Cureless

Last day last month, I forfeited half of my day’s work to catch up with a bus trip to Bicol. If you could read my previous blog entries written during the same season of the year, you’d probably know how eager I had always been to get home.

Mama has a habit of lighting candles for me and my cousins whenever we take our school exams. She believes that by some divine, supernatural intervention, we could beat the exams without sweat. Call it weird, or even absurd. But since I started schooling, I have always felt the spirits were just around to guide me. Yes, I have a sort of unfounded belief in them. Thus, it’s always been like my personal pilgrimage to visit the burial place of Daddy’s ancestors.

I never found success in slipping through that tight military cordon (that was my job) just to be home during All Saint’s Day for the past 3 years. I should be anticipating the holiday, now that I’m a free civilian. But I went home half-heartedly. The excitement wasn’t there.

Need proof? Although I’ve been expressing my desire to spend the holidays in Bicol, I never laid out a plan. Nothing motivated me to get a reservation ticket for that ever elusive air conditioned provincial bus. And the pasalubong? Nada. Just a few candles hurriedly bought from the National Book Store in Ali Mall. (As if you’d count them as pasalubong for the dead.)

Apparently, there’s this ultimate factor that’s been dampening my spirits whenever I “go back to my roots”. I’m not at peace with how my folks see my current life. Or I’m constantly troubled by the truth that we can never think alike on several personal and family matters.

Half-hearted but determined to overcome the challenge posed by the holiday traveling rush, I rode the “air-continuous” bus (as Fluffy referred to ordinary, non-air-conditioned, open-air buses) to Oas, Albay on the 31st of October 2007.

Half the time spent waiting for the bus to be filled with passengers, I was wondering if I could cancel my ticket. No, not because of that heavy feeling. I just wanted to back out from traveling on an ordinary bus again. My observation was saying there weren’t too many people at the Araneta Bus Terminal, I could still catch a slot in an air-conditioned bus.

My love-hate affair with the “air-continuous” bus for starters didn’t begin that moment. The fact is I’ve been to my hometown riding it too many times that I can no longer count.

There’s just this one time, nth of the x number of times, when I got seated in the middle of the 3-seater side, which made me swear I won’t ride on an ordinary bus EVER again. I couldn’t have remembered the agony of feeling sweaty, steamy, sticky and stinky had I made up my mind before the bus started to move two hours later.

In short, I was doomed to relive the same unpleasant experience. “Here we go again,” I said to myself. I’m not sure if I should view myself as a masochist or something of that sort. I certainly didn’t enjoy being inside a humongous moving furnace (and it happens when the windows are all closed because of the rain).

On the contrary, there’s also this indescribable thirst for adventure for something that provokes your usually peaceful and tranquil state of being. (I imagine those naps on a hot summer afternoon. The rhythmic falling sweat from my nape and back just surprisingly lulls me to sleep.) Besides that, I’m really wondering what makes me choose to enjoy this kind of “suffering” through time.

While trying to keep a positive attitude, I convinced myself of the values concealed present within these “trying times”. Who knows? There’s something to learn in every situation, you might say. Reading “The Zahir“ (a book by Paolo Coelho) somewhat distracted whatever was afflicting my senses.

In the middle of the trip, something finally interrupted my chaotic meditation. A boy grabbed the plastic stool on the bus aisle to my left and made himself comfortable leaning on the side of my seat’s back rest. “Great”, I muttered. Of all people, why did he choose to seat beside me? My body was already dying for that extra air and space (or lack thereof). Not only that. The child’s head kept on bumping onto mine, driving me slowly into a state of intolerance. Where the heck are the parents of this boy? A cry on my mind that was only stopped when I overheard the conversation between him and some passengers at my back.

And so I heard the boy was without companion. That he just hitched for a ride. That he spent the past days living in Ali Mall. That he dropped out of school and have no plans of pursuing his studies. That he’s coming back to his family in a town in Camarines Sur.

Although I had the strongest urge to engage in their conversation, I chose not to react. From my point of view, the boy’s life was far too complicated for his age. The amused voices at my back were right. He’s a survivor. There’s so much about him that I need to learn.

But like the journey on the “air-continuous” bus, that wasn’t the first time I ever encountered someone like him. There were those kids at Bantay Bata, the orphans at Virlanie Foundation and our erya kids at Constitution Hills.

I have to rephrase the line. There’s so much I failed to learn from them.

I imagined the little skirmishes my folks and I will contend with when I get home. And if I realized before that I should be happy and contented that my family is well and healthy, why is it still hard to live (easily) with it? Why can I not help myself from whining?

I’ve began to ask, is this what my weird liking for the “air-continuous” bus means? Do I not subconsciously, in fact, want these conflicts? In an attempt to create complexity and drama, do I tend to linger on the tiniest details of my (bland) life and let my stubborn and rebellious nature magnify and spread the havoc?

Perhaps or more likely.

Then, some concerned passengers at the back offered the boy a box to sit on. He rested his tired torso on what he’s been sitting on minutes ago. Looked like he got his much needed sleep.

A few more hours passed, we crossed the border between Southern Tagalog and Bicol. Without realizing that the bus has passed by Naga City, I looked back and saw the child gone.

Finally, I was near home, hoping the least, that the folks would be surprised when I knock on the gate.

They were half-expecting me, in the same way that I half-expected the rickety arguments between us.

And it came to pass just like before. I went back to Manila on an air-conditioned bus.

Again, I swore never to ride the ordinary line ever (again).

The cycle goes on.