Thursday, January 04, 2007
SANCTUARY
Our house has a tower.
My mother refers to it as the roof deck.
It's about a 15 foot high extension of the second floor stairwell accessible through spiraling stairs, roughly 10 by 10 feet in area, open to the elements, and it gives a commanding view of the compound. It's a tower.
Climbed up the tower on the last hour of 2006 and stepped out into a world that was getting smokier, noisier by the minute. Metro Manila was a warzone of bangs. Bursts. Flashes. Flares. Whistles. Booms. The air already smelled of gunpowder. Searchlights from posh parties made their final attempts to knife through the clouds. Car alarms wailed endlessly in protest of the hundreds of little explosive shockwaves around them. To the southwest, the Makati skyline was on its way to vanishing behind firecracker mists. From time to time, mangled corpses of rockets would fall on the nearby roofs with one final sad clunk.
I looked down at the concrete flooring and saw I was casting a shadow.
Moonlight.
I looked up.
And there it was.
The gibbous moon.
Bright. Silver. Oblibvious to the rockets that vainly attempted to soar up to it.
It was the eye of the storm.
At that moment, as I stood alone on the tower, bathed in moonlight, a crisp breeze blew from the north. And I felt happy.
Going through the past few weeks choked by the desperate holiday rush had exhausted me. Much in the same way, going through 2006 had frayed my nerves at times and turned some strands of my hair white (though, as I'd say, that was mostly caused by being pounded repeatedly by my wicked dentist's fucking mallet). The year hadn't been horrible. True, there had been great highlights. Life's milestones. But it hadn't been a walk in the park either. '06 was a double edged sword.
For the first time, I had faced problems I never dreamed I'd encounter. I never even knew some of them actually existed. And of course the eternally hungry beast that is the industry that I love had to be fed with generous helpings of my blood, spit and sweat.
I'm glad that in spite of all these, I've had my quiet moments in the moonlight in the past 12 months.
It came in the form of little late night dinners with Kitty. Or spending cigarette breaks with friends. Or contributing to the growing collection of empty beer bottles on the table with those I think of as brothers.
The calm amidst the storm.
There weren't as much of those moments as I'd like. Still, they've been enough to get me through the year. And I hope I'd get more for the next. I hope everyone does.
I glanced up at the moon for one more time. Grateful for the moment before I had to head down the spiral staircase to join the crowd below waiting for the first meal of 2007.
My mother refers to it as the roof deck.
It's about a 15 foot high extension of the second floor stairwell accessible through spiraling stairs, roughly 10 by 10 feet in area, open to the elements, and it gives a commanding view of the compound. It's a tower.
Climbed up the tower on the last hour of 2006 and stepped out into a world that was getting smokier, noisier by the minute. Metro Manila was a warzone of bangs. Bursts. Flashes. Flares. Whistles. Booms. The air already smelled of gunpowder. Searchlights from posh parties made their final attempts to knife through the clouds. Car alarms wailed endlessly in protest of the hundreds of little explosive shockwaves around them. To the southwest, the Makati skyline was on its way to vanishing behind firecracker mists. From time to time, mangled corpses of rockets would fall on the nearby roofs with one final sad clunk.
I looked down at the concrete flooring and saw I was casting a shadow.
Moonlight.
I looked up.
And there it was.
The gibbous moon.
Bright. Silver. Oblibvious to the rockets that vainly attempted to soar up to it.
It was the eye of the storm.
At that moment, as I stood alone on the tower, bathed in moonlight, a crisp breeze blew from the north. And I felt happy.
Going through the past few weeks choked by the desperate holiday rush had exhausted me. Much in the same way, going through 2006 had frayed my nerves at times and turned some strands of my hair white (though, as I'd say, that was mostly caused by being pounded repeatedly by my wicked dentist's fucking mallet). The year hadn't been horrible. True, there had been great highlights. Life's milestones. But it hadn't been a walk in the park either. '06 was a double edged sword.
For the first time, I had faced problems I never dreamed I'd encounter. I never even knew some of them actually existed. And of course the eternally hungry beast that is the industry that I love had to be fed with generous helpings of my blood, spit and sweat.
I'm glad that in spite of all these, I've had my quiet moments in the moonlight in the past 12 months.
It came in the form of little late night dinners with Kitty. Or spending cigarette breaks with friends. Or contributing to the growing collection of empty beer bottles on the table with those I think of as brothers.
The calm amidst the storm.
There weren't as much of those moments as I'd like. Still, they've been enough to get me through the year. And I hope I'd get more for the next. I hope everyone does.
I glanced up at the moon for one more time. Grateful for the moment before I had to head down the spiral staircase to join the crowd below waiting for the first meal of 2007.
