Cycles
By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo
I had a lengthy conversation with Atty. Gonzalo Duque, chairperson of the Pangasinan Historical and Cultural Commission (PHCC) who just came out of the hospital. In fact, he said he signed the PHCC Accomplishment Report (2011-Present), immediately after he arrived home from a five-day confinement. He mentioned that during the inauguration of newly-elected Governor Ramon V. Guico III, where he was with Dagupan Mayor Belen Fernandez, he discussed with Vice-Governor Mark Lambino the need to continue PHCC’s initiative to integrate the history, culture and development of Pangasinan in the school curriculum in public and private schools in the province, whose modules can be developed from the book Pinablin Dalin, published during his term, under former Governor Amado T. Espino, Jr.
But this conversation was not about PHCC. It was the first time I talked to him about the transitions of life, how fast the days rolled by, faster even it seemed than the calculated increase in the speed of the Earth’s revolution recorded recently. In the middle of the conversation, he hummed his favorite song, Cycles, by Frank Sinatra:
So I’m down and so I’m out/ But so are many others
So I feel like trying to hide/ My head ‘neath these covers ….
He was in a reflective mood, going back to the time he entered the seminary, where he ate most of the time “inlambong ya balatong”, up to the present time, which he considered a bonus, having outlived the years his father and brother Ado, lived in this life. I felt like, I was a priest, in a confessional box, trying to absorb everything that was being said, just listening without meting penance, which could have been approximately 100 Hail Marys, 100 Our Fathers, and 100 Glory Bes, for seven days, walking on his knees to the altar.
Gonz, for all his “transgressions”, has a soft heart. I have known people he had helped without fanfare, without expecting any return. Generous to a fault, he was sometimes abused.
I’ve been told and I believe/ That life is meant for living
And even when my chips are low/ There’s still some left for giving ….
He had his foolish moments, like any other person, but I witnessed his mellowing. What did not mellow is his ability to laugh at himself, and like a child, he still rolls with laughter remembering the coarseness, the clumsiness and the irreverence of his days as a public servant, which annoyed some high officials of government.
There isn’t much that I have learned/ Through all my foolish years
Except that life keeps runnin’ in cycles/ First there’s laughter, then those tears …
And then we discussed pain. The pain of his tooth. The pain of his buttocks. And some other pain still to come, that may not even come.
You know it’s almost funny /But things can’t get worse than now
So I’ll keep on trying to sing/ But please, just don’t ask me now
No, I didn’t ask him to sing, he kept on trying, and succeeded. I suspect that in a past life, I was his mother, a freedom-loving mother who gave him permission to watch movies rated beyond his age, while I caressed the soil in the garden.
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