Carpooling Loonies
By Jinki Beldia

Coming home to a satire

In November 2004, my family who moved back to my father's hometown shortly before I was done with college (a wonderful and constantly interrupted seven years that finally ended in 2000,) invited me to come for a visit in this laid-back coastal city. I agreed, partly because it was a time I wasn't pretending to be busy with a so-called career, and that Christmas was just around the corner. There was no point in playing hide- and-seek with it. I have never spent a Christmas away from home because like they say, Christmas is a time for families to be together. When I was growing up, I was secretly believing my parents made that up. Although my readings have taught me that some people would actually spend Christmases away from home to discover new things about themselves, it was an unspeakable sin in the house not to be there for the occasion. It's not like I despised being home during that particular season which they fondly dub “A time to be merry…” but at one point or another, I wanted to spend a Christmas in a secluded island or at the foot of some mountain just to see if solitude would make such an enormous impact in my life. Like for instance, it just might put a halt to my bitching about life. Well, as if I haven't done enough of it in 29 years. But then again, I realized not being allowed to do something (even if I offer to sacrifice my entire troll collection in a bloodcurdling ritual just to be able to do whatever that is,) was already making great waves in my life. Living is wonderful because it gives you a lot of space for nitpicking; a mind and tongue exercise that permits you to embrace the quintessence of life. I have been here for six months and bitching has just become the greatest career move of my life.

I have gained a reputation for being the worst traveler my friends have ever known in this lifetime. During summer vacations when I was little, my mother would have trouble fitting my clothes in a suitcase because my eraser and sharpener collections would occupy so much space in my gigantic travel case she would have to strategically fold my clothes around them. One time when I asked to take along my fish with me, my family chorused threatening to leave me alone in the house in misery. I left Alexander, my fish, alone instead. In high school, the ratio became 1:6. One shirt, six books. I just kept getting worse. I was once sent to Bacolod City to cover the Masskara Festival and I brought four pairs of shoes for a two-day trip. It wasn't about having a fashion sense or simply not being able to decide what to wear. You see in every trip I make, there is always this sense of finality, like I'm never going back to where I left off. All the time I have spent going back to where I came from did not teach me anything. I kept going back but still kept dragging along my room with me.

Imagine what I brought with me when I was asked to spend Christmas vacation in this tiny city. But this time I was damn right about it. Until now, I am still in a daze when I would be able to go back to where I came from. My father is suffering from the human eradicator acute renal failure, a secondary complication to the unpretty diabetes mellitus. That is the reason why my luggage multiplied this time.

Roxas City is only a couple of hours away from Iloilo. They say if you want time to unwind, you come to this place because life here is slow and quiet. On my first few days here, it just became more and more quiet I started to suspect my life was about to become a sequel to “Sixth Sense”. Don't add sour topping to what I'm saying. I loved the movie and what I have is the real flavor. My antagonizing circadian rhythm is the perfect prelude to a satire about living in a city where stores close at 7 p.m. and everybody is in bed by 8:00 o'clock. It's like the last cable wire stretched only up to three towns away, a good six kilometers before it could reach this city. One of the first few things I did was to reorient myself to the concept of sleep, which never worked. Next, there was nocturnal domestication, a mind-boggling experience for people who live in my parents' house. I discovered that doing the laundry at midnight is a transcendental experience mankind has yet to discover. You are naturally provided with a serene, instructor-free and drug-free ambiance where introspection can truly reach its peak. It is almost like meeting God while doing something productive, unlike being inside the church where you have the luxury of sitting down if you preferred exercising your faith in that position. It is a sweet sacrifice where you don't only gain spiritual growth from, but from which your family can also benefit from lesser laundry the following day. Looking at it in a more academic light, this place will convince anybody Sigmund Freud formulated his psychoanalytic theory here. There is no need for a room designed especially for psychoanalysis where silence sometimes needs to be artificially provided. He could have just positioned his couch anywhere he desired to.

There is also something about food and the people who live here. It goes beyond basic need. It is an incessant topic in conversations any day, any place. Since I got here, I have never been part of a mealtime where food is just food. If people could create rumors about them, they would. While devouring a slice of meat for instance, a discussion on what specific time the next mealtime will be begins to snowball into an austere dialogue. So you end up feeling full even before you finish and start a meal. Hunger is an impossibility in a place where food is a passion. Even before you can tell if it is going to be chicken or beef, you know what exact time you're going to have your next bite. Even the food service of hospitals can't perfect that.

While the main course is justifiably chattered about and munched on at the same time, dessert is an even interesting slice. It usually comes in the form of detailed information about the goings-on in people's lives. It becomes so detailed the word ‘twisted' leaps from nowhere and lands on your head like a hideous lizard. The penchant for gossiping is a personal art most people here have perfected without guidance. Just when you start to think the early evening AM news provides you with the juiciest infos about who got stabbed in which corner of the city and who got caught with what, you find out something more salacious go on after bed time. You get to know which government official slept with whom without even asking…and more. (email the author at jinki_young@yahoo.com)