Blurry

I had my first pair of eyeglasses when I was in fifth grade, a week after my birthday. I surprised everyone during the school assembly, and my classmates’ reactions ranged from the cool-they-look-good-on-you type, to the they-look-nerdy-get-rid-of-them, to the nonchalant I-didn’t-even-notice remarks. I didn’t care much, what mattered really was that my eyesight improved, and the world suddenly seemed crystal clear.

Now, thirteen years since my first glasses, I can say that my “relationship” with my specs has gone “on” and “off” several times. Sure I needed them badly when I was trying to flag down a jeepney at night, when I was watching a movie that seemed a hazy swirl of color, and had to bother my patient movie-mate to read to me the few subtitles in “Pearl Harbor.” A trip to school without my glasses meant sitting in the front row, trying to read the white marks on the board behind a zoomed-in image of my teacher, and squinting extra hard just to figure out who the blurry faced person waving at me twenty feet away could be. But sometimes I just wanted to get rid of them, not really for vain aesthetic purposes, but because for some weird reason, I like to see things not too crisp, not too perfect.

I’m not blind, mind you. Just nearsighted, so everything’s crystal clear when not too far (am I making sense?). –1.75, I guess, whatever that meant, but I’m sure my normal vision’s far better than your granny’s. Without my glasses, I’m far from being a lost oldie. In fact, it’s better in a sense, cool in the eyes, edges seem blurred and smoothened, objects seem closer than they appear (like in those taxi mirrors), and everything seems much less complicated.

Remember “The Matrix,” the first one? Remember how that guy would pay much just so he’d forget he knew too much? Just so he’d enjoy life, and be able to savor a sumptuous meal as it is, and not know that he’s being fooled by the signals sent by the computer program to his brain? “Ignorance is bliss,” he said.
That’s my point here. I don’t want to learn too much, to see things too clearly, to be a know-it-all. I want to maintain some fragment of innocence, so that I’d never lose my sense of wonder and awe. Besides, I'm only 24. I don’t want to see things as if my eyes were microscopes, scrutinizing every detail, as if my brain were a supercomputer processing every bit of data I sense. It’s fun when we marvel at things, when we realize our limits, and acknowledge that there is a Great Beyond.

Sometimes when I look at the blue sky, I try to forget about the high frequency and short wavelength of the violet color of the sun’s light, and our eyes’ sensitivity for the color blue. At times, I regret having watched the magician’s secrets revealed on “Exposed” (I’m sure I’ll regret too if I didn’t watch it), for it diminished my childhood fascinations into a clever bag of tricks. Still, I’m thankful for the knowledge I’ve gained, for it proved enlightening and helpful. After all, as Ernie Baron always says, it is “power.”

Don’t get me wrong. Learning is very important, and so is the enrichment of knowledge. People pay for good education, and would love to find answers to baffling questions haunting them. But sometimes, being a little naïve isn't a bad thing either. How I wish it were as simple as putting on eyeglasses and taking them off.

So while having a perfect world would be nice, the not-too-perfect, a little blurry picture of the world is perfect enough for me. But of course, my trusty specs are there anytime I need them.

On death

I have seen many people of all sorts die, and not one of them feared death once it was inevitable. ~ Abbé Henri de Tourville

Have you ever come across this word and just as quickly decided to move along and dismiss the thought as though it did not exist? I have struggled with this reality at a very early age and have come to terms with it on my own. Life to me is synonymous with death in the sense that one is not complete without the other. When I was three years old my grandmother died of a heart ailment and we had to go to our country to attend the funeral. It didn't register to me back then what it meant because as I related in my previous stories I could still sense my lolo's presence even after they told me that she's already gone.

The realization of my own mortality came to me two years later because of an incident that I will never forget. We had a neighbor who lived in a huge mansion in the back of our home. We had some problems with them in the sense they were not too happy in interacting with a non-white family and often used to do things, which irritated my parents. I was too young to get affected and in fact I don't recall exactly now how it came about but they also happen to have a dog that I became attached to and would frequently come over to pet with. But one day out of the blue, this dog bit me on my left ankle. The strangest thing of all, I didn't tell anyone what happened, including my parents. I just kept the whole episode to myself and decided to forget it ever happened.

After this incident, I began to hear stories about how people can die and have died because of rabies from dog bites. Being an impressionable kid that I was, I soaked this all in my young mind until this story was related to me that suddenly hit me like a lightning bolt. I heard somebody said (as to its accuracy today, I cannot really say) that Napoleon died cause he let a rabid puppy lick a wound he sustained during a war. I also do not remember where I got this other information that stuck with me but I also got this impression that it can take up to six years before somebody finally dies of this rabies infection. Of course, I realized much later when I finally surpassed this mental ordeal that this was greatly exaggerated since the incubation period can range from 10 days to 2 years at most.

Nevertheless, I thought to myself that my life was doomed. But being the ever-optimistic girl that I am, I seriously gave myself six years to live! I find that somewhat funny and amusing now but back then it was very real to me. I can still remember that awful day of realization - what I was wearing! The sights and activities that surrounded me, as if it was all trapped in an hourglass. That was tipped over and the sands of time slowly but surely starting to fall and with every grain representing each second of my life that was now slipping away in front of me. All of this at the tender age of five!

Just imagine how this radically changed my thinking and perception of life. In all honesty, I wasn't afraid at all. I just sort of accepted it point blank and made a mental note in my mind that when I reach eleven or twelve at most, I'll be dead.

This event practically made me a mature lady, at least in my own thinking, overnight. My whole perception of the world changed. Before, I used to think that the whole world revolved around me. After that it seemed that I was just a speck of insignificant dust in the cosmos of my existence. And so I made every minute and day count. No amount of self help book today could have taught me everything I have learned at that young age on my own about life and priorities. I came to look at things with a different pair of eyes and what I saw was a beautiful world. John Lenon's song "Imagine" encapsulates all that I envisioned at that tender age. Hence I became an achiever. I studied really hard, polished my talents and smartness, because I knew I did not have much time in hand. I also became unselfish and thought of others first before my own. I became generous and more forgiving.

Some of my classmates in grade school must have thought of me being strange. While all they could think of then was having fun and being care-free, here I was being a diligent student who helped my teacher clean up after school and never wastes time idling around but goes straight home everyday. Not that I did not enjoy my childhood anymore. There was still time for me to hang around with my friends but more than that, I got to talk to them about serious stuff about life although I wasn't quite sure whether they understood me back then. Finally, I turned twelve and everything was anti-climactic to me by then. Through those years I doubted if I was really going to die but if I did then I was surely ready. But nothing happened. So I just moved on with living.

Much later, as years passed by, I went much closer to death and saw it right on my doorsteps as unfeigned and real as it can be. But that’s one more milestone in my life.

If you ask me what I think of death, I'd say death is very much like sleeping. But the strangest twist must be to find out after you died that you were just sleeping and dreaming all along. And you suddenly woke up.

Rain, Rain - be with me.

I love the rain. Ever since I can remember, I've always enjoyed sitting under the weeping sky. I like to think of it as God's tears (back when I was more...errrr... religious) that He sheds to cleanse His people. In a way, despite my...err... religiosity's decline, I still felt cleansed by the rain.

When I was about 2 years old, we were on a vacation to India and a big storm hit Calcutta. Flood waters reached my uncle's hip. I know because we walked across the street to the still-open Paan shop, with me on his hip, my little feet dipped in the dirty water. Most of the houses around us were almost submerged. Those with second floors looked like bungalows perched directly on water. Broken branches and debris floated around the oily gray water. Lighting flashed. The wind howled. The heavens wailed.

But I looked up the sky in awe. I felt the raindrops kiss my face. Tiny cherub kisses. Gifts from God. I saw the rain as a boon, even as flood waters rose higher.

Thus my love affair with the rain began. Now that I think of it, most of my memories involve the rain.

Since I lived in England, rains were a part of life and still I loved them. As kids, my brother and I would run around the garden, with beach-pails in our hands and try to catch as much rain as we could. We had this long-running notion that saving the rain would mean good luck when we bathed with it in the shower.

Ahhh...the innocence of youth.

I remember getting caught in a downpour with my brother when he went to fetch me from my kindergarten. Instead of cowering under the waiting shed or seeking the protection of umbrellas and raincoats we braved the lightning to walk home hand in hand, splashing in the puddles and dancing on the people-empty streets. Sure, we got scolded for walking through the rain and risking getting hit by lighting. But it was worth the fun and the laughter of course, dancing in the rain.

When I got news that I got the admission to the University for higher studies, it rained. I found it unusual that a thunderstorm brewed, matured and dropped its cargo barely two minutes after I opened the envelope containing the results. Needless to say, I threw all caution to the wind and ran around the neighborhood with the other kids as the rain pelted down on us.

Even in the University campus in Sydney, the rain continued to brighten my day (ironic no?). Rains were not as frequent there, as in England and I had to wait for the monsoon months to arrive. During the monsoon months, I remember walking around the campus, letting the water soak into my jeans, making it heavy and problematic, yet I loved it. I kicked up a spray of water from a puddle and sang insane songs with my friends as we performed our wet procession. Sometimes, we'd don our shoes and crappiest clothes and play soccer in the mud, despite the repeated warnings about viral and colds and fever.

My first heartbreak happened under the rain. He was my closest friend at a time when I felt all my other "friends" had abandoned me in exchange for their own pursuits. I had believed it was love, but I grew to realize that I fell in love with the idea of love rather than with him. Still the rain did not ease the pain of losing a friend to a (wrong) illusion of love. Ironically, it was raining when he and I met again years later. Me in a fresh new relationship, him just out of a stormy one.

Now I live at a place, where it does not rain. Only a ten minute drizzling, 4 times a year and that’s it. I do miss the rains, very much and I allow my dreams and thoughts go back a few years where I sit beside our huge landscaped glass window on the living room in our house in England, watching the heavy showers. My mother is furious that it ruined a perfectly sunny day to dry the day's laundry. My dad is complaining that he just washed the car and the rain has spoiled the waxy shine it had. My brother just called up, announcing that he is stuck in the rain and is getting late.

As for me, I'm still watching the rain drench the earth and suffuse it with new life. Who knows? Maybe it’ll infuse me with more life.