The first Saturday morning of June 1953, Walneia Monstros received a letter from Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. It was from his brother, Hal. With eight graceful strides, she took the letter inside the house and set it on top of what her mother liked to call the “tea table”. It was actually a 3-foot concrete kitchen counter with a marble top, carved out, if the words of the salesman were to be believed, of the side of Tab’awan Hill in Baguio City. It served as the partition between the living and dining rooms of the house. It was, in fact, situated in the middle of the kitchen.
Over this counter was a beam of lacquered coconut tree lumber, sticking out of which were eight two-inch nails. Laddles, strainers, can-openers, funnels, cheese graters, peelers, spatulae, and several such kitchen implements there hung, many of them sharing a single nail.
On the farther right of the counter (when the observer is in the dining room and is facing the direction of the living room) was a wooden knife rack. Directly beside this was a cup rack that though had the capacity of holding ten cups with its ten branches, now held only two: cups belonging to Walneia’s mother, and her one younger sister Elneila.
This isn’t to say, however, that Walneia didn’t own a cup herself; she did.
It was at the moment on the kitchen sink, soaked in sopawater for later washing. It was for this reason that Walneia took Elneila’s cup and used it to hold refrigirated water to half its capacity, leaving the letter in the marble counter top.
No sooner had she closed the fridge door had she heard her mother call, “What’s that?”
She was at the laundry area at the back of the house. Now turning fifty, she still did laundry washing for the family, and had a unique ability of hearing mail being taken out of mail boxes.
“A letter, mom,” informed Walneia. “A letter. Geesh.”
“Oh,” her mom said, trying to digest what she’d just heard. Her daughter’s expression was something that wouldn’t be generally accepted as a common remark among the youth until fifty years later. At the same time, she was debating within herself if it would be wise to do what she was thinking of doing… which she did anyway, before very long. “Who’s it from?” she asked.
“Hal,” came the reply.
“Hal?” There was tenseness in her mother’s voice, and if Walneia’s hearing was as acute as her mother’s, she would have picked up the sound of her mother excitedly pushing the large aluminum clothes washing basin out of her way, getting up, straightening her laundry washing house clothes, and walking into the house full of determination to sieze the letter from Walneia’s hand.
And sieze the letter she did. Walneia was startled at her sudden appearance, coming up from behind her without warning like that. If she wasn’t through drinking her water, she would have blown it out in sprays out of her mouth and into her mother’s “tea table”. Thankfully, however, the cup had been emptied and hung—without washing, she only drank water from it—back on the rack.
“Geesh, mom. You nearly killed me there. Geesh.”
It could be the precosciousness of her expression that her mother ignored her. “Your brother hasn’t written us anything in seven months, in case you’re interested in that, young woman,” she informed her instead.
“I know, I know,” said Walneia. “Geesh.” She cleared out of the “tea table” now and was moving more in the direction of the living room than of the dining room. Halfway to sitting down a couch, however, a thought occurred to her. She walked back, past her mother, and into the dining room. She remembered seeing half a bar of leftover Pinefrosted Danglebar from last night left on the fridge. She thought such nutriment would be welcome right about now.
Meanwhile, her mother was busy opening the mail. Careful not to cause the tiniest damage to the page (or pages) inside, she employed the help of a nearby chopping knife to take off approximately a millimeter of the envelope.
She pulled out four sheets of legal-sized white paper from inside, folded in three. Setting the now empty envelope aside for any future use, Walneia’s mother unfolded the letter.
One scan at just the first page, Walneia’s mother’s face immediately radiated the brightest, happiest emotions of a mother who had received a letter from a son from thousands of miles away for the first time in seven months. “It’s true, Walneia,” she said with all possible delight. “It’s true.”
Walneia, crumpling the now empty Pinefrosted Danglebar wrapper, fifty years ahead of her time, could only say, “Geesh.”
Tuesday, April 1, 2003
Saturday, March 1, 2003
Pinefrosted Danglebars
Pinefrosted Danglebars are known throughout the Woodland Territories as having not only superb nutritional properties, but also a powerful positive influence on a person’s well-being and interpersonal relationships.
I once had the pleasure of ingesting this said food product through the influence of a good pal of mine, Chuck Woodchuck, whose family was one of the last settlers in the place.
No sooner had I swallowed the last piece of the bar had I felt a change suddenly come over me. The sensation started out from my belly, where a rumbling sound issued forth. Holding it with one free hand (as the other held the crumpled wrapper of the Danglebar, and I couldn’t yet find a trashcan), I could feel my stomach vibrate. It expanded to different dimensions for about seven times in this episode, and on each expansion was also compression, which left my stomach in the end pretty much on its original size.
Then the sensation moved up to my lungs. It was as if every air sac in them was freed up from the noxious gases they had been accumulating from second hand smoke and the City Air in all my _3 years of existence.
Suddenly, I could breathe easier, and more comfortably. I never realized how oxygen tasted like until that moment, and I could have sworn I felt every molecule of this life giving air pass through my lungs and get processed inside my body, all in the name of Keeping Me Alive. Having thought this alone lifted up my soul, and for the first time, observers could have probably seen a faint, subtle, and yet nonetheless soul-felt smile cross my face.
To my skin the after-effects of having consumed a Pinefrosted Danglebar next manifested.
My skin glowed. In a single pulse, a pump of the heart sending blood carrying bits of Pinefrosted Danglebar to my system, my skin pores expelled dirt and excess oils, sending them falling like a rain of fine sand to the ground. None of the most expensive brands of commercial skin care products of the day could have made a human person’s skin more pleasant to look at than what Pinefrosted Danglebars did to me that day.
The final effect—and the last proof I needed to believe that it was working—was a sudden change in my outlook in life.
All the old ideologies were whisked away as if by a sudden gust of wind. My mind cleared up and it was like a field trip inside the avenues of my head. The guide was someone who strangely resembled me, if only in possession of good interpersonal and tour-guiding skills. There he showed me all the bad decisions, the thoughts and beliefs that led straight to Personal Humiliation, reacquainted me with My Stupidity… and just when I couldn’t take it anymore, he made a triangular gesture with his left leg, and the scene shifted to the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life so far.
It was the Million Possible Good Things That Could Happen To You If You Were Only Using Your Head, the guide said. As the name suggested, those good things could happen to me if only I would use my head for a change.
“I will,” I said eagerly. “I will use my head from now on.”
He laughed like it was the funniest joke he had ever heard in all his _3 years of existence. “Sure, you will,” he said, before disappearing completely.
I found myself then in the middle of the Woodland Territories plaza, in front of a rolling store selling Pinefrosted Danglebars. I didn’t know for how long I had been out, but I found the wrapper still in my hand. My friend Chuck Woodchuck wasn’t with me anymore, but if I’d only looked, I would’ve seen that he was not more than ten meters from me, having fun with two high school girls.
Presently, the vendor called my attention with the most amiable “Hey,” one could possibly utter “Hey”. He looked perfectly at peace with himself and his personal issues. Life and the world seemed to be the least of his worries. In fact, if there was anything at all that was worrying him, it was simplified by an itch that caused him to rub the index and middle fingers of his hand against his thumb.
I realized I still hadn’t paid.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “How much is a Pinefrosted Danglebar again?”
I once had the pleasure of ingesting this said food product through the influence of a good pal of mine, Chuck Woodchuck, whose family was one of the last settlers in the place.
No sooner had I swallowed the last piece of the bar had I felt a change suddenly come over me. The sensation started out from my belly, where a rumbling sound issued forth. Holding it with one free hand (as the other held the crumpled wrapper of the Danglebar, and I couldn’t yet find a trashcan), I could feel my stomach vibrate. It expanded to different dimensions for about seven times in this episode, and on each expansion was also compression, which left my stomach in the end pretty much on its original size.
Then the sensation moved up to my lungs. It was as if every air sac in them was freed up from the noxious gases they had been accumulating from second hand smoke and the City Air in all my _3 years of existence.
Suddenly, I could breathe easier, and more comfortably. I never realized how oxygen tasted like until that moment, and I could have sworn I felt every molecule of this life giving air pass through my lungs and get processed inside my body, all in the name of Keeping Me Alive. Having thought this alone lifted up my soul, and for the first time, observers could have probably seen a faint, subtle, and yet nonetheless soul-felt smile cross my face.
To my skin the after-effects of having consumed a Pinefrosted Danglebar next manifested.
My skin glowed. In a single pulse, a pump of the heart sending blood carrying bits of Pinefrosted Danglebar to my system, my skin pores expelled dirt and excess oils, sending them falling like a rain of fine sand to the ground. None of the most expensive brands of commercial skin care products of the day could have made a human person’s skin more pleasant to look at than what Pinefrosted Danglebars did to me that day.
The final effect—and the last proof I needed to believe that it was working—was a sudden change in my outlook in life.
All the old ideologies were whisked away as if by a sudden gust of wind. My mind cleared up and it was like a field trip inside the avenues of my head. The guide was someone who strangely resembled me, if only in possession of good interpersonal and tour-guiding skills. There he showed me all the bad decisions, the thoughts and beliefs that led straight to Personal Humiliation, reacquainted me with My Stupidity… and just when I couldn’t take it anymore, he made a triangular gesture with his left leg, and the scene shifted to the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life so far.
It was the Million Possible Good Things That Could Happen To You If You Were Only Using Your Head, the guide said. As the name suggested, those good things could happen to me if only I would use my head for a change.
“I will,” I said eagerly. “I will use my head from now on.”
He laughed like it was the funniest joke he had ever heard in all his _3 years of existence. “Sure, you will,” he said, before disappearing completely.
I found myself then in the middle of the Woodland Territories plaza, in front of a rolling store selling Pinefrosted Danglebars. I didn’t know for how long I had been out, but I found the wrapper still in my hand. My friend Chuck Woodchuck wasn’t with me anymore, but if I’d only looked, I would’ve seen that he was not more than ten meters from me, having fun with two high school girls.
Presently, the vendor called my attention with the most amiable “Hey,” one could possibly utter “Hey”. He looked perfectly at peace with himself and his personal issues. Life and the world seemed to be the least of his worries. In fact, if there was anything at all that was worrying him, it was simplified by an itch that caused him to rub the index and middle fingers of his hand against his thumb.
I realized I still hadn’t paid.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “How much is a Pinefrosted Danglebar again?”
The Creature
Nobody expected the creature to take on the appearance that it had. For one, its forehead was aligned with fourteen horn-like protrusions that moved and jittered about, especially on times of agitation. For another, its skin was undeniably purple.
“And look at its teeth,” suggested Jerry, one of its creators. “If those don’t remind you of an array of tennis rackets in the middle of a football field, you need to have your head checked up.”
“That’s right,” said Henry A—, yet another one of the creature’s makers. “And its braided, long, gelatinous hair looks as though it grew from a paper recycling plant.”
“Oh, shut up, the two of you,” ordered Maritess, another collaborator in the project, one who had authority over the previous two enough to order them around. “Don’t you see that his squiggly tendrils need a direct application of mushroom spray? And how’s about checking his nether regions for an abnormal accumulation of chickweeds while you’re at it? With all this soap, I kinda get the feeling that no one can be sure.”
The two young scientists had no choice but to do as Maritess had ordered. “Ah well,” they said, “at least we’ll be close enough to witness the palpitation of its gestationary organs—and yet still far enough not to inhale its abrasive vapors.”
“That’s right,” suddenly interrupted Dr. Pete, caretaker of the laboratory. “You know, a certain Dr. Bob once made the hypothesis that there is a far more literal interbodily relationship between that creature’s reproductive and excretory functions than the textbooks suggest. Of course, everybody in the Discipline thought it was irresponsible of him to have press released something like that, and that’s why he got demoted to being a lab assistant for the next twenty-four years of his career.”
“That’s so sad,” said the two young scientists, “considering that his hypothesis is not at all far from the truth. Thanks to the Foo-yei Series, we now have the creature’s interbodily functions reduced to a string of mathematical equations.”
“That is true,” remarked Dr. Pete. “Unfortunately, his morphological developments are still as unpredictable and as subject to checker board scrutiny as the words formed inside your stomach when you eat a bowl of alphabet soup on a rainy morning.”
“That may not be as scientific an observation as you may think, Dr. Pete,” mused aloud Maritess. “For one, the latest tests confirm an optimistic Comparability Factor of his exoskeletal development to the sinusoidal curve of a Chinese mooncake when simulated in Hal.”
Dr. Pete raised a dubious, snobbish eyebrow at this. “Is that so?”
Maritess nodded. “Not only that. Don’t you know that the integral of the perimeter of his vertebrae, regardless of the number, from the first to the last, is equal to that of the consistency of the Pulp of Yagii¹?”
“This creature is not something to be feared so much then?” Dr. Pete asked, looking at the creature behind his plastic framed glasses now with reconsidered understanding and renewed reverence.
“Not at all, Doctor,” said Maritess, as she stood beside him. She looked at him looking at the creature, and at that moment she felt a deep longing to cry. She didn’t, though, and instead took the doctor’s hand in hers and pointed at the creature’s ears.
“Look, Dr. Pete, at that pair of ears,” she said. “If that isn’t the perfect embodiment of the Gauss-Jordan-Freudian Map, every single person in this perishing world of ours needs to have his or her head examined.”
____________________
¹ A discovery made by one of Maritess’s preschool students, but had been bragged by and claimed as Maritess’s own for 2.52 years already, that people started attributing it to her.
“And look at its teeth,” suggested Jerry, one of its creators. “If those don’t remind you of an array of tennis rackets in the middle of a football field, you need to have your head checked up.”
“That’s right,” said Henry A—, yet another one of the creature’s makers. “And its braided, long, gelatinous hair looks as though it grew from a paper recycling plant.”
“Oh, shut up, the two of you,” ordered Maritess, another collaborator in the project, one who had authority over the previous two enough to order them around. “Don’t you see that his squiggly tendrils need a direct application of mushroom spray? And how’s about checking his nether regions for an abnormal accumulation of chickweeds while you’re at it? With all this soap, I kinda get the feeling that no one can be sure.”
The two young scientists had no choice but to do as Maritess had ordered. “Ah well,” they said, “at least we’ll be close enough to witness the palpitation of its gestationary organs—and yet still far enough not to inhale its abrasive vapors.”
“That’s right,” suddenly interrupted Dr. Pete, caretaker of the laboratory. “You know, a certain Dr. Bob once made the hypothesis that there is a far more literal interbodily relationship between that creature’s reproductive and excretory functions than the textbooks suggest. Of course, everybody in the Discipline thought it was irresponsible of him to have press released something like that, and that’s why he got demoted to being a lab assistant for the next twenty-four years of his career.”
“That’s so sad,” said the two young scientists, “considering that his hypothesis is not at all far from the truth. Thanks to the Foo-yei Series, we now have the creature’s interbodily functions reduced to a string of mathematical equations.”
“That is true,” remarked Dr. Pete. “Unfortunately, his morphological developments are still as unpredictable and as subject to checker board scrutiny as the words formed inside your stomach when you eat a bowl of alphabet soup on a rainy morning.”
“That may not be as scientific an observation as you may think, Dr. Pete,” mused aloud Maritess. “For one, the latest tests confirm an optimistic Comparability Factor of his exoskeletal development to the sinusoidal curve of a Chinese mooncake when simulated in Hal.”
Dr. Pete raised a dubious, snobbish eyebrow at this. “Is that so?”
Maritess nodded. “Not only that. Don’t you know that the integral of the perimeter of his vertebrae, regardless of the number, from the first to the last, is equal to that of the consistency of the Pulp of Yagii¹?”
“This creature is not something to be feared so much then?” Dr. Pete asked, looking at the creature behind his plastic framed glasses now with reconsidered understanding and renewed reverence.
“Not at all, Doctor,” said Maritess, as she stood beside him. She looked at him looking at the creature, and at that moment she felt a deep longing to cry. She didn’t, though, and instead took the doctor’s hand in hers and pointed at the creature’s ears.
“Look, Dr. Pete, at that pair of ears,” she said. “If that isn’t the perfect embodiment of the Gauss-Jordan-Freudian Map, every single person in this perishing world of ours needs to have his or her head examined.”
____________________
¹ A discovery made by one of Maritess’s preschool students, but had been bragged by and claimed as Maritess’s own for 2.52 years already, that people started attributing it to her.
Wednesday, January 1, 2003
A Flying Mellotron and A Dead Seafood Monkey
An afternoon of listening to the Seafood Monekys brought me back to my senses, and thus started my capitalizing every first letter of the first word of my sentences.
It made perfect sense, if you think hard about it. Aside from that, it was but proper. For example, can you imagine people selling bottles of bottled water not encased in a bottle?
So in order to show them my appreciation, I chose a perfectly, numerologically lucky day and visited the greatest band in Prison-Lounge music history, where else, but in prison.
As it happened, it was the day of a Big Riot. As should be made clear, a Big Riot takes place at a regular basis on the Philippine University and Penology, on which the Seafood Monkeys are based. I wasn’t even into the second level of security inspection when I saw a mellotron literally flying out of a fifth-storey window.
The Seafood Monkeys, it occurred to me at once, for though it could not be denied that the Seafood Monkeys weren’t the only prison band in existence, only the Seafood Monkeys were influential enough to be able to afford such a rare piece of musical equipment.
I watched the mellotron 0.7 seconds afterwards plummet to the ground and crash about 0.5 feet away from a civillian, probably another visitor like myself. The civillian looked up from where the musical instrument had probably fallen from, and from up the same fifth-storey window where I saw the mellotron fly, I saw in person, *******, the Seafood Monkeys’s keyboardist himself, smiling.
At that same, exact moment, something suddenly protruded out of *******’s forehead, something not very much unlike an improvised arrow entering his head from behind. And an improvised arrow it indeed was, for barely a second afterwards, ******* started falling down to the ground himself, after his beloved mellotron.
As I wasn’t particularly used to watching people get shot on the head with improvised arrows, and much more, seeing them fall, dead or otherwise, off fifth-storey windows, I was shocked by this, and expressed it with a monosyllabic, “Oh.”
The jail officer inspecting my things didn’t fail to hear this, and he laughed as he informed me that it was nothing to be alarmed about, Big Riots took place in his prison at a regular basis. Prior to this, I must mention here, I wasn’t aware of this known fact about the prison.
“Is that so?” I said, a bit relieved.
“Yes.”
I was then made to wait for a couple of hours for the Big Riot to settle down a bit before I was finally allowed to meet my favorite band. But as I sat on the grimy wooden chair the prison officers provided, sipping on my plastic cup of Buko Joe’s Really Fresh Buko Juice, I knew that even if I met the Seafood Monkeys that day, it wouldn’t be the same. Already, I knew that they had lost a keyboardist. They had lost *******.
So I went home and wrote this instead.
It made perfect sense, if you think hard about it. Aside from that, it was but proper. For example, can you imagine people selling bottles of bottled water not encased in a bottle?
So in order to show them my appreciation, I chose a perfectly, numerologically lucky day and visited the greatest band in Prison-Lounge music history, where else, but in prison.
As it happened, it was the day of a Big Riot. As should be made clear, a Big Riot takes place at a regular basis on the Philippine University and Penology, on which the Seafood Monkeys are based. I wasn’t even into the second level of security inspection when I saw a mellotron literally flying out of a fifth-storey window.
The Seafood Monkeys, it occurred to me at once, for though it could not be denied that the Seafood Monkeys weren’t the only prison band in existence, only the Seafood Monkeys were influential enough to be able to afford such a rare piece of musical equipment.
I watched the mellotron 0.7 seconds afterwards plummet to the ground and crash about 0.5 feet away from a civillian, probably another visitor like myself. The civillian looked up from where the musical instrument had probably fallen from, and from up the same fifth-storey window where I saw the mellotron fly, I saw in person, *******, the Seafood Monkeys’s keyboardist himself, smiling.
At that same, exact moment, something suddenly protruded out of *******’s forehead, something not very much unlike an improvised arrow entering his head from behind. And an improvised arrow it indeed was, for barely a second afterwards, ******* started falling down to the ground himself, after his beloved mellotron.
As I wasn’t particularly used to watching people get shot on the head with improvised arrows, and much more, seeing them fall, dead or otherwise, off fifth-storey windows, I was shocked by this, and expressed it with a monosyllabic, “Oh.”
The jail officer inspecting my things didn’t fail to hear this, and he laughed as he informed me that it was nothing to be alarmed about, Big Riots took place in his prison at a regular basis. Prior to this, I must mention here, I wasn’t aware of this known fact about the prison.
“Is that so?” I said, a bit relieved.
“Yes.”
I was then made to wait for a couple of hours for the Big Riot to settle down a bit before I was finally allowed to meet my favorite band. But as I sat on the grimy wooden chair the prison officers provided, sipping on my plastic cup of Buko Joe’s Really Fresh Buko Juice, I knew that even if I met the Seafood Monkeys that day, it wouldn’t be the same. Already, I knew that they had lost a keyboardist. They had lost *******.
So I went home and wrote this instead.
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