AUTOTOMY

Simply put, the bed collapsed. Well, I haven’t been sleeping on a bed in my apartment for the last six months, but rather a borrowed air mattress. The other morning as I was rolling over, the mattress’s shell popped and the air expelled as I clambered to wake up and flee my fall.

Instead of getting another air mattress, I decided to try sleeping on the floor. This is pretty much the way a lot of Filipinos do it in the province. You lay down a grass mat on the floor and that’s it. So I bought an exercise mat and tried it for a few nights in a row. While the mat provides some cushion, I just can’t get a full night’s sleep, which has me walking around in a daze. Chalk this up to a failed experiment. I’ll be back with an air mattress soon. But at least it’s portable. Once the air is out, it can be stored easily and doesn’t produce clutter.

I can’t remember the last time I had cable TV. I think it was 1996. But in 2007 I also got rid of the box when I left the US for overseas travel. Since coming back, I haven’t yet bought a television set. I’ve been holding off to see if getting content via the internet really works.

To view content, I’ve been using Hulu, which has a good viewing experience. I can watch shows full screen, with only the watermark logos in the bottom corners. The shows break for brief commercials, but the interruption is slight. My only gripes at this point are that I wish I had access to more shows there and that the shows wouldn’t limit availability.

I’ve also picked up a USB tuner that allows me to watch some digital channels on the computer, but accessing all stations hasn’t been possible. And the shows I’ve most wanted to watch have been available on Hulu.

So for now, I’ll stick to my computer and the internet. Shows without TV. I can live with that.

I got to enjoy a golden hour sun this evening in the field behind my apartment complex. During the day construction on two sides fills the air with the clammer of drills and engines. In the evening as the sun passes, the den of cicadas drowns out even the distant clacking along the train tracks. It’s as if I’ve stepped into the country and civilization is as remote as mind. The cream wing bands of mockingbirds cross my field of vision. The insects are so loud the birds are silent as the flap their wings. My only thoughts now are about how to take this peace back with me.

When we arrived in Hong Kong, we ate at the Chinese restaurant attached to the hotel. In the hotel lobby the sign above the door simply said, “Chinese Restaurant.” So we entered because we were hungry and weren’t ready to venture into the city. We drank green tea and listened to the Cantonese for a while. We managed to order by hand signals and pointing to pictures on the menu. We were the only ones there who weren’t locals, and I felt completely out of place, though I enjoyed that sense of alienation.

A journey with no initial destination still may have side tracks, back tracks, or even a change in purpose. After a year of being in the tropics, I’m having to reconsider where the next destination should be. In other words returning the US and reentering the job market. Hopefully, the time here has given me a fresh perspective on life.

It’s been more than a year now since I’ve owned a television. I don’t miss it. I mean the box. My viewing habits have shifted to watching content via the internet. If it’s free and it’s good, then I’ve been giving it a try. And I’ve picked up on a few things that I might not have seen otherwise. It’s hard to imagine buying a box back in the states when I return.

We recently attended the 18th birthday party of a classmate of Juvy’s. Later in the evening, after the celebration — giving of roses and candles and singing happy birthday to the girl and eating chicken barbecue, we found ourselves out in the back bamboo party house. It was a shelter made of bamboo with a bench wrapped around the outer perimeter. It’s where all the guys and a few of the girls wound up. One of the classmates had mixed something they were calling a “Burning Tanduay,” which was made with the local rum.

The way Filipinos drink is to share. So one Burning Tanduay is mixed in big pitcher. And there is only one shot glass for about 15 people. Only one glass. The drink master sits at the central table and pours a shot out of the pitcher, then he hand it off to pass around the bench to the person who needs it most, or the person who hasn’t had any for a while. When that person finishes, he passes the glass back to the drink master who pours another and passes it out. That way, shots go around to everyone, but no drinks too much.

They also call this “jamming,” hanging out with friends, drinking, joking, smoking, laughing. When the father brought out more barbecue, the dogs had to join the jamming as well, since they could eat whatever meat was left on the sticks.

The Burning Tanduay didn’t burn at all. In fact, it was quite sweet, a mixture of a bottle of rum, chocolate and condensed milk.

Close to where we live there’s an ultra-modernist house with 15-foot walls surrounding most of the compound. The wall is topped with meter-long knife-point steel bars. These people are obviously rich. Painted white, the two-story house is composed of squares and glass, and one top window is a large circle. It’s surrounded by an open lot where carabao (water buffalo) and goats graze. Recently dump trucks have been parking in the empty lot as well. As we passed by the other night, a group of children, who would normally just be playing in the streets, had tied up a sheet under the back of the dump truck and were using it as a swing.

Sinulog is bigger than Christmas here, while it is essentially still a celebration of the Christ child. It’s called the festival of colors, and while the costumes that parade contingents wear are certainly colorful, it seems to me, the festival is more about the people of Cebu. It’s about smiles, it’s about interacting with your fellow human beings, it’s about lining the streets with two million people who want to celebrate, it’s about being a part of something that is far greater than yourself. The sociologist Peter Berger termed it communitas.

I was walking to the store and passed a glass window of an upscale dress shop. The building, with clean lettering on the facade, could have been a store front from Washington’s Georgetown area. But the window reflected the building across the street, a run-down scrap heap with so many layers of graffiti that it looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. These sorts of juxtapositions are common, walled wealth next door to squalor. Maybe the whole world will look this way one day.