These words that youread aren’t really words.
In these last few years of quiet, words have become a bit more than what they are. They have become voices – those little whimpers you hear when the going gets too rough. These words, too, have become laughter, melodic and warm – a bit like hot cocoa on a very cold, rainy night.
Oh but most importantly,these words – These words that you’re reading have become echoes. Soft echoes
in time that have stayed and remained. As if in an empty wide cavern that used to be so full and busy, all that lingers now are the traces of what was once there. Of what was once been.
I remember a trek maybe about fifteen summers ago in the deep Sierra Madres of Cagayan. There was this place called Callao Caves which was partly a tourist spot, partly ruins. The entrance of the cave has been converted into a chapel, and is always filled with people, mostly Catholics. Further down the path though, where it is darker, steeper and most likely dangerous, is the part which is not open to public. I remember getting lost in this dangerous place.
I wasn’t scared, and no I wasn’t exactly rearing to go back to the chapel which had somehow stifled my naturally-adventurous spirit. Instead, I plunged head-on, not knowing where each step would take me. After the initial up and down bumpy walk, I remember coming into an open space, which is lit by natural sunlight from a large hole five meters above me. The ray of light cast glittering dust directly to where I was standing. Suddenly, my surroundings became more quiet but instinctively alive. I could hear the drop of water from a stalactite 3 meters away! And the
leaves, yes the rustling of leaves from way beyond the hole above was very soothing to my ears. The very air around me seemed to have energy from within it. It was one of those split second moments than can evoke emotions to write
poetry or to make a painting.
I literally envision my life with the Bogases to the old feeling I had in that cave.
My life with the Bogas people was life full of contradiction. I’ve said this once, and I’ll say it again – it was a short time of driving free, the times when we counted destruction with thorns. We felt life, in fullness and in freedom, one part of life filled with madness and joy.
After everyone has left, I didn’t feel as much fire in friendship any more. I was not interested in having tight knots with people because in my heart of hearts, what was the point when everyone’s leaving one way or another. Of course I was wrong then. Life moves on inevitably and those that desperately cling to their past almost always drown in the miserable truth that the past is exclusively history. And so as I counted the months that led to years, and then to a decade, I was absentmindedly also trying to move on from life I had with the Bogases. My friend Mabelle will shake her head when she reads these lines I’m writing now – she will of course say, “We’re still here, alive and kicking” as the cliché goes. “Nobody changed, you know”. And for sure, I’d say, “Things change, people change, that’s the stark truth, who are we to dispute reality?” But us being us, we’d also most likely let our thoughts hang without necessarily agreeing with each other. And that’s the beauty of what we have now. I guess we’ve just learned to accept all that has happened without questions. Things were more difficult to understand in the early days. And one of the people who most likely felt it the hardest was Richard. If you’re wondering why it had to be him, don’t ask. Just look back. I’m sure you’ll get the answer you’re looking for. Just try to remember.
Remember.
This is so hard to do these days. Our get togethers have become rare and far in between, sometimes taking years before the next one. And when we do have it, I have always hoped to maybe talk about the old times, maybe laugh and reminisce about the old ways. But rarely does this happen. We do a little update here and there. And mostly it would be about people other than us. So these days, I end up knowing more things about the people we know, instead of each other. I don’t complain. Being together, albeit infrequently, is always better than nothing. Again, acceptance. Life goes on.
And so I write this 3rd book not in an attempt to talk about our past. As fiery, feral and colourful our past lives may have been, that is now almost exclusively history. Almost. In this fast and busy world we’ve embraced, echoes of the past are heard during quiet nights. But echoes are not stories – just memories. So what I intend to write is what happened after. What happened after Los Banos? What happened when people began leaving? And what happened to the people in this next life chapter of the Bogas people?
Read on.
