The longest journey is the journey inward.

February 14

Valentine's Day traffic nearly caused us to miss our bus to Bicol. we attended the service for my mother in greenbelt and the traffic back to pasay was the kind of traffic immortalized in every story about traffics in manila. the bus was suppose to leave at 8:00 pm and we arrived at the station a few minutes after eight, less our coats and my phone charger. it's going to be a cold and long trip.

there's a certain melancholia attached to these trips to naga. a little dose of excitement, a little dose of apprehension, relief and then nostalgia. like coming home but it's not because we no longer live there. we no longer have a house there. our belongings have been scattered with the four winds. my mother would not approve. but when we lost our mom, it seemed we also lost everything else.


February 15

it was a cold trip but it wasn't the long trip i feared. arrived in Naga at 3 bloody 30 am. the earliest i've arrived since time immemorial (trips to bicol usually take more than 8 bloody hours). my brother left the plastic bag with my cute metallic blue shoes (thank goodness it was the old one), slippers and my nephews' new shirts on the bus. we weren't able to retrieve the stuff. may the person who took it suffer from athlete's foot in his/her entire life. amen.

as we boarded the padjak to take us to my aunt's house, my brother told the dirver to take us to magsaysay. i had to tell the driver to take us to osmeña instead because we no longer live in magsaysay. not since my mother passed away. another family is living in that house. in the course of our 4 -day stay there, my brother made the slip twice and i guess in our minds have yet to catch up with the reality we no longer live there.

left for buyo in the afternoon to visit the living and the dead. it has been raining since we arrived early in the morning and still raining in the afternoon and it rained all through out the night. i'm never gonna see the sun until the end of my stay here.

i was freezing during the trip to goa. because of the cold front, the sun has not shined in naga or in goa for that matter. i always take the bus to go there and my hermano knows this. i always like to take these trips after the sun has set. i like travelling with my windows open, no matter how cold. i like to see the fields, the mountains, the road as it is lighted by the bus' headlights. i like to smell the burning dried leaves, sweet and nostalgic.

i like seeing the bus' headlights chase the darkness off the road, the shadows converging again as we move on. the mountains and the fields of palay covered by the dark and intermittently lit by moonlight (when there is one). otherwise the only lights in the distance are the lights from the lamps inside the houses scattered all over the plains but they are often times far apart that they look like glowing yellow stars from the distance.

the wind was unforgivably cold. the kind of coldness that seeped through your bones and reduces you to feeling and thinking about nothing but its coldness. it's no use trying to concentrate about getting warm because there is nothing warm in the wind or the cold seats of the bus. Or the thoughts that ran through my mind. i did not close the window until we got to tigaon when it started to rain again. i wanted to be numbed before i get to my grandmother's house. the less i feel, the better it is for me.

buyo is a sad and happy place for me. the place where everything begun and ended. a trip there at night is always like a slow walk down memory lane. as a rule i never took the van because the windows are always close. i want to feel the wind and the night as it merges with the darkest side of my mind. while the bus negotiates the bumps on the road, i try to make sense of where i am and what lead me to this place.

it's during the hours, the minutes and the seconds on every trip that i go over everything that happened on the past year. everytime i get on a bus, my mind takes this trip. whether i take the bus from manila to naga, from naga to goa, from naga to legaspi - my mind goes on another trip at another time. wherever i am i can't seem to shake it off of me. this melancholy. i can't let go. so i let the melancholia drown me as every thing that happened in the past flashes in front of my eyes like it was just yesterday. whoever said that time heals all wounds...is lying. it's been 9 months and a day and still it feels like it was only yesterday.

it reminded me of another night trip to goa 9 months before, the darkest and saddest trip i ever took with the heaviest heart.

we arrived at the centro of goa at past 7 pm. my uncle was not there to meet us because it was freezing cold to be driving the motorcycle in this rain. so my brother and i hired a tricycle to get us to buyo. since we're going up the south eastern slope of mount isarog, it was colder and we were shaking by the time we got to my grandma's house since there wasn't much in the tricycle that can protect us from the cold. my grandmother scolded us again for arriving that late and taking our chances with such a bleak weather.

dinner was ginataan and adobong manok. then i went to bed and fell promptly asleep.


February 16

visited my mother. i don't remember doing anything else on this day aside from playing with my nephews.

we were suppose to go back to naga in the afternoon but woke up very late and even my brother doesn't feel like returning to naga yet. we ate at my cousin's paternal grandmother's house (the Pan's) because they have laing for lunch and i have not eaten a good laing for some time. then when we returned to my grandmother's house, we ate the fish and the sauteed ampalaya they had for lunch. i was never a fan of ampalaya. life is bitter enough for me.


February 17

returned to naga before lunch. went to san francisco for the mass with my aunts and ukay ukay later. bought myself a cap and pants.

slept the afternoon away and met with my friend love in the evening. spoke with pres over the phone and some plebo he dragged over to seal a bargain. i was assured he walked on 2 legs but apparently the cat got his tongue.


February 18

the last day. it was still raining so i slept the day away and later met with love again and my brother for dinner at bigg's. went back to my aunt's house to pack and left 15 minutes later to take the bus that will take me back to manila.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. - Nelson Mandela