Almost Thirty, Nearly Bald

 

06 March 2010

 

When I was a kid, people were so fascinated with the kind of memory I have. Since having tests for certain acumen or gift is a rarity in the provinces, (Binanuahan, Pilar, Sorsogon to be more specific) being considered special was already enough. I will try not to be too narrative of what I have been through for that would be totally unnecessary. What contributed much to this state is an actual rush of blood.

 

It was one clear, Sunday morning that forever corrupted some of the files in my memory and no amount of re-formatting will ever restore everything in place. I was not fully aware of the impending danger on that fateful day otherwise I could have averted the ensuing predicament altogether. A portion of a 2” x 2” x 12” lumber is hanging near the roof of that house where a usual Sunday amazement is in town. Perhaps curiosity took it from there as I squeezed myself past the grown-ups looking intently at how an elderly man adroitly handled a constrictor for a snake just to earn a decent living. And in just about twenty minutes, for the sake of proving gravity, the said piece of wood started free-falling at a constant rate enough to cause an opening in my brain pricking the bag of blood within and somehow making the presence of that rusted nail manifest. Instantaneously, I was drenched in a spring of blood; enduring the pain and crying in between. Someone must have rushed me to a clinic nearby only to be attended by a doctor, just as I am, also in a state of panic.

 

And the good news – I won’t be taking a bath for about two weeks but will still attend classes considering pity and ridicule in the process. They shaved the wounded area in my head without the permission of a barber. Who would have wanted, at an early age, to be bandaged on the head of all body parts?

 

Then, on the third year after the incident came headaches of varying degrees but regular in frequency. I almost feel like a psychic but no one would ever believe when I tell them that I know what they are going to say next or what happens in the next minute. Scientists and researchers must have attached the name “déjà vu” to such a condition. The newfound gift would be eventually ruled out as “tension headache” by a doctor from Makati Medical Center where one of my sisters used to work. Still, the situation worsens to a point where I have to fake the headache just to make the agony more real. This condition would last until mid-college days.

 

When headaches visit as frequent as the rain, the mind starts to be pre-occupied with other things. Frustrations about people and circumstance set in. Rather than be defeated by these precepts, I started training myself to be productive in areas where no one, in my limited knowledge of people in our locale, tried to take the time seriously. And to somehow apply whatever thoughts or words I have read in the scarcity of books at home, I began writing non-sense poetry. During those times of inspiration, I always have with me a pencil and a pad of paper. When inspiration strikes, at any given time or circumstance, one needs to get hit.

 

By the time I was nearing 18 with headaches at the sidelines, the start of an oasis of ideas came after a failed attempt of involving oneself to another person. A lady rejected my courtship before it could even start. As a result of my commitment to conceal whatever pain that I have, I made my mind busy about things and matters of lesser or greater significance. It was then that I discovered a mental system of the calendar which, after ten (10) years more, was made into a tangible cylinder-type prototype yet to be applied for patent. A Rubik’s cube for blindsolving is the other invention I am planning to apply for ownership this summer. On the date of the antagonistic attacks in the American soil, I have applied for Philippine patent for a drawing instrument and successfully granted three (3) years after.

For most of the times that I tried risking, the likelihood of success is significantly lesser than failure. I have written melodies and lyrics out of sleepless nights and night-less sleep, invented things at the expense of necessity and made concrete whatever is not in existence for as long as I consider its relative value.

 

But the word most descriptive of this life since then is carpentry. With the gift of numbers and equality everything follows the rule and that is to always start from the center and distribute everything else evenly outwards. To each his own, to do or undo, to make or unmake; this is carpentry in its most pure element. Things break for a reason and people fix it for a definite purpose. And some other things are simply to be left broken to remind us of our human limitations or most probably the inconvenience attached to it which just shows how our lives evolved to date.

 

However, even the brightest ideas meet great resistance. The most likely reason is the evident inability of people to disturb and disrupt what has been and is perpetually practiced. We cannot simply rock the boat in an open ocean without causing concentric and eccentric ripples. When this rippling effect gathers enough momentum, it increases speed, sometimes shifts direction before it suddenly dissipates. Still, when we firmly believe that justice is at stake, we take a stand regardless of being outnumbered or isolated.

 

And in the process of unfolding of all these things, there is one thing I observe. The hair I have grown in my scalp out of the scars of my past is now trying to recede as if out of fear for the days ahead. As I count another decade but not necessarily of decadence, I came to a point of realization. Denial is just costlier than acceptance. It is much easier, consider it economical as well, to shed more hair than grow it back. You may even call it bitterness or just a plain genetic anomaly. Nature has its own manner of simplifying forces or occurrences. Almost always, it is not entirely about the losses incurred or the failures yet to be endured that is definitive of what life has become. Rather, it is the continuing struggle with reality.