"Senses" (11 July 2008)

I wrote "Senses" back in 2008. I had ended my UAAP track & field days, and was still sulking from the pain of losing. I was jobless and penniless, but I had loads of free time and tons of pent-up emotion. I did as much writing as I possibly can and was able to churn out a couple of [crappy] short stories.

Have you ever had the feeling in the morning of desperately wanting to go back to sleep, to grasp the final glimpses of a wonderful dream? I did. I always do. The boundaries between what was real and unreal seemed blurred within the confines of my mind. I usually wake up at the middle of the night, my mind hazy in thought. I would lie in bed motionless for minutes, sorting out those fantasies and accepting, in a sense, that they were nothing more than figments of the subconscious.

Alone within the four corners of my room, it was like any other Sunday. The streets were more silent, disrupted only by the occasional low hum of a passing car, or the vibrant noises of people going to the nearby Church. Each passing moment was punctuated by the pleasant chirping of unseen creatures. I tried to go back to sleep, but I simply could not.

I have always been the sentimental fool. For as long as I could remember, I actually enjoyed staring blankly at nowhere, as my mind drifted to some faraway place. Life and life's experiences, despite my young age, are a treasure trove of emotions both high and low. The worn-out, spiral bound notebook - my trusty, dog-eared journal - was my constant companion. It was a living record of the summits, plains, and canyons of my so-called life.

I've picked up the habit of writing as a toddler, according to my parents. I used to scribble incomprehensible marks in different parts of the house. The kitchen wall was one of my favorites. To curb these tendencies of vandalism, my mother gave me an entire stack of scratch paper, a fancy pen and a desk of my own.

I have written constantly since then.


I was in one of those contemplative moods when I first saw her. It was a lazy weekend and I was comfortably perched at one the stone benches in the campus. I was particularly fascinated at the rays of the early morning sun penetrating the old Acacia tree's canopy. I've been shifting positions for an undetermined number of times as the sun traveled its due course from east to west, changing the direction of its rays in the process. I felt the urge for a drink of water but ignored it. I was too lazy, too enthralled. I was about to drift into a much-needed nap when I felt a sharp ache in my back. It must be the result of lying too long on such a hard surface. As I sat down, I caught my first glimpse of her.

For a split second, our eyes met. I noticed a faint smile emanate from her lips. My hair was an unkempt black mass. Naturally, I was embarrassed. I was about to utter a word of greeting to strike up a conversation but it was evident that she was in a hurry. I was awestruck, unable to decide whether to get up and rouse myself from this contemplative stupor, to chase after her with the poor excuse of her having dropped something on the way back, or signing something for a survey in class.

So it began, the vain search for her identity. I did not know a single bit of information about her, but my first glimpse was a vivid thought. Her skin was like porcelain, brightly gleaming under the late morning sun. Her long, brownish black hair, bouncing gently under the light breeze, framed her face. I was too far to notice her eyes, but from my vantage point I somehow felt a certain sense of sadness in them.

I began to roam around school a lot; looking intently at the various faces I passed by, silently wishing it would be her. The times spent daydreaming were considerably lessened by my futile search. I was in a complete and utter state of helplessness. I could not ask around since I did not even know her name. Chance, fate, destiny and serendipity - call it whatever you may, these were the only things I could possibly turn to.

Hence, I hoped for the best. For the first time in my life, I began watching sappy romantic movies to complement what I felt, or rather, to set the mood for how I want my feelings to unfold. I have scoured the net for the most notable movies of the said genre. From classics like "Casablanca" to blockbusters such as the "Titanic", I've watched them all. My personal favorite is an obscure Hong Kong film, "Tiramisu", about a deaf man falling in love with a ghost.

In a sense, I was like that man and that nameless girl, the ghost. But instead of being deaf, I have lost every single one of these human faculties. My senses were practically useless. To see her, to catch a glimpse of her once again, I had to pause and close my eyes, trying to grasp the fading visions of that particular late morning rendezvous.

The grains of sand seemed to fall painfully slower. I began to lose sleep. Sleep became increasingly harder to attain with these whirlwind of thoughts going through my head. Sleeping pills and bottles of various sorts of alcohol were my constant companions.

Despite the lessened time for writing - the quiet moments of contemplation were but a distant memory - I was actually in the midst of my creative state to date. My mind, despite the constant delusions, was in a lucid state. Gone were the bouts of mental block that have occasionally hampered the progress of my work as a writer for the university literary journal. Even my good friend, my editor for the school paper, was impressed.

“This is great stuff, pare.” Alex exclaimed. “I’m sure some skirt is behind all these.”

“It’s purely intrinsic,” I replied.

“Oh really now?” He asked mockingly. “When can we meet this secret flame of yours?”

“There is no secret girl, Alex.”

“Bah! You’re really secretive, Pepo. Anyway, I won’t hassle you any longer. I know for a fact that behind those thick glasses of yours lies a wounded, hopeless romantic.”

Quit it, man,” I snapped, pretending to appear hurt. “I’m just feeling that creative urge, that’s all.”

I seemed to have stumbled upon a new fountain of creativity and inspiration. The sense of utter hopelessness has watered a fertile field of opportunity.

I was at the early parts of my junior year in college when I began to write the first short stories about Issa, a fictional character patterned after that nameless girl, created of course within the realm of my mind. My blog, then an obscure website patronized only by my closest friends began to attract wide attention, My work about Issa, literature ranging from poems, short stories, anecdotes and essays, spread through the grapevine. Complete strangers began to talk to me out of the blue, asking random questions about my work.

For an entire year, I churned out various forms of literature, mostly short stories, for the university journal, my blog and to various literary publications. I grew tired of course, wanting to focus my energies on different things. So I wrote one last short story, the final entry about how it all began one late Saturday morning. And I wrote it all by longhand on bond paper, a major deviation from my standard practice of encoding it directly on my trusty laptop computer. In a sense, it was better that way since it had that subtle tinge of intimacy. But for some unknown reason, I did not get it published.

Before I knew it, rainy season had begun, ushering in a new school year. After one of my night classes, I immediately proceeded to the jeepney stop along the main avenue, a good 5-minute walk. Since I forgot to bring an umbrella, my clothes and shoes were soaked by the time I got to the stop. In my haste to seek cover, I tripped and fell down hard on the pavement. I broke my glasses and badly bruised my left arm. My precious books, including my tattered journal, which I hid under my shirt to keep them from getting wet, were splattered all over the soaked concrete.

I was still a little groggy from the fall, when I noticed that the rain somehow stopped falling.

“Are you okay?” A sweet, somewhat boyish voice asked.

“Surely,” I replied as I rose up from my embarrassing position. I then saw her pick some of my things with one hand, as she held up the umbrella with the other. “Thank you, I can manage.”

As soon as I recovered my poise, as well as my things, we went to the waiting vehicle. I was thankful for its shade, and for this unexpected guardian angel. Without my glasses, I could hardly see anything beyond an arm’s length. To my eyes, her face was a smudged mass of color.

"Here are your glasses, what’s left of it anyway.”

“Thanks again,” I said with a laugh. “You’re an angel.”

“No I’m not. I’m just a plain girl named Ina.”

"And I’m a clumsy boy named Pepo.

"Hi Pepo,” she said as we shook hands. Her hands, despite being wet, still retained some degree of warmth – a refreshing sensation amidst the cold, night rain.

An uneasy silence took over. Perhaps I held on to her hand a little too long.

Almost everyone at the jeepney was staring at me with both humorous and compassionate eyes. I took out my coin purse to pay for the fare. She must have noticed how I put the purse mere inches from eyes, and realized my visual impairment.

“You really do have bad eyes.”

“Yeah I do,” I replied. “Too much reading I suppose.”

“Can you get home in that condition?”

“Yeah, through trial and error. I can hardly see the jeepney signs without my glasses.”

“Oh. I can help you get into the right ones then.” For the second time in the night, I was embarrassed.

As the vehicle made its way steadily through the crawling traffic, a nearby light bulb flickered despite its small size. I noticed something oddly familiar in Ina’s face. I stifled the desire to look closer and laughed at the prospect of finally finding – stumbling into, rather – the object of my year-long search.

Then it hit me: I had a pair of spare glasses in my backpack. As I put it on, it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the weaker prescription.

You have an extra pair, after all,” she remarked.

“Yes I do,” I replied. “I was just a little dazed from the fall.

It was she. I could not be mistaken with that long, brownish black hair and porcelain skin. And the eyes – those eyes – were as sad as when I last saw them, in total contrast with her polite, almost uneasy smile.

This time around, I did not make the same mistake of doing nothing. I got her last name and her course. With this new information, I asked around. I began to frequent the library for I heard that she was the stereotypical library rat. I practically spent all of my free time there, patiently waiting for that “chance meeting.”

In one particular Thursday afternoon a few months later, I had my chance. We had lunch at a nearby café and spent the afternoon talking about a multitude of things, from current events to Church issues, to crass noon-time shows to the Broadway plays. She mentioned that she has read some of my work. How ironic, I told myself. As time passed by, our “chance” meetings became more frequent. Soon enough, we were seeing each other almost every week. It seemed as if the more we conversed, the more I wanted to see her, although I sensed a faint hint of hesitance on her part.

The more I saw her, the more the dreams and daydreams increased in both frequency and intensity that I began to delude myself even more. I wanted to blur the lines between reality and how I perceive reality permanently.

I sensed something horribly wrong; I just had to stop.

In that coffee shop, she seemed so aloof. Although she was mere inches from me, she seemed so far away.

Senses.

Without senses, man cannot hear, see, talk, speak and, more importantly, feel. But can we really?

I was walking from the library one evening. The finals were mere days away and I had to finish a 50-page term paper for class. After countless hours of endless reading and typing in my antiquated notebook computer, I headed home. The school was practically empty, aside from the few security guards and a handful of upperclassmen minding their own business. I was walking quite slowly, my head bowed down in deep thought. It was so silent. There was hardly any wind at all. The only sound was my heavy footsteps engaged in the slow cadence of a man walking aimlessly.

I was thinking about Ina all the time. It was as if my mind was stuck in a typhoon of thoughts with her as the deceptively calm eye. I slapped myself hard on the face to rouse me from this deafening monologue. Some semblance of sanity went back. I paused for a sip of water from the bottle that I carried in my bag. It was hardly cold, with the ice melting a few hours ago.

From a distance, I saw an oddly familiar figure. As I drew closer, I saw that it was a girl sitting by her lonesome at one of those drab, plastic benches. She was curled in some sort of fetal position. I could hear her faint, muffled sobs. Her hair was strewn all over her arms and knees like a worn-out blanket.

Her hair was long and brown. Her skin was luminous even though light was at its faintest. I was quite certain that it was she.

"Ina?" I asked softly. “Is that you?”

"Hey there Pepo."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she replied unconvincingly. "I'm fine."

Something was obviously wrong and so, I decided to lend a helping hand.

"Hey, if you're not doing anything, do you want to grab a bite?"

"That would be nice, Pepo, but I can't."

"Oh, no worries then."

"I'm waiting for someone."

"I can keep you company if you don't mind. Until he or she comes, that is."

"No, thank you. That wouldn't be necessary."
There and then, I remembered the last short story I wrote about Ina. I've had it in my pack ever since.

"This may seem weird," I stuttered as I tried to explain. "I've written this for you." I gave her the stained, crumpled pages of my story.

"What's this?" She asked, obviously puzzled.

"Just read it." An uneasy silence loomed - the signal for me to make my exit. "Anyway, I'll go ahead. Take care of yourself, Ina."

"Thank you. I don't know what to say." Our eyes met. I sensed a flicker of brightness - a genuine expression of gratitude - in those otherwise sad eyes of her.

"Don't mention it."
"See you around, Pepo."

But we did not see each other after that night. I simply stopped frequenting the library and the coffee shop in a deliberate attempt to avoid her. The first few days were horribly difficult. She did not need to say anything; Her brown eyes said it all. My very senses craved for Ina. I wanted to see her. I wanted to hear her voice as we exchange thoughts in endless conversation. I wanted to smell her hair, feel her hand and skin as we walk hand-in-hand in that bright summer day of my dreams.

I was almost delirious, but I pulled through. Time, indeed, heals everything - especially the shallowest of wounds.

My mind is a lot clearer now. My five senses are no longer stumped and deadened by those delusions of a solitary mind. Nevertheless, I could not help but wonder what would have happened if we had met at an earlier time, before the eyes became engulfed in that shroud of sadness.

The rains have stopped and suddenly it was summer again. The fire trees were in full bloom as the grass turned into yellowish-gold. As I breathed the warm, humid air and exhaled slowly through my nostrils, I felt my lungs clear. It was sunny yet again – the climax of a carefree season. But soon enough, the fluffy cumulus clouds would make way for the gloomy ones. Rain would then start to fall.

Again I’m at one of those benches, albeit at a different place and under a different tree. Feeling the rough, weather-beaten stone on my back, I closed my eyes and waited.