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Portraits, Guimaras

I’m writing this in a coffee shop in Iloilo, killing time in a complex that’s beautifully built but almost empty. Makes one think about how beauty relates to emptiness—or is it loneliness, in this case? For instance, the best peaks in the world are those that are hardest to reach.

1. C, who was born next to the sea

“I’m allergic to seawater,” she claims as she watches our stuff from the pumpboat. I banter with her as my head bobs up and down the water. Our gracious host, she offered to accompany us on our two-hour island-hopping tour. She deposits her youngest kid in the arms of her mother, a well-known Guimaras matron.

The irony of her skin condition is not lost on her, and I suspect it’s one she has developed years into her birthright. As the only child of Nanay E still living on the island, she has taken on a lot of of her mother’s spillover roles: host to delegates, government monitor, storyteller.I used to live in Cebu before I got married. It wasn’t the pull of the Guimaras waters that led her back home, obviously.

She tells me about her children. The older one is joining the Santacruzan parade this morning. The young one I have gotten to know as the happy-go-lucky boy who doesn’t understand a word I say but knows how to say no to my camera gestures. We return from the islets, a bit browner and wetter, and sit outside our room. In between barqueron bites (hers), I catch glimpses of her life:My husband works in Iloilo; he only goes home on Saturdays and goes back to the city on Sundays.The ports between Guimaras and Iloilo are separated by perhaps twenty minutes and about fourteen bucks (during the day), yet the 100-peso-a-day fare (all in all, both ways) is too big a discount on the monthly wage he earns. Staying in Iloilo makes sense, given that a bed there could be as low as 400 pesos a month.

The thing about C is that she talks a lot, but I can tell she feels a lot too though she’s the type to get angry before she gets sad. Her eyes shine when she talks of how she steals (or used to, at least) weekends in Cebu, trading the time for sleep and a meal for fourteen hours in transit at sea. Her eyes grow distant when she starts to speak of the laborious travel to that Villa in Iloilo, where her husband works. One time, he decided to come home upon receiving his paycheck. He bought the formula (milk) and diapers, so I didn’t have to go out to (the) crossing and get them.

Love, in this day and age, has to be practical. As I watched words spill out of her mouth, I realized that the lovers’ measure of distance is inversely proportional to our ability to consume. Love requires mobility—of bodies, of thoughts, of words. For those movement is not permitted, even a twenty-minute boat ride across ports is a luxury. (Think of all those times you were waiting to get home to your mother, your son, your lover. What wouldn’t you give to be in their radius of comfort, right then and there?) C, and many others, are in a perpetual state of flight: suspended mid-air or marooned at sea, where no amount of wishing can make you travel any faster. Or in this case, how does she buy time?

Iloilo Airport, Departure wing.

2. Nanay Maimai

“Sa’yo ‘tong tindahan, nay?” (Is this store yours?) I was referring to the makeshift house we were in. It had three walls made of some flimsy wood, two of them shared with the stores on either side. A talaba (oysters) stand stood as the fourth wall. I also live here.

I found her lying on her stomach on a papag inside the structure, her wavy hair pulled together by a brightly colored scrunchie worn with use. Dre and I ask if we could sit on the bench across her bed while we wait for our clams (only 45pesos/serving) to cook. She smiles, and then nods her approval.

I also live here. She’s lived in Guimaras all her life, and in the last few years, migrated from a spot only a few meters away. That was how geography used to be: we amass lands as wide and as far as our charms can take us. This was before chartered flights across “countries” and land titles and deeds of sales.

Can I come and stay with you… I can learn to dive for oysters with ease? She gives a toothy laugh—oysters are cultivated on farms—but says sure. I tell her I can carry the oysters during her daily trips to Iloilo. She looks at my arms and says not even she can carry her load. She has to pay each person who picks it up and moves it just a few meters at a time.

The bigger the ship, the slower its movement seems to be. There is a reason why people stay where they are, even when a new life is only a ferry away.

Flying Lessons

i. 

The shifting of weight mastered by pilots and attendants is a homonym for what precedes a scab.

ii.

In case of an emergency, life vests are provided to those who can wait for air to seep into sacs. It’s a balloon of nothing that we can touch. These are reminders for the names we utter when the plane dips. When rain slaps every surface of soldered metal.

iii.

From the control room, the officer sounds out orders phrased as requests. We are on our final descent; please, stay. Staying is a lesson that fits the requirement of trading a home for years. We aren’t potted plants, anymore. Who we are is not to be avoided (comma anymore).

iv.

My recent memories of flying involve saltwater. Full stop. A scab indicates healing.

v.

Lessons in weightlessness, they aren’t. Invisible scales tipping to our favor. You know, geography is often the culprit.

vi.

Arrival. One-way itineraries to our centers.

Transcribe

She was reading Murakami’s South of the Border, West of the Sun. “You like Murakami, too?,” I intruded, with a tinge of surprise lilting in my voice. That tinge was enough to betray my thoughts about her: I never pegged you for a consumer of surprising fiction. A nod, and another revelation. “He taught me about the possibility of loneliness in a sea of people.” This was around 5 in the afternoon, minutes before we were supposed to board the aircraft that will bring us from Palawan to our adopted urban home.

Too-long moments later, a snapshot a few meters from the vessel’s left wing. I shifted to the alternate camera, pressed the makeshift shutter and said “This would do.” He grabbed my arm, tugged at it and in a failed half-whisper, he shares, “What you said earlier about being lonely in a sea of people… I’m (un)learning that now.” He always spoke of heartache and regret as if the breakup was only last month, but it has been almost two years (I think). But time is relative, I maintain, for his sake. Our conversations about anger and forgiveness are eternally punctuated by gay—very gay—laughter. Like: Stop feeling and just jump on his lap; or, We should just go back to reading Zizek or Tadiar, as if intellectual masturbation is an acceptable substitute for whatever it is he was denied; or, She likes you, you know she knows how to take care of people. These are pleas said more for the self and for others than the second person. As we ascend to the rear entrance, I tell him, “That was my constant line some months ago, you know. (We were) whispering apologies about trying to unlearn and relearn…” My voice fades as I struggle to get past the messy line of people populating the aisle, and as I lament the death of the things I used to apologize for.

I was in 23A, she, in 23B. We spoke hurriedly, but timidly, too aware of the hundreds of strangers we shared that confined space with. There is something about sharing the same air cycle that makes us feel closer. I have had my best conversations in transit, and this was perhaps one that makes our shared list. She inquired about the hows of reassurance, she who has racked twice my years. There was a startling wisdom to this question, but I refused to show my surprise. “I’m not sure…” My answer comes out less tentative than I intended. Her eyes widened with the disapproving stare of an aunt. We didn’t speak until the flight stewardess came by with the dailies. “Inquirer, please.” That was all I managed to say until she fell into a light sleep, and I leaned over to 23C to borrow a pen for the crossword section.

Fast-forward to a few hours later. With the added clarity of digital ink, I listen to the aftermath of deafening silence in a relationship. A struggle to find answers: How did you try? What inspired this break? Again, I am reminded of the rock formations I witnessed in El Nido, and Winterson’s Weight: they spoke of the value of the holes and cracks in the wall that allow air to pass through. But science will tell you that these cracks are not supposed to split the earth. We aren’t supposed to fill them in, but this is still not an excuse to ignore them. Therein lies the confusing directive: to be like these towering rocks of granite and limestone and let centuries of saltwater and rain pass through it without breaking. “This was how it was with my father.” A pause to shift gears. “I don’t want that to happen here.” Where exactly here was for her, or me (the fact is, at times, we are interchangeable), was not a mere principle of addition. It’s not two-dimensional heights on a plane; it’s small but three-dimensional monuments. Like schools of fish. Like piles of leaves. Like sand eroding to make way for a body of water. Like the lovers’ log of complaints they feel have been filed against their person. 

Though the last conversation never really ended, I was compelled to think back to a couple of hours earlier. I had just taken a shower, washing the remnants of the vacation off my skin. I was thinking of ways to prolong my tan. A superficial tan, they all called it, as my skin refuses to interact with sunlight. Then, a call on the phone that never really rings that way anymore. (Do you ever notice how some telephone rings sound more urgent than others? I miss that.) Some static, and three lines of conversation. Person aside, you know, this is small but this is how most people like to be loved. Questions that get answered through letters or calls; postcards that are sent; routines that don’t get scratched out; responses.

Robert Hass (2007) writes:

The motion of washing machines

Is called agitation.  Object constancy is a term

Devised to indicate what a child requires

From days. 

In a city where I still reside / Settle

Maps have a way of getting to me these days.

• I’ve been still for too long. There are travels that keep getting postponed. Trips I have to take just for myself. Destinations I want to escape to.
• I’ve settled into a life that keeps unnerving me. This merits much explanation.
• My heart is a terrain that must be constantly scaled, measured, graphed. I am a tourist attraction; you have to travel to me but the ticket comes at a price.
• I hold in my hand a book of maps. Atlas is knocking on our door, roommate. There is some heft that must be handled. Unfortunately for me, it’s not up to me to settle the score, this time.