By Rex Catubig

 

I feel trapped in a time warp. While I’m fully aware of my advanced age that osteoarthritis has proclaimed and confirmed unabashedly, I realize that I have not really fully grasped the inevitability of age, the accretion in years, and the imminence of death.

My theater talents and followers in the pivotal seventies are now pushing sixties; the vigilant youth of Namfrel who passionately guarded ballot boxes in the face of guns and goons are now in their mid-fifties. Peers and even younger ones are lining up in the fast lane of the graveyard station. And the queue rivals that of the box office.

“Stop the world, I want to get off” was a symbolic slogan of the seventies that was spinning uncontrollably on its axis. It has not slowed down but I want to hold on.

My mind, while it is time and again seduced and waylaid by senior moments, still finds its way home. And my heart remains untamed, still beats wildly with fits of fanciful flirtations.

It’s this body that betrays me and is trying to fell me off with its centrifugal force. That wants me to abide by and follow the dictates of time. Constantly reminding me of the mathematical equations that rule life but which I seem to continually ignore—stubbornly unmindful of the cyclical phases of suns and moons.

I feel I’m still together in one piece and refuse to be knocked off yet.  My knees may buckle, but the brain it holds up, still sits squarely on my shoulders. And I hope it will not dangle anytime soon.

I’m proud to claim I have not lost steam and can still run a track. I promise that. Or that’s what I want to believe. The context of the race has changed. Now, the exuberant relay of old is becoming more of a lonely sprint. My company of long-distance runners are throwing their hands up, way ahead of the finish line. Still, I find comfort in Jean-Claude Van Damme’s brave assertion: “No retreat, no surrender”.

Against the foreboding hues of the darkening horizon, I feel the push of the third wind and it reassures my defiant soul that I can still run the whole nine yards. The challenges are real, the hurdles more difficult but I’m emboldened by the rage of age to go on.

However, in the blur of wayward time, I can only march to the beat of my different drummer, step to his music, “however measured or far away”, in the ever shortening, disappearing track of life.

Maybe, I should start walking with the Akarestas — if my cane would agree.

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