Signos

An unusual collection can be found in a castle somewhere in Austria. Called the Schloss Loosdorf, the site was written in the magazine called “The World of Interiors” and shows the Neoclassical structure and its display of shards, or broken ceramic vessels and plates. History saw the castle occupied first by the Nazis and later by the Russians at the end of World War II. The Russian soldiers discovered the prized ceramic collection of the castle and soon they started breaking them, according to the story, and throwing them.

Sorsogon is now a city. I realized that when I went there last week to evaluate a non-governmental organization. With that appellation comes the expectation of a busy place and people with some sort of sophistication in taste. We expect angst in the crowd and pollution around. And yet, the citification of towns and communities are not exactly promotions in status; they are predictions of more problems of all forms.

I wanted to begin this essay with lines from Will Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. You know the line from Mark Antony, which goes “The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones?” I wanted to twist the lines and shift the places of “evil” and “good” so that it would say “The good that men do lives after them; The evil is oft interred with their bones.” There was a reason for these quotes: a general has killed himself and everyone, practically started groveling on the ground of guilt. Rationality flew off the nation’s windows. The men and women from national television camped outside the home of the general. The usual interview went on. Friends were asked; wife and sons were asked. Was he a good father? Was he a good friend? Was he a good grandfather? What did they expect? That in the pit of grief, the loved ones left behind would be objective and critical of the man who so loved them and was dead now?

Jessie was first a cousin. But she became a poet, a good one, published and winning many awards. When presented with a choice between medical internship and a fellowship at Silliman University, she opted to postpone her medical studies in favor of a summer with poets and writers.

I always get this feeling horoscopes have gone already the way of the postage stamps (the kind one licks and pastes on an envelope) and telegrams (the proto-form of texting). And yet horoscopes are having resurgence over radios and in televisions.

I step out of the house while the wind howls like an old man with gout. The weather is appropriate: bleak now, bright now, with just the right amount of sorrow. It is the last day of the year and even if this terminating of the year is a fairly recent human invention, we are convinced really that the 31st of December of any year is the last day of the year.

Some people have New Year’s Resolutions and some people buy round fruits. If I may borrow a classic comment from Cristy Fermin who is consistent with her abhorrence of Kris Aquino, which I share: Kris is someone who, it seems does not have New Year’s resolutions. The punch line is this: kaya si Kris inuulit niya ang sarili na parang kasaysayan.

There is a war going on. It is almost like the war in the minds of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s characters. It is a war about memory and forgetting. People remember things and forget about things. The war is forgotten because it is madness? The present is remembered and the past relegated to the past. The wheel continues and we do not anymore know where one end begins and where the beginning ends.

Long before the City of Baguio invited everyone to witness snow in the Philippine highlands, we had snow in our home. My aunts would spend the whole afternoon after the celebration of the Immaculate Conception to whisk a drum-full of snow. I do not know the recipe for that snow; all I recall is that the main element was soap named Perla, and some salt.

The 8th of December in the Catholic calendar is Immaculate Conception, a mystery of infinite density that non-Catholics would find allure in. Years and years ago, in 1941, this tremendous mystery, however, vanished with the skies filled by what were called then enemy planes.