Diary of Pain

Inquirer newsroom on the 3rd floor. Chino Roces. 2017.

I have decided to embark on a project--or a journey--whatever you may want to call it, to expunge this very bad thing that is bothering me. The first thing that I will do is to download some of the photographs that have been clogging my icloud for a very long time and talk about them to expunge their power. Stop them from bothering me. Leave them behind in a place where they should be: that is, in a limbo where they could not exert power over me.

But a voice within me warns: Not in limbo! That place could be tricky, shadowy, those demons could assume many dimensions and could come back to you in another form!

So, I will bring all of them into the light!  So that I could look and examine them and see them for what they are! 

For example, that particular shot where a dark chair outside framed an illuminated newsroom. That's where I waited for the call that never came many years ago. It was maybe, past 8 p.m. or was it almost 9, I was already done with the work at the newsroom and was preparing to go home. But I sat there waiting for the call. It never came. I looked at the shining metal frames of the glass windows surrounding me and felt their efficient coldness; rendering work in the newsroom was sheer efficiency. I long for the warmth of that call that never came. The warmth of home.

Then, I realised that no one was helping me. No one was taking my side, no one was backing me up.  That photograph was taken five years ago. 

Last night, I talked to my sister. I rarely visited them now because doing so would distress me so bad it would take me days and months to recover. But I went there prepared. I thought I could shield myself from whatever distressing things that they might have to say.

Then slowly it came, innocently, and right in the middle of the conversation. I was telling her how before, in my twenties and in the midst of the circumstances I was facing, I had given up pursuing a particular path. Then, she cut in and said, "Had you become a lawyer, you would already have had so many enemies by now." She laughed a long, hard laugh that scrunched her face, made her look very ugly. 

I could not understand why she said it, where such unfair and wrong notion came. I did not know how to answer. Stunned, I merely stared at her. 

Now it dawns on me. They always view me as a troublemaker.  This is a badge of honor as a journalist, but if you hear your sisters telling you that in a totally misconstrued and negative way, I wonder what would you feel? I should lessen my contact with them as much as possible. 

Chrismas shift at the newsroom

This was the second Christmas I spent inside the newsroom. Many things were happening in the regions, so, we could hardly look up from our desk to consider what day it was.  Three days before, Vinta made landfall on Cateel, Davao Oriental; and had badly hit the provinces of Zamboanga del Norte, Lanao del Sur and Lanao del Norte, and we had to keep track as the stories--and the numbers--kept coming.  It was not until I was about to go out hours before Christmas Eve that I noticed the many gifts  gathering at the bottom of the staircase and remember what they meant. I said goodbye to the guards and the last few people left behind.  Everybody was asking where I was going and what I would be doing during the next happy hours! I went out as fast as I could, my heart beating fast. How I loved to be alone with my thoughts and my readings at the strike of Christmashour!  Merry Christmas belated!

Like Life Itself

It's the stairway I climb everyday. Just like life itself, it goes round and round and round in a never ending spiral. 
Yet, every time I climb it in the morning, I don't actually see it the way I'm seeing it now.  In the morning, I take it only one step at a time. All I see are the nearest steps before me, and the rails leading me to a slowly curving ascent, so slight and so gradual that I almost could not feel it. It's only upon looking down from the nth floor above that I get a glimpse of its shape below. Just like the series of days and nights that eventually form the seasons, and the seasons that gather into a year and the years that eventually form a lifetime, we hardly perceive them at first until we've gone a long way and we start looking back.

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?

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!