Re-evaluating our values

       (Conclusion)  

By Emmanuelle

Not to be confused with its numerical successors, the first EDSA revolution will always remain a phenomenon in the perception of the international community. The personal experience, however, had awakened us Filipinos to the surprise that the values we had looked for, or had presumed long-dead and buried, were there smoldering within ourselves all the time - courage, pagkilala sa tama o mali, pagkalinga sa katarungan, pagkakaisa or solidarity.

Since EDSA I of February 1986, social scientists believed that the Filipinos thus remain re-awakened, watchful, restive even.

It is not yet a cauldron boiling over. It is, though, a huge kettle simmering, bubbling in spurts and hot bubbly puffs. Waiting for more stuff to ignite, to heat it up, tipping  its  temperature from puede pa siguro to sobra na talaga. Again.
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Re-evaluating our values

By Emmanuelle

Doctors of the mind claim that our realities are stuff that dreams are made of. On the other hand, they also claim our dreams cross-over to the reality of our days.

Usually, the lingering waking effects of these dreams diminish to nothingness. Sometimes though, these escalate to the status of walking stalking nightmares.

Who among the Pangasinenses relish the nightmare of Kuya Joe’s fall from gloria? Flash us back, anytime, to shots of the sons and their clones during the cabalistic ritual of disenthronement, and worms in our skin crawl. The images are immortalized, on film and on print. And in the screen of our minds.
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A kick in time!

By Emmanuelle

There is this true story of an adorable first grader, with dimples so deep on both cheeks, on both knees, and just at the region of both kidneys. This is not descriptive overkill. We said adorable, didn’t we?

To exercise our creative imagination further, let’s call this adorably dimpled boy Dimples, shall we?

One day, Dimples runs to his mother with tears coursing down his eyes in rivers and streams. Now, this definitely is overkill.
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A ghosting promise

By Emmanuelle

The young can sometimes lay it on thicker than thick. To them, old is ancient. If so, how ancient can ancient be? Antique! They squeal! How antique? Prehistoric! Primordial! They squeak out, laughter in between.

I ask the question idly while the niece and nieces on summer vacation are sprawled about in different languid poses in Grandma’s room. It is the biggest in the old family house, but that is not what attracts the kids like bees to the honeycomb. Grandma has the widest telly screen!
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Between here and there . . .

(Conclusion)

By Emmanuelle

For a week, Manta would be a special guest of the city and of this man of influence. And Chuck would be one of the local celebrities invited to their late afternoon soirees and evening sorties.

Manta learns Chuck and his woman had split ways without even trekking to the altar. Chuck learns Manta is as elusively single as ever. Manta would proudly describe Chucks’ special influence over her as pinalaki niya ako. Likewise, Chuck would own-up fondly and yet wryly pinalaki ko siya. To the other guests, it would appear they were affirming a close acquaintance that had rooted from childhood.

They were fooling no one, themselves included.
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Between here and there . . . (part 4)

By Emmanuelle

. . . one stumbles upon heaven and hell on earth.

      Manta graduates from one of the country’s most exclusive colleges, specializing in music and mathematics for kids. Aside from being adjudged by her mentors as a most innovative instructor in elementary math, she would encore on stage as piano and marimba soloist, a sometime flutist, and a jazz ballet experimentalist. With a bow and a flourish, she would flow in fluid harmonic motion from one discipline to the others. She is her worth in full measure with an octave to spare.

      Full-pledged and all grown-up, not anymore a child, she rushes home and to him, refrains of their voices in her ears. I wait for you. Uhuh. I rush. 

      Lo, behold, alas. He now shares his home with a woman of his age, Manta holds her breath. Chuck can almost see her heart stop in mid-beat. What have I done? He grasps those cold, colder, freezing hands. He tells her to breathe their beat, to let the lead strings find its way through the thundering drums. He bends his head to hold steady those big brown eyes gone cloudy, misty.
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Between here and there . . .
(Part 3)

By Emmanuelle

are moments so exquisite, so intense that though they remain unphotographed, unrecorded, they might as well had been.  The prints they carved in our memory scoured full and deep.

In one of her brakes-and-stops, Manta suddenly realized there was something missing in her music. There was no lead. The band was just keeping time with their steps.

 She whirled around, perplexed. The boys and girls behind her, with their copycat game, whirled around with her. The result was complete chaos.  Off-balanced, they tumbled here and there without grace. There was no dropping delightfully to the ground. Neither was there an exaggerated exasperated chorus of Manta! Legs went askew, arms flailed. Teachers’ whistles outraged the ear.
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Between here and there . . .
(Part 2)

By Emmanuelle

  AM I hearing my song? She nodded to herself. Is that a band playing the instruments to my song? Another nod. Then it finally got to her. 

She gave up on her intended leap, and dropped down fast from her perch.  

The band was on practice mode, themselves and their equipments in comfy disarray. The lead guitarist was plucking the chords with his long, thin fingers, and not with the pick. That was why the notes came out whole and full and cool from the boom speakers. Not squeaky thin, spiky or metallic. 

His music ran up and down the scales, light and nifty, unfolding a musical tale without words.
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Between here and there . . .

By Emmanuelle

is her hollowed self. She speaks just a few words, choosing these slowly, but she provides a more graphic illustration with her hands. She mimes a cave curving inward from her chest to the hips. At the same time, she sucks her cheeks in. The dark shadows under her eyes didn’t help any to lighten her epic imagery. The writer sees her interviewee suddenly emptied, sunken unto herself.

It was eerie. At the same time, it was mesmerizing. Throughout the interview, Manta would use her face, fingers, palms, even the rest of her body, to draw a larger-than-life picture of her words. The writer, guided by the gestures, would guess ahead of what Manta was still word-searching for, and the writer would guess right.
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Old and Cold

By Emmanuelle

AT a particular point of that certain moment in time, a literary group to which this writer belonged, swore to high heavens, and to each other, we will never have cause to insert the words into any of our writings.

Though  apt and timely throughout the days and nights that made history of EDSA I, the words had been rubbed-in to hysterical exhaustion until they were declared dry and trite, overused, over-expanded, over-expounded, washed thin and washed-out, deserving of a burpy and windy exit at both ends. They were cliche, passe, and what can one say?
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