crazy cats keep climbing the part of our roof that covers my distressed yellow room like a promising protective steel contrivance already blemished by sharp scratches and bird droppings. i was reading love in the time of cholera when the banging sound came like a thief in the dark of night. the uninvited eerie sound came as sudden as the unwarranted force i accidentally applied on my thumb and index finger to turn the page, causing a tiny rip on page 147. darn those cats! after 3 more banging sounds, i got up to anticipate the 4th and mustered enough patience to hold the window curtain, in a futile attempt to see beyond the opaque glass pane, with a half-hearted resignation to bravery...but it didn't come.
so i went back to my reading and stayed up until i finished the chapter. it was pretty intense. gabriel garcia's words left nothing to my imagination. i was there with dr. juvenal urbino and fermina daza in colombia...for real. except for the part where ms. daza and her aunt escolastica took the liberty of learning some sewing and embroidery, perhaps to kill time while doctors tried to find the cure for the endemic disease. i never had that lingering dexterity commonly present among women. i flunked practical arts in 6th grade to underline my disdain. as a matter of fact, unlike any struggling sewing student, i can still recall ms. balita's (yep, she's my prac. arts teacher) words of encouragement as she secretly continued to finish my half-accomplished crochet of a mess, but acceptable to the trained eye. the graduation rites hid my weakness and the school gave me an award for my perseverance (A+ for effort?)
at the back of my head, i kept thinking of what to do the next day. i can't think of any. my mom does the daily round-up of chores and errands the night before and she has small, yellow post-its that contain her day's agenda. i usually read them in the hope of joining her "productive" activities to make the long hours shorter by 12 hours (that's half a day of feigning the progressive life of a busy bee), but couldn't quite acquire her habit of waking up at 7am to anticipate the freezing cold of a bath waiting in the form of a maroon basin on the tiled bathroom floor.
so i typed away and nursed the idea of a busy, toxic day. our long table became my saving grace, where my laptop seemed plastered on a semi-permanent, wooden flat space by an imaginary adhesive. i spent evening after evening twitching on keys and sending ephemeral messages to long lost friends who are neither geographically compatible nor spineless to think of a way to bridge the gap between misery town and the advent of the christmas season.
soon, my mom will turn on the hot water and ask for a cup of nesvita cereal drink, to tame the corrosive oil and fat swimming in her tummy. it's 9pm, and still i haven't done anything worth any one's while. i took the short flight up to our stairs and wondered how familiar this day has been until its end.
the book was still on my bed when i turned the knob, ready to be ravaged by smoldering eyes of boredom and desolution. i paused and looked up for what seemed like 5 hours....thinking aloud: "now, where are those darn cats when you need them?!"
and i thought i was the only one feeling like this: lost as the lifeline that kept me anchored this past 7 years has finally been severed. di ba we lived for lawschool, it was the driving force that propelled us out of bed in the early morning and kept us up in the wee hours of the night, and around which revolved our lives. now we're in limbo and it is so hard to wait patiently when we cannot find creative ways to pass the time. [parehong-pareho pala ang tita tere at si mama, they're so efficient that its hard to take over anything because the chores are already done even before we have decided to put down our pocketbooks.] and so the challenge to fill up the void continues...
ReplyDeleteyes mommy...can't help but feel used and abused by law school (sigh!)
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