Feelings
Zilch between the ears
By Emmanuelle
This writer begs your pardon.
It had been so long, weeks too long, more than a month even that this space had idled. It had lain uninhabited. Up to now, anggad natan, inggana tattan. No one breathes here. No letter stirs the vacant air. The apostrophes had grown stale.
And it was not because this writer was thrown out of work. The truth was, nothing worked. More specifically, nothing worked up there where the skull clamps protectively down around where it mattered most. The gray matters.
It had been zilch, zip, zero. Nada. There was nothing there. For days, and weeks and more than a month.
Her absence on her page was because there was zilch, zip, zero. Nada. Right there between her ears.
All was not right, there between the ears. All was wrong, incorrect, off beam there between the ears. What was supposed to be there between the ears, was not there between her ears. And still is not there.
Pretend this scene is a cartoon on screen. Shine a flashlight through this writer’s ear. The beam shines clearly through, then exits out the other ear, as bright as it was unbent. Meaning, there are no gray matters in there, no matters of any color whatsoever. There is zilch between the ears. No brain busily grinding, sifting, shifting data from the senses to make sense. Knock, knock. What who in there? Quite quiet in there. Silence infinite in there.
As all things sardonic go, this writer absolves herself of fault. She beats her breast, in rhythm with all the rest of the men and women and beasts out there.
The fault was due to all things and because of you and you and you. Basta not me, not me, not me!
And when did this sorry state began?
Surely it was not Ondoy. Was it Pepeng, he of the three landfalls? His fury brought down the tears of heaven hereabouts. Buckets and dams of it. Down and across mountains and hills and valleys and fields. Notwithstanding people and structures that people build for people.
Maybe it began when this writer, fleeing a stinky rapidly sinking metropolis, rode just a few tiny seconds ahead the merciless pounding of the vertical, sometimes horizontal, oftentimes hysterical rain. The van windows kept popping up, whooshing down more wetness on the already thoroughly wet self. Which was this writer already thoroughly wet from the globs of rain, of cold petrified sweat, of sour putrefied vomit.
The few things that a writer carries with her to the end of the world were a few things already as thoroughly wet.
The van swerved with each strong gust of the wind. The wheels bumped hard with each unseen hole on the ground. The highways had given up its concrete a week ago. And with each swerve, each bump, the poor creatures on board grew uncomfortably wetter still.
When the old house of a dear home loomed up ahead, it meant dryness, safety, and warmth. At last. But alas, it was only at first. Came a call. One is needed. Actually, one’s camera eye is needed more. Truthfully still, one’s writing hand is needed the most. Whatever, this one writer pulls on boots above jogging pants, puts on hooded jacket over sleeveless shirt.
They were going to save people from an aggressor, friendly nature not so friendly this time.
The friend and the writer rode at the front of the dump truck. The writer kept the camera eye stuck tight between window frame and glass. She was seeing, she was recording the wrath of nature not calm, even gone mad. Getting even, going mad.
And so she saw. The Sea, the Rivers. Rushing down the mountains and hills, through the trees, to the lowlands. The brown surge had one horrible determination – to rendezvous with the Ocean, and along the way, to gobble, to swallow, to claim back the fields from the houses, the streets.
It growled, it howled as it swept by, swiping this wall, that roof, that body of weak flesh. This land is not yours. It’s mine. Why do you insist on building over my fields, these paths I take to marry the deeper, bluer ocean beyond?
This writer still faintly smells of the urine and crap and milky scent of the babies she shared the front seat with. But that is not why she now has zilch between the ears.
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