It is raining. The noise disturbs the quiet afternoon awaking me from my shallow sleep. I look outside as I lay still on my bed watching the rain pours slanting on my window. In the many rainy days of life this is the only time that I really paid attention to the cleansing elements of rain washing my senses in a drowsy afternoon.

 It is turbulent outside; I am motionless inside.

I delight to the sight of the sparkling waters confined on the tips of the leaves and that magical moment when the gentle breeze shake the lucid liquid beads off the trees. Below are streams of rain water collected into small pools in the concrete pavement that drain to the gutter, to the directions I wouldn’t know. I listen closely to the refreshing sound of waters rushing down the spout near my window as I block my ears from the much louder and annoying noise of the down pours hitting the roofs and the grounds that now release that sweet scent of the earth when it rains.

The chilly feel, the soothing sights, and sounds, and smell of the rain calm my senses.

The heavens bathe the trees again. Quenching the thirst in our hearts and bring our wilted souls back to life so our petals could display their rich colors once more.

The heavens wash the pavements and the gutters and flush the arteries of the city from the clotted debris draining them to rivers, and lakes, and oceans and the filthy sins of the city desolves and forgotten in nature’s forgiving heart. 

Silently I, too, let the rain carry my own sighs down the drain and I felt the cleansing of my heart. 

And the rain stopped.

I watch the faint reflection of twilight in my window  and let it in. The view gave my soul a certain peace.

I am a better me like a cleared window pane after the rain.

What happened between the silence, between the lights and shadows of last night? I’m back in a corner where I spent the night few days ago, still reading - a different book - caught in a semilar web of thoughts. There must be something in that corner, in that space why I need to return.  

Between reading and the silence, the memory of the fireworks return flaring in my mind with the fleckering headlights reflected in the walls. The frantic mood and sounds, the glowing faces and sparkling eyes of the crowd watching the colorful burst of light in the evening skies. A fleeting treat to the eyes that stayed only for a brief moment and then desolve with the smoke clouding the horizon. What’s left are memories that the crowd take as they slowly parade home. Often, I feel like the fireworks - things make me float in the air, seeing colors of temporary bliss and then gone desolving in the air like smoke clouding my hopes. What’s left are memories.

Between the silence, between the lights and shadows of last night, the memory of the flickering headlights of traffic returned. The sounds of vehicles’ coming and going, you could not tell the difference. The city never sleeps. It goes on no matter what, even if somewhere some souls are happy, or sad, or hurting. The traffic doesn’t roll to a halt even when you’re tired but can’t sleep. The city would not cease to move even when love opens or closes its door on you. It goes on even if you contenue to struggle to take grasp of life or find a sudden enlightenment from the brief reflection of headlights on the wall and then gone. What’s left is emptiness.

Between the silence, lights, and shadows of last night I awake - I’m not sure if I even slept - with the cries of the birds taking flight in the early morning skies where the fireworks desolve leaving only hints of memories in the thin clouds floating, in pastel colors signaling daybreak.

Between the silence, lights and shadows from above, the birds look down to the city that doesn’t sleep, they know the terrains below, much more above them. They know that the city lights and the fireworks are temporary, the birds know better. They have seen what we neglect to see.

Watching the sunrise that peered through the city skyline, I briefly saw what guide the birds’ flight every morning. Colorful than the flares of fireworks, brighter than the flickering headlights.

If we’ve stayed a little longer after the fireworks desolve with the smoke in the evening skies, like the birds, we would have seen the clouds clear in the horizon and above are the real fireworks that are constantly there.

Because if we stayed long enough, we would have seen the stars and they are there forever.

—

I will tell you about the rain next time.

I turned off the light for awhile in my nook. My pages went to sleep as I allowed my soul a quiet rest watching the colors lurk in the shadows of my black and white dreams. I needed it. I need the time, I need the moment to clear myself from doubts, to free my heart of fears, to listen to what my soul wanted to say without the forbidding empty page and the blinking curser: Without me writing them.

My soul told me many stories. Inside me are heap of raw thoughts thrown in the junk shop of my heart waiting to be polished to become precious gems that they really are. So now, I allow the sunrise on my pages. It had slept long enough. I need to reconcile with my soul to clearly see its colors and paint the many facets of its hue. I need to listen closely to hear its music and write its songs. I have to give it time like I gave myself time for my worldly needs.

Because if I don’t, what would this life be?

~

Goodbye my eventide, the dawn’s now here.

Your clinging shadows are all behind me,

‘Tis time I face the light I use to fear

To welcome the promises of a new day!

~

I will now fold your comforting blanket,

Which has kept me warm and safe overnight.

‘Tis time I place it back in the casket,

My life’s streams will flow and I should not fight.

~

The morning knocks behind the window pane,

I am enthused to rise from my slumber.

To allow the breezes to ease the pain,

From the yesterdays I still remember.

~

I will open myself like the window.

My body yearns, my eyes long for the light.

I will miss the silence of your shadow,

But I can no longer stay in the night.

~

Farewell darkness my silent confidant.

You know my secrets and heard all my sighs.

Outdoors, my new grounds are turning verdant.

Hello sunrise, would you now end my cries?

~

—

The poem is an older piece I wrote: “My Silent Confidant” The photograph is a view of the sunrise in Bay-bay, Roxas City, Philippines.

Tomorrow, I will tell you about the fire works and the sleepless city. 

“Una” (First), my initial attempt with oil on canvas, By Jeques B. Jamora, 2004

 —

When you’re still single at your 30’s

You’re apt to be asked with some questions.

Like I’m always asked during weddings by my Aunties:

“So, are you next in line?” (to get married)

I oft find this question so annoying,

But I don’t get mad, I just get even.

So during funerals When I meet them,

Please don’t dare me ask them that same question:

“So, are you next in line?” (to be burried)

For I’ll surely get a slap in my face.

 ”Solitude” oil on canvas, By: Jeques B. Jamora, 2005

 Yes, I gave him a name and his name is Ethan.

I was called once to priesthood when I was in highschool, but I was expelled from the seminary after a year. Many are called, they said, but only a few are chosen; I was not. It is my first taste of rejection, I will not write about that now, but soon I will.

I would like to tell you about my first bonsai tree instead, Ethan. I mentioned the seminary because I planted Ethan the summer after I was kicked out. I was 13 years old with wings broken. Nobody really cared to listen to my side of the story especially my father. My mother, as always, was there to console me ~ in silence. I was left alone in the corner to leak my own wound to heal. At that lowest point of my life, for a reason that I’m just beginning to understand now, God sent me Ethan to care. I always had some loner tendencies as a kid. That summer and years after that I became withdrawn, misunderstood. Gone was the child full of life, I fell down so low I never thought I could ever rise from again.

I found Ethan still a seedling just starting to grow wild under the coconut tree in our backyard. He is a rare specie from the Balete(Rubber tree) family often found only in the forests. He must be a seed from those trees brought here by birds’ droppings. My natural liking for plants instantly draw me to his 5 verdant leaves. I replanted him and his first home was an empty tin can of milk.

Quietly, I spent my summer wondering where to go reaching the end of my road while I watch Ethan grow new leaves. To him, I was a broken guardian; and him a soothing green that healed my broken soul.

~

What now with my broken wings?

I wonder now if I could fly again.

Will the winds of time save me from falling?

Tell me, where will I go from here?

~

What now with my wounded spirits?

I wonder now if I could rise from here.

Is there a pill that can mend this pain,

Would I ever have the courage to fight again?

~

My highschool years was a mess. I lost interest in everything. Like a seedling uprooted, I drifted with the uncertain currents of my young life. I slept my way through highschool, I was at section F of our batch,  a picture of defeat at 15. Looking back now, I feel I only did one thing right those years ~ I planted Ethan. 

God always have his way to pull our strings and bring us back to shores when we lost our ways in the ocean. He did and he put me in a nursing school. The least I thought I would become for a profession, but the course served me double purpose: I got a degree while I nurse my heart’s scars through college. Ethan grew into a maniature tree with dense leaves and 2 main branches by now. We practically grow up together. I trimmed his roots and leaves year after year, trained his trunk to lean to the direction it would look best, molding him into a lovely tree in a pot that he had become. While I became a nurse.

It was sad to leave him home when it was time for me to go to find my place in the real world after college. But I have to do what I need to do. And for the first time he was out of my life. I have risen and had moved on from my previous defeat. I never saw him for 5 long years, when I went home we already moved to a new house in the city and then I remember Ethan.

It was a sad reunion for us. He lost his beautiful form the last time I saw him. My mother cut one of his main branch the previous year not knowing what to do with his uncontrolled growth. He was like an old friend with over grown mustache and beard unrecognizable when I saw him during my home coming. He has a scar in the heart of his trunk from the branch that was cut off. I bleed inside seeing this friend who was once there for me soothing my pain with his green silence.

I started trimming, grooming, molding him again making the best out of the one branch that was left. His cecatrix added beauty to his new form. 3 years after he surprised me with abundant fruits in his branches to show me that he is a full grown tree now. He inspired me to grow more bonsai trees and he became a big brother to all of them. I was home for 8 years spending every day moments with him sitted in that quiet side of our garden with the pond under.

When I moved to Chicago in 2006, he’s one thing in my life back home that’s hard to let go. He is part of our conversations over the phone I call home. I make sure my 2 nieces are taking care of him. I left him to their care for I know it is time for him to touch their young life like he did to me.

During my home-coming last January, 2008, I had a grand reunion with family. But on my solitude, I have a silent reunion with Ethan. I spend quiet moments in the garden with him  towering over me when I’m sitted ~ God, how he has grown sturdy like a seasoned tree. I  took shelter in his canopy of green leaves, I felt the cool breeze of his breath in the wind ~ he has grown to become the guardian of my once broken soul. 

It is when the seed is almost destroyed that it is about to grow. I understand that better now with Ethan. I went through the lowest point in my life and manage to rise like a seed. Yes, our cicatrix add beauty to our forms.

Some live to hunt; I came to life to plant.”

~

The first living thing I planted is a stem cutting from a “Camote”(sweet potato). My mother uses the shoot tips for her fish stew. I observe her while she’s preparing the food, when my child-like curiosity made me ask her how the vegetable is grown?

“The cuttings,” she replied.

What happened next, she picked and handed me one cutting from the waste box and there I was, 3 years old, planting my first farm of potato in a pot. I would visit my new potted friend each morning patiently waiting for any sign of life from the stem partly covered with earth. I can still recall my surprise one morning finding some changes during my regular check. It was magical to my young eyes seeing tiny greens sprouting from a seem lifeless piece of stem. The sprig grew long with the passing of day, as new leaves replaced the pared parts my mother used for her stew.

The progress are exciting source of story I told my sibling everytime they arrive from school. I have learned from them later on that the  steamed“camote” (sweet potato) we ate for snacks are “over-grown” roots of the plant. My curiousity of the leaves waned as I become more interested with the roots, observing the soil closely, digging its roots to check for any growth thinking of the sweetest potato produce from my potted farm.

My childhood curiosity killed my first plant - that same curiosity that once breath life to it. I woke up one morning finding my wilted plant, and no amount of water can bring it back to life - or perhaps I over watered it - and for the first time, I grieved for the first living thing I lost.

“You have touched its roots prematurely,” my mother told me. I know better about plants since then..

This is where my love for plants started. The garden brings back beautiful childhood memories. The passion remains in me to these days, the roots has grown deep in me. I have to mention that at thirteen, I planted my first bonsai tree, I gave it a name: Ethan. I am 35 now, which makes Ethan my 22-year old potted friend. My story with Ethan is still on going. It is crazy, but I miss my plants back home.

~

Shepherds Of Life (Senryu)

Hunters live to take

While planters exist to give

They’re shepherds of life.

~

Ethan, my 22-year-old bonsai. I’ll write about him next time.

Love, “Fish,” Hope, oil on canvas By: Jeques B. Jamora, 2005

 —

 

 At midnight

When half the world is asleep,

The prying eyes of the nocturnal owl

Stay alert for mice dozing undergrownds.

.

A turtle slowly prowls in a swamp

Disturbing the resting fishes

On the shallow waters.

.

Somewhere, you are confined

Asleep in your room dreaming.

While I stay awake questioning.

.

Am I part of your dreams tonight?

Would I take part in your life

When you awake in the morning?

.

The night ends

With the owl catching no mice.

The fishes has gone to The deeps,

But the turtle hasn’t reach where ’tis going.

Just like me with my doubts never fading.

.

But nevertheless always wishing

That one day I’d stop questioning

And to The deeps I’d just let the fishes

Swim.

Fish Of Mind, oil on canvas, 30×38 By: Jeques B. Jamora, 2007

—

The Deeps is the English term for the Hebrew Tehom, found in the opening verses of the Book of Genesis. It is believed by Biblical scholars to come from the Sumerian word Tiamat, the name given to the Salt Water, and means “The Mother of All Life”, (from Sumerian “Ti” = Life, “Ama” = Mother), a title that in the Bible was later given to Eve. (”And the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living” - (Genesis 3:20).

photograph of my pond back home

—

An errant bird stirred the steady water

Of the desolate pristine pond

Creating ripples.

.

The tiny currents sent genial waves

To my dormant heart.

.

Errant bird of my 30’s

Look what you did to me.

—

After many months of long hour work, my request for three days off was approved last week. I feel fortunate. The three days were initially set for me to attend my friend’s graduation from Med school, but something else came out and the initial plan was changed. I instead went for the written exam for driver’s license. Though I have a professional driver’s license in the Philippines, and I’ve been driving for years, I still need to go through the process and start from step one: I got my permit to drive. So the 3 days away from work started really so well. I was with friends I’ve not seen for awhile, we had a grand day malling. I got some books from Barnes while they get their hair cut. I was so sleepy, but I tried to fight it, I don’t want to miss a thing. God I missed doing this!

We extended the day, got some coffee and decided to have a walk in the lake shore late evening. It was foggy, the temperature dropped but it was fun. I am a night shift nurse, I lack sleep, I was a walking zombie. When I got to my apartment and my back hit the bed I slept like a baby. It’s been long since I slept this way in a night time, so it’s a luxury for me.

The next day, it was all fixing things and cleaning up the mess in my apartment. I started by washing the loundry, cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning the whole day and went to bed. I am grateful, everything seem to fall in the right places. I wanted to freeze time and stay in that moment forever but I am mature enough to understand that I need to work to pay the bills and the next night would be back to work.

I spent my last free day browsing and reading the books I bought. Great day chilling out, good read.

After a brief nap in the afternoon, the turn of events unexpected started when I woke up discovering something that made me sweat profusely: I CAN’T FIND MY WALLET! The last time I remember having it was wednesday evening when I bought something from seven-eleven. It’s friday, I learned my lost after two days. I have all my cards in the wallet. I don’t usually bring them but that day because I went to apply for my driver’s license, I have with me my Social Security ID, Green Card,  and State ID. I immediately checked on-line the activities in my credit cards. Nothing unusual really, one of my cards still has that last transaction I did at seven-eleven, so I was able to breath a little better. I gathered myself together and took action for damage control from my lost. I first cancelled my credit cards, then went to the nearest police station to report the incident so they could notify the credit bureaus. The question that was hard for me to answer was where and when I lost it? I just claimed I must have dropped it in the lakeshore that evening we had a walk becuase that was the last time I remember having it, but I was not really sure. 

I was back to work that night worried. My mother sent me a message to pray that whoever has my wallet return it, my friends told me the same thing. But I am more skeptical and distrustful of people. I didn’t expect nor pray for that. What I was only asking is for me to understand why it has to happen. I know there’s something to learn even from this turn of events unexpected. If there’s one thing I prayed to gain from this, that’s just it. 

The next day, I cancelled and changed all my bank accounts and get the consolation finding no problem when I checked my account balance. Less worried and less expecting to recover my wallet, I’m still searching in my mind the answer to my “WHY.”

Time made me accept my misfortune. Monday morning, after working double shift, I went straight to Social Security Office to get a new card. But I found my misfortunes was not over, after a long and tiring trip , I discovered I left my lunch bag in the bus and I have my keys to my apartment in it. What more? I arrived in a closed office for renovation. JINX!

I went home feeling tired and sleepy and I don’t have my keys. I waited for almost an hour for the apartment’s care taker to open the door for me. I slept exhausted, my body gave up to any positive thoughts left of me.

After only 2 hours of sleep I got my strength re-charged, got up to find solution to my recent added problem. I called the the CTA office to check if my bag was returned and luck started to send me signal as I see series of little spark of hope. I recovered my bag that afternoon, and when I returned the key I borrowed from the apartment’s care taker, she handed me one of my lost credit cards she found in the loundry. Now I got a lead where I lost my wallet. But Who has it? I remember there was somebody with me in the loundry that day, but I don’t know who he was.

Questions overflowed, playing in my mind that night at work and the next day. I found the answers at 10:00 P.M. of tuesday with a knock in my door that ended all my misfortunes. A boy and his father was outside my door asking me if I was looking for something. There was no doubt in my mind in that instance that their question was the answer to my “WHY.”  He handed me my wallet with everything in it crampled by the washing machine but intact nevertheless. God, I could kiss the child! He found my wallet in the loundry. They live in the next building and since I work night shift it was hard for them to see me and they’re not really sure where I live. It was only that afternoon when they got the chance to talk and confirm with the care taker who knew my lost and handed me one of my card the previous day. The boy was even hesitant to accept a small amount I handed him as token of appreciation for his kindness, I heard his father said I don’t need to give him anything but I said I’m just really very grateful and I should have even spent more than that if they did not return my cards.

Now the answer to my “WHY.” I have to admit that since I came to America almost 2 years ago I became distrustful of people and less friendly. I am always cautious and in my more than a year stay here in my apartment I didn’t reach out to my neighbors. The incident opened my eyes, changed my mind and opened my heart to the truth that there are good people out there. It took me lossing something to find that truth again. It reminded me of the power of prayer that my mother told me in her message which I disregard being too skeptical. I wasted many days and nights worrying instead.

God has a sealed message in everything that happen. In this instance, I realized I have hardened my heart which made it difficult for me to open and understand His message. Should I have been friendlier to my neighbors, I could have recovered my wallet faster if they know who I was and where I live. But I was not. I kept my doors locked and my heart shut to the possibilities of friendship.

And It took God to let a boy knock in my door for me to realize that. 

     Here’s an old post that I thought perfect for Writer’s Island matinee muse this week: “Reconciliation”

—

       My love for poetry traces back to my childhood, When I vaguely understood what I was chanting. I started reciting poems before I learned to read or write. Memorization came not from reading, but from listening; not from understanding the words or the message of the verse with the mind, but with the heart. It was primarily the sound of its rhythmical composition, more than anything, which lured me to it. Grasping the metaphors and absorbing the meaning concealed between the lines came much later. It captured my heart before it conquered my mind. This is probably the reason for my enduring love affair with poetry.

       As a tyke, I liked listening to the rhythmic tone of my high-pitched voice as I would parrot poems - joining and winning contests - before I entered school. What sounds good to the ears of a child feels good to the heart:

“…The shepherd came to worship; the tiny baby smiled.

It is an old, old story; old yet forever new.

Watch for the little star tonight;

It will shine for me and you.”

And just like most of the singers learning their first song, I, too, learned my first poem by listening.

        Poetry for me then, as it is still to me now, like love, needs no extra ordinary thoughts to touch the heart. Purity speaks the truth. I can now tell when a poem was written using blood-stained ink from the heart:

“Don’t forget me; make a shrine to hold me

Safe and warm within your faithful heart;

Weave a web of happy thoughts to fold me

In all remembrance, when we part…”

       Now, if it was not the heart of Rafael Dimayuga that wrote this lines, what could it possibly be? Those lovely words were finely entwined, undoubtedly, by love. Reading this poem leads me to the re-discovery of a treasure box I feared to open for a very long time. It was the key that re-opened something in me that I locked from the inside. It unleashed the dormant would-be poet in me, an inclination I lost with my first taste of rejection, when I was expelled from seminary at the age of thirteen. I have outgrown the trauma, but the scar remains - God knows it still hurts. The seminary produced many success stories of priests; mine was a sad story of defeat. My english teacher, a priest, dropped me from a poetry recital contest in favor of his pet student(it is a long story, I’ll wrote about that in a separate post). I felt bad, so did some of my classmates who thought I was more deserving. I lost interest in everything after that incident, my vocation included. By the end of the school year, I was kicked out.

       Something in me died. It was my lowest point that inchoate my long detachment from anything poetic. There were times when I felt it resurfaced for some brief moments, whenever something or someone whisks my heart with gentle strokes or reckless blows. My lack of the resources of language to speak my mind and the fear of confronting my too sensitive feelings quelled it even more. I was unaware, though, that I channeled my creativity into other mediums: There’s poetry in my sketches and paintings, and my bonsai in the garden. I now understand.

       Love and rejection, indeed, gets in the same route into, and out of our hearts. Rejection locked my heart once, and it was love that reopened it years later. It started with meager and petty journal entries:

“… i thought we have it, but somewhere along the way we lost it. Shall we ever regain it, perhaps at least i still hope, in the end?”

Then it progressed into short vignettes;

“I am forever tracing in my mind
The creases in your palms,
When you pressed it close to mine ~

Your last strong grip,
Our last hand shake ~

Then we bade goodbye.”

       Moving further,  I progressed and tried free verse:

“At night, I light a lamp

So even in the long dark hours

The little spark of my thoughts of you

Could light the moment

As I read my life’s pages back

To the times

When you were still with me.”

       I heard that strangely familiar voice of the child again. And there he was, just like the last time I heard him. Albeit mellowed, and unlike before, he now demands to deliver not somebody else’s thoughts but his own. So I listned. Listning I did in the placidity of early mornings, when silence utters messages that we can understand if we listen with an open mind and a quiet heart:

“If you need a quiet place,
A perfect haven to rest;
Come let me be,
You can lie on my chest.

There you will hear a single sound,
A love song at its best;
‘Tis there that you will hear,
The whisper of my heartbeats.

Hey, stay with me
And let me be
Your quiet place to rest.

       I wrote this poem, “A Quiet Place To Rest,” just about the same time I was rediscovering my love for poetry. I wrote this then for someone who I eventually lost. But  reading it, I know now that this poem is actually for me. And that is how we reconciled, and began our journey together again.

       It was hard to believe and convince myself initially that I could write and I am a poet. But we all are. For every literate person, according to David Kirby, has it in himself to be a good poet. The good news is each of us is a poet already, or at least used to be, it’s just that most of us have gone into early retirement. It is relaxing - like a balm to the heart - to read and write poetry. I read poems to find more of its secrets and to be reminded that poems can be written. Books of poetry gives me a simple surprise that more poems are there and that the magic is available. One poet said that most of us are poets on-call because poetry only comes when it wants to. So we should always make ourselves available. E.E. Cummings also said that “a poet is only a poet during a few hours of his lifetime. The rest of the time he is a would-be poet.” So here I am reconciled with my first love. Our years apart makes a good plot for my works. I promised my self not to let go of poetry again.

       I do not know where my life’s journey with poetry is going to take me. I always have this incessant vision of me in my mind: standing on the bank of a river, I watch the waters flow, and wonder where the river came, and where life goes. I can only look as far as my eyes can see and my heart can imagine.

~ Jeques

—

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