Memory Keeper

It’s only a room with shelves and books,

but it’s far more magical than it looks

It’s a jet on which I soar

to lands that exist no more.

Or a key with which I find

answers to questions crowding my mind.

Building my habit of learning and growing,

asking and researching till I reach knowing.

Here, I’ve been a mermaid and an elf

I’ve even learned to be more myself.

I think that I shall never see

a place that’s been more useful to me.

With encouraging kind friends with wit

who tell me to dream big and never quit.

It’s only a room with shelves and books,

but it’s far more magical than it looks.

-Varda One

Two people. Twenty years.

“‘Live each day as if it’s your last’, that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn’t practical. Better by far to simply try and be good and courageous and bold and to make a difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you. Go out there with your passion and your electric typewriter and work hard at…something. Change lives through art maybe. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance.”  -David Nicholls

It is fifteen minutes to one AM and I am sitting–or should I say molded—in a pink bean bag chair. The Internet signal is wiggy tonight. I’m not in the mood to read a book (having just finished David Nicholls’ inventive yet tragic ‘One Day’), and the last two options on my nightstand are Edith Wharton’s Victorian sexual awakening one ‘Summer’, and Jack Kerouac ‘On the Road’ during 1950′s Jazz era.

By all rights, I should be in bed by now, having slept at 4 AM the previous night and still nursing a stubborn cough, but I am wide-eyed in the midst of this midnight stillness. I was on the phone earlier with Maw and I told him about the tragic end of ‘One Day’. I was half-expecting one of them to die, and I was right. Only I thought it would be Dexter. But (spoiler alert!) it was Em.

I told Maw that love stories with tragic endings (where one or both of the lovers die) are more memorable than ones with happy endings. After reading enough happy endings, they sort of meld into a blurry rainbow. It becomes generic and indistinguishable. But tragedy, that’s something you’ll always remember. Maybe it’s because pain is sharper, carved into the surface of our skin, the exact details of which our mind and body remember after we experience it, as if to remind ourselves to be careful next time, to steer clear of this bad thing that no one wants to experience in the first place.

Love stories that end in tragedy are more precious to me somehow, precisely because it has an end, and in hindsight, the moments shared between the characters become more meaningful, more poignant, less taken for granted, less complacent. If love or happiness didn’t have an ending, would it be as precious?

Maw: But you have to remember, it’s still a story.

That’s true. But after reading a story like ‘One Day’, where you are invited to join these fictional characters, Dexter and Emma, to bear witness to 20 years of their lives, the story becomes real. They become real, and you start calling them Dex and Em, Em and Dex, like old friends. It is real in a certain sense, because David Nicholls drew from reality aspects of the book, like all writers do, unconsciously or on other levels of consciousness. Somewhere out in the world, there is a Dexter and an Emma, fragmented in both random and selected people. There is a fragment of Emma in me. Her nickname, her dream of being a published author, the way she charts her life by the things she worries about at 3 in the morning. There is also a fragment of Dexter in someone I used to know, who is out of my life now.

Me: I can’t wait to see the movie.

Maw: They’ll probably change the ending. People hate sad endings.

Maybe it’s because sad endings remind them too much of real life. We watch movies and read books as a form of escapism. We want to escape into an ideal world, where couples live happily ever after, the war is won, the villain is defeated. If death and evil win, we would walk out of the theater or close the book feeling worse than we started, disappointed, angry and hurt– emotions which we already feel keenly in real life. Because it reminds us of someone we have lost, of incidents where someone bad or wrong has triumphed. Reality is defined by the negative things that happen to us, obstacles that block our attempts to find happiness. In fiction, in celluloid, we’re entitled to happiness, damn it, if only by way of empathy.

Stories are more real to me than life sometimes. There is a life, there is a world contained in each book. It may be called fiction, but what is fiction but a story created through weaving threads of reality and imagination. It is reality imagined, personified, transcended.

I have my mother’s hands. Not in the way of her delicious cooking, nimble sewing or the way she chased away my fevers as a child. But the color and shape of them: long, slender and white. The nails shaped in arched ovals, rather than the fashionable French tips women favor, or practical ones clipped down to the nub.

Little splinters of loose skin protrude from the cuticles and corners of my nails, indications of unmanicured hands. I never saw the appeal of getting a manicure; ten minutes after stepping out of the salon, I would absently rummage around my oversized bag in search of my car keys, and that would be the end of it.

As a teenager, I used to crack the knuckles of my right hand out of habit, usually after writing an essay or report longhand. The resounding crack of each digit as I curled it was strangely satisfying. As a result, the knuckles of my right hand grew slightly bigger and more defined than my left.

Two tiny moles dot the base of my right hand, while a third one flecks the back of my left. Just as my entire body is dusted with moles (my equivalent of freckles), my hands are no different. I also have a sparse collection of scars— one on my right thumb, another on the left side of my left middle finger. Most of them have faded over time, but the ones I remember the most are those which I’ve gotten as a result of tripping and falling on the concrete ground during childhood games on the street with other neighborhood kids.

During such instances, my hands would reflexively shoot out in front of me, saving me from literally falling flat on my face. I would get up, shaky and red-faced, to discover my scratched, bleeding palms. They resembled battle scars when they healed.

My hands are unadorned of rings. I can’t remember how many rings I have lost over the years from removing them, laying them on a nearby surface with a metallic clink, washing my hands, and subsequently forgetting all about them. In a way, my hands see them as restrictions. Like the rest of me, they prefer to move freely, although they love to express their affection of other people—a light squeeze on the arm, slipping into a loved one’s hand to savor the secure warmth, straightening a crooked collar, patting down a few strands of unruly hair.

The best thing I love about my hands is their talent to create words, sentences and paragraphs that turn into stories, letters and compositions that have the power to touch people. They move across a blank page entwined with a pen in a graceful dance, fly over the keyboard of my laptop like excited, fluttering birds, or momentarily hang suspended in midair when searching for the right word. They clap in delight once the piece is done, then remain clasped together in a short prayer of gratitude.

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands. -e.e. cummings

I love the rain. I crave its scent, crisp and whole. The elemental cadence of its footsteps tapping on the roof. The moist breeze that sweeps through the house, breathing life into still spaces, transforming it into a thing of motion. Safe cocoon ensconced in a glassy sheen.  I love how the same breeze weaves through my restless form—stirring the roots of my hair, murmuring against the taut skin of my ankle, like being submerged underwater.

I love how the rain trickles down dirty white walls, onto parched leaves, into cracked concrete pavements, giving them a shining, sharp, substantial visage, like capturing the true character of a person. I love the way the rain expands and reforms the world, drenches it in all its liquid beauty: no crevice, no miniscule fissure can escape its glimmering blessing. It is love. It is God.

On a sweltering day in June 1956, Oldsmobiles, Studebakers, Sarao jeepneys and BLTB buses rumbled along the Manila South Road, then the highway leading to the south. The vehicles’ open windows blared out the tunes of Elvis, Nat King Cole, Ruben Tagalog and Cely Bautista. In the driver’s seat, men tapped their saddle shoes to the beat of the radio and next to them women sat primly, hands resting on the laps of floral swing skirts. As they passed through a sleepy town called Las Pinas, green fields dotted with cows and goats and the occasional dusty sari-sari store stretched out on either side of the road. Then just before reaching the Las Pinas-Muntinlupa border, a new sight greeted them: sitting squarely in the middle of a sprawling 18-hectare land was a looming, modern facility with a solid granite frontage. And emblazoned across it was the name: Goodyear.

The Goodyear Philippines plant in Las Pinas was built during an era of prosperity in the nation. World War II was over, the Philippines had gained its independence, and trade and industry was flourishing. Ramon Magsaysay was the third president of the third republic of the country, and the Philippines ranked only second in Asia’s well-governed countries. This era marked the Philippines’ golden years. Similarly, Goodyear was enjoying a continuous period of growth and innovation. The company was the biggest tire manufacturer in the world, and its local manufacturing facility placed Las Pinas on the industry map.

More than half a century later, Las Pinas is a bustling, thriving city crowded with subdivisions and commercial establishments. In late 2009, during the global economic recession, and under the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Goodyear closed the Las Pinas plant after 53 years of operations as part of a strategy to address uncompetitive global manufacturing capacity.

A few days ago, more than a year after its closure, the Goodyear plant was demolished. Vehicles stuck in the increasingly omnipresent traffic along Alabang-Zapote Road, formerly Manila South Road, can see a yellow bulldozer standing on the spot that was once the frontage of the impenetrable gray stone structure that bore witness to more than 50 years of history. Along with its nearby administration buildings and sports center—places of countless memories— nothing is left of Goodyear, just a flattened space of land stretching out as far as the eye can see, empty and almost eerie in its stillness.

Looking back, Goodyear has been part of my daily life long before I became an employee. When I was young, our school bus would pass by the Goodyear plant every morning on the way to Benedictine Abbey School (now San Beda College Alabang) in Muntinlupa, where I attended elementary and high school. One day, when I was about seven years old, I saw a fair on the Goodyear grounds. There were carnival rides, balloons, a cotton-candy machine and sorbetes carts, even ponies! How I longed to be part of that wonderful occasion. Years later, when I was working for the company, I related this story to one of the senior managers. She told me with a wistful smile that the event was Goodyear Family Day, an occasion that was reminiscent of the company’s happier times.

Thomas Wolfe wrote, “You can never go home again.” This became evident a few weeks ago, when my dad was shopping at a local supermarket. “Did you work at Goodyear?” the bagger asked him excitedly, seeing the old Goodyear cap he was wearing. It turned out that he used to work at the plant, and was one of the 500 employees who were laid off when the plant closed in September 2009. “My father also worked at the factory before me,” he added, handing my dad his groceries. “Now I work here.”

For 53 years, the Las Pinas compound represented a home for many in the community. Despite the physical obliteration of this local landmark, the Goodyear brand lives on. And we can always take comfort in the fact that we were part of something of great pride, something that binds us as a family, no matter where life takes us.

A poet once said, “We all search for love; everything else in life is merely killing time.” Indeed, the concept of love has been endlessly discoursed, referenced and thus immortalized in just about every aspect of society throughout history; may it be philosophy, literature, religion, science, the arts, pop culture. After all, love does make the world go round, and more importantly, it guarantees the survival of the human race.

Courtship, or dating, has been the most important and accepted means used in the never-ending search for romantic love. During the Victorian times of the 1800s, courtship was a mannerly, stifling activity held in the girl’s household, with the mother or a spinster aunt overseeing the ‘date’ and choosing conversation topics they believed were appropriate for the couple to speak of. However, the man had to be deemed worthy as a suitable match for the wealthy debutante first before a formal courtship could take place. At the turn of the 20^th century, courtship consisted of the boy bringing the object of his affection candy or flowers, writing poetry or a song. The couple would walk the girl’s family home from church or eat at a school or church picnic.

The definition of dating in the 1920s was attending social affairs such as grand balls and dances, and elegant dinners at supper clubs. The rock and roll era of the fifties saw young couples going to drive-in movie theatres and getting to know each other over burgers and milkshakes at a local diner, with Elvis Presley blasting from the jukebox. However, formal dating or courtship experienced a decline in the late sixties into the seventies following the sexual revolution, since males and females had begun to mingle freely.

By the dawn of the 21^st century, dating had evolved based on technological advances in the form of the mobile phone, the Internet and online dating.  Nowadays, individuals in search of love and companionship need not look any further than their computer screen, where they can meet potential partners on social network sites and online dating services for other interested singles. For those who are in search of love on distant shores, they don’t have to fly halfway around the world; all they need to do is click on the sponsored websites’ link featuring options such as singles asian on the sidebar of many websites to come up with several candidates that hopefully leads them to their perfect match. E-mails, private messaging and text messages have become the post-modern version of love letters.

Dating techniques have come a long way from the restricted Victorian times wherein social class dictated the suitability of a partner, to present-day online dating that spans across social classes, cultures, nationalities and genders, giving people the freedom to search for love without borders and without restrictions.

Love is a powerful, universal force that renews itself with every generation. In every era and place in the world, regardless of norm or custom decreed by society, the search for love—that mad, passionate, extraordinary feeling that transcends barriers and transforms lives—continues.

for Maw.

When you know the bend of someone’s shoulder

better than your own because you have seen it

from every angle for so many years,

when you have learned that body

like a language for which the grammar is imprinted

on the brain in a space reserved

for connections made without thinking, then

only the perspective changes:

remote as an arc of stars,

intimate as a spoon in your mouth.

But though you recognize that body’s permutations,

you can’t imagine where

they will take you, and part of that freedom

is fear. It’s a mistake to lean on any body;

you must be satisfied

not with the thing itself—

frail, vile, glorious—

but with the way you know it.

Your gift is reading that body

in a crowd, at a distance—

its slight dejected form, ebullient lilt,

or especially the feeling you’ll never find

words for, but you know

how to answer anyway.

- Natasha Saje