By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

THE image of her friend in a wheelchair bothers her. It is an image Enya had not gotten used to, having known Amira as a vibrant, cheerful woman, gifted with intelligence and a capacity to help the less fortunate. That image is somehow fading, being replaced by an image of her lying in bed, beside a wheelchair fitted with a hole where she is being helped to relieve herself. The room is dimly-lit, with one window that is forever shut, allowing just a glimmer of light during the day.

This image of helplessness departs slowly, swallowed by the images of the night, the sounds of cars passing, and the singing of crickets. Enya sees Amira receding in her memory as the darkness makes visible the stars, and the moon shines. She feels herself becoming one with the veil of heavenly bodies, as she awaits the arrival of hundreds of shooting stars that was described to be spectacularly magnificent, sans the shroud of clouds. In the immensity of the universe, or the multiverses, She sees herself smaller than a portion of the sand.

As night crawls deeper, Enya wonders if the helplessness she perceives of Amira is her own. After all, she thought, we are helpless in our own way, manifestations of universal consciousness, a wave in the ocean, a drop of rain. In the same way, we are part of this immensity, so that we are able to become the ocean in a drop of rain.

A nagging question from another friend comes to her mind, Mildred, her contemplative, often melancholic presence that reminded her of the sadness of Ben, another friend whose sadness drowns whatever little joys he was able to experience:

“Is this all?”

But “all” defies perception. “All” is forever expanding, if scientists are to be believed:  “ … the existence of dark energy and the amount of repulsion it displays compared with dark matter is what’s causing our universe to not only expand, but to expand faster and faster.”

Both Mildred and Ben had departed this earthly (?) dimension, but they appear occasionally on moments such as these, reminding Enya that separateness is an illusion, that she, too, her own reality, is a manifestation of the limitless. Both friends were the exact opposite of her mother, who believed in the limitless, in the reversal of fortunes, whose tears evaporate with thoughts of ultimate goodness and justice. Her mother is a presence she is never separated from, her source of healing, the star, her comet.

“ …
there is absolute charm
in the song of the cricket
that soothes a turbulent heart
in the quiet of dawn
when the wind brushes
through the leaves
and stays for a while
leaving suddenly
as a whisper …. “ ***

 She comes, her beloved mother, with the shooting stars, behind the clouds, unseen, but felt. The specter of the wheelchair disappears with the soft wind, wrapping her whole body in a lazy embrace, so relaxing an embrace that even the reality of her intermittent toothache, fled with the fart of angels.

*** From the poem “Nanay” composed 01 March 2021.

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