Bangus dreaming on the 4th of July
By Rex Catubig
I WAS fixing my bed-zombied self and arranging my nine o’clock face for the day, when my Messenger rang incessantly. It was Lenuski Peruskiini on the other side of the world, apparently taking a break from his dinner and in the process of opening a bottle of Napa Merlot.
Who could refuse a video call from this raconteur from Duarte—who is Lino Paras, of the renowned Paras clan of Bonuan, in his prior incarnation and the proud father of Duarte, California’s first Filipino Mayor, Tzeitel Paras Caracci? (Who, sadly, passed on last year).
So despite my unvideogenic somnolent appearance, I plopped down myself before my laptop and gamely took the call. Within thirtysome minutes of lively, engaging banter, we practically covered the gamut of life and times in good ol’ Dagupan.
It was hiraeth on the 4th of July.
I could sense his palpable yearning to come back home as he longingly intimated his plan to hire a trike and track down the nooks and crannies of the city, veering off from his usual route that traversed what he calls his beloved San Paras-cisco Bridge–aka Dawel, that used to be a rickety one-way wooden span. It would be a different road trip for him–a getting-to-know-you-once-again sort of sentimental sojourn, a venture out of the comfort zone of his Bonuan world that’s now connected with the rest of the complex city with a two-lane steel bridge, to rediscover the mooring that harbored his youth and marked his identity..
In the old days, he recalled how the boys in the barrio counted Bangus similia using pebbles and shells, then cupped them into a buyog or earthen jar. From this simple practice of the fisherfolk evolved the Bangus commerce and anointed this local produce with the honorific Bonuan Bangus.
In his Duarteland, as he calls his foreign home, he is a heritage conservation advocate who lobbied for the preservation of a 1909 schoolhouse in danger of being demolished. And while he claims to be a “happy and proud” straight guy, he asserts: “I recognize that everyone is different and I respect love, instead of hate; inclusion instead of exclusion, acceptance instead of prejudice”. He “rejects ignorance and intolerance to others who have a different reality”. And to round off his muti-faceted persona, he is also an avid participant of the Comics Convention that recreates the larger than life figures of our childhood fantasies.
He is every bit an homme universale who embraces the complementary ideals of legacy, currency and fantasy.
Should he finally retire in his beloved Bonuan, Lenuski Peruskiini would probably be counting his years with hard earned clams and gladly place the memories they had shaped in a giant aquarium, there for him to stare at with a smile and sweet sadness, as the fierce Dagupan sun rests upon Bonuan’s blue seashore. A rugged romantic, he avers that, “if you need music on the beach, you’re missing the point”.
Then, in the serenity of twilight, he would walk down Tondaligan, sit by the Jackstones, and with inihaw na bangus for pulutan, gulp cold San Mig beer amid the melody of rushing waves. And as the spirit embraces his being, he would gently drift off into his magic world, and imagine Wonder Woman–catching and counting Bangus fingerlings in the bewitching Blue beach seashore.
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