Feeling like Rip Van Winkle

As soon as the air cooled, I went out of the hotel and walked towards Osmeña Boulevard, where I took the jeepney that had Santo Niño on its signboard. I asked the driver what route would take me to San Jose and he said, this one, pointing to his manibela. So, after winding down through--was it Sanciangko or P. del Rosario Streets?--the jeepney finally went to my old street and dropped me near the gate. I immediately followed the walk that led to the chapel because that's what had always been on my mind--to find that chapel and see what it looks like now.

They call the walkway leading to it the Paseo Recoletos now, although I could not remember if we ever used that name before. To us, this was simply the way towards the chapel, you would meet so many people here, usually carrying things, baggages, sometimes sacks from the nearby Carbon market. Today, I met this woman hurrying towards somewhere, carrying at least three bags and dragging a child. Another man followed, this time, carrying a--what was that--a sewing machine?! Why do they have to manually carry a sewing machine? A beggar,  covered with soot, lie sleeping on the paseo's floor.  An obnoxious smell of dried urine assailed ones nose.

I was surprised to find the chapel's entry on the ground floor sealed but I could hear church music upstairs. Two opposite stairways led to the second floor. I chose one and heard someone--a priest?!--leading the novena. It's a novena, we're starting the novena, a woman told me. I did not know why she had to explain that to me.  I went down and asked the security guard how long had he been working there because I wanted to know when did they move the chapel to the second floor. But he said he was only working there for four years and it had been that way since he arrived.

I fell silent. I was gone thirty-three years!

A view from the Tower

There's not much to see from here. This is a lonely place to be but I like the isolation and the total privacy.  You can type anything on your laptop without anyone peeping over your shoulders. You can write letters, diaries, journals without anyone asking, "What are you writing? A journal again? Why do you write a diary? What for?" As if diaries were filthy little secrets; and sounds like diaper. The voices in your head. You can turn off the TV set here, shut all the voices and sounds.  You can finally face yourself, ask what's bothering you. Explain why you did the things you did and those you did not do. 

No one would bother you here, except yourself. You'd be completely on your own. That's a scary thought, though; to be completely on your own.

 

No Exit

"Do people ever sleep there?" the taxi driver asked, pointing to the boxlike structure where I came from. "That building has always been alive until morning," he observed.
"The newspaper never sleeps," I said, explaining. At that hour, the production people were  still about to take their turn printing tomorrow's newspaper. The editors--I work as a copy editor, so, me included-- had just closed and approved the pages.  They had to see to it that they were there when they the page closed to ensure that everything that came out passed under editorial scrutiny.
"But people need sleep," he said. "Who goes there in the morning?"
"After the production people finish printing," I continued, "The newsboys come in at dawn to get the papers and deliver them to the newsstands. Sometimes, they also deliver the papers right at the subscribers' doorsteps. At eight, the business and advertising people come. So, are other office workers, like the editorial assistants, in the newsroom. The day desk editors also come in to see to it that reporters pursue the latest news stories for the day. In the afternoon and towards the evening, the reporters start trickling in to write their stories. Then, afterwards, it's editing time all over again."
It was already half past 12 in the morning when I talked to the taxi driver on my way home. Late in the morning, I went to the laundromat and watched the washing machine, and then, the dryer, spin. "The newspaper is one huge machine," I couldn't help mumbling.
The man running the laundromat who kept asking where I worked, looked up.
"Well, I work for a huge machine that never stops churning," I said, and marveled at the irony of my words. I thought, "I don't think I could ever serve a machine, no matter how big."
Then, I started dreaming of going to a far flung place where no machine could ever reach me. Instead, I conjured images of the remote mountains of Mindanao, where the machines were more deadly. People getting killed by another type of machines---the machine guns--right in the places where they lived.
With the Human Security Act, policies that cater to the World Bank and the global capitalist system, debt servicing, the deregulation of everything, privatization even of health services and more, even governments can be deadly killer machines.
Societies, civilisation  are machines that demand subjection from everyone within reach. Even the groups fighting for change have to invent their own "machine." 
Probably, in this life, there's no escaping from the rule of the machine. But isn't it terribly sad?

My Changing Landscape

My landscape has been changing so fast the last few days. First, I remember taking a snapshot of davaotoday at the two-story YMCA building in Davao at the back of The Venue. Now, as I climb up the Cebu Daily News' rooftop canteen to eat, I can't believe I'm being greeted by the sight of cranes and containers being loaded at the Maersk container port! Last night, I climbed up here at six o'clock and I actually saw all those lighted cranes at work! What would Ja say if he'd find out I'm closely living close to Maersk?! He has been in love with Maersk for a long time. He has been in love with all container ports for that matter. Cargo boats and cranes and container vans litter his adult dreams. His love has been so deadly and fatal that it has driven us out of our rented house in Matina! Maersk, of course, had delivered his shipment of bananas to Vladivostok! But sometimes, luck is in short supply. Sometimes, the yellow corn from Bulgaria also get stranded in the Black Sea on their way to Vietnam. So, we are cast homeless. Now, I can't believe I'm actually staring at the pile of Maersk containers at the port! Sighing and turning around, I see on the opposite end, far off Nivel Hills, where Marco Polo Plaza beckons! This is a totally different landscape!

Trying Out

In the last 10 days, I've been trying a hand on some editing works inside the newsroom of Cebu Daily News. The work stretches from the three o'clock story conference---when the editors decide on the headlines and stories of the day and give page assignments---to deep hours in the night when the editors finally put the paper to bed. On the first days I was here, I was bowling with laughter from the police stories assigned to me because they were---tragic, comic and absurd! They were also the toughest works to edit. After the first days (urrhm, nights), I discovered the benefits of coffee but I fought the urge to draw out a stick of cigarette. My cigarette memories are still with Nico, outside the gate of PDI Mindanao bureau where we can watch the Bachelor buses from Butuan passing us by; or with Dasia, whose ashtrays bear the marks of nicotine abuse while we allow our minds to roam. Inside the newsroom, I can't probably allow my mind to roam. I have to fix an eye on the copies and make sure that they stay there. There's not enough time to explore the depth and breadth of things. You have to deliver the finished product before the first rays of the next day.
Over the weekend, I handled a page on a heritage building along Osmena Boulevard. I liked doing it because I wanted to get inside that building--a museum---and take a look inside. Cebu is teeming with those centuries-old Cathedrals and colonial Churches that are remnants of our past. I have the urge to go out and stare at them in the afternoons to summon all the ghosts and understand my future. But what can I do? I'm inside the newsroom!