Parkour Singapore

14 Shots and a Little Story 

Kid, when will you ever learn? I thought I had told you enough, a hundred times over. But if you had to learn the hard way, this way, then so be it. Just calculated risk, my kid. I don't want you going home with a bruised arm, a dislocated joint, a fractured jaw, a bump on the head, or a missing tooth. It's the least I want seeing from you. You don't have to endure all that jumping, flipping, kung fu, or whatever, or that gymnastics. Or that running on clean walls, like a lizard or Spiderman. Leave it to them superheroes. 

(Deep thinking) 

Hmmm, I heard your mentor, or the two of them, the other day. They made an awesome lot of sense, though. Talking to another student, they said bits of something like a necessary mantra to absorb before going out to battle: When in doubt, tame your fear first. If you are high on surefire Jet Li, fly to upper ground or drop 15 feet, gently, as if you are gliding through the air. I buy it, kid. Sure applies to life, though the latter part was a bit silly. You know the guy, right? 

(Quiet moment) 

So, go on, and please don't hurt yourself, again. Here is your second betadine. 

(Fast action)

Images: Clarke Quay, Singapore

Nostalgia: Matalom, Leyte

It would have been the classic tragedy of all tragedies, had I stayed and been staked firmly into your ground, and killed a dream, forever. I would have been more quiet and still than the already quiet town that it was. I would not have seen, heard, and known what I should have and what I should have not. The parting, truly, just made all the difference. 

Had I not bitterly bidden you farewell, the towers I would have only known then were the guava-rich rolling hills, home to fighting spiders of all colors, cocooning inside the deadest and driest of all leaves; the melancholic, yet itchy bamboos, swaying and rustling against the breaths of distant mountains; the three-meter pole to which I would hold my chin up high, with squinted, sleepy eyes, during endless 8 a.m. flag ceremonies, singing the national anthem and reciting the pledge of allegiance; the lofty coconut trees, the trees of life, rising from our backyard with harvest-ready tomatoes and bell peppers rooted to garden beds gorging on carabao dung, and living on Canigao island, white and lonely and the purest of all virgins imaginable, shy and meek; the wooden power posts, greened by algae, pestered by accidental mushrooms, and nested by jet-black crows in holed heads; the two-storey, corrupt municipal hall dressed in cracked paint, leaving texts unintelligible, useless; and the centuries-old Saint Joseph church that stood high through the sweat and blood and tears of those who labored hard under the tropical sun disguised as Spanish crown. 

But the things I knew, I have grown up and smiled and laughed with them sealed in between my throbbing temples since the time of our bitter parting, welcoming wherever the world takes me. I have always reminisced our memories, good and bad, immortalized in shameless, old-school diaries kept inside shoe boxes, shunted from dust. Those were sweet and tangy-smelling every time I recall my youth and playground at every possible square soil. I crave for it like the juiciest fruit known to man, and I sincerely apologize to you at the same time. There is a must in all things. And I must do what I had to, explaining and hoping you would understand. 

I called out your name one morning of my last young summer, but you didn't hear me. I saw you with a curious companion riding habal-habal (motorcycle-for-hire), as if on a chase -- swift, unmoved, indifferent. And clouds of dust rose above the choked up slender greens lining the roadsides, and my poor, sore, allergic nose, growing red and terribly sneezing. 

Still, if you asked me the same question on that fateful day today, I would answer the same and sail the same rough seas convoluted with uncertainties and heartbreaks -- even if it meant leaving you in the cold, again, you feeling betrayed, and me coming back after six full years. 

I bade you farewell, my Matalom, the second time, in the hope that you would be happy for me and wishing me well on this journey, even farther and longer and sleepless and uncertain and brokenhearted.

Images: 

Caridad Norte

Elevado

Hitoog Cave

Mahayahay Falls

Canigao Island

Chasing Sheep

It is past midnight again, where a heightened sense of wakefulness gets repetitive and unwittingly long. At this very hour, I am sure of but one thing, that restlessness will be stretched out all throughout the olden night. It invariably happens to me whenever I oblige myself to finish reading a chapter or two of a good book -- a great escape from the day-to-day 8-hour cycle of labor -- until I lose the elusive sleep. Now I regret shrugging it off, for I have to impatiently await its revisit in the wee hours of dawn. 

The electric brain waves have not ebbed just yet, and the least I want is to have to open my eyes at such an ironic, unforgiving, inopportune time. 

The wind blows a slow chill at 16 degrees toward my conspicuous naked feet, which manage to crawl out of my thin blanket. The white lights from outside knife through the curtains, not helping in concealing everything, lifeless and breathing, in this room. Blackholes, after all, do not exist on earth. Even in a woman's jet-black locks, one may find a stray brown strand of hair, an outlier that triggers an itch. Pardon me of the utter nonsense. Why can't it all be painted black at night? 

I look up the headboard, following a wealth of visible spectrum past through the window. There goes the culprit. I wince at it. Is this the threshold of sleep deprivation? Or a wry humor? 

I can feel the quiet fanning of the AC, fixed up high at the side of the dull whitewashed wall devoid of anything artsy, hung or posted. Its soft mumbling turns into a lapping of the soles of my feet, rousing a gentle tickle not enough for them to retract, nor for me to curl up. I can endure it for hours, like a log, so long as hypothermia remains at bay. I love it, and it might lull me to dreamland, just maybe. 

But still, it does not help, and I cannot invoke sleep. Now it has become a luxury. Remorse is everywhere, when I should have seized it while it was on a high courting me to rest. The more I resist it, the more its spirit dwindles. I realize it is a sulking fellow, too, which will leave you alone furtively. Now I am running after its tail, and it is, perhaps, around the bush, stubbornly hiding. 

I finally reach for my phone at my bedside, switch it on, in hopes that writing about the luckless circumstance at this very hour will tire and let me fall asleep.

Image: Woodlands Waterfront Park, Singapore

Over a Bowl of Thai Beef Noodle Soup

Block 183, Toa Payoh Central, Singapore. An old man, with silver mustache and beard trimmed to an inch long, spilled out his beads of wisdom at the hawker centre. It was him and his audience of only three, and then there was me seated at the far corner of an eight-person, elongated table, across, one seat apart from a young man, overhearing their discourse. They were done with dinner. Their mess all cleaned up save the man's cup of coffee, half-full. Black coffee it must have been, spelling a whole lot of luck to a much-needed goodnight sleep for the aged.

I had just started with mine, a Thai beef noodle soup from a newly-opened stall. This one's better than its Vietnamese brother at Block 177, I confess.

It was half past eight. Really, I was starving and could concentrate less on anything, except for food, of course. But I had my ears pricked up, anyhow.

And now the host was on a roll.

Old man: I started smoking at a very young age. It was in my secondary years. I am cleaner now, hopefully. Finally, I bid goodbye to smoking.

Young man: Did somebody tell you to stop smoking?

Old man: No one did. It was my body who did it. It almost gave up on me. And, oh, dear God, the Holy Spirit struck me in the head!

Young man's mother picked her excited hands, clapping several times. But hands barely touched each other. Such discreet hands.

Old man: No cigarettes for 10 years now.

Young man: Wow! After 50 long years! What an achievement!

Wife, sitting beside the old man, kept on smiling with beaming eyes.

Then I started with my mental calculations, wishing I had the sharpest of concentrations.

Woman

It pierces its way through the fine gap between the flesh-coloured curtains spread out from the high ceiling down to the tiled floor of a wholly bleached room. The visible ray of the spectrum, which finds the glass window as its true-blue accomplice at 6 in the morning, faint and dull, upsets the sleepyhead from her comfort. It taps me that it is a new day, and she is now mobile from a 6-hour paralysis, displacing herself slowly inch by inch on her mattress, creeping, as she stretched forth her hands to check on the clock at her bedside table. Fuzzy are its dials and numbers. She argues with the drag of getting up and succumbs to engaging in a 10-minute nap, setting the alarm this time, and buries her exasperated face in the lavender-scented pillow. 

I will wait until she wakes up again, while clearing my throat inaudible enough to be heard. My left temple rests on my fist. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, and the room doesn't get any less colder. 

She rises up, at last. As part of her morning routine, she stretches her extremities in repetitions until the cracking of joints satisfies her. Dishevelled, she combs her candle-like fingers through her hair and glues herself to the arched mirror and solicits a convincing grin for herself. It means she is all ready for the day, and she will be sporting that radiant aura all day, like what she does all the time. 

After washing her face with soap and lukewarm water, I follow her footsteps down the staircase. Barefooted, she grabs over the lacquered railing while yawning sheepishly, as though somebody has caught her red-handed. She laughs at herself. She must be very sleepy still, yet she treads as lightly as she can to the kitchen past the living room, the library, and the dining room. No one else is around as usual at this very hour. 

She plugs on the thermos just beside the bread toaster. She hurries herself to prepare breakfast sandwiches with bacon, egg, and cheese. Poor thing, lava-hot olive oil spills from the pan, compounding the beads of sweat forming on her forehead. A small drop of it burns her skin. It is nothing serious, though, as she continues on. 

Coffee, milk, and two sandwiches are now served. 

She climbs the stairs and realizes that she is without her slip-on slippers on, amusing herself twice today. 

She opens the door of the room right next to hers, which has always been unlocked. On his bed, she sits beside the 7-year-old boy who is reading his favourite children's book, a fable collection, for the fifth time. After flipping through the end of chapter three, he turns to her. Dejection wells up in his eyes, and she is accustomed to this cycle. Nothing has changed ever since that day. All that she can muster now is to hug him, one hand on his flushed, rosy cheek, the other on his skinny right shoulder. 

"Mom, I miss him. I wish dad were still here." These are the last words the young boy recites every time before they go down for breakfast.

Image: Johor, Malaysia

Fireflies

Take me to the place. Take me to the place where my body sweated off its childish yet full, bursting, relentless spirit, as I ran swiftly, slipperless over a dusty and uncemented track, and breathed off a steam of relief at the finish line. I claimed the first prize from our local captain, such a meagre amount, a pittance, but was fat lunch enough to feed my piggy bank. It was a most momentous day despite having to walk home with a limp thereafter, for I gloriously scraped my left knee and elbow at where the lowered, down-to-my-ankle, stiff line was. How could they? I don't remember their faces, but I can't forget what happened. Victory was ironic that it had to be painful, bittersweet, and I just stared blankly at the colorful banderitas over my head as blood was let out. It was our barangay fiesta, and it was high time for money-making for me and my sister by winning games. 

Take me to the place where my cranium and its innards plotted "The Strongest Fish," an underdog story that moves the good-hearted to stand up for himself and gives bullies a taste of their own medicine. For as long as my memory aids in my recount, the young, valiant protagonist knocks down the smirking, arrogant, Goliath-sized bully in the underwater boxing ring. I wish I still had a copy of our elementary school paper. 

Take me to the place where I buried the pages that I tore off from my notebook. It was a sunny afternoon. Using my trusty gardening tool, the sometimes rusty bolo knife, I dug a small hole in the ground where the trunk of my gmelina tree stood. The tree was a treasure find for someone with green thumb. The sapling jumped off our neighbor's truck, was left lying across the street, and good Lord, I safely brought it home at night. The nonsensical love notes met top soil and water, and were gone in a month's time, united with humus. 

Take me to the place where dreams, ghost stories, songs, riddles, and even gossip kept us awake until midnight. More so, squashing mosquitoes was part of the routine. We often had our not-so-secret meetings at the pergola of our ancestral house, which served as a walkway, the second gate. It was a shed made from bamboo amongst guava, lanzones, and santol (cottonfruit) trees, santan, roses, yellow poppies, and a variety of orchids. After we tired ourselves from playing on the street, all soiled and wet, under the pale, Friday moonlight, a stream of puerile, excited laughter still managed to seep through the walls of the pergola, while we beheld with wonder the hundreds of magical fireflies glowing in gold around the bent, old guava, and lent an indifferent ear to the buzzing crickets -- until our angry parents came looking for us to go home and hit the hay. Sticks proved to be more effective than just an endless nag. 

Take me to the place, and then tell me what it means to be back to where my mango, tambis (love apple), jackfruit, and mahogany trees grow. They must be full-fledged, bearing fruits by now, spreading their sturdy branches off the bamboo fences. Watching them grow is a deferred capacity, long overdue. 

Take me to the place. Take me home.

Photo source credit: Ecology Global Network

Memoirs of the Hopeful

Something keeps my mind pre-occupied unnecessarily at this pitch-black hour, like an extreme comedy enforced upon a lifeless outrigger sailing aimlessly over the immense, fogbound ocean. It holds captive all five senses, their purpose lost. It seizes my faculties, rendering me a hard-core inutile on the ever faithful ground. Much more, it punishes the last dregs of my breath. It screams king from its exploding, arrogant chest; and I am the enslaved soul on all pitiful fours, fettered and wounded. It spells dread in its countenance that I shudder and become weak at the knees. It lives in a prominent, arresting mansion over the hill this poor dreamer could only fancy about, as it murders the sullen truth that rides the silent and infinite ripples of black water -- putrid and nobody's wine nor tea. The phantom lingers its shameless exploits round me. 

As I don my tattered shirt and threadbare pants, which speak loudly of what it wants me to, exhausted with bloodshot eyes, I toy with the penetrating idea of how to escape, which is now a crime. How hapless this soul is, it could not sing anymore. But there should be a tunnel out! If not, I could dig my way out all day without its prying eyes noticing. I could outsmart my enemy, however skinned my hands and restless my heart would be. I have to. 

Now it seeks to suck out of my life, leaving me freezing in stiff air with the deafening, shrill cries of its mocking guards lurking in the dark, whose labyrinth-red eyes I can only see. Poised to battle against this mimicry of the devil, I pretend not to hear any of it, nor to imagine what creatures bear those eyes. I turn myself into a modest stone. I need to endure its bigotry. 

I close my eyes with a dying heartbeat. I swallow my saliva to quench a parched larynx, only to murmur within myself. I rest my mind from the convoluted pollution. I hope to muster a sleep. 

This is not a race to forever, nor a fruitless struggle. A triumphant claim looms over me.

Image: Toa Payoh, Singapore

The Plant

There you are my muse

in the nook of my soul,

looking out for my god

dressed in my faith and hope.

How the silence of your mien

perpetuates through my afternoon,

is to my indignation not;

it is the fuel stirring 

my affair with solitude.

I delight in your fine expression

-- coy, playful, full of conviction,

yet unpredictable.

You carry the eyes

watered with spring and summer,

and direct which to mine;

and for that, so grateful I am.

Despite all the nuisances

dangling and screaming around,

you remain calm and steadfast,

only to breathe with me,

to sleep in our own pulses

and be swayed by our simple happiness.

I catch the phrases let out from your foliage

-- young, smiling, and still wading

in the ruffled air and storms.

I love you.

Image: Toa Payoh, Singapore