Rommel F. Bonus
If you’re not young enough to forget Gulong ng Palad, a classic teleserye
in the television, you will not think literally of a tire on the top of
someone’s hand, but will actualize that life is full of circular patterns,
circular enough to imagine a neglected electric fan as it moves on a classroom,
or the sensation in your head during a lecture on Mathematics, you will notice
that looking in those formulas and equations on the board has no difference on
drinking a case of beer or not sleeping in three days. If you’re a food geek,
it is not a surprise that you’ve noticed the Oriental style of fiestas in our
towns, all the foods are lying there in the table waiting for you, and it’s up
to you if you want to eat first the panghimagas,
or the main dish, the appetizer, or eat all at the same time, or not eat at
all. But if you prefer to eat it all over again, I will thank you for helping
me to prove my argument; for it is cyclical. Unlike on western that is linear,
food must be served from time to time, people just wait.
“Ang pag-ibig natin ay
walang hanggang paalam” as Joey Ayala sings on his song Walang Hanggang Paalam. If you’re
cyclical, then forever is for you. A
lifetime is not enough to love and be loved, and for the one who loves more
than what it supposed to be – a lifetime is just an hour. And if you’re desperate enough to push your forever philosophy,
than you might sing Forever’s Not Enough,
and look for the proof that there is something out there that can possibly be longer
than forever.
Reality is cyclical in nature. The analogous characteristic
of the colors, from red to violet, is because any color will always have its
relation with the other colors unless some weirdo is weird enough to discover a
so-much weird color that hasn’t. Music
is like that too. Sing the diatonic scale, or in the more popular term the
do-re-mi, from do re me fa sol la ti,
and you will always start and end with do.
Again, it is unless an alien would bring us an alien note that is peculiar
enough to defy the do-re-mi thing.
Cyclic can also be manifested in a form of a curse. Paulit-ulit nang sinasaktan, nagpapakatanga
pa rin, martyr nievera ang peg. Paulit-ulit
nang iniiwasan ka, ‘di na natuto. People who are like a planet that
revolves around the sun, they have no destination. Or those who don’t grow,
always contented in their level, napaglaruan
ng tikbalang; they are those who can’t escape in their comfort zones. No
sense of history, believing that yesterdays are same as today and tomorrow. If
your everyday life revolves on a deterministic routine such as waking up in the
morning, attending the class, going home, eating dinner, sleep at night, and
wake up again in the next morning just to do the routine, then you have the
tendency to possess a cyclical curse. Napaglaruan
ng tikbalang. When will we ever
learn from the past? We are fool enough to always elect the same kind of
politician, giving him all the powers without knowing that the true power must
come from the people. In this matter, the tikbalang
is us. Heneral Luna was right, our greatest enemy is ourselves. Our history, as
an anti-modernist philosopher once said, is not a linear path to progress but a
cyclical process of development and decline.
Such is such, a cyclical curse that we cast ourselves, and
if and only if the reincarnation is true, then I would rather choose not to
reincarnate at all.
Life is full of
circular patterns.
Hindu’s mandalas
that are quite look-like a spider web is their symbol of the universe, always
repeating, rebirth, the concept of karma, and the dharma not darna. Review
for students that will soon take the exam, is sometimes the process of re-dying
if there’s such term. Reduce, reuse, and recycle for the environmentalists.
While I am here sitting on the blue bench, I reminisce the nights
alone in my room thinking that someday I must die. We all know that. And
spending time with the people and things we love is just an opiate of our
mourning souls. Despite of all those opiates, we will go back to reality. We
must die sometime. But if you write enough to be called a writer, a singer that
will forever be heard, you’re a music that always echoes, or a tiny pebble that
falls on a tranquil waters creating successive waves; then you will always
experience rebirth. We are only travelers in a wilderness called life, there were
people who already crossed, and there are people that are destined to travel
soon as we pass by. We must remember that we should always leave marks. And believe
me or not, you’re on the first step towards immortality.
*Photos by Rommel F. Bonus (1st, 3rd pics from Bulacan. 2nd pic from Binangonan)
