A Bright World

One day while darkness crept slowly into the night, I was in a hide-and-seek game when suddenly, as I looked into the area full of banana trees while hiding from my seeker, I noticed a little distortion in the trunks of the banana trees, and as I stared lengthily towards the woods, I noticed that a group of persons was looking at me. Some were standing while a couple was sitting in a kneeling position. They were all staring at me. They looked unusual in that they had skin gleaming like bronze and their body sizes were relatively small like children's body and yet their faces looked old. I should have been scared and immediately run away but they seem to have put me in a trance that fear was absent in me at that moment. I remember it now so vividly, as I try to recollect these past events. I could even describe to you how one is put in a trance. As I looked at them, my head felt a gentle swelling, painless and smooth, as if the rest of me disappeared, except my head and my feet did not feel the ground. Again, my surroundings became yellow and everything seemed to glow despite the lateness of the day. My sight became sharper and I could hear my heart pounding and my body seemed ethereal like I was a spirit floating above the ground. The one person sitting kept on signaling to me that I should approach them, because perhaps of the trance that I was put in, I headed towards the woods slowly, into the thick groupings of banana trees. As I pierced through the woods, the surroundings became brighter and ahead of me was a pathway in the forest, and I could see many of them at each side of the pathway, hanging from trees and huge stones. They all held palm leaves in their hands and shook it that collectively they made a swooshing sound that is gentle to the ear. Nobody spoke to me and nobody touched me. After a few meters of going forward, I stopped abruptly without deciding on my own, and turned back and into the games that I was playing with the other kids. It was a transition so smooth that I could say that time stood still and the event suddenly disappeared from my mind, never able to tell it to any of my friends or to my mother about the particular strange occurrence. It was only later on in life, that the memory kept coming back every time I walked into some woods with the same landscape and contour, feeling déjà vu every time, and vividly recalling details of such event. It must have been a dream. It must have been not. But dreams I could really recall to be dreams no matter how vivid they were and the forest incident was never a dream. In fact I had a dream once, about three years ago that was so vivid and yet I fully recognized it as merely a dream, not a memory of past events. In that particular dream, there was also a pond. I found myself in the middle of a wasteland, with red cracking clay all over, up to where my sight could reach. And then there was the pond that was unusually situated near a sloping hill and the air was yellowish and the sky a bit red, bleeding into many hues and concentration of red. There were no trees or a single bush in the arid ground except for a leafless tree protruding at one side of the shore of the pond and the wind was very still and motionless and the only sound I heard was the poundings of my heart. If you could perhaps imagine Mars and its landscape, that was how the dream looked and felt like.

The pond was of fair size in a shape that is an almost a perfect circle. It was a small pond indeed with a radius not more than ten meters. I climbed the barren tree and sat there looking into the water, undecided about my next move. I could see the water inviting me to jump, almost feeling the coolness that it harbored; the dewy color of the water was refreshing to the sight. There was some life in the pond that I felt it could talk and communicate as if it was a creature on its own, with a head and a torso, and the tentacles of an ancient mollusk. I stood up from one of the tree's branches and dived into the water. The splashing sound it made as I entered the water reverberated throughout the heavy air that I could hear it rumbling even while I was deep into the water. Such sound made me reckon that the pond was deep, so deep in fact that I kept going further and further into the water and I could not see ground. As I went deeper, there was exaltation inside me, a sudden gush of joy that became more and more prevalent as I dived deeper and deeper. But even as I go further into the water, I could find no end, as if it was a bottomless pit. I was insisting to lunge deeper when suddenly I felt a hand grab my body and pull me towards the surface. When I reached the surface of the water I realized that I could not swim that the man who grabbed me had to help me reach the shore. There were actually two men that helped me get out of the water, as I lay there gasping in the banks. I examined the two men and observed them carefully and to my amazement, they both looked like me. They were my twins if only in that particular dream.

I sat there at the pond's shore while the two men stayed in the water, so expert in their swimming prowess that you could not tell from the surface if they are really moving their hands and feet to wade above the waters. That was the time that I saw this vision of an old person who looked like an old woman in a very long white dress. She looked so old that I had initially thought of her to be a ghost but despite such apprehensions, I could not move and continued to stare at the apparition. She approached me slowly as she floated through the wind, her feet entirely above the ground. As much as I thought that she was approaching me, as much farther she had become. It was completely a distortion of physics and of sight. She moved away from me, hovering towards the top of the nearby hill. A smile was pasted on her crinkled face that somehow I felt reassured that she meant no harm. She pointed towards the tree and through my mind, she instructed me to dive once more into the water. And so I recreated my previous dive and the sudden gush of happy emotion was there again as well as the temptation to go deeper and deeper. To seek the ultimate depth, the bottomless pit. The water offered such narcotic feeling that the two men had to grab me and pull me up before I go so much deeper and became lost into such very fearful depth. Every time I reach the shore, I dived again and then dived again until I was able to swim on my own, having gained the patience not to go deeper into the water.

And the dream went into a blur. The last recoverable image I have got of that dream was the old woman dancing atop the hill, while floating, and swaying her arms sideways and roundabout as if ordering the wind and all the elements to move, and the air moved. In fact, the entire atmosphere was in a whirl.

If dreams could be so vivid, nothing could top that particular dream where even when years had already passed, I could still remember the details and the minutest of emotions that I felt. It was one of those dreams that once I woke up, I had the feeling that I had been transported from one place towards another instead of the general feeling of waking up.

Of dreams and of past memories therefore I have a healthy recognition and have reasonable distinction.

It was also in my Hadja Saniya's front yard that I also had another experience of trance. Again, we were playing a catch-me-if-you-can as twilight was already heavy into the night that it was only the full moon in the sky that gave us sufficient illumination. When the moon was full, us children would play into the night and it was sort of a ritual for us every time the moon appeared at its fullest. Before night came, the older children would inform all of us that the moon would appear in the night so we had to prepare for the night games. They say the night was full of monsters and ghosts but when the moon was full, even the olds would be in the yards to enjoy the mystic of a moonlit night.

The extra playing time we've got made us giddy and a little bit livelier. Everyone seemed to laugh and snitched until we were all laughing incessantly as we go running in a circle continuously and I started to hear laughing voices not of my friends but of some other persons'—old persons'. I stopped moving while the others kept running in circles, and the laughing voices faded as if I became suddenly deaf. And I stood there petrified and my body moved independently of my will until I was positioned apart from my playmates and gazed towards a guava tree whose leaves were crumbled due to the coolness of the night. The night became a little bit darker and my friends disappeared into a blur as if I was the only person on earth that night. There was a red flickering light in the middle of the guava tree. The spark of light flickered so slowly as if someone was blowing it again and again. I squinted my eyes and I saw a figure of a huge man with the head of a horse, and the flickering light was at the end of what looked like a huge cigar. I could see figures in shadow because the tree was just about twenty meters away from where I was standing. The figure then changed into the figure of an elephant. After a few moments, I saw the shape of a whale, then a horse head again, then of a monkey. The shape kept on changing and changing. The occurrence took about nearly an hour but when it ended my friends was still running in circles. I felt sudden loneliness that I started to cry for no reason at all. I saw my mother coming after me and asked what was wrong with me. The other kids said that we were just playing. My crying caused the disruption of our over-extended play into the night. Somehow, I could not remember telling my mother or anyone about the strange figures I have seen. Funnier still, when the day after came, nobody mentioned to me that I acted queerly by just standing there and crying so suddenly. Just like those other strange memories, I always failed to tell anyone for reason that is perhaps beyond careful remembrance. It may be perhaps the feeling I had then, even up to now, that no one would believe some queer stories anyway that it was not worth telling in the first place. Such memories faded in my head as the years went by, to recur as deja vu in later years.

All these experiences had one major tread that is similar to all and that is the feeling of entering into another dimension, penetrating an invisible wall that divides this world from some other parallel existence. I have a great feeling that those events were planned by some supernatural beings, as a way of introducing their presence here on our material world, to declare that they are here.

2.1.

Hadja Saniya was unlike other elders we had. The more she got older, the sharper she had become. She had been tending a store and kids like us could not touch the goods as easily, in order to put some candies into our pockets without paying for it. All-day long she played solitaire and was all too engrossed in it. I have learned one lesson or two about playing cards from her. At age six, I was already crazy about solitaire. At age nine, I was already gambling with the older cousins and uncles, playing poker and baccarat.

She never spoke much but she was always ready with the broom every time we did some mischief in the house, even those malefaction we did outside whenever news of such reach the house. One afternoon, words got to her that we took some bits of pork meat from some neighbors grilling a whole swine. I did not have so much beating from anyone as much as I had from her. That was my first religious lesson. Moslems do not eat pork she screamed and gnashed and from then on, I never touched the meat for a long, long time.

Her house would have been so grand when it was newly built as if centuries ago. While I was scrubbing the floor and wiping the dust from furniture, I imagine it to be a classic house made of wood, somehow Spanish in architecture but always reminding me of American houses that I often see in the movies, just like the one in American Psycho. Her husband died years back that we did not really see him alive but his picture hanging in the living room reminded me about how handsome he might have been, a man pure in Middle Eastern blood, leaning to the Turkish rather than Arab. He might have been a cinch with the ladies in his younger days. I imagined their stories of adornment. Perhaps, he was a handsome young man then, setting eye upon a fair Samal lad, and some other girls. He must have been a rich man to put up such a house. In Moslem wedding engagements, at least to those who were prosperous, all the matters are never settled in one sitting, at least not in one grand ceremony, merely climaxing upon such explosion of merriment and celebration. There would be the engagement procedures where the family of the male would bring all kinds of sweets and delicacies wrapped in colorful packages. In recent times, they used colorful cellophane and Japanese paper when in the past they have to make use of carefully garnished garments and expensive silk from china. The china man brought these things and porcelains in exchange for the gold of the local tribesmen. There must have been a lot of gold vein in the area of Zamboanga that there were old pictures of Samal tribesmen flashing those teeth that glitter even if the photograph were in fading black and white.

Imagine yourself in a stock exchange as quoted prices flew by here and there and you would be able to feel how the parties negotiate for the amount of dowries to be taken by the family of the would-be bride. The spokesman for the male party would offer all the things that were superfluous like four heads of cow or a pocketful of pearls and morsels of gold. The father of the bride-to-be would of course negotiate for a better deal until the two parties meet at one delta of understanding. About a year after the agreement, the wedding ceremony would take place and in those olden days, it would last almost a week of merry making and festivity. The gongs would reverberate throughout, day and night, insistent and almost to the point of annoyance to the neighborhood. The best dancers would be invited to take turns, as the bride and groom are kept apart until the last day of the ceremony. There was the persevering smell of rice cakes and pastries made of mustard and egg, the kind that I always look for whenever I am in such activity, identifying the area of the kitchen as early as possible and then reconnoitering the area like a vulture. I usually fill my stomach with a lot of native coffee as the supply was bottomless and unending and every adult would took notice that such a young child would spoil himself with nerve-wracking amount of coffee.

Even in her fading years, Hadja Saniya looked fair that there was no doubt that she had deserved such grand wedding from the "Turkish" suitor.

Years after, the house of Hadja Saniya was graying and the paint on the walls subsided that there was apparent darkness everywhere. When night comes, the darkness is more pronounced as silence complements the general dimness. The smell of old wood always lay heavy upon my nose that every smell of wood reminds me of the house. Dirt stuck to the decades-old walls invite me always to stare at them and I reckoned then that the dark stains on them formed the shapes of men and other unlikely beings. The house was alive I thought then and it breathes into our lives every moment we happened to be there. In the night, these shadows become sharper that I thought I saw the shade of an old woman always while the lights are out and I lay there trying to find sleep, turning in my bed while cuddled inside the heavy fabric, sweating profusely from fear of shadows.

I would sweat so heavily from warmth as I resisted the terrifying shadows of an old woman sitting just at the foot of my bed. There were times that the fear ate so much into me that I screamed and cried in the middle of the night. My father thought I was just missing my grandfather that at midnight, they would deliver me to my Uncle Mameng's house nearly ten kilometers away.

Of course, I would have to be back with my mother when school finally opened. The shadows finally came at a lesser frequency and besides sleeping together with my brothers kept me somewhat reassured. If that old woman would strangle me, at least I would not be the only one to be strangled.

I could not tell if those shadows were really ghosts or spirits but I felt so sure that they breathe a life and they were unmistakably the shape of human beings.

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 the night comes, I had 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 that 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 white gown, with her hair down to her knees, walked pass the hall leading to the kitchen.

" Is someone still in the kitchen?" I asked.

"Everyone is here. Why?" quipped my Aunt Coney.

"I just saw a woman in white walked by in the kitchen hall!" I exclaimed.

"Do not kid us like that." She warned.

"Really. I did see a woman"

We all stared at each other and after a moment, we all scurried for the main bedroom. Every one was blaming me for playing some wicked game on them and I kept on denying them.

"It must be your imagination." they all indicted me.

Half an hour later, we were back in front of the television while I was feeling so sick already from fear. I had no choice but to join them in the living room otherwise I would be alone in the room.

While the television was glaring, a sudden wind blew forcefully from the window and rain poured instantaneously as rumbling thunder shook the house. It was just another bad weather, as we disregarded the weather's tumult and stay stuck to the television show. Perhaps the wind was so whipping that small bits of stones were thrown at our direction, entering thru the window.

"Damn it. Someone is throwing stones at us," Coney said and we all peered into the window to investigate the malefactor and we find exactly nobody outside as more bits of stone came at us. The sound of thunder became extremely forceful that the lights went out. By this time, I could already feel the fear that had enveloped not only me but also the rest of them; fear has a smell I realized that moment. In the middle of the living room, a small whirlwind was lifting the small stones towards the ceiling in a circular motion and while the stones circled above ground, the wind suddenly stopped and the bits of stone fell simultaneously to the ground. We all screamed and run to the bedroom.

It was strange that the day after, no matter how patently strange the experience we had the night before, everyone was merely jesting about it while Hadja Saniya simply dismissed it as the playful imagination of our minds, us who were still tender in the head. She was deep in slumber when the strange happenstance occurred. Even those who were present in that strange occurrence simply forgot about it, never mentioning it again. My Aunt Coney just did not talk about it. My brothers Nasrullah and Akmad and my sister Rimaisa just went to the yards and play the usual games, as if nothing happened. If I remember well, my cousin Nimfa and Mernisa was present then and similarly, they never took it so seriously despite the common terror we had felt that night. Where in contrast, that unusual night were etched forever in my mind.

The eldest who was there was Aunt Coney. I had expected her to convince the others that some spirits really played fun on us but she acted as if the strange night was merely a usual occurrence, and did go on with the ordinary chores as if nothing happened as if she was expecting such things to happen ordinarily. After that night in fact, she had slowly gained isolation from the rest of us, at least it was how I have observed her to be. She would walk along and would give me that iniquitous stare that I felt somehow uncomfortable that she had suddenly become so mindful of my presence that she would shout at me easily if for example, I happened to touch the expensive jar in the living room.

I reckoned that she had blamed me for that strange occurrence in that one strange night.

FROM Chapter 2 of my unfinished autobiography "A Day in the Life...".

The Dance of Life

In one of those nights of enchantment, while the wind remained fragile and ethereal, a collection of thin clouds gathered in the middle of the sky and formed the image of an angel. As the vision fortified, I could see the angel clearly. This angel was different from the rest that I have seen before for this angel had hair so long that it reaches the area of its feet, and wearing a long white robe.

The angel must have been a woman or a man with all too lengthy hairs---I just could not tell at that time because the distance from the ground to the sky is of course immense even if the image of the vision was larger than their actual size. Then the angel spread its wings of the widest span and I stared diligently. For some moment, the angel kept on motioning its wings to spread so wide until I felt like imitating it and the angel nodded. So I spread my two arms as wide as the wings of the angel. Then the angel showed its arms and its hands making some varied movements with it, the hands in an open palm position. After some moment, the angel placed its hands in the middle of its body, somewhere near its chest, both open palms facing its other. After a moment, the hands made a movement that brought the hands and arms towards the left side, with the hands remaining in an open palm position. The hands came back to the middle-of-chest position. After a moment, the hands went into a looping motion towards the right side. After that, the hands went back to the middle-of-chest position. The angel kept repeating the basic routines and I kept following and imitating the hand movements until the angel made complicated movements with its hands and arms, a circling motion towards all directions, towards above and towards down low, towards the east side and west side of its body, towards north-west and towards north-east, until the hand and arm movements became so intricate that I failed to catch up further with the angel. The Angel ended the hands movement and crossed its arms in front of its chest, as if saying, “so long” and slowly faded away.

I pondered upon the significance of the vision of the dancing angel. Was it another message? If it were, what would the message be when by all means of analogy the graceful movement of the angel’s hands does not bring to mind any symbols or signs that declare some fact or issue. It was merely a combination of movements, some sort of calisthenics.

I went to bed that night heavy with thoughts. I had felt so strongly that somewhere in my memory, the sight of the dance had already occurred to me. It was a familiar display of movements that it was not that strange to me anymore to witness such spectacle. I was pretty sure of that, as if everything was a memory, a sort of a déjà vu. There was wonderment that spawned a glee in my heart. A giddiness resulting from a discovery of something that I never thought could happen before. The divinity was starting to reach out to the mortals, and this reality finally kicked in.

The following morning, while the air was still pregnant with heavy mist and early dawn enveloped the still hushed streets of Manila---while many eyes were still shut in deep slumber---I stood up and recreated the dance of the angel that I have witnessed in the sky the night before. I made the movements to the left of my body and then towards the right and then towards the middle, while my palms were open and my arms were extended. I repeated and repeated the movements of the angel. It was sort of surprising that I was recreating the dance all too easily as if I have been dancing it a number of times before, as if it was my own dance, except that the more complicated movements were harder to recreate at first that I tried and tried before I finally got them in the manner that I have seen them, with the help of a force that moves within and without me. Altogether, the dance was like putting on a very familiar cloth, merely feeling a second skin.

As I made the movements again and again, I could feel a palpable surge in my spirit, an embalming feeling of lightness that I could not stop moving my hands. After some moments, I could feel a certain force in my hands, a kind of a magnetic field to be more particular, that I just left my hands to move on its own. And my hands would indeed move independently by themselves! I merely let them sway to the will of the force that controlled it and then my hands were finally able to recreate the complicated movements of the angel, the ones that I found difficult to remake. It was purely magical, an out-of-this-world experience. My hands were floating and my spirit rising.

It was indeed an awakening for me, a sudden realization that the new reality set forth before me was something I did not expect even in my wildest dreams. How do you expect anyone to really believe in angels, anyway? There are mythical things that I had easily disregarded before, to be merely staple of fantasy movies, of fairy tales, and one of such beings are the angels. And then these things happened and I had no other choice but to accept it.  For how was I still to deny that phenomenal occurrence when there was already a palpable force in my hands, a force that was already controlling to a certain extent the very movements of my body? Tears flowed from my eyes like a river for I felt an overwhelming feeling of enchantment and of gratitude for having been given the privileged to feel this very unusual but all too beautiful experience. As a result, I was already conversing to a one that I call “My Lord”, in whispers and through my mind.

I kept saying, “Thank you my Lord for letting me have these enchanting experience and if it goes away tomorrow, or disappears from me altogether, I would still be forever grateful to you for now something has been fortified in me; that is, my faith in God, the Creator of all things great and small.”

Day after day, at dawn and at near midnight, I kept recreating the dance and continue to feel the enlightenment that it had afforded my inner self.  Addictive is a word I shall use if I have to describe it. It is also habit forming that at times when my guards were down, I made the movements even if I was in the law library of San Beda, the school where I was reviewing for the bar examination, reading law books after law books endlessly. It was very useful to me that whenever I felt the stress of lengthy and continuous reading, the movements had helped refreshed my mind and body. There were some passersby and some acquaintances that were able to observe me doing the hand movements and they showed immediate curiosity with some hidden smirk on their faces thinking perhaps that I might be having a serious emotional breakdown. But still many of them showed genuine interest and inquired about it and I just tell them that it was a meditation which I use to manage my stress and that I have learned it from a book I’ve read about ancient Chinese meditation. The “meditation lie” was a comfortable white lie, allowing me to easily stave away many concerned and insistent inquiries. I just could not tell anyone at that time that I was seeing angelic visions in the night. I was too wary that the people around me at that time may label me as an insane person just as easily, knowing that these kind of occurrences does not happen every day and they are harder to believe than the existence of life in Mars.

Upon its enriching qualities, I have upon myself inquired on the very nature of the dance. As a student of laws and as an avid reader of many established philosophies, I always had the inquiring mind ready whenever I am faced with questions that have no ready and immediate answers. I have always approached every premise upon the careful method of uncovering a hypothesis, attacking every unknown idea with scientific processes, a mode that I have learned through years of education and training in the classroom. I have exhausted all possible explanation and yet I could not find any established fact or notion that would explain the nature of the dance, in relation to the vision of the angels. The only explanation I had then was that divinity is establishing itself as an undeniable reality and that it is now setting forth its presence at this particular point in time, reasserting its existence and dominion in the world where for many years and centuries, it had gotten lost in the great advancement that man had achieve in so short a period of time. Reasserting its existence in a time when humans can already be cloned and computers are nearly reaching the point of independent thought---a time of extraordinary progress for humankind.

I looked further into myself for rationalizations that would justify these visions while quelling any hope of explaining it scientifically, for no scientific processes could dissect it properly. As I danced the dance of the angel, I studied the beautiful movements I was making, what they evoke and what their purposes are. I started to take faith in my own notions (where there seem to be no other recourse left for me) and my head kept nodding independently as if someone invincible was saying: “Go ahead, your notions are true”. So I looked deeper into myself and interpreted the dance as the manner of creating Heaven and Earth, as the Divine One had done it in a time before us.

The hands evoked earth, wind, water and fire. I had called the dance, “The Dance of Life” since.

The dance on another view connotes the harmony of our existence. An earth there, but not too much earth, water thereat, but not too much water, fire in this part of existence, but not too much fire and wind that blows from all directions, but not too much wind.

Everything that is lacking has desperation written on it but on the other hand, whatever in excess is scoffing by its nature. There must be balance in life. When this balance ceases, everything falls apart.

Indeed, the dance speaks of the balance and harmony of our existence, of how the world and the universe should behave. Every man would do himself or herself the greatest good if he or she treats his or her own person as a universe of its own, putting a balance to it, therefore attaining a harmonious existence within and without him.

In every action, the man should have a ready instinct of inquiring upon every act he make, whether this act would harm the body and soul or would it harm that of others. How does my action affect the harmony of my own existence as well as that of others? If I harm others, would it be possible that they would also harm me? If I speak against this person, would he or she not speak of me also in a bad light?

This is a mode inculcated to us by nature, this questioning mind---the very spirit of our conscience for that matter. However, through years of conditioning, we dispel this questioning mind as easily, in order to look out merely for the greatest benefit to the self no matter how they harm us or other persons.  As we commit these unkindly actions, our world becomes limited because we are always hiding from someone we harmed before. We deviate from going to places where others whom we have harmed or injured before may pass along. And the ones we harmed would limit their universes as well, trying so earnestly to evade us. And the self becomes a limited universe, a disharmonious existence, and an existence of disarray. Nobody wants to live in this kind of universe. And ultimately God would not want to grant a boundless existence to those who by their own mischief and indiscretion had limited their own universe because the Universe of God is boundless and infinite, and no one who is full of mischief would be allowed to enter this Universe that God had promised us from the beginning of time, for they are a threat to the harmony of a limitless, boundless, and unending Universe of God.

For it was often said before that in order not to fall into the doldrums of life’s misery, a man must know how to balance his life in order that he may be able to live contently. Even the physical act of walking, a balance must concur as he strolls along or else the man walking would surely stumble. It is undeniable that the existence of man today (in his temporary sojourn in this material world) is a perpetual traipsing between good and evil, between the excessive and the wanting, between love and hate. He had to maneuver carefully to retain the balance---a condition that is desirable---for the road ahead is always fraught with temptations, those excessive pleasures of the devil, that form the manholes of our morality.

The balance of man that I speak of however is not too analogical to the bodily balance a man must attain in the very physical act of walking. This balance of man has an unusual fulcrum because the more you go to one side (that is, towards the side of goodliness) the better balance you would have. It is the balance of man between the good and the evil. The balance of a man is an idea that propels us to believe in ourselves, of our being human, the most beautiful and glorified creation of God, for it has been said at one time or another that “man was created in the image of God Himself”, and hence man’s purpose of being is to become the exemplification of the ideal creation, closer to the perfection of God.

The material world is a training ground for us, a milling factory of the soul, a litmus test for every man that whomsoever attained the qualities that our Creator had dictated to us as the ideal human being, as often relayed to us by our old folks and as instructed to us by many holy books, and through many examples and stories of wisdom, like the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the life of the Enlightened One known to many of us as Buddha, the adventures of those knights in shining armor, the travails of Robin Hood, the diligent boy scout that assist the old in crossing the street, the courage and valor of the revolutionary hero fighting the cause of an oppressed people, the causes Martin Luther King, Jr. stood for, the sacrifices made by Indira Gandhi, the gallantry of Joan of Arc, the charity of Mother Teresa, the genius of Jose Rizal, and the liberty and freedom of Abraham Lincoln. They are the goodliness of man that had been attained before by mortals like us and there is no reason that every man could not attain this level of humanity even while toiling in his or her daily existence.

The balance that the man has to attain is a shield against the mischief of evil, for evil is ever-present and ever-threatening in this present world that we live in, in order to sway us to the dark side and pull us down towards everlasting suffering and pain in what was termed in the Bible as “the vengeance of an eternal fire”. 

Evil will permeate in us if we lose the self---the ideal self--that there are times that we feel the urges to commit things we instinctively feel as abominable. And because these urges are at most times irrepressible, we would indeed commit these abominations. For as angels are supernatural in form (material at one time and spirit at other times), and so are demons. Whenever these demons find an imbalanced man (due to his lack of faith in the Creator and in the ideal self), they come in and conquer the fragile self, to dictate the will in order to lead the person to commit acts and deeds that defile the self. They feast upon man’s primordial feeling of envy and prejudice and upon other human instincts and imperfections, and propagate their culture of madness, a culture of irresponsible pleasures and of impatience. Often we feel so discontented and frustrated that we often come to the point of intending and committing defiant acts such as gossiping, stealing and fornicating in order to satiate our impatient urges, desires and pleasures. And there are those who would even kill or harm another man’s life just to satisfy their frustrations---such is the nature of evil.

There are many who would covet their neighbor’s wife or daughter in order to satiate the irresponsible dictates of the flesh, to use authority to gain ungodly favors from some innocent victim. Lust is an instinct of man that is often used by demons to sway the soul towards the fold of darkness for it is in lust that men have the greatest weakness.

Many would kill for no other reason but prejudice and envy. Many would steal to present themselves falsely as more worthy of wealth than others do or to falsely present themselves as more privileged. Such is the nature of evil.

The demons are very invasive that they come into our persons like water into a vessel and urge us to commit abominations. As the man possessed takes pleasures from these evil acts, the demons, which have conquered him, take the more pleasure from it. After we committed these misdeeds, we often feel a feeling of resentment (as we somehow regain our human self after the demons flee our body), realizing the very nature of the acts we have committed, and to realize so belatedly, when the harm done could not be undone anymore

If we have the strength of faith, the fortitude of God’s teachings and dictates, and the belief in the ideal self, the demons would never succeed in pushing us to fall on the wayside, to make us lose our balance, and the Kingdom of God is for us to dwell after we leave this temporary world.

There are many among us, however, who do not anymore feel the usual feeling of remorse after the commission of a misdeed, no matter how grave these misdeeds are. It is a condition attained where the conscience of man has already been numbed and stunted due to the repetition of misdeeds, committing the evil act over and over again, like a habit.

The thief would certainly feel the pangs of remorse the first time he commits the evil act of stealing. On the second commission of theft, there would still be some remorse but not as heavy as the first time. After committing the act of stealing over and over again, the thief would lose his conscience altogether and starts to feel that thieving is but common and ordinary, and stealing becomes a beneficial and rewarding act instead of being such a scourge to society as a whole.

The murderer would also feel in the same manner. His conscience would be numbed with the repeated act of taking another man’s life. The first time he killed, the face of his victim would hound him until he toss and turn in his bed, but after many more commissions, he would feel no such qualms anymore and there would come a point where he would take life as if he was just eating peanuts in a moonlit park.

The fornicator who commits abomination over and over again would also have his or her conscience numbed and stunted. The first time that the adulterer ravished the flesh, he must have felt so burdened by such act of abomination. But after the repeated commission of irresponsible sexual conduct, he would have no more conscience to bear. The doers of fornication would surely feel the heaviness of his or conscience the moment the commission of such abomination takes place and to commit this confusion of man, they would have to take in alcohol and drugs in order to numb this heavy conscience. And with the repeated commission of such confusion of the mind and heart, the fornicator would entirely lose the checking mechanism of the heavy conscience. Such is the nature of evil.

There would be no more conscience to speak of in a highly imbalanced man for he had already allowed himself to be a follower of the devil, whereas a result he and the demon who had perturbed him becomes already of the same breed and of the same kind. And both shall indeed be cast into the “vengeance of an eternal fire”. It is the evil that haunts us that we should always be on the lookout against.

But to the man who takes great faith in the Creator, and believes in the very purpose and nature of man---as he was created, in order to do good and avoid evil---demons could not conquer and deceit him. Every attempt to disturb him with deceit would be futile and fruitless when he has the strongest faith in his human self and in the Creator who had born him. And he shall be allowed to persist in an everlasting life of peace and harmony in the life hereafter---a life full of joy---sliding over into another world of existence just moments after he perishes from this material world. He shall reap the rewards of God and he shall have wings of the greatest span where Heaven is an infinite universe for him to spread his wings. There would be many mansions to choose from, castles in the clouds, a Paradise reborn, and many worlds of different kinds to visit, for indeed it is an entire universe of existence in which for us to dwell---this Kingdom of God.

Those who cultivate their hearts, their sympathy for others, and their faith in the Creator, to follow His edicts and judgments shall have wings of the greatest span. The balance of man is rooted in the sympathetic heart, a pure and loving heart, and a rational and understanding heart. When we cultivate our sympathy for others with love, faith, hope, and charity, we create a footing on the ground beneath our feet, where no storm could shake it and no evil could transgress such valiant stand. “Though I may walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.” 

From Chapter 2 of my ebook "The Night of Angels".

Deuterium: The White Gold of the Philippines

When I was in high-school, Michael Petralba, an old neighborhood friend from Carmen Street but who is now residing in Los Angeles, once spoke to me in a very animated fashion how the Philippines could one day become the richest country in the world. As a prelude, Michael said to me that his father had some vital information why a number of foreigners were in the country for a very secret purpose. I wondered loudly to him how secret it was and asked him if he could actually let me know some of the “secret’. He then informed me without hesitation that the foreigners were here mainly to study and find out ways on how to extract deuterium from the Philippine seas. I asked how come his father knew about all those stuff and what “deuterium” was in the first place. With gasping breath, and with gleaming pride for that matter, Michael told me as a matter of fact that his father was a war veteran and because of this, he had American contacts in the CIA. 

The CIA thing sounded preposterous to me at that time but when I recently read some articles in the Internet about deuterium, I started to wonder if the CIA talk of Michael was plausible after all and that maybe the CIA was behind the sudden departure of Michael’s whole family to Los Angeles later that year, where in a year’s time he was already driving a very exotic looking red corvette (might be from second hand store) as evidenced by a picture that he had sent to the neighborhood kids through a very kind uncle. This story may start to sound like a brimming Tom Clancy thriller but before anything gets out of hand, that CIA talk of Michael is just that and nothing else to it I am pretty sure on that and their immigration to America was due mainly to his father being a USAFFE during World War II. But Michael’s rambling on deuterium was completely a different matter—-it sounded to me then so awfully good that I had wished it to be true already even though it wasn’t true at all at that time, and even now.

There is really something to this issue on deuterium that lingers long and never goes away completely. It had been virtually popping and bobbing up in the local media every now and then—-especially in the last couple of decades. The Cebu-based news outfit The Freeman published the most recent news article on deuterium. In that article, Freeman publicized a certain study on deuterium by a Filipino scientist working in a Canadian agency. Canada by the way is the world’s leading producer and consumer of deuterium as an energy source. There had been many rumors and hush-hush talks before about certain groups of foreigners, possibly American and sometimes German, that were in the country to initiate drilling projects that should siphon-off the coveted deuterium from the Philippine seas. All those talks just died down however and nobody really minded them, perhaps everyone just disregarded some weird-sounding element that is supposedly found in the Philippines in great volume. In fact, even as we speak now, I would not be surprised if Exxon or Shell has some of its people working night and day trying to unravel the key to gathering the millions of barrels of “white gold” underneath our seas.

It was reported several years ago that the United States Government, through the Department of Energy and General Motors had unveiled an $88 Million joint project in order to put a fleet of hydrogen-fuelled cars on the streets of Washington D.C., New York and Los Angeles within a year’s time. The fleet would consist merely of 40 of such cars but most of the money would be spent on putting up a number of hydrogen refueling stations all over the streets of those pilot cities since the main cause why consumers are not buying too many hydrogen-fuelled cars these days is basically due to the lack of gas stations peddling or selling hydrogen gas or liquid hydrogen. Come to think of it, even if any of us had all the money to buy this car stuff right now, like for example if some of us are sons and daughters of Taipans with money to burn, we wouldn’t be able to use them anyway, at least not for long, unless we all fly all the way to America to buy gallons and gallons of hydrogen fuel.

But again come to think about the possibilities. If only there were enough hydrogen-refueling stations all over our city streets, our days of being dependent on crude oil (freshly-drilled from the dusty sands of Sahara) would soon be over and our atmosphere would be a lot more livable since the only end product of hydrogen fuels is water. Water, instead of carbon dioxides that make our urban landscape looked orange or yellow at dusk.

I really hope that this project of GM and the United States Government would entirely succeed for reasons that we all should know by now.

And so this bit of news on hydrogen-fuelled cars reminded me of the high school talk I had with an old friend from the neighborhood concerning deuterium. What is deuterium and how does it become an energy source? Deuterium is the end product when a common tap water (H2O) is subjected to enormous pressurize of gigantic proportion that the oxygen element in the H2O compound is forced out of the combination, making the hydrogen element to purify and consolidated all the more. Since in deuterium, the hydrogen becomes so solid and unadulterated, hydrogen gas can be easily obtained from it since a natural electrolysis happens immediately the moment deuterium is exposed to room temperature. Meaning to say, when deuterium is used as a base in obtaining hydrogen gas, the generation process is much less expensive. Right now, hydrogen gas and liquid hydrogen that are often used to power jets and giant trucks, are sold at very steep prices (much more expensive than gasoline) because it is so costly to produce them, necessitating an energy-consuming and lengthy electrolysis process that are undertaken in order to separate the hydrogen compound from common water. When deuterium is used, the very expensive process of electrolysis would be bypassed and set aside in the production of hydrogen gas and therefore, obtaining hydrogen fuel becomes more efficient and less expensive by a mile.

The Philippines is identified to hold the greatest amount of deuterium deposit, somewhere in the area known as Mindanao Trench, the part of the Pacific Ocean just off the shores of Surigao. Deuterium is most prevalent in an area more widely known in the whole world as The Philipppine Deep. In the Freeman news article (dated August 2004), Dr. Anthony B. Halog, the Filipino scientist working at the Sustainable Technology Office of the Institute for Chemical Process and Environmental Technology, and the National Research Council of Canada described the Philippine deuterium wealth in this manner:

“A big deposit of 868 miles long, 52 miles at widest point, and 3 miles at deepest point, replenished by nature 24 hours a day after deuterium travels more than 12,000 kilometers from Central America to the Philippines through the span of the Pacific Ocean when Planet Earth turns on its axis from West to East in unending perpetual motion.”

And it’s potential in this breathe:

 “At 12 million barrels per day capacity priced at US$7.00 per barrel, this is US$84 million per day or US$30.66 billion per year, enough to wipe out all existing foreign debts of the Government in one year, revenue-wise in foreign exchange.Public works, private construction, economic and financial booms are expected to happen in the Philippines in the same manner as those which happened in the Middle East and financial centers of the world from 1974 to 1984, with everybody earning their respective comfortable livelihood, while pricing basic prime necessities at reasonable and affordable levels.”

At present, deuterium seems to be produce exclusively through an expensive synthesizing process, by subjecting ordinary tap water to enormous pressure using some highly-advanced machinery or equipment and thus the price of hydrogen fuel remain relatively out of reach from the ordinary consumers of fuels. But if the deuterium deposit under the Philippine seas can be obtained, hydrogen gas prices could become far more reasonable and affordable. If natural deuterium is utilized as the base in the production of hydrogen fuel—-in both its most widely used form as hydrogen gas and liquid hydrogen—-the generation process would become more efficient and much cheaper. And mind you, deuterium as a source of energy is not only useful to power cars, trucks and planes. It is also being utilized to power factories and power plants in the same manner that nuclear power plants are operated. With deuterium as moderator, nuclear power plants could do away with enriched uranium as a main fuel source and this means, deuterium use could generate a whole new species of power plants that are a lot safer—-safer by a grand mile.

The problem faced by those who wants to extract natural deuterium from the Philippines seas is probably the enormous pressure that is existing in the very area where deuterium are supposed to be found. To reach the area of deuterium concentration, a drilling system should reach a level of at least 30,000 feet deep into the ocean, where the water pressure could reach as high as 10,000 psi, or the equivalent of 10,000 tons of load pressuring from all direction. Apparently, there is no material known today that could withstand such enormous amount of pressure. Maybe diamonds could be strong enough to endure the extraordinary pressure down there but imagine how much diamonds should be needed in order to manufacture a very long tube. That’ll be unimaginable in both cost and expanse. But scientists nowadays always finds a way and when the time comes that a kind of metal could actually be developed, one that could reach ten thousand meters underwater without breaking apart and efficiently drill out barrels and barrels of sea water that contains deuterium, then that’ll be the time the Philippines could become the main hawker of fuels for the world’s cars, airplanes, buses, factories, power plants and whatever that runs and hums not by its own accord.

So deuterium may be the gasoline of the future, the main energy source of the next millennium, and the Philippines is the only country that has them naturally tucked under its seabed in an amount and breathe that replenishes on its own every time the Earth rotates and the sea shifts from side to side.

(A post from 2008)

Caveman

By tomorrow or a day after, as I am estimating in my mind, I might be packing my bags and bundle some important things as I would be heading for some place else, somewhere that I have been to before but somewhere not many have seen yet or have been to previously.

I have decided to leave the city for good. This plan had been in my mind for sometime now and I must assure you that this very drastic move on my part is far from being hasty—-in fact it is to be done with very deep contemplation and scheming that I have etched in my mind for so long now.

Mount Pulongbato

I have learned before how to drive nails effectively into wood and I reckon now that I have learned such task fairly well. My grandfather used to do some carpentry work and I used to have observed him so closely doing woodwork when I was so little, putting in mind every phase of the activity, from handling so tightly the wood to be nailed and towards the part when finally the nail is about to be hammered with reasonable precision, or else the hands would be greatly harmed.

Some of my uncles are pretty good too at this kind of work that I would have no doubt that I could do it by myself, hammering nails into wood. By that, I can safely assume that I’d be able to put up a small wooden shelter all by my lonesome when I get to the place that I am planning to go as of this moment. I’ll have thatches as roofs because many have opined how it would help ensure a cooler indoor environment, especially in rural environment. Having thatches as roofs is also one situation that I have been in before, right about the time while I was so young and our family could not then afford a better place to live in, as my father then was just earning his take as a humble mailman. My mother used to tell us stories how my father—-who is a native of the far away Province of Tawi-Tawi—-couldn’t articulate so effectively the local Chavacano (a broken Spanish) dialect being spoken here that in some days, while he was still learning the tricks of delivering somebody else’s letter to somebody else’s house, my mother would come along with him for she was far more proficient in the tongue spoken here and therefore could communicate more easily with the mail recipients and also was more familiar with streets names and barangay locations here.

Now let us go back to this plan I am presently having in my mind—-no reminiscing for now. I really do have a particular place in my mind, one that is far from the honky-tonky noise of the city streets. It is a place near or at the heel of a very prominent mountain known here as the Pulongbato, a stony mountain whose façade is so majestic that it could be seen from any point in the city, from east coast and west coast, from south side and perhaps in some part of north side. It is so strong and mighty like an honorable beast that have decided to sleep for a thousand years and still sleeping as I write now.

Below this mountain is a gushing river and a forest so lush that when years ago I was trekking this area with a number of friends from college, I have almost stepped over a striped multi-colored snake, climbed two small waterfalls, fell from a low cave wall and fell into cool river water, trotted into knee deep gushing water to reach a giant stone in the middle of the river and smoked to my heart’s delight as twilight had enveloped the forest, while the trees slept humming like old warriors, and had even eaten eels we caught from a calmer area of the river. Nature is so varied there, and so abundant too.

I have reckoned that while I am there, I would ensconce myself in the warm embrace of Nature as Nature would show me a beauty that I have seen before but still looking for since then. I won’t go thirst there for the river that runs through it is so crystalline like diamonds in our hands. And I won’t go hungry either for even sweet bananas—-as I remember all too well now—-grow so wildly and I bet the rich river-ways contains fishes that becomes so scrumptious as roasted on a brimming campfire, and the smell coming from it would just be gorgeously sublime. Out there, there’d be no time to keep up and catch up with. Industrial fumes are of no issue and the crazy sound of rushing vehicles won’t bother me no more. Could this plan of mind work? What do you think?

I had wondered deeply if ever my family would follow me there even if things wouldn't be as easy in a sense that there’d be no school there, no fast food to drive-by and order hamburgers and fried chickens. There’d be no education to attain there, and then no occupation to profess. And there’d be no roads to where we could drive our humble car. So perhaps, that small car would have to stay undriven for so long, or for eternity most possibly.

Could I say to them that we could have our own education there? That we can be teachers and students by ourselves? Nature is by itself an education and I can sense that it’d be an education that is similarly worthwhile, if not more propound. But I don’t think I could explain this to them efficiently and sell them the wisdom hidden beneath this idea.

And the air, yes the air there is so fresh that once I had thought of putting them in a bottle and sell it as pure purified mountain air, just like what they do to water nowadays. I have read once or had seen in a television show how in some part of Japan, air or the purified version of it had been contained by some enterprising souls there and had raked in some money for it.

The noise there could be so minimal that often, the chirping of birds and the momentary shrieks of monkeys coming from tall shrubberies far beyond becomes calming to the senses and it is certainly the best anti-dote for stress and worry that most urban dwellers suffer and that for sure, it is a situation so ideal for those who long for peace of mind so desperately and to those who seek ultimate freedom from anxiety. Long walks in the mountain side would be a luxuriant activity and sipping hot coffee beside a cool rushing water, while the sun is just about to set into the horizon, is not a far-off idea anymore.

Ooops, I just heard City Hall’s siren wailing and it’s about time for me to go and bring my third son Yuri to school. And by the way, I was just daydreaming a while ago and none of the plans narrated here is to be carried out any time soon.(A story from 2007)

The River of Mesopotamia

 

In the ancient valleys of Tigris,

in the days of still molt and rock,

a river sung the serenade

of the beginnings of life,

as it moved in crystalline fluidity,

to brim with sparkles and light,

and come across upon a rock reckoned in time,

it is a moment set forth as a matter of design.

And the river became two,

the great parting of waters

in the dawning of the Earth,

to thread two different roads

and two different eras--

one found in the East,

another in the West--

to spread further and further,

until the sound they hear were

merely of their own

and nothing more.

Rushing in vigor and strength

each alone in the wilderness,

among the great wars of the world,

through the ashes of kingdoms burnt,

the mischief of kings and emperors,

through scorched earth of conquests,

of kingdoms and empires

both the fortunate and the inopportune;

as they run feverishly,

one oblivious to the other,

welcoming merely the beatings

of their own hearts

and of no other,

and every other beating of the heart they hear

was of the enemy and the enemy merely.

Amidst the rage of their marathon,

seemingly unending and without destination,

and with a ferocity so great that

even rocks of great prominence

would crumble into dust---

by the sheer strength of their pursuits,

or by the wave of their hands.

As another time was set forth,

where for once they looked heavenward

the journeys they threaded

finally found a single star,

to speak the truth in their own hearts

that in their own glorious runs,

no matter how magnificent and forceful,

still the Heavens are their own navigators,

upon the comets and constellations,

so that the rivers would find a path to travel,

a road set forth from the beginning of time

while they go nearer and nearer,

they begin to hear the same beat

that is not merely of their own separate hearts,

but of two hearts moving as one

running faster and faster,

like stallions in the hills of a desert

where in the beginning of time

there is only one river

that became two,

and then becoming one again.

Fleeting Clouds in the Night

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-ceilinged 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 the northern sky.

At night, I sat in near the window and watch the motorcars speed through the street below. I relaxed my tired mind by listening to my Walkman, letting my consciousness slip slowly into sleepiness.

As I gazed towards the night sky, a very bright star near the sky summit always took my attention. Every night, I could see that star at the places it usually appears, treading the same path in the sky consistently. I had realized then that navigation thru the guidance of those heavenly bodies could be so accurate that even in the ancient times, men find faraway places by merely staring at the night sky.

It is one those nights typical in Manila, windy and wet. The clouds would move easily that they have patent fragility. The clouds were too dynamic that I indicted Manila to be a place of queer weather. I thought that back in Zamboanga, the clouds never moved like this. I pitied the Manila indeed, always struggling against typhoons and hurricanes. A city with the burden of being the capital of a nation and at the same time bugged with hellish winds.

One night, the movement of the clouds started to move so queerly that I decided that was not the weather anymore. The thin clouds would seem to break out, then close in again. Sooner, I thought I saw the shape of a man. Then there were the winged horses. Then there appeared also a shapely woman in white gown.

I retreated back to my room thinking my mind merely needed rest. Too much reading may have affected my visions that I started seeing things.

Inside my room, I sat in front of my study table and proceeded to read. My head started to move independently, sideways then all around, until it got plastered facing the wall. I could see shadows and then figures began to move. The shape of a boat took shape and at both ends were two little beings that looked like the form of aliens usually depicted in movies, hairless heads and thin body structures. Again I questioned my senses and proceed to the living room and gasped for air. I started to worry then about my sanity. In my past readings, seeing things is a symptom of schizophrenia. This may be it, I thought. I was already losing my mind.

I recollected myself and began to calculate my entire person. How does an insane man think and behave. Am I of the unusual behavior? I had also asked myself. Do I talk senselessly? Am I still able to acquaint with the usual people I know?

After such inquiry, I concluded so determinedly that indeed, there is no marked changes in the way I behaved and relate with others. I am still able to have the common notions and senses. If I were not insane, then only one thing was deductible—the visions is a reality that I must accept. I tucked my thoughts through a deep sleep, hoping somehow that whatever defect of mind that bothers or would be bothering me would soon go away.

And yet, the night after, I looked at the sky again and the clouds behaved as usual—so fleeting and fragile—and the bright star that I have mentioned earlier shone the brighter than the night ago.

When the clouds began to form figures again, I did not retreat anymore to my room and instead tolerated what was then to me was a huge stage show in the night sky.

As I trained my sight so carefully, in the middle of the sky appeared a figure of a person with wings extending towards its sides. It was an angel, as we know them through stories and movies, cloth in a long white garment and wings so white that it almost shone. Such image stayed there for a long time that it had seemed that it had merely served a center point of the entire visions. At the farther left of the sky, I saw clouds in the shape of a ship of the ancient form, with huge mast and sails, voyaging towards the eastern side of the sky until it faded as the clouds soon disintegrated into thin parcels of smoke. Then I saw the figure of a man, also sailing by from the left of the sky heading to the right. Despite the distance, I could see that the he looked like a Chinese man with a headgear, and he was smiling. If Genghis khan were photographed before he died, the man would have resembled him. That was the thought that immediately came into my mind.

I returned my attention towards the middle and there were the winged horses trotting the center of the sky, in circling motions, so steadfast and so gallantly.

Those were my initial visions.

The night after, the visions became more lucid that the angel in the middle of the sky showed me a dance that was somehow familiar and yet altogether unique.

The angel spread its wings again and again and I just stared. This particular vision was so clear that some tears flowed from my eyes as I realized that the visions had already transgressed the bounds of reality, as I know it then. I became so concern that one of my companion in the boarding house might come and find me in such unusual condition—staring vehemently at the sky while my eyes were wet with tears. One of them, Alexis, was just nearby at that particular moment, reading in the living room just outside my room. In later times, I had felt the notion to tell Alexis about the vision since he was the closest to me--sharing the room I had-- but most of me relented because again, that would only propel the suspicion of insanity. In the mind-numbing mad rush towards the bar examination, many had lost their minds in the past.

So I just stared at the angel and marveled at the sight. I could feel a little rising in my emotions and a general feeling of gratefulness.

The angel kept on spreading its wings, again and again; that I thought it wanted me to follow such movement. My head nodded independently. I took this as an instruction so I spread my arms while being so wary that some of my mates would suddenly come in towards my direction and deduce insanity.

Then the angel's arms showed as apart from its wide wings. It swayed its arms towards the right side of its body in a circling motion and I followed it. Then its arms went back to the middle of its chest, while its palms were open, and then I followed suit. The arms swayed to the left of its side, and I also followed suit. After a while, the Angel moved its arms in circling motions that were so complicated that I was not able to follow it as it slowly faded away.

That part of the vision was mesmerizing of all for it was the one that exhibited a lot of movements that naturally ordinary clouds could not do. This is perhaps more coherent than the vision of a bearded man sitting on the throne. About the bearded man, I saw a huge throne and the man sitting on it. If my notions were not wrong, I reckoned it looked like Jesus Christ in clean white raiment. But this vision was static compared to the dancing angel where there was the dynamism of mobility that had clearly erased whatever doubts I had of the phenomenon.

The morning after, while still embraced the foggy streets of Manila, I recreated the dance I had witnessed the night before. I planted my feet in a fairly wide position and swayed my hands from left to right, just like the angels did. I did the routines as far as my memory could serve me right. Then after a while, my hands started to move by themselves that on its own it had seemed, my hands repeated the complicated movements that the angel made, the ones that I was not able to follow well the night before.

The dance drew some lightness of being inside me that it felt good always to recreate them. It was sort of habit forming, an addictive action. There was such lightness of being that I felt floating above air when I walked. I felt my hands and I could feel some force in it, a trapped wind beneath my palms that whenever I held my hands against a surface, I could feel a palpable force underneath, a kind of a magnetic force. And my body started to move queerly at times, a sort of an independent force was controlling my movement and from my mouth the sound of a bird's chirping came out too often. I would sway to one side and to another without intending to move. I would walk into directions that I never intended to head.

There was a visible smirk on my face whenever I walked the streets or the hallways of San Beda. The phenomenon of angels had given me such giddiness that humored my mind to no end. How could such things happen? I asked and meandered upon myself and why of all people it had happened to me? I must be the "chosen one" I was tempted to deduce. For what purpose that I was chosen was not yet apparent to me at that time.

The review for the law examinations had gotten more intense. By the end of July, all the students were priming up for the big month, which was September.

I had been tenacious with my reading in order to recompense for the poor quality of my law foundations, the result of boredom and frequent inattentiveness at school during my college years. As September approached, I even forgot to eat at times.

The "night calls" of the angels somehow tempered the rigidity of readings. And because of the queerness of my body movements, I felt so strongly that I gained the attention of many. They were good attentions although I could feel some look that decided that I had gone haywire in the head. Most of the attentions however were of the inquisitive kind; the way one looks upon an exploding mystery. In the library, when I thought no one was looking my way, I would sway my hands to recreate the dance of the angel. The dance always relieved me of stress, especially when my readings became so ardent and straining. Obviously, some of the students noticed me that some of my acquaintance started to inquire about the strange movements I made with my hands. I felt embarrassed by the inquiries so I had no recourse but to explain it. I could not explain it to them as factual as possible for I felt it would be too much for them to accept and then it would only lead them to the belief that my mind had already succumbed to the pressure of the bar preparations. So I put up a comfortable lie. I told them that I was a practitioner of a Chinese form of meditation and I sway my hands in order to relieve me of stress.

My comfortable lie might have been convincing that instead of shying away from me, most of my acquaintance became interested in the movements of my hands. They wanted me to teach it to them. I said I had no luxury of time to become their Chinese meditation master. They liked it many condescended because of the harmony and synchronicity of my palms swaying thru and fro.

Some threw me a disconcerted look. Some stares were stained with disparagement. And then there were those with amazement in their eyes.

I seemed to be easily get blown by the wind that I had to readjust the angle of my footing or walk in order to evade the whipping of heavy breeze. When I stood still, some force was tugging me towards some direction that perhaps many observed it so keenly and decided fairly that I was not just making them up.

The inquiries about my condition had become more prevalent but still, I had not yet gained the proper mindset to divulge the truth about my visions as the cause of these strange movements. I continue to hide under the lie of a Chinese meditation. Perhaps, my lie was somehow weak in some point, there were gossips going around that I was really going haywire in the head. The talk spread like wild fire that it had reached my hometown of Zamboanga. Apparently, one of the barristers preparing for the examinations was my town mate. I did not know her so much because she was from the lower years though her face was familiar to me. I received messages in my cell phone from friends back in Zamboanga, advising me to slow down and take some breather. I felt disturbed by the gossips running around in San Beda and as far as back home. But I easily set it aside for I felt that someday they would know the truth about all these matters. (Read from my Autobiography "A Prophet's Life".)