By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

I never doubted the evolution of the human race. We are born, we live, we die. Or we take another form. We become something else, to sustain human existence. Others believe that our spirits join the larger spiritual dimension, the superconsciousness, becoming one with God. Some have documented this experience in their biographies.  Anita Moorjani’s memoir Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing narrates her near death experience where she had a realization: “I came back with the understanding that heaven truly is a state and not a place ….”

 I recall that sometime in March, over lunch fulfilling my wish to eat “bakla” (gay) crabs, Arabela Ventenilla Arcinue, Fr. Weng Escaño and I promised one another, through a “fist bump” that whoever goes first among us will have to make an effort to come back and relate what the afterlife is like. Fr. Weng is absolutely sure there’s heaven where the pious are destined to go, as certainly as he believes that there are no bakla among the crabs. He told us, the bakla crab is actually a juvenile female, and will grow to be a full-grown female crab. This prompted us to speculate if gay human beings are actually juvenile forms that will eventually evolve into their true identities. Bel and I must speak to a crab to verify his hypothesis. Catherine Bernardo Velasco, a seasoned dietician, would have laughed, considering her familiarity with the behavior, the character and the disposition of crustaceans. She must know, now that she is in another dimension and “sees” with clarity the level of human ignorance.

 

Catherine

a yellow bird swoops down
nestles on a branch
nibbles on the mulberries
another bird, with an orange breast
flies close to it
they chirp, they swing their feathers
strut, like old friends

nearby, a worm crawls on a leaf
they race, flying without a sound
in the scuffle, they pull
with their beaks, they break
and swallow the fragile body
of what could have been
a curious butterfly

one bird flies away
forcing down his throat,
half of the worm
the other stays,
on alert for more

another bird comes with dried grass
this bluebird sits, quietly and sings
I wonder, is the song for me?
or is it for the mulberry tree?
or is this you, my dear friend
incarnated, keeping a promise
to make me wonder
about the many wonders
in the afterlife?

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