Reconstructing my deformed meaning of home

WHEN I WAKE UP, my mother is screaming. The choral sound of plastic objects hitting concrete fills the house. My nephew Coy-Coy must have climbed in somewhere, now sending things flying here and there. Of course he did. It’s daytime. People are supposed to do a routine.

It’s been years since I’ve felt that the meaning of home for me has been deforming in slow-mo. My mother screeching again. My sister screeching in return. My nephew screeching to follow the trend. You might as well throw in our father’s normal speaking voice before, which was louder and more powerful than a scream. My father who used to be the balancing force that put everything to quiet. Except now. He’s locked inside his coffin. Sleeping forever in the past two years. I still find myself screaming at night because in my nightmare his ghost was haunting me. Or smiling because in my dream he was talking to me in a meadow, asking how’s my career. Oh, my father who I thought died never reading the stuff I’ve published on newspapers or in technical journals. Whom I loathed because I assumed he wanted me to become an engineer like him, or a medical professional, and yet he was not that civil engineer who found a fortune for us. The father who resigned from his jobs because he wanted to be his own boss and ventured into an ambitious business that was bankrupt, leaving our family savings depleted. When he passed away on the bitterest April morning eleven days after my twenty-fourth birthday, I realized I was wrong for hating him. During his burial, I saw my aunt who recognized me. She said I was the boy whose achievements my father had often talked about when they were in Tagaytay recently then, building a family vacation house. She said I was the boy whom my father had always been very proud of. Things I was fully unaware of… Well I thought I’d gotten used to this. The noise in our house, I mean. But every time I get a one week off, because I wouldn’t go home to my hometown for a tryst in the city, it’d feel like a whole new environment again when I return. Maybe it’s not a matter of getting used to something, like the noise. Maybe it’s a matter of living with the dramas of your life until the end.

Circumlocutory likeness of two dissimilar words

Two pieces of paper and a pen for writing in a contest such as a press con. The first paper will serve as your rough draft, which you may keep as a memento. The second paper will be submitted to the judge as your final copy, which could be your key to attaining victory.

HE STARES AT YOU with his dagger eyes. Then he lifts his fist, fleetingly stares at it, and his squeaking voice says, "You want this?"—my nephew's reaction when he gets annoyed...

Last week, I've seen Jonathan de Quiroz—former USC President in AUF and one of the few Suma Cum Laude and TOSP awardees, in the same school, who graduated in 2006 (to shorten the long description, “high-profile person”)—at the waiting contour of bus passengers. I approached him and he flashed a hesitating smirk while saying, “Hi!” Then he stuttered, "Uh… uh, I’m sorry. What's your name please?"

When the meaning of “home” deforms in slow-mo

“I despised to spend my holiday at home; instead, I had it in the city…”

City of struggle, Makati City. The tallest building at the center, the PBCom Tower, where our main office is located.

(Credits: Imageshack.com.)

…AND YES, I AM a qualified fugitive who fittingly said goodbye before leaving the house. So who cares?

Impetuously, I dashed to stash my stuffs inside my bag last Sunday to go back to Makati City. I know there were no offices on the following day because August 30 is a holiday. However, my untimely decision to depart from our house was unfaltering. My mother was asking me why I am leaving earlier than expected. I answered, “I just changed my mind!” Then I ended with a firm judgment left furtively hanging on a faceless identikit like that in novels…

Dette, my sister, and my mother always quarrel against each other at home. My mother has made it a tradition to pickle my sister’s faults just like daily desserts served after each meal to add a little sweetness that ends with a spice—my mother, informatively speaking, has a ranting voice. When she speaks, eardrums crack. Then, when my sister gets enough of it, she retorts—and yes, her voice quality “inherited” that of my mother. Both of them weren’t as worse as what they are right now. They are just slowly getting to the point of a “worst case scenario.”

The author of "Mais"

LAST NIGHT, I HAVE talked with a former colleague (or a friend as I actually reckon her) through facebook. I just inadvertently popped out my blog address on her screen through the chat-feature of the said social networking site. This, in a concealed agenda, means I am coercing her to read my blog! After few moments, she replied and said she was very amused with my entries; she thinks they’re hilarious...

Well actually, we have diminutively asked each other if how our lives have been going at first. Most questions posed were just very common questions being asked by two people who haven't seen each other for a while; yet our answers were not that ordinary. (Of course, we’re both living interesting lives.) The last time I saw her facebook profile, conversely, she posted a status from where I gathered she was feeling so blessed to have her fiancé and their baby.

French’s Mr. Photogenic?

“THIS TYPE OF FACE is the photogenic face for the French people… you stand out,” said Madame Ambassador as she was pointing to my face, which has blunt expressions.

Wearing jacket every day

THE TEMPERATURE DROPPED DOWN recently… It’s not alarming; it’s amusing!

I’ve been wearing jackets these past few days because the climate has been chilly. In Baguio City, it has been reported that the temperature dropped down to 7.5-degrees Celsius. In Pampanga, I don’t know exactly the temperature. I just suppose that it’s cold enough for me to stop perspiring even if I wear layers of clothing.

An arctic morning in Baguio City

EARLY THAT MORNING, I remember I looked like an arsonist exuding fog-like breath from my orifice each time I exhale. The temperature was so freezing that it didn’t jibe with my synthetic-like, fitted t-shirt and black and gray vest and skinny jeans – without a jacket. I was staring at my shivering hands that I was bemused if they might wither or shrink because of the arctic climate. But still, it was just Baguio City; not the Antarctica....

I can’t believe it was more than a month ago.

November 30, 2008 was when I was about to depart from the Teacher’s Camp to traverse back to Pampanga after a four-day seminar, which I didn’t even want to attend to. I went desolately as The Pioneer’s delegate in the seminar together with the AUF-USC and all CSCs. I assumed I would feel like a tiger having a festivity with lions because I was the only member of the university publication then. However, some people made me feel befitting – the Criminology students.