A REAL BEAUTY

[In retrospect, with all due respect, again:   September 28, 2012]

I could not recall anymore when was the last time I rode upon a jeepney to Miagao from the city. But I was certain it had been a long time already thus I was so uneasy when I rode one last Wednesday.

And from the original jeepney terminal at the Super, I took the front seat where, minutes later, seated beside me was a real looker. She got a face like a fairy or an angel, while her scent was like a mixture of wild orchid and a rare rose in the jungle. Her olive skin was like a glowing silky satin meticulously weaved and made from the finest Arabian linen. I was so sure when that damsel would turn into a full-blown woman, in the end, she would be chased and hounded no end not only by a few good men.

It didn’t surprise me when I wished unwittingly that my daughter would look like her in the future at least. But I took back that wish upon realizing that when the time comes, she would pale in comparison with my princess. But I liked her finesse especially the way she covered her neckline with her palm in her every twist and turn. I could sense trained attitude and good breeding of a child raised by Miss Manners though in riches she was born.

Halfway to Miagao, I felt on my left shoulder a little weight, and I saw the right side of her forehead leaning on it. And I saw beside me was a sleeping child, as despite those blossoming features of a lady, I still saw innocence so tired.

Since time immemorial, that was one of the classic examples of a man’s dilemma inside a public utility like the jeepney: When a sleeping lady passenger sitting beside him suddenly leaned on him unintentionally. If you’re a man and that happens to you too, what would you exactly do?

As you notice her slowly inclining herself on your shoulder, would you hold her face to keep her head from dropping down further, or you quickly move forward and let her fall behind your back and see her diving on the seat with her kisser? Remember, doing the first would be like risking yourself to be accused of being an opportunist if not a molester, while the second would reveal your ungentlemanly character, which, to me, is more inhumane thus a sin graver.

I didn’t know if it was prudence but I just let things to happen as they would do anymore. I held my ground and still sit straight just like I did on that spot many moments before. I didn’t know too if it was due to the poor shock absorbers of the jeepney or the poorer road asphalt overlay, as I felt her soft head dribbling on my arm muscle softly but too much exhaustion may have had kept her consciousness at bay.

As her fine-chiseled nose was buried right in my wet arm as if sweating a wax, I started to be conscious and could no more get to relax. I wasn’t sure what did I rub on my underarm after failing to bathe in the morning due to time constraint, was it Rexona in a sachet or just plain “tawas”? Worse, if my worst fear was correct that I instead forgot to apply anything in my underarm then because I was in a rush and in panic, I’d pity the girl for she would surely wonder, upon reaching home, where she had acquired asthma or why she would always sneeze and became allergic

I still let her sleep on my left shoulder. If her head would slip or fall, it wasn’t my fault but hers. I glanced at those lovely eyes wide shut and angelic face in deep slumber while I quietly sat. I said to myself that when a man loves a woman—he should do this one—someone who’s nice to look at and seemed to be allergic to spat.

Suddenly, her cell phone rang and I had another shock of my life when after only a minute, as she answered it, she blurted out in full volume a flurry of expletives. Wow! There went an apparently lovely angel, cursing and cussing like a street kid if not a devil.

Truly, things are not what they appear to be. Always, beyond the eyes and skin is the real beauty.

HAIR TODAY AND GONE TOMORROW

I think some bygones have not easily gone by.

Like the typhoon “Pedring,” my long hair was finally gone, thus, to it, I’d now say goodbye.

But I still long for my long hair.

No thanks to an official directive, id est, OCA Circular No. 122-2011, with matching photo annexes of prohibited style and hair length.

Yet, that’s democracy, you could not insist on your right to fashion, though your soul’s adherence to democracy itself is always filled with burning passion.

Well, as a law-abiding, lowly subordinate, no choice is left there to take but to follow and swallow though your principles would break.

Who could question the wisdom of the higher-ups? I just assume what matters to them is not an inside beauty but a facade with a make-up.

It was not unkempt for I cared so much for my long hair. Had they given it a few more months, it would’ve reached past my shoulders. It was shampooed with a leading brand, and aloe vera and cocomilk were religiously applied on each strand.

I had already a dozen pussycats to make it firm in the morning, and an imported brush and a fine-tooth comb for hair massage in the evening. 

A shoulder-length hair would have made my goal and desire perfect. That is, to hear the people around me say like in the 80’s, “Gee, your hair smells terrific.” 

Or to try to be cute again and recall a then famous shampoo commercial to reenact. Like the ultra beautiful Alice Dixson, wiggling shoulders, and seductively say, “I can feel it, shyak!”

However, I realized too that biblical principles eschew long hair for men. For even Paul the Apostle admonished the Corinthians: “Doth not even nature itself teach you that, if a man [has] long hair, it is a shame unto him?” (I Cor. 11:14)

So, to my so long hair, I say so long. Maybe see you in my retirement which may be coming soon.

For next attraction.

LIFE SENTENCE

“What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Mark 10:9 KJV)

(originally posted exactly three years ago today)

Nowadays, coldness grips the whole country due to relentless rain everywhere. Besides, it’s cool season despite the unpredictability of climate as we’re now in the months of “ber,” or “brrrr.” Once again people are practically panicking as if there’s a so-called gold rush in marrying. I noticed this anew when I recently stood as one of the principal sponsors of one of my best friend’s wedding.

You could see genuine smiles fixed in their faces as single young men and women uninterruptibly grinned with the couple the entire ceremonies. You could detect the fire in their eyes as they found it hard to hide their burning desire that sooner than they expected, they too would be in those marriages.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. I’m pretty sure I know what is in the mind of those poor guys, that married life is all bed of roses, or a walk in the clouds if not hovering in the skies. It is, only however if you’re ready mentally and psychologically, let alone financially, have a superb understanding and a good grasp of all aspects of marriage and have attained maturity. 

When you are shocked to find yourself one day that upon looking at the mirror you suddenly remember you’re still single although you’re already past forty, relax, baby. Don’t panic, be still, never mind those creases and the siege of light and shades of gray. Marriage is not a race; its success will depend on how it ends, believe you me. As, this I fully guarantee, age is not an accurate barometer of a person’s maturity. There’s a normal old man who still thinks like a child and a teener who reached early the stage of senility.

If, God forbid, it happens someday my only daughter, one of my reasons for living inspiringly, would be included in the statistics of teenage pregnancy, I’d never allow anyone to force her to marry just to “save” herself and her “honor” from becoming a fodder for busybodies and the humor-mongering society. As what I also lately believed, marriage should be sacred. It is something you want to do, not what you have to do. 

It doesn’t mean just because you found yourself forty and above, to catch the so-called “last trip” you’ve to devise an undetectable trap. If you do, you are definitely the one being miserably trapped by the lure of the deceiving world then. Like the young creatures anywhere who are practically still considered children, who think life begins at fourteen. They rush up to marry in churches and courtrooms without much understanding, not knowing how difficult and conflicting married life would be right after the wedding.

Believe in the song “Naaala Ka” by Tito Vic & Joey, during the wedding, plenty of kisses would you shower for each other. But if you observe closely after one year and thereafter, you’d find out there would be only one kiss a year. And worse, strictly for the sake of peace, you’re only doing her a genuine Judas’ Kiss.

As was always repeated by my friend “Lec” who had it personally proven, marriage is not a word but a sentence. 

Considering that since only death could do you part, hence, without a possibility of a parole, it is a life sentence.

LOVE IS CONSIDERATE

I had a friend who fell in love with the daughter of his father’s first cousin and when the family knew about it almost everyone was fuming.  But the feeling was mutual, for aside from their mere three-year age difference he was a certified ladies’ man for he was very good-looking.

When hostile relatives, dissents and detractors grew every day, he decided he had to act quickly, thus, he took no chances and ran away with the girl to settle down elsewhere.  I had only wished him well and his distant-niece-turned-lover, for who could stop a determined lovestruck kid who, like today’s youngsters, was a firm believer there’d be ‘forever’?

I remembered my friend again when I attended the burial of my late maternal grandfather’s sister-in-law.  There, I had a very rare chance to meet upclose almost my mother’s entire relatives very briefly though.

So many years ago, when I was much younger than my friend’s age when he loved his kin so, I fell for a distant cousin too.  Nevertheless, my friend and I had completely contrasting fates as, unlike his love recipient, mine’s till now would never know.

She was marvelous; her exhausted image from non-stop household chores could not hide her rare kind of beauty that was extraordinarily graceful despite her being less in ‘luck.’  At her young age I enlisted her in my personal list of daughters of Eve in the whole universe whose stares my stares, when we would talk, could never ever meet straight up. 

She was in high school when we saw each other for the very first time in our lives and I nearly blamed the heavens for making us blood relatives thus instantly cutting down all my desire with bluntness.  My two closest drinking buddies, both of them have since deceased, pleaded for my help in courting her despite my made up stories she was one of the boys because obviously she looked like one of the goddesses.

In view of our distance I abandoned my blossoming affection, and as time went by it only felt like some kind of hurt that was a cross between intestinal gas and chest pain each time I saw her in whatever mood.  I told myself my heart might be right but the person would be wrong in the eyes of my relatives and the neighborhood, so, as to my uncomfortable feeling, I’d only cut the cheese and stayed away from her for good.

I always knew I had freedom to choose whom to love, yet, for the sake of other people I had to nip it in the bud.  When I became a Christian I saw the wisdom in what I did, i.e, not following my own instinct.  Otherwise, she’d never have reached whatever riches she is now fully enjoying at present.

As human beings with basic rights, we have to exercise our freedom but we have to see to it that we won’t offend those who do not understand.  “Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak,” as Paul admonished the Corinthians (I Cor.8:9 NIV).  

Be considerate and live for others too, as what he reminded to Christians in Rome:  “For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone” (Rom.14:7 NIV).

"HONEST 'TO!"

A four-year-old boy came out of the bathroom rushing on his feet as he would bawl.  His father learned subsequently the boy dropped his toothbrush in the toilet bowl.  So, the father fished the toothbrush out and threw it in the garbage bin.  His perplexed child just stood idly nearby while thinking for a moment.

Then he ran to the Master’s bathroom and came out with his father’s toothbrush.  And with chivalrous resolve and a charming little smile, he said as he held it up:

"We better throw then this one out too, 'cause it fell in the bowl a few days ago!”

What can I say?  What an honest lad.  We need more people like him so bad.

Meanwhile, I laughed at myself after I nearly fell off my chair in surprise yesterday upon reading the heading of a front page news item of the Inquirer, a respected national daily.  It said that, finally, there were two honest persons in the House [of the Representatives], but when I continued reading, I horribly found out they happened to be janitors “only.” 

(My apologies to janitors, my “only” doesn’t mean to demean or debase you.  That’s why I put it in quotation marks, I knew it you’re more honest than a CEO.) 

Considering the natural covetous character of a human being plus financial humps he would hurdle every day, the exemplary deeds of those two honest janitors should be consistently treated as great news on any given day. 

But it would have been much greater news if the honest two were bona fide members of Congress, so-called wielder of power of the purse, in cash or in kind.  Yeah, if so, then it would be truly sensational, a real scoop, and not quite a few citizens could expect that for weeks, the news would simply grab the headline.

For there’s a traditional belief that finding two honest congressmen anywhere within the Lower House’s area, would be like finding ten just persons in the then notoriously popular cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.  But of course, let me say here such kind of belief could also be mistaken.  There may have not just two, who knows, there could be three of them.

I think, like what is believed by everybody, an honest man is a good man to me.  Or, better man, or better yet, best man, simply because honesty is the best policy.  To be best, err, honest, a Christian is definitely not a Christian unless he is honest.  Others may never know he’s telling a lie but God sees the heart, to say the least (I Samuel 16:7).

We can fool other people but not Him, as what every believer knows full well.  For “the eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the [good and the evil]” (Proverbs 15:3).

UNDERSTANDING UNDERSTANDING

“Habang buhay, may pag-asa.”

As long as we’re alive, there’s hope.  This is one of the enduring Filipino maxims that are practically true and faithful in everything.  Of course, only the dead are hopeless and despairing, even if half the world had been theirs at the very hour they were dying.

For even if their heirs would spend all of the riches of the deceased had left for them to hire a multitude of praying righteous to plead for him to escape harsh judgment, still, everything will be in vain.  As what’s written in the Scriptures, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked:  whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap (Gal.6:7), so don’t believe the Led Zeppelin, there’s no buying stairway to heaven.

“Habang buhay, may pag-asa.”

This local phrase was my battlecry in my much younger years, especially during the stage when I discovered that my feeling for a certain girl was not mutual, for it egged me on to bravely pursue my case.  Yet later, I proved Shakespeare was right, ‘the better part of valor is discretion,’ for after I was pitted against handsomer race, I learned that facing the problem is full of stress if the problem is your face.

For many years, that Filipino proverb would stick to my mind like glue.  Throughout my roller-coaster life, it would become my rallying motto.  Yeah, as long as we’re alive, hope and chance would thrive.

“Habang buhay, may pag-asa,” however, “dapat may pang-unawa.”  Well, it is simply suggesting, there must have understanding.

All we need as well is the ability to know, to have the kind of wisdom, when under any given circumstance we could immediately recognize that such moment presented is our very chance.  People lived miserably—some perished—after failing to grab things at their very first appearance, as sometimes opportunity and chance seldom return to those who snubbed them once.

It’s like when we’d say we believe in God and in His Word but we lack wisdom and understanding.  Specifically in determining if what He says is in metaphor or literal sense of its absolute meaning.  Like when we say, God helps with all His heart.  But let’s not be like fools, we must do our part.

There was a preacher so faithful who fell in the ocean and he couldn't swim.  A little later a big boat came by, "Do you need help, sir?" yelled the captain.  The preacher said calmly, "No, God will save me."

Some moments later, another fishing boat came by and a kind-hearted fisherman asked, "Hey, do you need help?" The preacher replied again, "No, God will save me, thanks!"

Eventually the confused preacher drowned and went to heaven, and The preacher asked God at once:  "Why didn't you save me?" to which God replied, "You did not understand, I sent you two boats, son!"

FRIENDZONE

“Friendzone” is one of the most recent popular words and phrases I like so much to have popped out around cyberspace.  From what I have gathered, it’s a kind of situation where one’s been dumped by another he/she would worship and praise.

However, it’s a softened version for the word itself suggests it’s not done in vicious manner considering its root word ‘friend.’  Maybe its inventor’s heart was badly broken, but due to consolation of friendship he/she came up with this nice catchphrase to mend.  It’s logo is beautifully represented by a thumbs-up sign face to face with another hand doing a half-heart design.  When I first heard about it, I’ve tried to recall also how often I’d been into ‘friendzone’ since the beginning of time.

No matter what dumping people may say, I fall in love with their memory, but of course, it doesn’t mean it’s still for the same persons the same way before, it’s now Christian love, as in from a human being to his brethren.  We don’t have to dwell in the past, though I agree some of them are worth revisiting, yet be sure only for some lessons to learn at present, and avoid wishful thinking that you should have married many years ago then.

For how could you get married at the time the love was burning through when marriage would need two to tango?  For how then could you get married when every time you sweetly said “I love you,” her constant reply was “Thank you?”

 

Therefore, tell rather your present loves you now understand why you never had a satisfactory relationship, if any, before, it’s because he/she hadn’t met you.  Break it to them gently, so passionately, that if you had only known there were human beings like them, you would have married one many, many years ago.

  

And regarding those who kept you in ‘friendzone,’ be thankful unto them, they’re nicer, or many times better than the ones who for many times too had your heart thinly sliced.  For the latter did not just slice it, they crushed it, and as if put it in a blender without ice, for you to confirm that a creature who betrayed you once would betray you twice.

But deep in our heart, let’s always possess some patience there, did Jesus Himself tell about forgiving seventy times seven our personal offenders (Matthew 18:21-22)?  Thus, don’t ever get tired of understanding people, show that you always care, the important thing is what you left behind in the mind of others.

Therein, a creature once loved lives on.  Even if you’re just confined in ‘friendzone.’

SAVED BY SEPTEMBER BREAK: ALMOST ANOTHER HEARTBREAK

September is the first of what all the Filipinos known to be as “Ber” Months, referring to the last syllable of each name of the remaining months of the year.  It’s also known as “Brr” months, for compared to the rest which are as scorching hot as summer, September to December are traditionally rainy and thus colder.

But some of my hottest memories happened in September, like the ones I had with a former classmate whom I would simply refer here as “Mitch,” who was not just a classmate, but, well, a regular seatmate in, of all subjects, my then most dreaded Statistics.  This was the beauty of my being irregular student after I decided to go back to San Ag to finish a degree in Commerce, in all of my nine subjects one semester in ‘98, I had different sets of classmates from seniors down to freshies, hence, I learned different tricks.

Okay, Commerce was never my childhood dream, or a burning desire for a to-die-for degree, to be candid.  Ever since, I have always known myself to have definitely no heart nor passion for any kind of business and trade. 

It just happened that when I sought what department to transfer to after I found courses in Techno to be difficult to hurdle because of its subject called the impassable Analytic Geometry, I saw it during one enrollment day that of all snake-like queues of various courses in payment windows, the girls taking the long lines of College of Commerce were the most stunning and pretty.

And that was the exact moment when I firmly decided I would definitely graduate as one of the Commerce men.  Besides, I was in awe of then President Erap Estrada’s business so I presumed loving girls was a true commerce of men.

“Mitch” was not the brightest in our Stat class but aside from her being one of the adorable, she was a very dependable classmate.  On Day One when she sat next to my right after coming in late, I quickly tricked her into believing she’d be my permanent seatmate.  I said dependable because after I humbled myself before her, she would let me take a peek at her answers right on our first quiz.  I let her know I didn’t survive Techno for I had troubles with numbers so she guaranteed me that with her I would regain peace.

We were classmates only in Stat but we grew close to each other so fast that a little later she would comfortably stroll and take snacks with me in the cafeteria when our professor would be absent.  So close there were instances that while I peeped through her yellow answer booklet she opened for me across her chest, I would accidentally see as well the swells covered by her undergarment.

She would say, “Hey, naka bonus ka ba!” and I’d reply, “Wala ako nakita,” knowing she showed not on purpose those things she meant, only the answers did I see, I’d swear to her, betting my conscience.  She trusted me because she once let me guard the door in a lock-less male cubicle when female CRs were all engaged, assuming it’s a matter of honor to me to help out a friend regardless of inconvenience.

However, I told her later not to repeat what she did because after all I’m a man and a man will always be a man especially when provoked whether or not it’s a friend he’s helping.  As Ken Follett concluded, there’s no Prince Charming, only a bunch of more or less flawed men who sometimes wear shining armours but there are always rusty spots in them. 

To be honest again, after a couple of struggling years of being a heartbreak kid, that was as close to love as I had ever come.  That was September, the closing stage of the semester, where I suppressed the matter after she told me, “I have a husband.”

Maybe, had it not for September’s intervention, I’m not sure what worst thing I would have done too, knowing my heart’s inclination.  And I remembered King David’s misery because of what he had had for the much married Batsheeba:  an accidental but fatal attraction (2 Samuel 11).

CONSEQUENCES OF TELLING THE TRUTH

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).

There was a cyberspace story about a woman who sent off her husband, for him to go to a nearby store to buy food, cigarettes and then some.  He hurriedly walked down to their favorite store only to find it closed.  So he proceeded to the bar for there was vending machine to use.

And he saw a gorgeous lady in there.  They began talking to each other.  They had a couple of beers and as everyone expected, one thing led to another, naturally.  In her apartment he woke up at 3 a.m. and he said, “Oh, no, my wife’s going to kill me.”  He frantically requested for a talcum powder from her as if she was a lady harassed.  And when he had it, he quickly rubbed the powder on his hands and went home fast.

His wife was in the doorway. Waiting for him, pretty angry.  “Where have you been?” asked the wife, smoke of fury was running through her nose.  “Well, Honey, it’s like this, I went to the store like you asked, but it was closed.”

He continued, “So I went to the bar to use the vending machine, and I saw this great looking girl there.  We talked a lot and had a few drinks later and one thing led to another, and I ended up in bed with her.”  The wife answered, “Oh yeah?  Let me see your hands, Mister!”  Husband obliged and she saw his hands covered with powder.

“You are a liar indeed, Steven!  You were playing billiards again!”

No matter what philosophers in the world may say, that’s one fine example where the truth sets one free.

I don’t know if the recent conviction by the Sandiganbayan of whistleblower Jun Lozada for graft was some kind of a zarzuela or not but let’s take it for the meantime at face value.  So we have now a big joke for taxpaying Maria, Juan and Pedro considering that the decision was handed down after the acquittal by the exposed Benjamin Abalos and Mike Arroyo.

Finally, the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, not figuratively but literally anyway.  That is if the smart Ben Abalos and the indestructible Mike are as wily as a cat really.  Well, the Justices of the Sandiganbayan have well spoken.  Who are we the law-abiding subjects compared to them?

Here’s the moral lesson of the story, if you are an accomplice to something like big-time money-making business out of government contract like the infamous NBN-ZTE, before you contemplate turning yourself into a state witness when things go wrong after an exposé, think twice as you may end up the only one to be found guilty.  Not in the said transaction of commission-earning, but in some of your past crimes and wrongdoing.

But here is also the problem with some of the courts, if they could not give credence to the testimony of a whistleblower who repented, and who could narrate facts matter-of-factly with simple spontaneity yet the court still insists on hard evidence, who then can be convicted?

No wonder here in this nation of masochists who are just gritting teeth, the courts find it hard to pin down big-time crooks or powerful “buwaya.”  For aside from the difficulty to secure a video footage showing their hand’s in a cookie jar, they can afford the services of a lawyer like Estelito Mendoza.

Elsewhere in the world, crime syndicate members were exposed and prosecuted with great success because whistleblowers’ words gave the greatest impact in all those cases.  Who would have thought that the super-powerful Al Capone, who often had won the war in the courts and in the streets, would meet his match in the person of Eliot Ness?

There in the USA, the courts believe the whistleblowers because they as an insider have the information the outsiders don’t have.  The only problem to solve about them is to verify the facts, but people in the sleuthing world could smell a lie as they’re smart enough.

What happened to Jun Lozada contradicts what Christians have learned about contrition and I hope for him it hasn’t served yet a bitter lesson.  It’s because if the man was indeed telling the truth on and on, in his case the truth did not set him free, it sent him to prison.