I'm on a 24 hour duty again today and it seems these are the only times I could actually write decent entries. Maybe it's because I try to clear my duty days of responsibilities other than emergency calls from the ER Complex, which can come at any time. That, or I am subconsciously challenging the ever reliable Cosmic Joke Theory to put the blame somewhere other than myself (teehee!).
Anyway, I wish I had my own camera. There are so many colorful sights here. I suppose if you live long enough in big cities, you can teach yourself to see through the smog. Then, everything transforms into a living, breathing, painting. A 5-sense experience of nowhere else.
Take the Blumentrit wet market and imagine it in a frame. You step off the light rail transit and the odor of poultry is your big billboard announcing: “This is a marketplace”. A war zone by its own right. The scent of inihaw wafting invitingly like a delicate lady's finger beckoning you to come see the forbidden schnitzels of flour-coated animal entrails and congealed chicken blood cut into blocks and smoking over barbeque grills. Somehow, there is always a crowd around these ihawans: jeepney drivers and their sidekick barkers, tricycle men ad their occasional back-riders, a student or two in their school colors who most probably cut class to be there, and the regular clique of she-males in their spagetti-straps and skimpy shorts and muscled legs and ukay-ukay stilettos. The sweaty, shirtless, beer-bellied manong behind the grill, fanning his coals to a bright sizzling glow and unknowingly adding drips of his perspiration into the sauce he smears and the taste he sells (his secret ingredient ;P) is the real Mr. Palengke of the street. Of course, there's always that overpowering scent of raw fish and meat (and butcher :D) that comes jolting you into existence with that sudden thunderous sound of a heavy cleaver falling onto a chopping board with practiced precision. THWACK!
The sounds: an orchestra of vibrations, timbre and pitch. The sights: a clash and clang of livid hues, all at once distinct and all at once a dizzying , spinning blur; A Van Gogh's palette or a 1960's moving picture show, depending on the horizons of your own imagination. Chickens cackling an their babies chirping in confusion as their natural yellow is suddenly transformed into a rainbow of colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet; hiking up their prices as they are consequently transformed from meager creatures in the food pyramid to semi-exotic children's toys.
“Ma'am! Vran-new Bra. Tweynti fesoses only,” says a woman squatting amidst a molehill of unmentionables, rouge on her lips and permanently sucked in cheekbones; a malnourished young lady who has aged more than her years, drowned in the multicolored racks of allegedly-from-Korea RTW's.
And vegetable produce laid lovingly on straw mats. Carrots red with crunch. Cabbages round and frilly at the edges. Beans in their stringed coffins. I wish I could describe to you all the others but my vegetable vocabulary is quite limited. I was brought up eating in the kitchen but was never taught the vital curiosity for cuisine and its essential beginnings until it was too late. Like an old dog who will gobble up a bone but will stubbornly refuse to learn new tricks. I'm so sorry to say. Even my repeated attempts at pasta in tomato sauce always end up in culinary disasters. A test of ultimate love from the person who would rather lick his plate clean than hurt my feelings (heheheh!).
When I was a little girl, growing up in a small city where the primary modes of transportation are the ever reliable three-wheeled motorcycle and sidecar (as the saying goes: everywhere in Roxas City is one tricycle ride away...), I used to believe that trains were extinct like the dinosaurs. Our loyal house keepers who have been with the family even before I was born used to talk about ancient trains traveling from Roxas City to Iloilo and back. Their tracks are still visible in some parts of the highway like skeletal fossils of archeological significance. Needless to say, it wasn't much of a surprise when the LRT stations started bridging up the skyways. I am now, no longer a child, and a regular commuter of the light rail transit. But walking down Blumentrit, I was stopped in my tracks by the chuga-chuga sound of a train engine. Remember when you were a kid and you were watching Disney's Dumbo and the circus train goes, chuga-chuga-chuga? That one! It wasn't the LRT. The LRT goes whoot and something else more electronic, futuristic. This sound was the sound I was imagining magnificent trains made in story books. It was the sound chuga-chugging in my head when I was reading Like Water For Elephants. And the metal fossil that passed by when I turned in that direction could have been a dinosaur anyway. Rust and decay and all that. Nothing spectacular. Just one of those things that trigger a memory.
Anyway, they say Blumentrit used to be my father's playground. I don't recall him talking much about the place except when mentioning relatives who might still be there.
Now let me demonstrate how ideas fly. I'm about to skip to a topic with no relation to the Blumentrit wet market except for that one word.
Father.
The Muffin Man took me to visit his father again. Baba would remember her Lolo's birthday. She is young, afterall, and full of life. She would remember the life-giving holidays. Christmas. Easter. Birthdays. But Moe always remembers the anniversary of his death. It's still 7 days from today, but we went yesterday anyway. No candles or fresh flowers as is traditional. A can of Pilsen and a pack of cigs were his tribute. Something he believes he would have shared with his dad had the circumstances been different. Consequently, his papa's eternal resting ground was in an area in the memorial park marked: Lot “FAITH”. And it popped up like an answer to all his queries.
“How do I go through all this?”
“With faith...”
A picture was called for. It was accessible at the time. Cellular phones are the modern day magic wands.
Tree leaves turn brown and gold and red with age. Not always green. Then they fall and join the grass.
“How do I go through all this?”
“With faith...”
And then we H-H-W-W-ed our way back to wherever it was we came from. It was still a park, after all, and H-H-W-W's are a prerequisite in all kinds of parks... even parking lots, I would say. :) But that would be another story, and another case of flight of ideas, and I can only allow myself one symptom of problematic thought process at a time. :)
If I could paint these scenarios simultaneously: one busy marketplace and one quiet garden for the eternally resting, I would swirl down colors equally tumultuous. One assaulting the external senses to a halting experience. The other grabbing hold of you in a full grip from somewhere deep and tugging you down to a full stop.
Just because... Just because...
But, still.
F.Y.I.
The H-H-W-W-ing in itself was already worth it all. ;)
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