travelling tantrums

I had always been wondering why travelling has always been tiring to me when I only have to sit and wait. Considerably, every vehicle ride is the same. Hail, ride, pay the fare, ‘para’, alight where you desire to after calling out to stop, is the jeepney protocol. It would always be that way whether I ride a jeepney in Batanes or in Jolo. The only indicator that this ride has a different destination from the other would be what lies beyond the wide window.

The bus seemed wriggling. I don’t mind. All I want is to go home. For a while I pass through scenes which I have often seen without actually seeing, with much thought on some than others. I always lose track of time, motion speed deemed irrelevant to being where I should be. The locations I pass through as long as the trip lasts form the film I’ve been intently watching from the viewing space available. There are similar structures in different figures and varying frequencies: offices, gas stations, apartments, condominiums, salons, stores, houses, drugstores, malls, terminals. They are monuments with personality, captivating me and automatically etching a map on the memory by its chronological combinations with each encounter.

Gothic buildings with wide and paved perimeters, tree encrusted repainted offices, elaborate lamp posts interspersed with advertisement billboards and high rise buildings. Dilapidating ancestral houses side by side half-way finished construction sites. Century old university compounds sandwiched between imposing condominiums. Stacked up tin roof, plywood and used tire shanties opposite multi-national firms and companies’ headquarters. Gradually, more residential areas, subdivisions side by side foreboding factories. All these structures a zigzag against its portion of the early blue skies. Soon, structure height dimensions become consistent, from continuously neck straining to succeeding eye-level ones, their stature variances resembling an electrocardiogram.

The claustrophobic clumps diverge into adequate spaces until there is nothing but fields as far as the eye can see, touching the horizons and the palette of green in exhibition formations. The terrain significantly less punctuated by deep crevices, rocky riverside slits and stream clearings than the previous’ billboard commercials. The trip seems a yoga stance wherein stress is collected and concentrated first, accumulated slowly to a sudden exhale whoosh of release. The scenery rolls on the reverse, more subtle than the first with more uniform structure elevation, land area getting smaller and buildings becoming taller. The height of the buildings during the entire travel compared form an unequal u-curve.

Eventually, the waters limit the land. The ferry presented me with the unimpeded vista of the horizon the green background has not satisfied, the distinguishing line instead between blue and blue, with bulging masses of green islands every now and then. It’s so easy to get lost in the sea, an expanse of water shaking hands with the shore by its lapping and ebbing waves. Shifting, wafting in the steady roll of unpredictable waters I have trust now that it will carry me where my heart has already wandered.

Whatever open space there is to the world is my viewing space, my watching screen. Stars are now attracting me, the cold provincial night breeze gone active with the rush of the tricycle to the home I’ve grown in.

This place has nothing to boast of as a tourist destination but as our mayor points out, the amiability of its people would make it a renowned city.

More than location markers, voyage scenes are testaments of people and living. I have a crazy personal impression that if I have explored the Philippines, I have already scoured the world with its diversity. It appeals to me as a microcosm of the earth, tiny pieces of the large picture comprising a mosaic tile. The country I live in is a miniature world! But sadly it is neglected what with less appreciation for those within reach, with what is always accessible, in comparison to what we do not have though in our nation, we generally opt taking the easiest course. This streak is the inconsistency. This is the country of these times famous personalities Manny Pacquiao, Charice and Arnel Pineda, more esteemed by other nationalities than heralded by their countrymen. This is a place where people are bred to be imprinted upon by another culture, its citizens taught to be flexible and to embrace whatever culture a foreign land, particularly of his/her employment, has. The Philippines has a lot to learn, for diversity not to divide but provide reasons for being a complementary part of a whole, a country of cooperative competition.  This is a country of ironies where the macabre surroundings foster people who could laugh amidst everything crashing down. My country is a country conducive to thinking, learning, revealing and understanding our humanity. I will not exchange it for any other.