Wild Boar's Tooth (Part 2)

I guess that is really how everything starts. Simple. 

Even the universe started with the simple causality of the center no longer being able to hold. The result? An explosion that fathered all the complexities we all know about life. 

I do not see why it should not be the same with love. It starts with facts, with something empirical. I see how water is being poured on to the rice pan and the sound it creates, then the warm glow of cinder causing the steam to rise from the pan. I, being the perceiver, complicates it to a degree that I could no longer grasp, then the aroma is the only thing that I can keep as the memory of this moment fades over time.

Or maybe, this is what I am doing now. I multiply the incomprehensible and elevate it to something poetic. There really was nothing romantic about my uncle's making coffee, then. It is just that now, I remember it distinctly to be a moment of joy.

But why?

That was just among the many things that happened in this litte village.

In the afternoon, just before taking the dreaded nap, I would usually sit at the balcony where I could see the river to the south and the other four houses to the north. It would always be a lazy afternoon. Almost everyone was out to the farm, either to till the land or to tend to the corns or maybe to harvest the crops. I would be alone with my grandmother or a cousin or two who had yet to have their afternoon naps.

The sun would have gone just past the sky's highest point, and I was still savoring what I just had for lunch. That would be either another vegetable or dried fish or something that grandpa brought from bukid (farm). It was not really difficult to take naps, but it was something that would not happen without my grandma telling me the importance of taking at least 2 hours of nap every afternoon. I did not understand why I would waste such time when there was so much fun to do outside. Besides, a few hours after the nap, I would be asleep again.

I still agree with my younger self up to now. When we die, we would be spending eternity as dead to the world as I was during those two-hour afternoon naps. But like I said, napping was not difficult if all you hear are the birds chirping, the rustling of leaves of the nearby trees. Sometimes, even, I think I could hear the river from the deep valley. As I closed my eyes, I would hear the distant conversations of some farmers passing by, or my Aunt Juanita yelling at her chickens, and the radio playing "Victims of Love", as it signaled the start of a drama program entitled, "Handumanan sa Usa ka Awit". In some cases, the DJ would play, "Love is Blind", and then she would start reading the love story of an avid listener. "Good afternoon to you, DJ and to your followers. It all started when..." She fell in love and got heartbroken.

Though I would have my afternoons unnecessarily shortened, I would be woken to the the delicious aroma of my grandmother's afternoon snack- grilled or steamed banana, bibingka, or lugaw. My cousins, Ramil, Gaga, Ludy, Dedet, Daylin and Rey would share the food with me if they had not invited me first to whatever food my aunts had prepared for them.

It was Christmas time, only it was something that would happen every day in Lower.

(To be continued)