A LESSON FROM BRIGHT EYES

(Memories from August 23, 2011 at 2:39pm)

WATER’S abundant in the heavens. Or so it seems.

Rainy days are here again. Farmers rejoice when this season comes but saltmakers seething tears would fill in many drums.

This season reminds me too of a very beautiful young lady, so full of charms. So filled with spice. And everything nice.

I exclusively called her “Bright Eyes.”

Fact was, not just her eyes that were shining bright. But so were her nose. Her ears. Her brows. Everything in her glittered and glowed.

It was when I started dreaming of her while she was on sight, when Art Garfunkle's’ “Bright Eyes” suddenly filled the airwaves in the night.

The year’s 1988. First sem. When cats and dogs were raining.

I was still then drunk with joy after having been allowed and admitted in the Commerce Department of the USA (the San-Ag, not the Master of Colony). I was a trasferee. I came straight from the Arkee Department wherein I could not even pass a mere quiz, much less, a prelim exam in Analytic Geometry. 

For how could I be analytic when I did not even know what geometry was in the first place?

I passed high school maths by sticking to an age-old adage for employment: “It’s not by what you know but whom you know.” With some help of reason and persuasion… and begging 75’s too.

I could still remember the scene the first time I met her.

Aurora Subdivision. Boarding house. I was happy to be grouped together in one room with two double-decks, with my best pal Pongkie, his bro Zenon, and my one and only bro Nono. 

We were gathered one night by the Lady of the House at the sala to let all the boarders know each other. The four of us were busy huddling, sizing up and rating each and every face arriving. And with the Lady presiding, the meeting jumpstarted to its sole purpose that evening.

As a male boardmate was in the middle of his stammering, my eyes turned upon the staircase. And suddenly caught an angel descending from which. Effortlessly swaying her dangerous curve and hips. And when she took her seat, we were mesmerized by her charm and grace.

She of Venusian beauty. If not the reincarnated Aphrodite.

She had easily piled up so many suitors. In and out of the boarding house. But she evaded them all like the plague. As she said suitors would only make her judgment vague. She revealed she only wanted friends. Thus I saw an opening.

When other alpha males would scramble at her feet, my eyes would pass by her as if she did not exist. And I was shocked the following night when, as I went out of my classroom at 6:30, in the next room I saw her smile and her imposing beauty. When I checked the posted schedule at the door, I found out she’d be out at 8:30. 

I did not went back to the boarding house. I whiled away the hours. Two hours of waiting was a very small price. If you were staring the whole time at your Miss Bright Eyes.

The bell rang at 8:30. And busy bodies mixed up suddenly in all classrooms, some were gathering bags and make-up, some were gathering storm. As she hurriedly went for the door, I deliberately crossed her path and bumped her right shoulder without touching her upfront treasure. Feigning surprise, I informed her I had just discovered we had the same schedule every night. And to my genuine surprise, she was so happy to know it, for, starting that time, there would be someone who would go with her back to the boarding house every night.

And from then, the whole first sem was almost heaven. For what would you feel when you walk with someone special under the rain? And when the lone umbrella you were both holding, your hands over her hands over the handle, almost took both of you up in the air?

A walk in the clouds in every night. Of a shining lady and the silent knight. Amid the talks and laughters’ flight, still a repressed love was out of her sight. 

I was so scared to get busted.

I never veered away from her trust the whole time. I knew she considered me a friend like Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. Little did she know she was then a true love of mine. For under the rain, she was my sunshine.

I quit school after that sem. I sailed and tried my “luck” in the Big City to begin my first stab at glory. After a week, I wrote her to reveal my deep secret. And she wrote back in words to this effect: “Tatz, you should have revealed it to me upclose and personal and risked failing. Who knows, you might win. Do not take league with those who did not experience the pain of losing nor the glory of winning just because they were so afraid to risk something.”

The Proverbs was right: “Open rebuke is better than secret love.” (27:5).