Feelings
Between here and there . . .
By Emmanuelle
is her hollowed self. She speaks just a few words, choosing these slowly, but she provides a more graphic illustration with her hands. She mimes a cave curving inward from her chest to the hips. At the same time, she sucks her cheeks in. The dark shadows under her eyes didn’t help any to lighten her epic imagery. The writer sees her interviewee suddenly emptied, sunken unto herself.
It was eerie. At the same time, it was mesmerizing. Throughout the interview, Manta would use her face, fingers, palms, even the rest of her body, to draw a larger-than-life picture of her words. The writer, guided by the gestures, would guess ahead of what Manta was still word-searching for, and the writer would guess right.
She must have been born short-circuited, her family would joke. Instead of her brain sending its message directly to the speech-framing neurons, the message gets sent instead, first, to the nerves of the muscles then forwarded to bone ligaments. As a child, when Manta sees a rainbow, she opens her eyes and mouth wide, she ups and joins her hands into an arc, she hops on the tips of her toes – a ballet of awe and joy. Only after this impromptu dance would she shout her wow!
She could easily be mistaken for a brain-damaged retardate, if only she were not an early-bloomer of a musician, a linguist, a mathematician. But before becoming a heady dizzying drink of academic accomplishments, she was nature’s mixed brew-half-Chinese, one-fourth Filipino and one-fourth Spanish and Irish. Thus, barely past five feet, she has the petite body and smooth creamy skin of the east. Then, her blood surges with gusto to the west. She grows fine, curly reddish-brown hair down to the waist, a bridged nose, freckled rosy cheeks, and deep but wide brown eyes framed by translucent lashes and brows. And two dots of the deepest dimples at the sides of her full Pinay lips.
It was this unearthly combination that made Manta so pansinin. Not only intriguing to the eye, but utterly endearing, someone to protect and to hide far and free from flesh-tearing carnivores, especially those lurking within and without two houses.
During her senior year in high school, on her way to promenade practice, she paused while toeing a leap from the low fence to a high stone bench. What are elevations for, but to fly from?
And to promptly fall, deeply, into love.
(More next week.)
{NOTE FROM THE WRITER: This true story is owed, long-overdue, to a reader whose lovely life this was. It is also in keeping with the burrowing stage this writer has nested into in reaction to the grossness of the country’s political state. When one can’t breathe stale air, one backs from it and escapes, fast. Into all things light and beautiful. For a while.
This announcement, too, is owed and long-overdue: graduates of Binalonan Community High School (now Binalonan National Science High School) Batch 70, residing here and abroad, are all invited to attend their Alumni Homecoming on March 29, 2008, a Saturday, preparatory to their Grand Alumni two years from now. Mayor Monching Guico, Jr., one of Batch 70’s prominent graduates, unifier to them all, shall co-host the event. For particulars, please contact jingmil@yahoo.com or CP# 09175062609, or call Saling 562-3340 or CP# 09102402187.
(Readers may reach columnist at jingmil@yahoo.com. For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/feelings/
For reactions to this column, click “Send MESSAGES, OPINIONS, COMMENTS” on default page.)
Share your Comments or Reactions
Powered by Facebook Comments
