Sunday, March 23, 2008 Estremera: In search of solitude By Stella A. Estremera Spider's web
IT'S summer, and all places are packed. It can grate the soul, especially with noise-loving youths getting into every nook and cranny with their shouts of "yo's", emo beats and shrieks and groans. Is it generation gap? Maybe...
Or it can just be a longing for a quiet place, which is becoming scarcer these days.
It seems like with everything that's happening around us, everyone just jacks up voices, radios, even MP3s at very high volume. Everyone is craving for his or her own space, and so they drown themselves in their chosen sounds.
Woe to those who stand beside them and be drowned as well. I couldn't help but cringe when a young guy walks past with the "krrssshh-krrssssh-krrssssh" sound coming from the earphones plugged into his ears. I can't help but wonder. If I can hear it when it's supposed to be plugged into his ears, how loud could that be? And I pity him as well for the wasted pair of eardrums that he has to live with until he lives past his youth and crave for lower volumes. He will no longer have a choice by then, because everything has to be jacked up so he can hear them (if he still can). The vagaries of youth, indeed.
My usual hangout with buddy Kublai is just as infested (and yes, I mean infested) with large groups of youths chugging down Red Horse and speaking in what is now the trademark of the young -- loud voices. There's not much solitude there now.
Coming down from an overnight visit in Bukidnon right smack into the Araw ng Dabaw celebration, I could only wish I was still out there where the only noise you hear are cargo trucks groaning under their loads and the public address system of the fish car driving up and down the highway, enticing buyers. But that vacation was just that, a vacation, and I had to buckle down to work in order to earn another vacation.
Just as the Araw ng Dabaw revelry subsided, in came Holy Week vacationers taking over every space on the beach and trying to outdo each other in grabbing attention. Oh dear...
I'm just glad there's the underwater to hide in. For an hour and a half, there is just your breathing. There may be reminders of the life above, like the ubiquitous disposable diapers and occasional sanitary napkins, and plastic bags of all labels, wrapped around corals or debris, but not that much as fish and slugs and corals hog the scenery. Then you have to surface once more for an hour or so to remove a little of the nitrogen in your blood before basking again in another hour and a half of watery solitude.
As I sifted through the coral rubbles in search of critters in Kaputian in the Island Garden City of Samal last Good Friday I noticed a different sound. It was not the glub-glub-glub of my bubbles, nor the wheezing inhalation my regulator makes. Boom-boom-boom... it went. I slowed down my breathing, just emitting puffs of bubbles so that my exhalation will not get in the way of my trying to distinguish what that boom-boom-boom sound was.
Boom-boom-boom-borooromboom-boom... it went. It had rhythm, it had beat... it... it's the mob up there. Oh dear...
The city was quiet, the stores closed, but there's nothing there to even sit down on, it's not a place to lounge and reflect in. But not the beaches that in the days of yore epitomized peace and quiet. On Good Friday, they were all filled to the brims, as if the malls have been shipped over to the seaside, there's not a single space to sit down on, it's not a place to lounge and reflect in either. And so you just slink back to your home and turn on the television to watch re-runs and reflect on why you're running out of place to reflect in and why it's costing more to find solitude.
And so you recall the mob that has taken over Bora as beamed on the television news last Wednesday just before every free TV started showing reruns. You also remember last Wednesday's TV news showing a group of village folks singing the Pabasa with the videoke machine.
Where have all the old women wearing black veils on their head who take the lead and dictate the tone of the Pabasa gone, I wonder... maybe they've all gone to the Great Beyond to find the solitude Holy Week meant to them or maybe they just decided to stay home and watch TV reruns, as well, because there's nothing to sit on in the quiet downtown.
With nothing much to do, I texted my other buddy Paring Bert how his "reflection sessions" of sorts in this posh beach resort went for the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and he replied, "Gamay ra man ang tao, tua man sila tanan sa dagat."
And thus ended my Holy Week, and it's back to work... and Jun Lozada. Oh dear...
