By Rex Catubig

 

TWO years close to the date, the world was caught unawares and put in shackles by a virulent virus that is a variant of corona.

Here in Dagupan where I had retired a little over a year earlier, government imposed health protocol had me confined at home, holed up for most of the day in my man cave.

I had lived through Martial Law years before but despite restrictions, freedom of movement was less curtailed. With the pandemic, there were police checkpoints all over the place. In fact, the street junction just a few hundred meters from my house was barricaded and the tricycle I was riding in was denied entry until I pleaded with the armed policemen that I could not walk home due to my diseased knees.

It was like living in a war zone.

Truth be told, the covid pandemic could be likened as this generations’ version of World War–(notwithstanding the imminent Russia-Ukraine war) with nary a way out yet in sight–leaving everything topsy turvy in its wake.

In the cusp of the turbulent ’60s, “Stop the world I want to get off”, was the shibboleth for easy passage out of the angst. No such luck at present as we dangle precariously on loose ends of the rope that has snapped.

So we just try to ride out the pandemic–even as we feel the earth spiraling off its axis.

Meantime, the forthcoming elections have provided a government sanctioned side show to divert us from what truly ails us as a nation. But the Kakampink versus BBM war of the roses seems more apocalyptic than redemptive.

At the start of the pandemic, there was a mad rush for toilet paper in the world’s most developed country. It’s at once pathetic and at the same time symbolic of the gross and shitty times. The covid journey has taken us to the matrix of madness where toilet paper and, perhaps, elections have the dubious efficacy of salvation.

At day’s end, when darkness falls and the bonfire of vanities of man lit up the starless sky,  primordial hunger draws this retired senior to the highway meat shop–there to indulge in his carnivorous craving–where in quasi-symbolic sacrifice–exquisitely sliced beef is stir fried in the cauldron of untamed passion.
 Agi, naksawan la yay masiken insan narasan labat kari.

I guess I’m just tired and hungry, that’s all.

With each mouthful of the pigar-pigar, I could feel the earth move under my feet.

Maybe, just maybe, when I have digested my food and could go home without passing a barricade, the world would be all right after all.

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