I am holding in my hand my Form 5, a document in my University that doubles as my class schedule list and as a formal receipt of tuition fee payment. This is the shortest time I have spent enrolling in several semesters. Maybe because I did it at the earliest time possible, given how much of sloth I can be when school is just about to burst open. I tried to get myself enrolled on every morning I woke up with my mind feeling a surge of purpose. Hey when the surge is gone, it's gone. Might as well.
Morning one: got my Registration Materials and went to the English Department, to get my dossier for my faculty adviser to check; got my adviser's nod--I can take a master's level fiction workshop and a PhD level nonfiction workshop; got enlisted, and cleared of lost /unreturned books at the library, had my forms assessed at the Graduate Studies Office. (Oh gee, look at the time, it's an hour before noon.) Went home. What you can do today, you can do better tomorrow, when you're in the mood.
Morning two: breakfast tastes a little odd when you are high on cough and cold medicine; coffee, thank heavens, is still coffee, and served to balance what could have been a badly begun morning; had my boss sign my study privilege form (my office is paying for my tuition); went to HR, where, amazingly, everyone I needed to sign my form was actually there; went back to the English Department to return my dossier, where a lecture was waiting for me: "You're not supposed to take this home," said a stern woman behind a desk, while tapping my dossier. "Oh," I said. "Won't happen again." Went home. "Procrastination is the thief of time," said one cliché. I say, "Mug me, baby. I'm rich."
Morning three: such a lazy morning; went to this warehouse that calls itself the Office of the University Registrar; really, it's a warehouse, smells like one, too; got my forms assessed, afterward, I walked to Palma Hall, where I paid a dizzying amount of money for my tuition: P66.00, for six units. Wait, that's not for tuition; says on the receipt it's for student funds. But then I'm a student. I'm funding myself? Why am I required to pay, then? (What? It's only 8:40 in the morning?)
Wow. It's over. Just like that. Usually I'm harassed just by thinking of what I have to do just to get enrolled. But now it's really over.
I have to print out this entry. So I can remember, when I read this at the beginning of the next semester, how, in three successive mornings, the universe conspired to go easy on me.
a walker in the city
by |
Categories:
the human condition
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When you silently curse your neighbors for the noise they make, normal innocent racket like screaming at a four year old for merely existing, or the full-blast noontime shows they watch, you wonder what you did right when tranquil mornings arrive. Like this one. I wave the bed covers aside and notice tranquility: beams of sunlight light the wooden floor with stripes, filtered by Venetian blinds. Not a child is screaming. Not a single radio in earshot. No television sets are blaring. What could I have done to deserve a moment like this one. I jump out of bed and switch on my PC. Whatever comes to mind, write whatever comes to mind. Lifelike and at the quick.
I am leaning on the ledge of my open window, on the second floor of this suddenly quiet apartment, seeing a portion of a neighbor's rooftop across me that's brown and grey with rust and age and neglect. One part is collecting water, the upturned sheet of galvanized iron and its through is a water pocket, a puddle of rainwater on the roof. I stick my head out further and look for tomcats prowling. I see one. Coming over here. Too far out to be in range of a pellet gun, even if I had one.
These tomcats are as big as my neighbor's little dachshund and they dent roofs when they land on them and they pull down my laundry and scare my domesticated cats into hiding in the closet. But it's too early in the morning to hate them, and I put away the thought of buying a long-ranged pellet gun with which to hurt those four-legged freeloaders. Delayed gratification.
I'm going to add new parts to my memoir, the one due in class in two or three weeks. I am thankful for mornings like this. The quiet ties together memories and thoughts and such, and make my writing easier.
Look, it's taking shape nicely:
"When Mother and I pushed the boxes deeper into the back of the truck, a neighbor asked if we were leaving that apartment, the one that looked down on the road, with its second floor roof as pointed and quiet and still as that of a church's. Mother said yes as I carried more boxes piled on the sidewalk into the lipat-bahay truck. Neighborly small talk was rare for us, and Mother wiped her hands on her shapeless flowery duster's sides and chatted, with a wrinkled old man with sideburns; a break from moving the contents of our lives into yet another anonymous vehicle. We were used to this. All this moving from home to home. Though none of them felt like home. But this house, I never wanted to leave this house, this two-floored oddly-placed dwelling on the elbow of nowhere."
I'm going downstairs to fix me some coffee, and then I'm going to continue writing, while the quiet lasts.
I am leaning on the ledge of my open window, on the second floor of this suddenly quiet apartment, seeing a portion of a neighbor's rooftop across me that's brown and grey with rust and age and neglect. One part is collecting water, the upturned sheet of galvanized iron and its through is a water pocket, a puddle of rainwater on the roof. I stick my head out further and look for tomcats prowling. I see one. Coming over here. Too far out to be in range of a pellet gun, even if I had one.
These tomcats are as big as my neighbor's little dachshund and they dent roofs when they land on them and they pull down my laundry and scare my domesticated cats into hiding in the closet. But it's too early in the morning to hate them, and I put away the thought of buying a long-ranged pellet gun with which to hurt those four-legged freeloaders. Delayed gratification.
I'm going to add new parts to my memoir, the one due in class in two or three weeks. I am thankful for mornings like this. The quiet ties together memories and thoughts and such, and make my writing easier.
Look, it's taking shape nicely:
"When Mother and I pushed the boxes deeper into the back of the truck, a neighbor asked if we were leaving that apartment, the one that looked down on the road, with its second floor roof as pointed and quiet and still as that of a church's. Mother said yes as I carried more boxes piled on the sidewalk into the lipat-bahay truck. Neighborly small talk was rare for us, and Mother wiped her hands on her shapeless flowery duster's sides and chatted, with a wrinkled old man with sideburns; a break from moving the contents of our lives into yet another anonymous vehicle. We were used to this. All this moving from home to home. Though none of them felt like home. But this house, I never wanted to leave this house, this two-floored oddly-placed dwelling on the elbow of nowhere."
I'm going downstairs to fix me some coffee, and then I'm going to continue writing, while the quiet lasts.
the last bite
by |
Categories:
fiction in english,
shark stories
|
0
comments
Jeremy saw past the daze in her eyes and stared at her pale and seawater-wrinkled fingers. A day and a half on a sinking lifeboat with Martin and no signs of rescue. At least the night and its endless darkness was over. She hated the dark.
Wonder just where this lazy current is taking them. Her wristwatch said half past three in the afternoon. Nothing to do but endure the boredom and hold out an inverted mineral water bottle, with its bottom knifed out, to catch in raindrops. Seawater dehydrates you more. So she and Martin split the accumulated drinking water evenly, and took turns holding it up. Hunger, dehydration, exhaustion, hopelessness, a shark. Jeremy wondered which would kill her first.
Above them, they sky was cloudy-bright, the kind of sky she looks at from her hammock on her apartment's terrace. She misses home, and her long afternoon siestas. "Tell me again," she wanted to ask Martin, "how your boat leaked to death on the way back to the harbor?" But she didn't Martin felt bad enough as it is. His plan to seduce her on his boat didn't work. And now it's life and death. How romantic.
A shark, Jeremy whispered to her self, to rock her back into reality. A shark would kill them. At least, she wished a shark would come. It if didn't come, at least it's something to think about. Better than the endless nothing she is enduring. Better than the thought of Martin raping her on an already sinking lifeboat.
Soon, night would come. So many things could happen. A shark might attack. Or the lifeboat might give out. Or a shark might come while the boat is collapsing. Or a shark might come while Martin is trying to rape her while the boat is sinking. How convenient, Jeremy thought.
She remembered a paraphrase of Occam's Razor: the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Right, definitely, I'm sure, a shark would come.
Their lifeboat was a lung slowly deflating, a boat exhaling air; they took turns sticking their fingers into a hole on the boat's side; they kept checking themselves for open wounds that would lure in a shark.
They hardly talked. Martin said they should keep quiet, to conserve their strength, so they could scream and wave at a passing boat or airplane for however long it took to get noticed, to get rescued. But what if Martin got tired of conserving his strength, and wanted to spend it all on her?
The sound of motor in the sky. A plane. Martin screamed, forgot the hole and waved both arms. Jeremy blinked and joined the noise barrage. The hole hissed and hissed. The plane was gone. There was more water inside the lifeboat. The boat had gotten limp. The water bottle was nowhere in sight.
That's the second plane that missed them. Jeremy blinked at the coming darkness. So again, where is that shark, she asked herself.
Something in the water moved. Probably nothing. Probably the hunger and desperation setting in. A fin. Out of the water so suddenly. Twenty feet away. Coming to them, fast. Something surely is hungry. They are not the only desperate creatures at sea.
She pointed to the fin and Martin's voice was almost a silent screech, "We're dead." His throat must hurt from all that screaming.
"I'm not bleeding. Are you bleeding?"
"No," Martin said. "We have a flair gun, with one flair chambered."
"Save it. We can do this."
"Do what?"
"Sharks are sensitive not only to scent but to sound."
The fin swam closer. Fifteen feet.
"We yell it away? Are you nuts, Jeremy?"
"Do you trust me?"
"Just tell me what to do."
Ten feet away.
"Get you fingers out of the hole and pound the boat, open palm, and don't stop screaming."
"You're nuts, we'd hasten the deflation--"
Five feet.
"Do it!"
They do. They scream. The hole hisses air. The fin slows down.
"Don't stop, keep pounding, keep screaming, Martin!"
Martin barely blinked as he screamed. His throat was in pain. The shark turned to circle the lifeboat and Jeremy turned to face it, screaming and pounding. Their voice, in tandem, might just be enough.
The sun setting when the fin turned around and vanished in the silent waters. Jeremy plugged the hole with her fingers. But it was of no use. When the sun had set, more than half of the lifeboat was submerged. Both of them clung to the floating part, exhausted. Their throats hurt.
No sound rippled the sea. The blanket of darkness came. Jeremy hated the dark. No, she was afraid of it. Instead of her phobia killing her, there was another way. She bit her lip until it bled.
Wonder just where this lazy current is taking them. Her wristwatch said half past three in the afternoon. Nothing to do but endure the boredom and hold out an inverted mineral water bottle, with its bottom knifed out, to catch in raindrops. Seawater dehydrates you more. So she and Martin split the accumulated drinking water evenly, and took turns holding it up. Hunger, dehydration, exhaustion, hopelessness, a shark. Jeremy wondered which would kill her first.
Above them, they sky was cloudy-bright, the kind of sky she looks at from her hammock on her apartment's terrace. She misses home, and her long afternoon siestas. "Tell me again," she wanted to ask Martin, "how your boat leaked to death on the way back to the harbor?" But she didn't Martin felt bad enough as it is. His plan to seduce her on his boat didn't work. And now it's life and death. How romantic.
A shark, Jeremy whispered to her self, to rock her back into reality. A shark would kill them. At least, she wished a shark would come. It if didn't come, at least it's something to think about. Better than the endless nothing she is enduring. Better than the thought of Martin raping her on an already sinking lifeboat.
Soon, night would come. So many things could happen. A shark might attack. Or the lifeboat might give out. Or a shark might come while the boat is collapsing. Or a shark might come while Martin is trying to rape her while the boat is sinking. How convenient, Jeremy thought.
She remembered a paraphrase of Occam's Razor: the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Right, definitely, I'm sure, a shark would come.
Their lifeboat was a lung slowly deflating, a boat exhaling air; they took turns sticking their fingers into a hole on the boat's side; they kept checking themselves for open wounds that would lure in a shark.
They hardly talked. Martin said they should keep quiet, to conserve their strength, so they could scream and wave at a passing boat or airplane for however long it took to get noticed, to get rescued. But what if Martin got tired of conserving his strength, and wanted to spend it all on her?
The sound of motor in the sky. A plane. Martin screamed, forgot the hole and waved both arms. Jeremy blinked and joined the noise barrage. The hole hissed and hissed. The plane was gone. There was more water inside the lifeboat. The boat had gotten limp. The water bottle was nowhere in sight.
That's the second plane that missed them. Jeremy blinked at the coming darkness. So again, where is that shark, she asked herself.
Something in the water moved. Probably nothing. Probably the hunger and desperation setting in. A fin. Out of the water so suddenly. Twenty feet away. Coming to them, fast. Something surely is hungry. They are not the only desperate creatures at sea.
She pointed to the fin and Martin's voice was almost a silent screech, "We're dead." His throat must hurt from all that screaming.
"I'm not bleeding. Are you bleeding?"
"No," Martin said. "We have a flair gun, with one flair chambered."
"Save it. We can do this."
"Do what?"
"Sharks are sensitive not only to scent but to sound."
The fin swam closer. Fifteen feet.
"We yell it away? Are you nuts, Jeremy?"
"Do you trust me?"
"Just tell me what to do."
Ten feet away.
"Get you fingers out of the hole and pound the boat, open palm, and don't stop screaming."
"You're nuts, we'd hasten the deflation--"
Five feet.
"Do it!"
They do. They scream. The hole hisses air. The fin slows down.
"Don't stop, keep pounding, keep screaming, Martin!"
Martin barely blinked as he screamed. His throat was in pain. The shark turned to circle the lifeboat and Jeremy turned to face it, screaming and pounding. Their voice, in tandem, might just be enough.
The sun setting when the fin turned around and vanished in the silent waters. Jeremy plugged the hole with her fingers. But it was of no use. When the sun had set, more than half of the lifeboat was submerged. Both of them clung to the floating part, exhausted. Their throats hurt.
No sound rippled the sea. The blanket of darkness came. Jeremy hated the dark. No, she was afraid of it. Instead of her phobia killing her, there was another way. She bit her lip until it bled.
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