If I Die

If I die...will there be a wake?

Will someone cry quiet tears of friendship or weep great heaving sobs of pain over lost causes and missed opportunities? Or will someone dance his waltz of relief over my passing?

Last night I dreamt of vultures. Great flocks waiting for my dying. They were loud and swift. Chasing dizzying circles against a backdrop of blue. It was only when one broke away and made a dash for land when I woke up. Was this dream a harbinger of things to come?

Permit me then the luxury of a wish. When I die, wrap me in sorrow and allow only the chosen seven to see me as I sleep: my parents, my sisters, my cousin Grace and two of my closest friends--Trina and Mariliz. They are the seven who know my dark and light.

Then allow me the comfort of dark...close my coffin for the wake. And on the last day, cleanse me with fire...bright and swift. Gather the ashes in a porcelain jar, seal it and bring it to Buenasuerte where other relatives wait for my coming.

Write me an epitaph, write me a book of epitaphs...let them be truthful so that the world may know that I lived as I saw how to live. Let them say, here lies a bitch. Or, here lies someone who shouted out my incompetence. I am no saint and do not expect my epitaphs to say that here lies one.

Finally, let those who come be those who genuinely weep. Fair warning to those who come to gawk and point because I will come for you with my flock of vultures.

Don't run unless you're eating

THERE are just some nights that when you wake up, your skin is warm and the smell of a thousand dinners waft through a half-open window. Then, it is easier to pretend to be someone else, someone you can only recall with a drowsy eye.I am always this way in Hong Kong.For an instant I can be an innocent young girl, my sister sleeping, my father daydreaming his way through countless decisions, or my mother tending to her garden. Hong Kong allows me the luxury of that instance before pasting images and sounds together into a cosmopolitan hub.

All I know is this: Hong Kong first confuses, then comforts. The moment you are ushered out of the airplane, its “hugeness” assaults. You take a short “train” ride to immigration, wondering whether your luggage can catch up with the rush and hustle of electric tracks that hum past the window.

Then you sense the distance behind the courtesy of immigration personnel. Everything is efficient, tourism people mouth banalities (the weather, how long you’re staying), even trash bins are stringently labeled and sorted. You begin to buy into first world efficiency until you remember that many of your kith and kin are responsible for this without enjoying its benefits (a Cebuano taxi driver once revealed that Chek Lap Kok Airport was constructed by former Atlas workers).This confusion of feelings is temporary.

Out of the airport, your heart begins to race with envy at the pulse that drives this city. Familiarity in its strangeness Hong Kong is not a shopper's paradise--if you are a shopper hunting for bargains to rival Carbon's ukay-ukay finds. But if you are funky and value variety, Hong Kong is incomparable!

Walking around Park Lane (Hong Kong side), small shops compete with large Japanese chain stores for attention. Their only difference is that at the small shops you can attempt (and often successfully) to bring down the price to 1/4 of what it says in the tag. Here and there in the shopping districts (whether in Tsim Sha Tsui, Stanley Market or Mongkok) you hear snippets of Filipino, sometimes raised in anger over the antics of a pesky child.The streets are also full of anachronisms: Mobile wielding teens furiously texting in Putonghua, quail eggs in vats of boiling water (which we only see in dimsum baskets), fish balls sharing space with stinky beancurd, and a sign that says "Welcome To Tai O" (whatever that may mean).

Hong Kong’s rhythm allows residents to run while they’re eating.Still, it is these anachronisms that comfort. You are reminded that in Hong Kong, you can find characters to almost believe in.

In the end, the confusion encourages you to return. Hong Kong fascinates because it perplexes. The SARS episode only added to its mystique, because there lies its secret.Hong Kong makes us bloom, marking us and challenges what we believe is inviolable. There is never a simple plot in their lifestyle, no closure or unity that often arrives in another city's daily life. So, you return and do nothing except to record Hong Kong's stunning recklessness.

Leavetaking

Please
take your address with you
fold the sadness into your clothes
suitcases are ready
and there is no room
for goodbyes

Flight

I am too near
for him to dream of me
there is no ocean
holding up the flight
of wind

Daughter country

THERE is a place in China called Daughter Country. There are no husbands and every night, men knock on women's doors looking for a warm bed.

I am sure that there are favorites, given the privilege of flinging open unlocked doors in the short hour between afternoon and darkness. For them, the bed comes with a cooked meal and warm lips to kiss after a shared shot of mao tai.

The children will then be sent to bed with quiet admonitions of respect and equitable distribution of attention for significant others. And the adults will play, maybe even weave dreams of life together.

Or will they?

In Daughter Country, how can you scheme to fill a bowl of rice for next day's evening meal when there is no certainty as to whom you share this bowl with? This day's catch is yours, but tomorrow's could be handed over to the lady next door. Then again, your bed will still be warm, if someone else knocks.

"Will someone knock?" you ask yourself. The trick is in recognizing his. Rather heavy because of callused working hands, the slight shuffle of feet as he waits for your greeting. What happens if you open your door and find his friend smiling sheepishly?
Do you close the door on his friend's face and wait for that right knock, except that you hear it answered next door?

Ah! Many envy the lives of women in Daughter Country. Imagine, being able to choose the man you wish to be with! Your prerogative to have someone different every night or just one for the whole week.

But that is cold comfort.

We all live for forever. Chucking our choices for that one favorite who sees himself growing old beside you. A choice between hangover mornings and quiet nights nursing coffee with a shot of brandy. A choice between comparing notes and conversations about growing mangoes.

But still, how I envy the women of Daughter Country! Their ability to ask for no more than a night, a quick toss in the hay without so much as drunken good byes in the morning. Instead, we are tied to the burden of generations of tiyas and their unwritten rules of womanly conduct. One night has to mean forever.

Or, should it? Who says we have to hide under the cover of tequila and vodka? Unhappy spirits that fling the cloak of repression off our shoulders. Throw the rulebook to the stars and ask them to rewrite it! Maybe they will laughingly fling it back at you and say there are more interesting things under the night sky.

Kissed By Someone Else

Sometimes I wonder how it feels like to be kissed by someone else. A fleeting erotic brush with someone you've not pledged undying love to.

How is it going to be, I wonder? Maybe it should be after evening goodbyes, just as the night is ending and you can both dismiss it as part of drunkenness.

That way you can say the next time you meet, "The alcohol got into my head."

Or you can credit it to raging hormones, the moon cycles, or the blatantly musky perfume he wore. But why find an excuse for two adults sharing a pleasurable biological moment?

I remember old maid grand aunts who died one after the other, one cold December. I'd always wondered if they ever "made it" with any of the muscled island boys who went spear fishing before dawn and tilled earth by break of day.
Did Lola Blasa ever hide in the shadows of banana trees for a quick stolen kiss on the way home from the farm? Or, did Tiya Ling ever sneak out at midnight to exchange perfumed touches with high school classmates?

How I wish they did and felt the fire of passion stir in their loins.

It is unbearable to imagine them leading ascetic lives confined to hearth and earth. There must be more to farm living than cooking, baking, washing, and waiting for tired brothers and fathers to come home.

For sure, these questions do not even enter the minds of single women today. Questions change in these times when high school girls consider it a disgrace to graduate without the memory of their first kiss.

Ahhh ... the first kiss. Where did you have yours? Did he bend your will to his in the backseat of his parent’s car? Or did you wait for that special moment, the requisite sunset, glass of wine and you dressed in a sheath with just a flimsy wrap around your shoulders? I hope you let your hair fly free, let his fingers run through the strands.

If you've not had your first kiss yet, just wait and allow yourself the choice of time and place. This memory is for rocking chair moments, when arthritis has gripped your knees and forced you to live on warm tea and solitude.
Other than that, I still wish for the pleasure of stolen kisses. Especially when it rains, just when you are about to say goodbye, and most of all ... with someone you don't share anything with other than a cold night. That way, goodbyes are sweet and final.n

yay for originality

I got pissed today. One of the account executives (well, okay two...joy & joy) walked in waving what i thought was a poster. Horrors! It was the pale attempt of former employees to copy the magazines we are publishing. Oh well. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery?

The new team (see above). Way more experienced and better attitude. Cheers!