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Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Obenieta: Let me try again
By Myke U. Obenieta
Sound of Mosaic
Unless he’s a freak, no prince could possibly dream of becoming a frog one more time. Neither would a billionaire wish to be pauper.
Indeed, it’s a challenge both timely and warped— to change. Call it a loose coin inside almost everyone’s pocket. But despite the disappointments that have been stored up in the past up to the present, who doesn’t buy the idea of an ideal self, if not an ultimate life, ahead?
Though resolutions often end up no better than a shipwreck on the shore of one’s expectations, that won’t stop us from crossing our fingers once again for some agreeable, albeit, earth-shaking transformations.
For the sake of the city, for instance, the mayor’s target is to shift the tectonic plates from under the feet of those who’ve been stomping on peace and order. Now reportedly shaping up for the forthcoming Year of the Rooster— so that there will be no more feathers on the felons’ caps—— is the “hunter team” composed of sharp-shooting cops. A new lease on life? Too bad for the reform-proof robbers who would likely be swept away down the drain of their own blood.
Personally, I resolve—so help me God— not to die due to high blood pressure if things wouldn’t change for the better in 2005. In the folds of my new wallet (my wife’s Christmas gift) are two prayer leaflets enough to tweak any pickpocket in the nose with a twinge of guilt.
Knock on wood, and that might partly explain why I bought a new rosary made of, well, wood. Never mind if it remains to be seen whether I can keep abreast with the mysteries of faith through the daily lapses of doubt or despair, even as newspapers offer no yearend resolutions to make the front page free from disasters both man-made and natural in the days to come.
Recently, a powerful earthquake— the largest in the world in 40 years, according to geologists— triggered tidal waves that slammed coastlines across Asia and killed thousands. If that sort will occur inside us— something like a heartquake— imagine what would be washed away. What little deaths must we go through to experience a rebirth, to live again with more feelings and a tad wiser this time?
Just like you, dear reader, I wish the fireworks and polka dots of our desire for a better year won’t fizzle into a ho-hum affair. Or, we’d be wallowing in the doldrums as usual, and drown uncertain after setting out to make waves for a personal sea change.
Then again, doesn’t uncertainty offer just another opportunity to test the waters of possibilities? To try, yes, time and again.
In one of her poems about renewal, the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva waxes paradoxical: “The same water— a different wave./What matters is that it is a wave./ What matters is that the wave will return./ What matters is that it will always return different./ What matters most of all: however different the returning wave, it will always return as a wave of the sea…”
(e-mail: yomyko@yahoo.com)
(December 28, 2004 issue)
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