Almost Grasped, But Not Quite

The Kindness Coffee Brings

Even before we made the trip, I was already clamoring for coffee. Iced, please. Its been one month since I sipped the precious brown bittersweet liquid and my throat runs dry every time I see a cup sign from a distance. I choke when we get near a coffee shop. I die when we just pass by it without getting a cup or a glass.

I made sure I’ll enjoy a cup once I get to the new place on this brand new month, when everything returns to normal. It’s a memory I want to have. Sipping coffee in a new place, like the Persian Gulf perhaps. Or the Sahara. Or the Atlantic ocean. Wherever I go, I want to have coffee alone or with someone and etch it into my memory where I can replay what was shared in between sips again and again.

There were coffee shops in the new place. I couldn’t even count how many they were brewing finely ground beans grown from afar. I was salivating at the thought of iced coffee after making my rounds on the new mall but the others are too tired to make the journey to the other side of the road where a familiar logo of a popular coffeehouse is beckoning to me. I looked around and found one, one that doesn’t appeal to me but is the last option because of its nearness. I walk to it and enter. First, asking if I’m allowed inside.

The barista is friendly and motioned me to come in when he heard my order’s to go. He’s embarrassed they don’t have a hand-out of their menu but pointed to the menu printed on the board overhead. I scanned it quickly and settled for a grand tumbler of iced latte. While waiting for my order, which is being mixed fast, I surveyed the room. Like any other coffee shop, it is warmly-lit with coffee aroma wafting on the air. Very, very enticing. The pastry display lacks goodies but I’m eyeing the strawberry cheesecake when the shop’s manager walks in the counter.

“Hi. Do you need anything else?,” he asks. I hesitated. It would be hard to eat my cheesecake at the shore so I declined and said “no” returning to the waiting area for my coffee, which is being poured into a plastic tumbler now. The manager asked me the usual “Where are you from?” “What do you do?” “Why are you here?” When everything has been answered, he smiles and says “This is for you” and hands me a bar of dark chocolate (for sale at the counter). I’m surprised. “So you’ll come back,” he adds with a wink and a smile.

I receive the bar wrapped in cream and red paper. I say thank you profusely. The barista hands me my drink. I say my goodbyes and return to our vehicle where my companions are impatiently waiting for me.

I sigh the moment I plop myself at the back seat. I’m not sure if I will return to the coffee shop because I live so far away from it. But if ever given a chance, I will. Besides, because I was too busy trying to show my overwhelming sense of gratitude and to hide the red flush on my cheeks, I actually forgot I ordered a bottle of mineral water too!

No matter, next time, next time. There will certainly be a next time.

Last part of the (3) Sea With Lots of Sand Collection

“That no matter how much money and how beautiful the life and the city and the weather it never quite feels like home, and why one piece of ground smells different from another no one knows, but it does and no matter how familiar it gets it will always be ground, never grounding. You get there — the other place — only to discover that home is deep in the innards and can only truly be removed by surgery, complicated emotional surgery, and nine times out of ten there are unforeseen complications and there is haemorrhaging and scarring and a dull ache like a cramp that flares up on cold damp days or hot days, beautiful summer days when everything is pleasant enough except when the wind blows. And even the trees speak a different language.”

- Alison Wearing, Honeymoon in Purdah

Let me grin like an idiot.

I gritted my teeth to suppress the smile wanting to escape my lips. I spent the whole time sitting on the leather couch, looking interested and knowledgable, and trying to stop myself from grinning. Gawd, it was such a huge effort with him sitting directly in front of me. Of all the chairs he could have chosen, there is where he took a godamn seat! He could just have proceeded on his usual chair, away from my sight. Nonetheless, he was already sitted there ready to talk while I listen like an absent-minded fool. Our eyes met for a moment but we both managed to tear away from each other’s “I recognize you” look.
 
I was whistling in my head all the time trying to divert my attention. To no avail, of course.
 
I steal glances from him from time to time, when I know he’s not looking at my direction. He’s not that good-looking but there’s something in him that makes me look once, twice, thrice… but there’s also a pull that makes me want not to look. I’m sure he sees or feels me looking at him but he doesn’t show any signs of “awareness.” He chose to be oblivious to this one crazy girl who sits right there not minding her own business. Or maybe he’s just oblivious. 
 
He makes me want to grin like an idiot, for no particular reason! It’s not as if I like him. He’s way beyond me. It’s just that there’s something in him that makes me want to approach him, smile, and say “Hey, want to grab some coffee?” or something like that. I feel like we have something in common but what is it I couldn’t point a finger to. And what’s more frustrating is that I’m sure I wouldn’t know. Ever. Argh.

A Thief Like No Other

I went to the mall after lounging on the sand for hours. I shrieked again when I entered. Did the female population get annihilated while I’m at the beach? I can’t seem to find them anywhere. But okay, I can see two or three black heads bobbing in and out the male crowd. We can play hide and seek in here. I can stand behind one person taller than me, rush with the crowd out, and never be found, until I get to the curb of the road where everyone just seem to vanish into little streets swaddled with all kinds of goods. Again, I get transported to the world I am used to. Hey, this is the place of my bargain hunts!

The little department store’s detector keeps on beeping when I go out. It’s hard not to notice, especially when all eyes were on me. I was the only one passing by. I frown at my shopping bag. What the hell? I return to the counter and shove the bag to the cashier. He checks it and finds the culprit: a tag he’s supposed to tear before he gives the shades to me. He hands the bag back to me and I try the gates again. It beeps again, again, and again. I am frustrated, and embarrassed. I shove the entire bag to the cashier’s desk. The salesman get my things, march over to the detector and runs each piece. No sound. Nothing. So I giddily take my purchases and march to the exit. Again, it beeped loudly.

The female security guard comes to my rescue and gets the purse I purchased at another city. She runs it at the scanner and it beeps. My eyes widen. She scans and checks the contents of my purse with a laugh. All the men are looking at me now like I’m some kind of a thief. Some with doubts in their eyes, others with sparkles of amusement. I am frustrated. I swear I didn’t take anything without paying it! Darn!

The security girl shakes her head and hands my purse to the salesman who checked it again and again, even spilling my money, lip gloss, and ids on the counter. Nothing. I did not take anything from their store without freakin’ paying it! Promise!

And then he runs his hands on the little pockets of the purse. And he caught the culprit: an electronic tag which is supposed to be torn by the salesman of the other store where I bought the purse. Damn my luck. I didn’t see that tag because it’s under the flap of the pocket and since I began using the purse a week ago, I haven’t opened that part. I sheepishly get my things and purse back and head to the exit. I know what those men are thinking.

Who cares? Whatever.

That gave me a phobia. I feel like every detector at the entrance and exit of every store will beep and ring and howl and will drive me crazy when I pass through them. Argh.

Part 2 of the (3) Sea With Lots of Sand Collection

When I went away, I came to teach myself how not to expect that everything will be the same when I return. People, places, and things will change the same way I will be changed by time, by age, and by experiences. What I haven’t prepared myself is not to expect that there will be people who will not only change but I will never see again.

Sometime during the middle of the dawn, a grandmother will never see her newly-born granddaughter. And a granddaughter will never have the chance to know her grandmother personally. Someone went away and someone came. A departure and an arrival. While I am happy for the latter, I am very very sad for the former. I cannot help it, I’m sorry.

“For death begins with life’s first breath And life begins at touch of death.”

I can’t seem to stop my tear ducts from working overtime while I type this very short paragraph. I didn’t even have the chance to say goodbye. I am ashamed that this is only the thing I can offer to that someone who went ahead. She shared most of her life with my life and my family’s and I will be forever grateful for the care and the love. I hope I was there for her from beginning to end but I know I wasn’t. Tonight, I feel I am the worst person in this world.

I love this person. We all love her.

The main struggle of being away is not being there. But the worst kind of struggle is being there but not really being there.

Written last week for a woman the family and I love dearly… We will miss her.

Squatting toilets and pain-free attention

I shrieked when I entered the room. It was the nastiest comfort room I’ve ever seen in my entire life. The toilet the friends and I found on the mountains two years ago was way far cleaner than this one. The two pesos fee was worth it. But this one is just horrible. I was out of it in three seconds flat.

But that wasn’t fast enough for me not to see the vomit and feces on the floor. I guess the one who came in earlier couldn’t contain herself when she saw the mess. The stench reaching ten meters away, or more. I just have to restrain myself from breathing. My piss returned to my bladder, thank god. I can live until the next gasoline station. Or maybe not, if the toilet there is like this one, or worse. I am near tears.

There are discomforts when travelling in a new land. Never knowing what to expect. Just expect to be surprised. Whether it’s a good surprise or not, you’ll know when you’re there. That’s why I love and hate being surprised.

I was surprised of the sea I saw when I set foot on the powdery sand 400 kilometers away from the new home. The sand is not gray. It’s more of a fine light brown shade. The one you see on the desert, which is nearer than it seems to where I’m standing. The water is nice, but murkier than what I was used to. Maybe because of the brown sand. The horizon is not the sky meeting the waves. It’s a long bridge connecting two different worlds. A world of freedom which you can discover in one day at the other side. Too bad the side I’m on is so vast I can’t discover it even if I offer my whole lifetime.

There were lots of people on the shore. People who want to have fun in a day or two. I sat on the sand with my usual slouchy pose and ponder on the gentle rolling waves nearby. I can’t find the clouds but it’s unusually cloudy. The atmosphere is more laidback but I can feel the suppresion, the want and the need to get out, to be one’s self, to be free.

I feel it everywhere I go.

Even the guys who are acting stupid several feet away gets my sympathy. I’ve been watching them for a while now because that’s what they wanted anyway: attention. Thank goodness I’m wearing my shades but the tint can’t keep me from seeing how idiotic their actions were. If you have a vehicle, you should know everything about it. How it works and where it works. If it’s an ordinary car, it shouldn’t be used in the beach where the sand can devour the wheels, obviously. But these guys have other plans of their own. It’s okay if they committed the mistake once but this is the third time I see them stranded on the same spot! I wonder what’s so beautiful with that spot. Or what’s so “macho”in pushing a car which shouldn’t be stranded if they only used their brains instead. (Sorry, I’m more into brains than muscles.)

I was laughing my heads off but I try to gaze at another direction when doing so. They might see me laughing at them. (I’m still trying to be modest.) But one caught my eye. He paused from pushing their car when he saw me looking. He waves and makes the “Time Out” sign with his hands. I’m not sure what he means but I don’t care. I laugh and shrug. It’s not as if I can help them, you know. For one, I can’t push a car. Two, I don’t know anything about cars. Three, I refuse to do an action I’m silently labeling “stupid.”

But still they get my sympathy that’s why I am paying them attention from afar. After all, that’s the only thing they wanted in the first place.

Attention is one of the few things I’m free to give and they’re free to get here.

Part 1 of the (3) Sea With Lots of Sand Collection.