Blessing the Heat

I'm happy that it has been almost a year and my blog hasn't been discovered yet.  I guess it is true;  it is easier to hide in the crowd, and what could be more crowded than the blogosphere?  Everyone has something to say, and, flooded with words after words after words, I am forever lost in my preferred anonymity.  After all, who knows where would my thoughts would be if the world is oblivious of it?  I did not exactly hide:  I gave away hints, used old names and common tags, referenced subjects that would give me away.  But after some time, I know my new blog has passed the test.  I am officially anonymous.  I can now bear my soul, as I do before my Lord.

My first confession:  I'll do everything to be home.  Yes, to go back to my home country and suffer the tropical heat and the third-world inconveniences, but at the same time, be close to my family, my friends, my people who have this goofy charm that borders between nobility and kitsch.  I'll taste again the heavily salted cuisine of the islands, that rejoices on the flavors of the sea, the the clear soup of meat and vegetables that I knew from childhood.  I'll swim through the haze of the polluted mornings where women rush for the commute, with hair still wet and perfumed well with cheap shampoo, alongside men, that smelled of fresh shirts and cigarette stains, to open the day with a hopeful hum and a hurried prayer.  I wish to swelter in midday heat that glared through streets and corrugated GI sheets, and probably curse the climate change, but at the same time, consoling myself with the colors of halo-halo and the fury of an old electric fan.  I wish to watch TV shows that are infantile but of very high entertainment value, song and dance and crass jokes that have brought me up to who I am: sentimental, spiritual, tacky.

More confessions to come...



Christmas Wish

When sorrow dims the heart
as winter dusk does to the earth,
and the ache of solitude pierces
like an arrow from nowhere,
then Master, I fall as a warrior
by Your door, imploring
if defeat would still find me
 a place at Your table.
Lo! And see how opened his dwelling
to reveal at the core a meaning:
In this world, where the lonesome
is shunned, a leper in spirit,
there is a refuge that awaits me
where I can leave my mourning
by the door and find, among things,
joy, peace, rest.