the weekenders.

it all began in October.

my belly was swollen but it's a workshop and i can't afford to let it pass, even if i had to go home at midnight. i wouldn't really mind giving birth in the middle of a writing workshop.

just before the workshop ended we had our only group picture taken, made promises to keep on writing, and to open an online discussion board where our output would be dissected and torn apart; analyzed piece by piece, word for word, line by line.

the next call came in August of the following year. it was so because..."we had to counsel a depressed friend".
i willingly jumped into it again because i was recovering from postpartum and wanted a weekend life apart from the weekend urban planning class. one weekend was followed by another then one more until we finally felt comfortable with Dot's little lush garden; until it felt like we were in our own world, far from the noise of the city.

then it abruptly ends, as all good relationships do.

our season is over.

Otic Discussions

Keith gives me a look of disapproval as i grab a sheet of bathroom tissue and roll it tightly into a nice thin, tightly packed piece of paper stick.

He tells me to go see my ear doctor, the way he reminded me to go to the dentist last month. This weekend i'll go, i tell him but when my body parts stop hurting I forget about it and go on relaxing the Saturday away.

I tell him it's just a simple ear itch and this paper stick can easily make it all go away. and i scratch and scratch to the deepest recesses of my right ear, far as the paper stick could reach, tickle and roll my eyeballs in what could be the best ear-poking orgasm ever.

Keith shakes his head, in disgust maybe. or because he couldn't believe how stubborn i'd be after going through a terrible ear infection 5th month into my pregnancy. and because i was pregnant my medication came in low dose of antibiotics for an extended period. 14 days. jesus.

But i deduce the infection worsened because of the incompetent lady ENT who diagnosed my left ear trouble as a mere "pimple about to burst but it's really not a big problem so i'll just prescribe you some eardrops to help reduce the swelling of the pimple." how unfortunate of that pimple to land inside my ear canal. she told me further to "lie on my left side when i sleep so the dirt (what dirt, the earwax??) can gradually trickle down and help me hear better again."

lo and behold after 5 days of ear-dropping and left-side lying i didn't feel any better. in fact nothing trickled out of my ear, making it one of the gravest-disappointments-of-my-life-while-waiting-for-something-great-to-happen. in this case, for something to trickle out of my left, almost-going-deaf ear. i was half expecting the alien that Sigourney Weaver killed with all her might in Aliens would come crawling out but nothing. nothing happened. nothing came out.

it was later diagnosed, this time by a different ENT, to be a really bad ear infection. the pus and the ear wax decided to have a hell of a decadent party ever, group hugged and turned themselves into balls of disgusting ear matter as big as a kernel of an imported, and disappointingly bland, corn (yes, because the native Philippine corn has smaller, definitely much tastier kernels).

when i asked the ear doctor, a receptive, really good male doctor (NO EMPHASIS ON THE "MALE" PART. I'M NOT TRYING TO INSINUATE THINGS HERE AND I AM NOT INTERESTED IN ANY GENDER-RELATED ARGUMENTS. NO NOT THIS TIME. I JUST NEED TO DISCUSS THIS EAR OF MINE) with a comfy clinic about the possibility of the pimple growing inside my ear canal and subsequently infecting it (as i was told by the former ENT), he simply brushed it off and said that it's mostly because i cleaned it too much. My incessant use of cotton buds pushed the dirt and the ear wax and everything in between far inside my ear they couldn't move out to the outer ear anymore. A spic and span ear canal is not so good because th earwax provides protection to the very sensitive walls of the ear canals. They protect it fro the germs.

oh.

And i giggled and grinned as he suctioned all those disgusting kernels of earwax and pus, and thought about the possibility of having my own ear suction machine at home because it really really really felt good.

Keith said if I had my own suction machine, I'd use it so often I'd have my brains suctioned out of my ears, too. And he'd end up with a dumb, mega brainless partner. QUE HORROR of his life.

So with the itch coming back again, I go to my ear doctor. The itch keeps coming back, at the interval of 30 minutes and it's either we run out of toilet paper at home or I'd go deaf from a busted eardrum form too much poking of that paper stick.

Inside the clinic the doctor smiles and glancing from my records asks about my left ear, says (yes, says, not asks) I have given birth already. I should, because it's been more than 2 years since i visited him, unless of course, I am an elephant whose gestation period, we all know, lasts 10,000 years.

I tell him my left ear is doing great and I now have a 2 year old boy.

He asks which ear this time.

Right, I say. But I think I'll also have my left ear checked, just in case, you know. It itched also. yesterday.

he smiles and probably thinks Oh, you cotton buds addicts you really don't have nothing to spend your money on but to ear doctors, do you? Well, i am a reformed cotton buds addict. in fact i've made the switch to paper sticks which are pieces of toilet paper rolled into thin paper sticks and poked into my...okay. And actually, I don't have that much money, in fact i need more money to buy me a lot and a house with a front lawn and a backyard to plant my fruit trees and grown my herbs on. It's not what you think it is.)

I sit on his examining chair and he inserts this apparatus and says that my ear canal is clean, in fact, again it is over-cleaned (do i hear him ask if i used Lysol on it?), it's irritated. And he goes to get his small tube camera to show me how my ear is doing, points to the red spots where i apparently poked and scratched too much. And i have pushed the earwax too deep again, almost near the sport where my ear drum is. And that i should not even try to be so ambitious on taking that one out because it'd be too painful and dangerous; i might poke and tear a hole at my eardrum (yes, that shiny object, I see it). And i should really really stop poking the insides. Of my ear. Limit the cleaning to the outer ear.

He says this ear drops can help loosen that earwax that's stuck to your canal and help the itch go away but again, don't poke. wait for it to reach your outer ear.

I thought it's time i put up EA to rehabilitate my self. EA for EARWAX ANONYMOUS. Yes. But that kinda sounds disgusting. EPA. Maybe EPA is better: EAR POKING ANONYMOUS, where we'd ask each other what we use to poke our ears and if we are all similar in the eyeball rolling look of satisfaction each time we do so.

Jesus H. Christ.

death of a father.

I could not quite recall exactly when it happened but I suppose the dying began in 2003, the year the family started rehabilitating the old lot across the river. Or maybe it was even way before that. Perhaps he began dying when I was still a child.

It took me a while to write the succeeding descriptives to
those lines I wrote having been overtaken by my own metaphoric ability. I wait on the bench under the trees in Jaro Plaza amidst the stench of the piss on the walls of the monuments. Today is a Wednesday. Time for the baby’s shots at the Health Center a spit away.

I strain my eyes to the lines I wrote having to content myself with a piece of stick-on ID I found in my wallet. That one was
meant for the trash but somehow saved itself by hiding amongst the receipt that I couldn’t afford to throw for plans of eventual household accounting. Colorful.
Like the tickets. Concert tickets that remind me of college.

His lifeless body moves across the house; wakes up, bathes, prepares for office, leaves for office and goes back just in time for the news or much later if there are visitors to entertain at the office.

He talks a lot about so many things but the current events is his favorite. He reacts to the news and talk shows on ANC. I’ve listened to all of it for 28 years; those very profound ideas I never thought I could even get to think of when I was a child. Five years ago I gave up. All I do now is give him a blank stare or plain yeses or nos in every conversation he tries to initiate. Those conversations and those arguments are mere repetitions of things already said by somebody else. If he were paid for every plagiarized statement or name he drops, he’d be a billionaire.

It is true. Indeed no matter how much you prepare for doomsday
you still could never be really prepared for it. You could always prepare a
script and trick yourself into believing something else is happening but in the
end you would still have to conquer it all by yourself and completely trust in
what doomsday has to offer you.

When I heard the news, I calmly told myself that such is expected. All men go through some midlife crises and my father does not deserve to be spared from them. He is no superhero after all. He will never be spared. And the thoughts crept into the farthest creases of my mind, kicked aside by plans of traveling and getting nowhere, getting drunk, kissing, hearing an old old favorite song, missing old old friends and eating putannesca or pan de sal ni Paa at dusk in August with the old old friends missed and new acquaintances met.

I remember reading LC’s beautiful letter when we were 17 and recently separated, she having to stay in Iloilo for Fisheries and I, praying to survive Biology and the jungle that surrounds UP Manila. She wrote the letter at the back of Brandon Lee’s The Crowe poster, photocopied on A3 paper. Such a long letter, considering her microscopic handwriting. She writing about her father having lung cancer was all I could remember from that letter, and that she was coping well with life in provincial Miag ao. I was not at all surprise by the lung cancer but was surprised at the timing.
How soon till he dies?
She laughs and tells me to read the letter again.
I didn’t. Of course. I wouldn’t.
She tells me it was just a wish, that she was wishing her father would die of lung cancer. Right now. When we are all 17 and young and naïve and boyfriend less and not yet jaded by life by love by everything.
It took me 3 years to understand what she meant.

News like that however, is also never spared from being talked
about during the Lenten holidays, Christmas or year-end reunions and the annual
family gatherings. First we talk of his inadequacy as a father. Then his
contradicting ideals, his rehashed ideas, his lack of a father figure, his
superiority complex, his sorry state having been very poor and fatherless as a
child. My mother would go on talking about how pitiful my father’s life was. I
get my mind and mouth working up until the talks about his superiority complex
then my thoughts would lock themselves and refuse to accept more thoughts when
my mother and other family members go into their social worker mode and be
empathize with my father. Of course all the talks about him happen in his
absence. He could never take the comments I give. What does he think he is, some
kind of a superhero? No, he could never really take them.

Did I also have a death wish for my father? For so so so so long I have put all those issues aside. For so so so long after recovering from the psychosis of Manila all I wanted was to give myself back something that has long been lost. I just wanted to stop blaming him for my dead dreams. But he never took a moment off to step back and look at what has happened.

Yes he died, at the very same day he began dying.

All the things he said. They never matter now. They would soon be dead deep within me.

20080121.