open field while the sun was shining so brightly and the wind was warm, such as the summer breeze. Some bystanders answered my query:  “A boy from Japan was showing some flying ship.” I stretched my neck out and see for myself what the ...

My real sighting of a ghost came years later when I was just about ten or eleven years old . I could remember some particulars as I relate this to you now. It was near midnight, on one weekend, when most of the members of our household stayed wide awake to watch a television special; it was a late-night movie if I am not mistaken. Usually, when night comes, I felt dutiful always to check the back door if they were safely locked and shut tightly. That night, before I sat to watch the show, I reconnoitered the kitchen and locked the door after reassuring that every chore in the kitchen has been done. As the show started, I felt a strong urge to relieve myself so I headed for the comfort room, situated just to the left of the kitchen. As I turned towards the direction of the kitchen, I saw a figure of a woman in a white gown, with her hair down to her knees, walking past the hall leading to the kitchen. " Is someone still in the kitchen?" I asked. "Everyone is here. Why?...

There was one fish story that brought me to the very ends of the world it seems, so far away that running water does not exist and a paved road is an alien concept. My cousin King came to me on a warm day, the kind of day that my head is loose and every idea could grow and expand into some humongous concept. The kind of weather that the breeze is almost thick you could see them pass by, making you light inside and cheery. It was this cheeriness perhaps that took a bite into salesmanship, an amateur one that I realized later. "I am busy with some business prospect," I mentioned to grasp some talking points. King always seeks tutoring with his school assignments. "That must be a good prospect," he condescended. "What do you know about silk?" I asked. Perhaps he must have known some who could give me some idea. " Not much" he said. He seemed to know nothing. Bet that's why I was always ghost writing his report. "It's something we could ...

I do not mean re-engineering or even re-structuring. Maybe all we need is merely to invigorate the government system in order for it to achieve the maximum efficiency that is expected of it. We have tried such modes of re-invention as re-engineering and re-structuring, at great cost in time and money, and yet improvements have not been substantial or palpable. The public continues to languish in long queues every time a license or a passport is needed. Bribes are ever pernicious, and even more open today like it is no anymore a secret that should be tucked inside the pocket or a key is thrown into the deepest ocean. Sadly today, the public continues to encounter lazy faces of public servants seemingly tired of their day job and daydreaming of life on beaches almost all day long. At the slightest error, the public who is merely seeking public service gets squirmed at by those who are especially employed by the government in order to serve the public, and in order that the common person ...

It is in the early hours of the night that they come amidst the marching clouds; when the wind was fragile and the moon was somewhere out of sight. Clouds of all sizes and magnitude swayed like sailboats and ships in an ever-moving sea. They remain vague to my naked eyes until I train it a little further until I gain more focus. Then the clouds would take shapes of all sizes, of men with great wings of the widest span---the images of angels appeared to me, as we know them in lore and stories of old, handsome in their white robes and wings white as pearls, signaling to me the messages that they desired to convey, in beautiful and graceful pantomime, vividly staging what to me was the greatest show ever witnessed by my mortal eyes. In some instances, winged horses appeared in the sky, just as handsome and nearly as graceful. And to emphasize their messages, the clouds would also take the form of other things, such as ships with giant sails, a traffic enforcer directing an intersection, a...