Hic Terminum Longissimum Memoriarum

Reminiscing things past that should have been long dead while walking on the sands of Puerto Gallera is so Nora Aunor. Drama, drama, drama…

September 10, 2006. Puerto Gallera. 2 AM! Something’s telling me I traveled quite far just to be haunted. By memories, that is.

In this life, one does not merely come home once. Nor everyday to a single familiar place where home-cooked meal set by Mom awaits an empty stomach. Coming home is a metaphor for that place and places – restaurants, sidewalk, grocery, malls – where the sixth sense is awakened by sights, sounds, taste, and feel of something familiar, pleasant or otherwise. What is sixth sense is that which makes one feel a pat in the back without being touched, taste something when one swallowed nothing, hear something other than what is really audible. Or maybe hallucinating without the aid of hallucinogen. Yes, it’s weird but come to think of it, this kind of coming home calls into being what could have been thrown off into selective amnesia.

Hindi ako Noranian dahil walang himala... dahil my brother is not a pig!

Coming home, the metaphor, is like Nora Aunor coming home after years of being away from her hometown, steps off the tricycle in front of their ancestral home, puts her little luggage on the dusty ground, lay her hands on her breast, one on top of another, surveys the facade as tears begin to ooze out of her eyelids brought by memories that are forever etched on the walls of that facade; but before the tears drop off her anime-round eyes, she picks up her luggage and runs up the stairs calling, "Inay! Itay!"

Yep. Fuck the memories. I party.

I was with Ning Hao visiting the island. I was hoping that nothing could bother me anymore as I have moved on after more than a year of wrestling with the realities of a failed relationship. It was a year and a half since that regrettable Holy Week vacation of 2005. And I say, I should party here once more as I did during the dates that I used to come here prior to 2005. Oh yes I did, I made sure I did, but came 2 AM today sitting at the porch reading Jessica Zafra (while it was unusually quiet…O, this was not Holy Week, what do I expect), I felt I came home to something spoiled and rancid. There I was walking under the scorching sun looking for a lost lover. There I was walking aimlessly along the length of the beach looking for nothing. Under a palm tree, exhausted, I was calling an ex to tell him of my yet another sad news. There I was in our cottage, packing our things teary-eyed, thinking I would have to go back to Manila alone and preparing for the worse. There I was at the police station.

After dishing out to Ning Hao the weird feeling, he inquired as to whether I still feel for the guy. Honestly, it wasn’t like that at all; not anymore when I have Ryoichi as my best friend and a Bagbag who takes care of me. I have begun to comfortably go to the places we used to go to but thoughts of him never bothered me anymore. I never expected the island would be a different kind of catalyst for unwanted reminiscing.

Twelve years ago, in Los Angeles, I used to go to my Mom’s grave by hitching on my brothers’ cars. Their presence never gave me the chance to cry before my Mom’s grave as I would really wanted to do so, like a baby. No comfort is comparable to one that could be had in crying before one’s mother, dead or alive. When I came to buy my first car, I planned to visit her all by myself. There I would weep with all my heart. I drove there twice but I could never make myself drop a single tear. I guess I have gotten used to going there without the fanfare. I have moved on. But then one time, I happend to pass by my sister’s house where I stayed during my early émigré days. My Mom died in that house. I have seen her weaken each day as she approaches her impending demise. My sister, in depression, sent us away on a cold winter’s night, two days before Christmas. Three months later she sold the house. It was long since owned by some Hispanic family but Mom’s wild roses were still lining the iron fences. I parked in front of the property and had my long-standing will to sob. I was home.

Here in Puerto, I refused to cry on these memories. Like Nora who was suddenly possessed by both happy and sad memories, I would rather keep the tears and run to embrace those whom I think are worth my tears. But not these memories. I would definitely hate myself a million times for doing so. This is not to say that I should instead trash away the memories. Contrary to what Rollo was telling me, I am not one to part with my memories though. Say I'm lacking the gift of letting-go but but I see no reason why I should let go. Yeah, to move on. To where? I am not one who graduated from the school of the Stoics. I would rather like to believe that, as humans, we are endowed with the faculty to remember both the pleasant and the unpleasant, and cherish them like treasures of the most precious kind. Nourish them because we brought them into this world. Wean them like a child because we created them. We are their mothers. But we don't have to cry to all of them. This is a matter of fact worth of intellectual debates in the hallowed woods of Aritotle's Lyceum; that it is this very gift that elevates us above all other beings, no matter how advanced they may be (I learned that from Contact and Dark City).

I must admit, I would have to deal with this coming home just as I would with the ones that I have yet to go home to, no matter where; starting here in Gallera… here in the farthest end of memories.

(There. Now nobody can accuse me of being heartless.)