I had once come across a principle whose progenitor now I could not remember so well. Such principle is actually a theory upon the very meaning of man’s existence here on Earth. It declares that all men were meant to be different from each other so that they may understand each other all the more. It elucidated quite explicitly the reason why some of us are white and some of us are black. There are some of us who are Caucasians and then there are the Malays, the Africans, the Yellow Race and many others. We even speak in variant languages and dialects, to the most evolved tongue and to the crudest ones. Just the same that we are all separated into many cultures aside from the major division of being Western and Eastern. Just also as we have diverse geographical conditions obtaining, from the jungles of South America to the desert of the Sahara. In my own meanderings, I reckoned that there is a major reason or cause for these differences, that is, in order for us to ponder upon these differences and inquire upon them the more, gaining answers to many questions and therefore promotes more understanding among us. There is synergy in diversity, the wise men say.

At a glance, the principle above spoken seem to be ridiculous and absurd. Is it not that wars and conflicts of the world are mostly premised upon the differences of men? The whites against the blacks? The Jews against the Arabs? The Yellow Race looking down on Malays? Malays distrusting the Yellow Race? The Christians against the Muslims? English against Irish? The Socialist against the Democratic?

Upon further thought on the other hand, the principle on the differences of men above spoken has certain form of credibility. Let us for example imagine a world where everyone else is Caucasian living in the same culture and having the same language, breathing in the same environmental conditions. When all the lands having been conquered and peopled, what would be left then to urge a person to visit and see other places when everything outside is the same as the home country? Even with some differences attending, still many would have no motive to travel and reach out to others except for the usual reasons of pursuing business and visiting family relations.

Without silk, the Chinese people would have no motive to travel half the world away to sell it, as well as to the Europeans who would have had no desire to staged major expeditions to China to buy silk and porcelain. Now, could we imagine with the same practicality Americans inventing or creating porcelain? The making of porcelain is deeply rooted in the Chinese culture, without that culture, there would be no porcelain but jars of clay. If the land in Europe produced spices in abundance, Ferdinand Magellan would not have been able to circumvent the world, upon the purpose of finding the Spice Island. Alexandria of old was a haven of scholars that people of all races traveled to that place to earn their education. If the same education were everywhere at that time, there would be no traveling of such great number of people.

The uniqueness of each land and culture are the things that pushed men in the past to spread out and explore. If without the differences in geography, climate and environment, mankind would have not reached this level of understanding as we have now, where economy had become so global that barriers have become invisible and communication happens with just a click of the button anywhere in the world.

It was for the fervent travels made by our ancestors in the past that we have now achieved greater understanding of the Chinese man, of the American, of the Italian and of the African– the food they eat, their temperaments, and the clothes they wear. We have become familiar with the music others play and the many dances they do. We have become wary of the things we could do and the things we could not do while we are in their country. They say, when in Rome, do what the Romans do. But how could we ever know what the Romans do if men did not travel as much as they did in the past and until today?

A wandering man reach places and discover the unknown. A motionless people remain trapped in the past.

And why would men travel vigorously if everywhere there were silk and porcelain? If every nation or country has the same kind of produce, environment and culture. If variety does not take place, men would rather stay home than roam.

Nowadays, those who travel the world are tourists and businessmen. Why would one be a tourist today if everywhere there were beaches and Buddhist temples and pyramids? Why would one travel the world and make business contacts across the continents if everywhere there are microchips or mangoes?

If I were born Caucasian, with bristled blond hair and skin pale as the cloud, I would not mind so much a white man walking our local streets for I will find no new things in him. But because I am of the Malay Race, I would be a little more interested in him if he materializes in my presence. I would probably ask his country of birth and the concerns he has in life, the things he does for his daily bread. With some probability, he would more or less ask for my name also, the place where I reside and the things I do everyday. And possibly, he could become my friend and perhaps offers me opportunities in his land of milk and honey. We could not say what opportunities that might come our way through meeting other people from some faraway land. Or perhaps I could assist him in finding the best antiques in town and we could go to our house for dinner after that. There are many stories like that. The basic difference in the way a man look brings people closer and gives forth more understanding among them.

In the old times, an ancestor of ours might have asked why a Spaniard’s hair was blond, his skin pale and his tongue queer. Or an Italian coming in peace may have asked if gold was abundant here for he has some fine leather shoes in his baggage that may be of interest to the natives.

Let us imagine also if we all have the same faith and religion. To what form of belief would my faith differ from if there were no other religion but my religion? To what other form of belief would I compare my faith from if there are no other faith but mine? How could I say the color purple is the finest if there is none other shade existing but purple? How would I value and accept my faith the more if I do not have a point of comparison?

The matter of faith is of course not a matter of comparison but a matter of truth. But if man is indeed a little vain by nature–where man is an imperfect creation–then man would always look at their possession and belief in contrast to others. Why would I gleefully wear my leather shoes made of fine Italian craftsmanship if all others wear the same? How do I see my faith in comparison to others? That is man, imperfect and tainted with vanity. Do we still argue on this point? If we say men should not be vain, then we are imagining a different creature. It is not altogether proper to say that men hold their faith in vanity, but it would do them good to appreciate their own faith in contrast to others, to hold it so dearly and then to follow its edict so diligently.

In order to see white, we must also see black. The diversity of man’s faith is to see white from black without saying that either black or white is the more enlightened.

Let us walk further into these meanderings. If we wish that all men should be Christians or Muslims all, then it should be upon the premise that we all are of the same race and culture, and that would be an impracticality of nature and of circumstance. Even if such spiritual utopia is possible, it would take humanity thousands of years of struggle and strife to achieve such peak level of unity in spiritual mind and purpose.

A Jew like Jesus Christ, the Son of God, may have walked the hills and valleys of China yet he would not have been as acceptable and as effective. If he had walked in the land of Arabs, he would have been in the most precarious position. Imagine if Prophet Mohammad (Peace be upon Him) walked the lands of the Jews or Hindus, he would not have had much impact or enough ground to take off. If Buddha walked the streets of England, he would have been relegated to the status of a minor spiritualist, an inconsequential oriental spiritual master.

In the olden times, perhaps until now, to teach the Chinese people about faith, a preacher must be a also china man in order for education to be full and fruitful, moving within the structure of the Chinese culture. For the matter of faith is fragile when culture clashes, and in fact blood are often spilt as it had been in the past, where men in great number died for and in behalf of religion.

Today, an American preacher may teach the words of God to his Chinese followers and may have some success, as humanity today has grown mature. In the olden times, this is a highly impractical task.

Now, is there one true religion? The answer to this inquiry is highly debatable, ever since and up to now, where no particular religion could claim the truth upon incontrovertible facts. They may present all the thesis and hypothesis, invoking even all the historical fossil and yet not one sect could come up with conclusions beyond reasonable doubt, that the argument may take the debaters through hundred days and hundred nights of professing and arguing, to somnambulate with passion, to be so wise in words and actuations, and yet the clash of ideas and principles would not meet a delta of unity, at least a significant unity. The debate may not end but there is a premise where all could concur, a premise that declares that even before the word “Catholic” or “Islam” was invented, there is already Him, the Creator of All Things. Is God a follower of Muhammad or of Buddha? Certainly not– He is the One to be followed and not the One to follow.

And when every religion speaks of good against evil, why should we then squander our mind upon the inconsequential differences? When every religion preaches the belief in a Greater Being as the Father of All Things, at which point or significant matter do we really differ? Is the Caucasian a lesser man just because he has blond hair and not black as Asians have? Is the African becomes a lesser man just because he has darker skin? Is rice a lesser food just because it does not grow from under ground like potatoes does? Is the language Filipino becomes a false language just because it is not as widely used as English?

Do I become a false human being just because I am a Filipino or a Jew or an Arab or an American?

When men have been created differently from each other, born in different civilizations and culture, is it for us then to expect that we all have the same religion? Is it for all of us to expect that we all eat rice or drink tea on a sunlit afternoon?

My blood brother does not look like me nor talk like me. He does not act like me or believe the things that I believed and yet he is my brother. My brother is not like me and yet he is my brother.

I may eat some other kind of food and speak a different tongue but you could not say I am a false human being. You like to sing popular music while I hum lullabies in the stillness of the night yet that does not make me a false man. You eat with chopsticks while I eat with spoon and fork and yet you could not say I am a false human being.

Religions are the embodiment of ethics that leads us all towards the good and away from evil and they become an important aspect of our humanity. Religion purifies us and structures our faith within the confines of disciplines in order that we may not go astray. We are like the water siphoned-off of the many impurities it carries and religion is the mesh that cleanses this water.

Religion must not lead us to violence, prejudice and contempt. It is only to evil things and to evil men that we should be prejudicial and contemptuous.

There must be a brotherhood of man in order for us to diffuse widespread violence and contempt among men today. We must accept others as brothers and sisters without regards for race and geography, and most importantly, without regards to faith. The diversity of humanity is something that we should accept as a mechanism for unity, and not a cause for quarrel, for in synergy there is diversity.

Diversity in the world has its purpose for without it, this world would not turn and revolve, as it turns and revolve for us now, in order to create and recreate the truest meaning of life, so that the potentialities of mankind are exhausted. For no matter the mass of norms and standards that had been laid upon our consciousness and no matter how we accept them as part of our reality, there is always something out there for us to search and wonder upon, that if it reaches the point where a man loses his sense of wonderment, it is the time that he loses the true meaning of life.

Would you want to eat the same viand over and over again? Would you rather see and visit the same places over and over again?

In the concept of the real brotherhood of man, the key towards lasting peace and harmony in this world, as the Creator had desired it to be, is acceptance and understanding of the differences of man. To be different is to be interesting. To be different is to understand others.

Note: Some chapters of “The Night of Angels” have alreafy been published in this blog and in some of my other blogs that could be found in the links provided in the sidebar.

San Beda might have been somewhere in my past memory if only memories were so affirmatively credible every time. The minute I went there, I thought I had known just how those gothic buildings would have looked like; as if I had previously walked those high-ceilinged halls before, where my shoes would click and clack like horses’ hooves. I felt a little de ja vu as I roamed those halls with their handsomely checkered floors. I must have loved temples and mansions in my past life.

So much of the past was in my mind.

I burned candles for nearly four months in order to refresh my grasp of those mountains and mountains of law books, as if I had any grasp at all. I rented a room less than a kilometer away from San Beda and for most of my stay in Manila; I must have walked the length between the law school and the boarding house a million times over.

I felt comfortable the minute I stepped into my boarding school. My room was overlooking the busy street of Legarda while facing the northern sky.

At night, I sat in near the window and watch the motorcars speed through the street below. I relaxed my tired mind by listening to my Walkman, letting my consciousness slip slowly into sleepiness.

As I gazed towards the night sky, a very bright star near the sky summit always took my attention. Every night, I could see that star at the places it usually appears, treading the same path in the sky consistently. I had realized then that navigation thru the guidance of those heavenly bodies could be so accurate that even in the ancient times, men find faraway places by merely staring at the night sky.

It is one those nights typical in Manila, windy and wet. The clouds would move easily that they have patent fragility. The clouds were too dynamic that I indicted Manila to be a place of queer weather. I thought that back in Zamboanga, the clouds never moved like this. I pitied the Manila indeed, always struggling against typhoons and hurricanes. A city with the burden of being the capital of a nation and at the same time bugged with hellish winds.

One night, the movement of the clouds started to move so queerly that I decided that was not the weather anymore. The thin clouds would seem to break out, then close in again. Sooner, I thought I saw the shape of a man. Then there were the winged horses. Then there appeared also a shapely woman in white gown.

I retreated back to my room thinking my mind merely needed rest. Too much reading may have affected my visions that I started seeing things.

Inside my room, I sat in front of my study table and proceeded to read. My head started to move independently, sideways then all around, until it got plastered facing the wall. I could see shadows and then figures began to move. The shape of a boat took shape and at both ends were two little beings that looked like the form of aliens usually depicted in movies, hairless heads and thin body structures. Again I questioned my senses and proceed to the living room and gasped for air. I started to worry then about my sanity. In my past readings, seeing things is a symptom of schizophrenia. This may be it, I thought. I was already losing my mind.

I recollected myself and began to calculate my entire person. How does an insane man think and behave. Am I of the unusual behavior? I had also asked myself. Do I talk senselessly? Am I still able to acquaint with the usual people I know?

After such inquiry, I concluded so determinedly that indeed, there is no marked changes in the way I behaved and relate with others. I am still able to have the common notions and senses. If I were not insane, then only one thing was deductible—the visions is a reality that I must accept. I tucked my thoughts through a deep sleep, hoping somehow that whatever defect of mind that bothers or would be bothering me would soon go away.

And yet, the night after, I looked at the sky again and the clouds behaved as usual—so fleeting and fragile—and the bright star that I have mentioned earlier shone the brighter than the night ago.

When the clouds began to form figures again, I did not retreat anymore to my room and instead tolerated what was then to me was a huge stage show in the night sky.

As I trained my sight so carefully, in the middle of the sky appeared a figure of a person with wings extending towards its sides. It was an angel, as we know them through stories and movies, cloth in a long white garment and wings so white that it almost shone. Such image stayed there for a long time that it had seemed that it had merely served a center point of the entire visions. At the farther left of the sky, I saw clouds in the shape of a ship of the ancient form, with huge mast and sails, voyaging towards the eastern side of the sky until it faded as the clouds soon disintegrated into thin parcels of smoke. Then I saw the figure of a man, also sailing by from the left of the sky heading to the right. Despite the distance, I could see that the he looked like a Chinese man with a headgear, and he was smiling. If Genghis khan were photographed before he died, the man would have resembled him. That was the thought that immediately came into my mind.

I returned my attention towards the middle and there were the winged horses trotting the center of the sky, in circling motions, so steadfast and so gallantly.

Those were my initial visions.

The night after, the visions became more lucid that the angel in the middle of the sky showed me a dance that was somehow familiar and yet altogether unique.

The angel spread its wings again and again and I just stared. This particular vision was so clear that some tears flowed from my eyes as I realized that the visions had already transgressed the bounds of reality, as I know it then. I became so concern that one of my companion in the boarding house might come and find me in such unusual condition—staring vehemently at the sky while my eyes were wet with tears. One of them, Alexis, was just nearby at that particular moment, reading in the living room just outside my room. In later times, I had felt the notion to tell Alexis about the vision since he was the closest to me–sharing the room I had– but most of me relented because again, that would only propel the suspicion of insanity. In the mind-numbing mad rush towards the bar examination, many had lost their minds in the past.

So I just stared at the angel and marveled at the sight. I could feel a little rising in my emotions and a general feeling of gratefulness.

The angel kept on spreading its wings, again and again; that I thought it wanted me to follow such movement. My head nodded independently. I took this as an instruction so I spread my arms while being so wary that some of my mates would suddenly come in towards my direction and deduce insanity.

Then the angel’s arms showed as apart from its wide wings. It swayed its arms towards the right side of its body in a circling motion and I followed it. Then its arms went back to the middle of its chest, while its palms were open, and then I followed suit. The arms swayed to the left of its side, and I also followed suit. After a while, the Angel moved its arms in circling motions that were so complicated that I was not able to follow it as it slowly faded away.

That part of the vision was the mesmerizing of all for it was the one that exhibited a lot of movements that naturally ordinary clouds could not do. This is perhaps more coherent than the vision of a bearded man sitting on the throne. About the bearded man, I saw a huge throne and the man sitting on it. If my notions were not wrong, I reckoned it looked like Jesus Christ in clean white raiment. But this vision was static compared to the dancing angel where there was dynamism of mobility that had clearly erased whatever doubts I had of the phenomenon.

The morning after, while still embraced the foggy streets of Manila, I recreated the dance I had witnessed the night before. I planted my feet in a fairly wide position and swayed my hands from left to right, just like the angels did. I did the routines as far as my memory could serve me right. Then after a while, my hands started to move by themselves that on its own it had seemed, my hands repeated the complicated movements that the angel made, the ones that I was not able to follow well the night before.

The dance drew some lightness of being inside me that it felt good always to recreate them. It was sort of habit forming, an addictive action. There was such lightness of being that I felt floating above air when I walked. I felt my hands and I could feel some force in it, a trapped wind beneath my palms that whenever I held my hands against a surface, I could feel a palpable force underneath, a kind of a magnetic force. And my body started to move queerly at times, a sort of an independent force was controlling my movement and from my mouth the sound of a bird’s chirping came out too often. I would sway to one side and to another without intending to move. I would walk into directions that I never intended to head.

There was a visible smirk on my face whenever I walked the streets or the hallways of San Beda. The phenomenon of angels had given me such giddiness that humored my mind to no end. How could such things happen? I asked and meandered upon myself and why of all people it had happened to me? I must be the “chosen one” I was tempted to deduce. For what purpose that I was chosen was not yet apparent to me at that time.

The review for the law examinations had gotten more intense. By the end of July, all the students were priming up for the big month, which was September.

I had been tenacious with my reading in order to recompense for the poor quality of my law foundations, the result of boredom and frequent inattentiveness at school during my college years. As September approached, I even forgot to eat at times.

The “night calls” of the angels somehow tempered the rigidity of readings. And because of the queerness of my body movements, I felt so strongly that I gained the attention of many. They were good attentions although I could feel some look that decided that I had gone haywire in the head. Most of the attentions however were of the inquisitive kind; the way one looks upon an exploding mystery. In the library, when I thought no one was looking my way, I would sway my hands to recreate the dance of the angel. The dance always relieved me of stress, especially when my readings became so ardent and straining. Obviously, some of the students noticed me that some of my acquaintance started to inquire about the strange movements I made with my hands. I felt embarrassed by the inquiries so I had no recourse but to explain it. I could not explain it to them as factual as possible for I felt it would be too much for them to accept and then it would only lead them to the belief that my mind had already succumbed to the pressure of the bar preparations. So I put up a comfortable lie. I told them that I was a practitioner of a Chinese form of meditation and I sway my hands in order to relieve me of stress.

My comfortable lie might have been convincing that instead of shying away from me, most of my acquaintance became interested in the movements of my hands. They wanted me to teach it to them. I said I had no luxury of time to become their Chinese meditation master. They liked it many condescended because of the harmony and synchronicity of my palms swaying thru and fro.

Some threw me a disconcerted look. Some stares were stained with disparagement. And then there were those with amazement in their eyes.

I seemed to be easily get blown by the wind that I had to readjust the angle of my footing or walk in order to evade the whipping of heavy breeze. When I stood still, some force was tugging me towards some direction that perhaps many observed it so keenly and decided fairly that I was not just making them up.

The inquiries about my condition had become more prevalent but still, I had not yet gained the proper mindset to divulge the truth about my visions as the cause of these strange movements. I continue to hide under the lie of a Chinese meditation. Perhaps, my lie was somehow weak in some point, there were gossips going around that I was really going haywire in the head. The talk spread like wild fire that it had reached my hometown of Zamboanga. Apparently, one of the barristers preparing for the examinations was my town mate. I did not know her so much because she was from the lower years though her face was familiar to me. I received messages in my cell phone from friends back in Zamboanga, advising me to slow down and take some breather. I felt disturbed by the gossips running around in San Beda and as far as back home. But I easily set it aside for I felt that someday they would know the truth about all these matters.

From A Prophet’s Life: An Autobiography. See Link On My Sidebar.

In the ancient valleys of Tigris,
in the days of still molt and rock,
a river sung the serenade
of the beginnings of life,
as it moved in crystalline fluidity,
to brim with sparkles and light,
and come across upon a rock reckoned in time,
it is a moment set forth as a matter of design.

And the river became two,
the great parting of waters
in the dawning of the Earth,
to thread two different roads
and two different eras–
one found in the East,
another in the West–
to spread further and further,
until the sound they hear were
merely of their own
and nothing more.

Rushing in vigor and strength
each alone in the wilderness,
among the great wars of the world,
through the ashes of kingdoms burnt,
the mischief of kings and emperors,
through scorched earth of conquests,
of kingdoms and empires
both the fortunate and the inopportune;
as they run feverishly,
one oblivious to the other,
welcoming merely the beatings
of their own hearts
and of no other,
and every other beating of the heart they hear
was of the enemy and the enemy merely.

Amidst the rage of their marathon,
seemingly unending and without destination,
and with a ferocity so great that
even rocks of great prominence
would crumble into dust—
by the sheer strength of their pursuits,
or by the wave of their hands.

As another time was set forth,
where for once they looked heavenward
the journeys they threaded
finally found a single star,
to speak the truth in their own hearts
that in their own glorious runs,
no matter how magnificent and forceful,
still the Heavens are their own navigators,
upon the comets and constellations,
so that the rivers would find a path to travel,
a road set forth from the beginning of time
while they go nearer and nearer,
they begin to hear the same beat
that is not merely of their own separate hearts,
but of two hearts moving as one
running faster and faster,
like stallions in the hills of a desert
where in the beginning of time
there is only one river
that became two,
and then becoming one again.

Among the most beautiful and most delightful symbols that I have seen from the sky was the scene of men holding each others hands, as if they are brothers to each other, not letting go of another, while a man with a span of wings on his back appeared out of nowhere in order to extend his hand, and in order to lead them towards a place full of hope and promise.

My brothers and sisters, there is no far greater purpose in life than to seek the oneness of all men, as we are all created equal, no matter how we were created differently. Nothing far more heroic in the eyes of men and mostly in the eyes of Our Lord, than to seek the fellowship of other men, although these men may be of different race or creed. Nothing is greater than a love to one who differs from us, for they differ not of their own intentions, but merely the intentions of nature and circumstances. For the Arab is man of the dessert while the Asian is mostly of the plains.

And yet to this mission, nothing could be far more daunting, for while we seek the peace among ourselves we are continuously haunted by our unpeace. We see with every eye and we hear with every ear how we wear many shades of skins and how we speak in many tongues, we are not blind to this. We are never blind also as to how the differences in us give rise to conflicts and arguments, and even to bloodshed that in one man’s hands lies the blood of his brother.

Far too difficult this task may be and yet we do not take heed to the weaker side of our minds and hearts. We shall strive to seek peace amongst us no matter how the storms may shatter our resolve, for it is the will of the Lord God Almighty, that we seek now the Brotherhood of Man.

We must fill the basket with apples and oranges; and then we still have to fill it with peaches and mangoes; and then further, we still have to load it with mangosteens and bananas. And we shall carry this basket no matter how we realize that our load had become heavier. We must strive harder, for sooner than we know, we shall reap our rewards in the end, and savor the basket full of fruits of many kinds.

We are like the river that threads many paths and yet to end merely in the same ocean. We all must thread the same path in the name of Our Lord God, for whomsoever conflicts with his brother, also conflicts with Him.

For He is like the Father who has many children and does not in any manner leave any child to suffer the weather, out in the coldness of the night. And He whispers gently to the ears of the older and wealthier children in order to persuade them to seek out their poorer and suffering siblings, for He suffers also when one of His children suffers.

He is the Father who suffers the wounds of His children.

How blinded have we become by our prejudice? How we take others aside for lack of knowledge that all men are seen as equal in the eyes of God. He did not deem it that He shall favor some and disfavor others, for He is the God of All Men.

Could you honestly believe in your hearts that He had allowed many other men to be borne only for them to lose salvation, just because they have not come to the folds of Christianity or Islam? There are just too many of them that we could never be blind.

Have you actually expect the china man to speak the white man’s tongue? Shall the African drink wine on his daily table when he grows root crops to drink some other beverage?

Shall you ask why the Jew did not become a Moslem when all his life he was tended and made to learn his own scriptures? Could you blame anyone? Blame is never in the side of the Lord.

We may imbibe a Hindu to seek your own creed, by teaching him all the books that may be at hand and yet you could go for a thousand days and a thousand nights and you would soon find out that you were only made to imbibe a few of them, if ever there would be learners of your kind of faith. It would take a millennium for you then to imbibe most of them, a task nearly impossible.

In so long that any one remains in the righteous path, to follow the basic teachings of the major faiths—Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism—then there would be no more argument for every religion seeks the righteous path, seeks the goodness in every man.

For a Moslem is blameless if he professes to Allah, the Most Merciful and the Most Omnipotent because mainly, he had been thought by his forefathers in the learned ways of Islam, until he had embraced genuinely the faith of his forefathers?

In so as the Christian, he remain blameless in the eyes of other men, for mostly he has learned in the way of Jesus Christ even from birth, and even until death comes to him.

And so is with the Jew, for he was born a Jew in the first place and learned mostly the teachings of Abraham and Moses. How could blame be upon him?

For faith can be bared to its simplest form and that is, in order for man to pursue the goodness of our hearts and to dispel wickedness. What is evil is the grave things that men do-fornication, adultery, murder, thievery, the wantonness of the tongues, the propensity to conflict, selfishness and apathy to the plight of the unfortunate. These are the things we must take issue and not the differences of our faith.

We must seek the unity in our faith rather than make war with the differences, for it is like upon seeing the rose then hating upon the thorns rather than being enamored by the beautiful red petals.

For a man may be rich in faith and yet in the confines of his own home, he is wicked and evil in his heart, faith then is of no essence to him.

Yet a man you see on the street may be of another faith aside from your own, and yet he is kind in his heart and light towards his other fellow men—his faith is of the greatest essence to him and to the whole world.

It is foolish now to believe that we could all be harbored in the same singular faith. Let be what could be let be. In so long as Evil does not reign in this world, then live and let live.

It is childish and at times foolish if we should expect the china man to speak the white tongue from his birth. We knock on empty doors if we should seek that in the end, men should speak the same tongue and believe in the same creed. Without our differences, existence in this world would be insufferable for its monotony. The world would not turn and revolve.

Our differences allow people to roam and explore the unknown, to be interested in the other. Men traveled in the past to find things different from what they have. They road the waves and braved the great ocean waves in order to find porcelains and spices in some faraway land. If spices were all abound, we would have not reached these level of understanding amongst people of different nations for men would not have traveled in the past. It was differences that brought men of different race closer together in the past and until now.

Prejudice put a seed of viciousness in our hearts that often we are led to hate and violence towards other men whose only pain was to be born different from us. To seek prejudice is to plant a seed of conflict, to seek the weapons of war, instead of fellowship.

We see the thorns and not the flower.

We must now realize that the Lord had intended it that we are born different. Our differences are for a purpose, even our differences in faith. If all religion seeks the path of righteousness, then there shall be no point of dispute.

Let not prejudice put you at risk of the Judgment Day for whomsoever conflicts with his brother, conflicts also with Him, Our Lord God Almighty.

There shall be no argument as which is the greatest of faith for even if we debate for a thousand days and thousand nights, no one could ever claim the truest faith with irrefutable evidence. The words would not end and the arguments would not cease. Let be what should let be and live so that others may live.

For righteousness is never the monopoly of any faith. In so long as we are all righteous and prayerful to the Lord God, we shall be rewarded with our peace in the Hereafter.

For those who shall make peace shall be called the Children of God.

San Beda might have been somewhere in my past memory if only memories were so affirmatively credible every time. The minute I went there, I thought I had known just how those gothic buildings would have looked like; as if I had previously walked those high-ceilinged halls before, where my shoes would click and clack like horses’ hooves. I felt a little de ja vu as I roamed those halls with their handsomely checkered floors. I must have loved temples and mansions in my past life.

So much of the past was in my mind.

I burned candles for nearly four months in order to refresh my grasp of those mountains and mountains of law books, as if I had any grasp at all. I rented a room less than a kilometer away from San Beda and for most of my stay in Manila; I must have walked the length between the law school and the boarding house a million times over.

I felt comfortable the minute I stepped into my boarding school. My room was overlooking the busy street of Legarda while facing the northern sky.

At night, I sat in near the window and watch the motorcars speed through the street below. I relaxed my tired mind by listening to my Walkman, letting my consciousness slip slowly into sleepiness.

As I gazed towards the night sky, a very bright star near the sky summit always took my attention. Every night, I could see that star at the places it usually appears, treading the same path in the sky consistently. I had realized then that navigation thru the guidance of those heavenly bodies could be so accurate that even in the ancient times, men find faraway places by merely staring at the night sky.

It is one those nights typical in Manila, windy and wet. The clouds would move easily that they have patent fragility. The clouds were too dynamic that I indicted Manila to be a place of queer weather. I thought that back in Zamboanga, the clouds never moved like this. I pitied the Manila indeed, always struggling against typhoons and hurricanes. A city with the burden of being the capital of a nation and at the same time bugged with hellish winds.

One night, the movement of the clouds started to move so queerly that I decided that was not the weather anymore. The thin clouds would seem to break out, then close in again. Sooner, I thought I saw the shape of a man. Then there were the winged horses. Then there appeared also a shapely woman in white gown.

I retreated back to my room thinking my mind merely needed rest. Too much reading may have affected my visions that I started seeing things.

Inside my room, I sat in front of my study table and proceeded to read. My head started to move independently, sideways then all around, until it got plastered facing the wall. I could see shadows and then figures began to move. The shape of a boat took shape and at both ends were two little beings that looked like the form of aliens usually depicted in movies, hairless heads and thin body structures. Again I questioned my senses and proceed to the living room and gasped for air. I started to worry then about my sanity. In my past readings, seeing things is a symptom of schizophrenia. This may be it, I thought. I was already losing my mind.

I recollected myself and began to calculate my entire person. How does an insane man think and behave. Am I of the unusual behavior? I had also asked myself. Do I talk senselessly? Am I still able to acquaint with the usual people I know?

After such inquiry, I concluded so determinedly that indeed, there is no marked changes in the way I behaved and relate with others. I am still able to have the common notions and senses. If I were not insane, then only one thing was deductible—the visions is a reality that I must accept. I tucked my thoughts through a deep sleep, hoping somehow that whatever defect of mind that bothers or would be bothering me would soon go away.

And yet, the night after, I looked at the sky again and the clouds behaved as usual—so fleeting and fragile—and the bright star that I have mentioned earlier shone the brighter than the night ago.

When the clouds began to form figures again, I did not retreat anymore to my room and instead tolerated what was then to me was a huge stage show in the night sky.

As I trained my sight so carefully, in the middle of the sky appeared a figure of a person with wings extending towards its sides. It was an angel, as we know them through stories and movies, cloth in a long white garment and wings so white that it almost shone. Such image stayed there for a long time that it had seemed that it had merely served a center point of the entire visions. At the farther left of the sky, I saw clouds in the shape of a ship of the ancient form, with huge mast and sails, voyaging towards the eastern side of the sky until it faded as the clouds soon disintegrated into thin parcels of smoke. Then I saw the figure of a man, also sailing by from the left of the sky heading to the right. Despite the distance, I could see that the he looked like a Chinese man with a headgear, and he was smiling. If Genghis khan were photographed before he died, the man would have resembled him. That was the thought that immediately came into my mind.

I returned my attention towards the middle and there were the winged horses trotting the center of the sky, in circling motions, so steadfast and so gallantly.

Those were my initial visions.

The night after, the visions became more lucid that the angel in the middle of the sky showed me a dance that was somehow familiar and yet altogether unique.

The angel spread its wings again and again and I just stared. This particular vision was so clear that some tears flowed from my eyes as I realized that the visions had already transgressed the bounds of reality, as I know it then. I became so concern that one of my companion in the boarding house might come and find me in such unusual condition—staring vehemently at the sky while my eyes were wet with tears. One of them, Alexis, was just nearby at that particular moment, reading in the living room just outside my room. In later times, I had felt the notion to tell Alexis about the vision since he was the closest to me–sharing the room I had– but most of me relented because again, that would only propel the suspicion of insanity. In the mind-numbing mad rush towards the bar examination, many had lost their minds in the past.

So I just stared at the angel and marveled at the sight. I could feel a little rising in my emotions and a general feeling of gratefulness.

The angel kept on spreading its wings, again and again; that I thought it wanted me to follow such movement. My head nodded independently. I took this as an instruction so I spread my arms while being so wary that some of my mates would suddenly come in towards my direction and deduce insanity.

Then the angel’s arms showed as apart from its wide wings. It swayed its arms towards the right side of its body in a circling motion and I followed it. Then its arms went back to the middle of its chest, while its palms were open, and then I followed suit. The arms swayed to the left of its side, and I also followed suit. After a while, the Angel moved its arms in circling motions that were so complicated that I was not able to follow it as it slowly faded away.

That part of the vision was the mesmerizing of all for it was the one that exhibited a lot of movements that naturally ordinary clouds could not do. This is perhaps more coherent than the vision of a bearded man sitting on the throne. About the bearded man, I saw a huge throne and the man sitting on it. If my notions were not wrong, I reckoned it looked like Jesus Christ in clean white raiment. But this vision was static compared to the dancing angel where there was dynamism of mobility that had clearly erased whatever doubts I had of the phenomenon.

The morning after, while still embraced the foggy streets of Manila, I recreated the dance I had witnessed the night before. I planted my feet in a fairly wide position and swayed my hands from left to right, just like the angels did. I did the routines as far as my memory could serve me right. Then after a while, my hands started to move by themselves that on its own it had seemed, my hands repeated the complicated movements that the angel made, the ones that I was not able to follow well the night before.

The dance drew some lightness of being inside me that it felt good always to recreate them. It was sort of habit forming, an addictive action. There was such lightness of being that I felt floating above air when I walked. I felt my hands and I could feel some force in it, a trapped wind beneath my palms that whenever I held my hands against a surface, I could feel a palpable force underneath, a kind of a magnetic force. And my body started to move queerly at times, a sort of an independent force was controlling my movement and from my mouth the sound of a bird’s chirping came out too often. I would sway to one side and to another without intending to move. I would walk into directions that I never intended to head.

There was a visible smirk on my face whenever I walked the streets or the hallways of San Beda. The phenomenon of angels had given me such giddiness that humored my mind to no end. How could such things happen? I asked and meandered upon myself and why of all people it had happened to me? I must be the “chosen one” I was tempted to deduce. For what purpose that I was chosen was not yet apparent to me at that time.

The review for the law examinations had gotten more intense. By the end of July, all the students were priming up for the big month, which was September.

I had been tenacious with my reading in order to recompense for the poor quality of my law foundations, the result of boredom and frequent inattentiveness at school during my college years. As September approached, I even forgot to eat at times.

The “night calls” of the angels somehow tempered the rigidity of readings. And because of the queerness of my body movements, I felt so strongly that I gained the attention of many. They were good attentions although I could feel some look that decided that I had gone haywire in the head. Most of the attentions however were of the inquisitive kind; the way one looks upon an exploding mystery. In the library, when I thought no one was looking my way, I would sway my hands to recreate the dance of the angel. The dance always relieved me of stress, especially when my readings became so ardent and straining. Obviously, some of the students noticed me that some of my acquaintance started to inquire about the strange movements I made with my hands. I felt embarrassed by the inquiries so I had no recourse but to explain it. I could not explain it to them as factual as possible for I felt it would be too much for them to accept and then it would only lead them to the belief that my mind had already succumbed to the pressure of the bar preparations. So I put up a comfortable lie. I told them that I was a practitioner of a Chinese form of meditation and I sway my hands in order to relieve me of stress.

My comfortable lie might have been convincing that instead of shying away from me, most of my acquaintance became interested in the movements of my hands. They wanted me to teach it to them. I said I had no luxury of time to become their Chinese meditation master. They liked it many condescended because of the harmony and synchronicity of my palms swaying thru and fro.

Some threw me a disconcerted look. Some stares were stained with disparagement. And then there were those with amazement in their eyes.

I seemed to be easily get blown by the wind that I had to readjust the angle of my footing or walk in order to evade the whipping of heavy breeze. When I stood still, some force was tugging me towards some direction that perhaps many observed it so keenly and decided fairly that I was not just making them up.

The inquiries about my condition had become more prevalent but still, I had not yet gained the proper mindset to divulge the truth about my visions as the cause of these strange movements. I continue to hide under the lie of a Chinese meditation. Perhaps, my lie was somehow weak in some point, there were gossips going around that I was really going haywire in the head. The talk spread like wild fire that it had reached my hometown of Zamboanga. Apparently, one of the barristers preparing for the examinations was my town mate. I did not know her so much because she was from the lower years though her face was familiar to me. I received messages in my cell phone from friends back in Zamboanga, advising me to slow down and take some breather. I felt disturbed by the gossips running around in San Beda and as far as back home. But I easily set it aside for I felt that someday they would know the truth about all these matters.

The cherubim ahead of me looked back and screamed towards my direction, urging me to speed up as the winged creature was fast catching up with us. I had burst into the branches of woods in the night forest and I had to cover my face with my arms in order to clear my view, otherwise the branches of the trees would harm my eyes and the feint illumination offered by the moon would not allow me to navigate properly through the dark woodlands, and especially if a winged creature that was blacker than the night was coming at us with full speed.

The night creature was an old woman with wired and mangled gray hair and eyes that was redder than blood. I kept looking into those fiery eyes every time I look behind me, checking out if the creature was already nearing or still farther away, and fear had never been so evident in me. The night creature had wings that were velvety, like they were made of black satin or a kind of a soft garment that are often used for curtains. I thought that perhaps those creatures knew how to sew and made their wings by themselves. I never knew exactly.

When I was a child, I had so many dreams where I was flying with cherubim or child angels. They never spoke to me in spoken words but somehow I could here them speak to me through their eyes, as if they had the power of mental telepathy. They just stared at me all throughout and I were just amazed at how beautiful and handsome they looked. The reason perhaps why I did not initiate conversation with them was mainly because of their foreign appearance. They had rounded faces and wavy blond hairs just like American babies that I saw in television back then. I reckoned that maybe they spoke in a different tongue. They were too young but their gazes seem to pronounce to me a much older and mature mind.

There was that cliff that I kept falling from every time I reach its vicinity, as I arrive at it with bursting speed right out the thick greeneries, and suddenly finding out that below me was a very steep cavity and although I was sort of flying through the air, the sudden change in height always threw me into deep confusion that my fluttering through the air became distraught and discordant. So my glide was often disturbed and my wings wouldn’t work so well that I start falling and I couldn’t stave my fall that I begin to scream so loud while my fall would accelerate. And there I was falling from a steep cliff and I remember that feeling of falling so well even towards this day, that whenever I ride the Ferris’ Wheel in older days, that familiar feeling come speeding back to me like a mirage. In those dreams of falling from cliffs, always I would wake up before I touched the ground but whenever I woke up, I find myself falling from my bed instead that my scream would be heard throughout the household. My grandfather would be awakened by my scream and he would make me drink cool tap water each time.

So in one of those flying dreams, we were again being chased furiously by the winged serpents of the night, and again I was there huffing and puffing through the woods trying to evade those night creatures, and I was scared like hell as usual. But the other cherubim were surer about themselves that they never fell and flew like they were masters of flight and in fact, they were just being playful and seemed to be toying around with the winged creatures, as if knowing that those hideous creatures won’t be catching up with us in any way. But I was so unsure about myself, and I feared the flying serpents like no other that my eyes were so wide-eyed with fright.

In order to lose our pursuers, we would thread into the thick forest and caverns at the side of the mountains and that night, we did the same routine until we finally lose them. There was great relief among our group as we proceeded to glide into the wide-open air and beneath us were great spread of grasslands with some assemblages of trees here and there, like oasis in a broad desert land. We decided to descend into a particular cluster of trees and there we settled on the branches. It was dark but the moon was so illuminating that there was some sort of daytime in the night. I could exactly remember how the branches of the trees would move and bounce as we drifted from one place to another, trying our darnest not to cause any noise as the cherubim which I always conversed with signaled to us to keep silent by putting his forefinger across his tight lips. I immediately wondered why we had to remain still and silent although I reckoned then that it was perhaps for us not to be detected again by our night pursuers. But I was to learn later on that the order to remain silent at that particular juncture in our night venture was mainly because of a group of men and women that was forming a circle around a campfire just nearby, about 20 meters away from us. The trees we hanged on were fairly tall that we could see all of the activities below with the widest of view and there I saw those people chanting some unknown prayers with their hands clasp and turgid. I saw the woman that had been one of our pursuers among the circle below and at that time, she had no wings on her back and was upright just like any human being. She was a shape-shifter I had reckoned then, a human being that could transform itself into a winged serpent when the night comes. I felt some fright again upon seeing the face of the woman who was always pursuing me, like I was her favorite prey. I felt leaving immediately but I could not just disregard the earlier instruction to stay silent. So I stayed and observed the proceedings below and the fire in the middle of the circle was blazing so thoroughly that it was reflected on our faces, while we clung to the branches with bated breath. I thought for a moment there that a male member of the circle had noticed us that he turned his gaze slowly towards our direction. I saw the eyes of the male person and they were so black all over like it has no white in them but all pupils and he looked like a dead person to me with his face pale as talcum powder.

All of a sudden, we heard the ruffling of the leaves just behind our position and we turned abruptly to see what had caused the noise. To our utter dismay and fright, it turned out that some of the winged serpents had found us again and we had to scurry in a jiffy and up we were trying to evade our usual pursuers again. Of course, we had been able to dodge them again by trying to confuse them into trees and caverns—the usual method we apply. Those winged creatures seem to have a weakness when flying into trees and dark crevices of the mountains, as if their guide system is all too flawed and far less superior than ours that it takes them so long to get out of those nooks and caverns.

And I will end this note about flying and falling from cliffs upon a certain dream where me and the other cherubim were slowly approaching the earth from a higher region of the sky, like from the clouds. As the ground became nearer, we softly and gradually descended towards a particular tree. It was nighttime and below us was a carnival that was set up so sparingly in the middle of a barriotic neighborhood. There was only one contraption in the middle of the carnival, or “carnaval” in Filipino common language, and that was a very high Ferris’ Wheel and nothing much else except for tables were men and women trooped into for some joint activity, like gambling perhaps on a dice game. There were a lot of people mingling about, as what would be expected of such event and they were walking about around the main ride while some other played card games and gambling on the wayside. It was sort of a busy scene and I saw a man in short pants carrying a child and some dogs loitering around. Just across the site of the “carnaval” was a busy and well-lighted sari-sari store where a group of men where around a wooden table, seemingly on a drinking binge. Some children where gazing and dawdling around the Ferris’ Wheel, gawking at the giant steel structure as if it was their first time to have witnessed such contraption. Around the “carnaval” where wooden houses of various sizes and style, the kind of shelters one see in a typical Filipino slum, where a few houses tower in height while others were smaller in comparison but more in number.

As I stared meaningfully towards the somewhat animated scene below, I had wondered to myself what place that was and why we came to it with evident purpose. One angel said to me: “ This is the place where you are going to.”

I didn’t responded to the declaration of the angel as if accepting it like a non-negotiable fact of life. But in my mind, I had wanted to ask why I was destined for that place and wondered to myself if there were any other places where I could choose. Like I knew that it wasn’t my call at all, I just shut up.

One night in 2001, some months after my last job in the government was terminated, I was stuck in bed gazing at the ceiling and was in deep thought on what to do then with my life. I had a job offer from a friend but the pay was way too low compared with my last paycheck that I much rather tried some other options then, like taking the bar examinations the following year. It was hard turning down that job offer especially when the offer came from someone I knew too well. What if he had needed my services that badly? But then, I had a future to take care of and so I had to inform him quite honestly that I was preparing for the bar that summer and it wouldn’t be in my best interest to have my hands full on an accounting/marketing job. I had to take some risk I had decided then and go for the farsighted plan that could offer me probable long-term benefits than be stuck with a dead-end job.

Perhaps it was too much of youthful diffidence in me that at some nights I had shivered just thinking how the realities of existence is not what many of us had supposed to be when we were much younger, that the world is at times a dog-eat-dog existence where one must claw up the ladder just about every time, even to the point of elbowing others and stepping on their shoes just in order to find a semblance of meaningful existence.

That particular night, the weather was so warm that even when the electric fan hummed at its fullest, I had perspired so monstrously that I could almost hear my sweat dripping from my skin. Drip…drip…drip…I turned on my stereo and listened to an aria of Andrea Bocelli and the coolness of his voice made me feel a little better. Conte le partira, Paesi che non ho mai…Vel dutto ver sutto conti….Conte le partira…

And then I fell into a sleep that wasn’t like sleep at all for it felt so much like I have just glided from one dimension of existence to another. Unbelievable as it may seem and yet those who believe in parallel existence may just sympathize with me on this. Perhaps you’d start to think that I have become so much of an inexhaustible dreamer that I started to live more of my life in dreams than in the real world. I won’t blame you for that for sometimes I feel that way already.

In that dream, I found myself suddenly bursting into a barren landscape where the ground was red all over and the air was smoky as yellow smog floated like grimes on the atmosphere. I gazed around and I could see a nearby hill gradually rose from the ground and I could see wide plains and gray mountains from afar. The sky was red, like a bleeding wall to my sight. I could see no bushes or any form of greeneries around and if you’d seen some photographs of Mars, then you might have the best of idea of how the place appeared to be. The air was so still that I could hear no sound whatsoever that every step I made I could clearly hear. I felt my feet a little harassed by the crackling ground below me, those plates of mud solidified by too much dryness. I decided to walk further until I reach a point where the smog cleared and in a sudden I saw a small pond just in front of me, with a leafless tree standing along its shoreline. The tree reminded me of the guava tree that I used to climb when I was a child. I could remember that guava tree only too well because I had fallen from it twice before and it was there that I saw a strange creature of the night, a huge manlike being with the head of a horse, with some burning object flickering from its mouth, perhaps a giant cigar, just like what our elders had always said about kapres.

I stared into the pond and saw that the water was a familiar blend of yellow and green, like dew, and it was so calm that its surface didn’t moved at all. That was how I reckoned that it was a very deep pond by just looking at it. Shallower waters are always fragile to the eyes.

The water in the pond looked so inviting and it seemed to have spoken to me like it had a life of its own. I went to my knees and smelled the water. The scent that it evoked gave me a mild exhilaration of emotions that it became all the more tempting for me to dive into the water. I touched the water again and a small amount of it in my hands was enough to quench the waterlessness of my body. Still, I was hesitant to go into the water as its depth intimidated me so much and I wasn’t a good swimmer. Suddenly I heard some rustling noise behind me and I immediately turned to look at the direction of the sound. As the smog cleared, a women in a white gown appeared and she initially smiled at me. It was a little unusual that I never felt any kind of fear the very moment that I saw that floating woman even though as I write this particular passage, I have goosebumps all over me. I stared at her and wondered what’s the purpose of her calling me into this dream. I wanted to ask her why she wanted to meet me but spoke nothing instead. In that dream, I did not remember uttering any words; in fact not a single word was spoken by anyone in that dream. I really had initially felt that it was the woman who had called me to that dream and that she had some important message for me.

I wanted to express so many things to the woman hovering just in front of me but I struggled to mumble even a single word. After a while, the woman stared at me so intently and it was a little strange for me to realize that she could actually speak to me by just merely looking at me. And slowly I had also realized that I could get all my thoughts across to her even without uttering any word. She told me through mind talk that there was something that I should know and some person had called me into the dream and not her. Then she moved slowly towards me but as I thought that she was coming closer to me, she actually went farther and farther from me until she disappeared from my view. It was a completely spellbinding distortion of distance and space.

Then my gaze was turned towards the nearby hill that I had mentioned earlier and there appeared another person that was also in white gown, just like the woman had worn. I thought at first that the woman and the person floating above the hill was one and the same person but as I examined more carefully, the person on the top of the hill was actually an old man with a white flowing hair that was too long; too long in fact that I had mistaken him for a woman in a glance. He had the face of a very old man and to tell you quite honestly, the old man looked like Leonardo da Vinci, the one most of us had seen in many self-portraits of the legendary Italian artist.

The old man caught my eye and without saying a word, he ordered me to dive into the water. I hesitated at first but the old man was too insistent that he kept on pointing towards the pond. Again, it was sort of a distortion of space and distance that despite of the distance of the hill from where I stood, I could see the old man quite so clearly like he was just nearby.

As if the old man had suddenly gained control of my body and mind—even from a distance—I slowly took steps towards the tree and climb it, this despite my clear wavering. My climb was swift like I was a trained scaler of trees. As a child, many of my playmates teasingly dubbed me as “Monkey!” for I had always loved climbing trees when afternoon came. On a period of the day when most kids in the neighborhood took their catnaps, I go play by my lonesome instead and climb trees. My favorite tree to climb then was the Datiles beside a small fishpond that bore so many ripe fruit that I picked and gobbled in my mouth. I have grown to like the sweet nectar coming from the Datiles fruit. The guava tree on the one hand does not bore any fruit that we kids rarely climbed it. There was also a Chico tree about five thousand feet farther from the Datiles and it is where most of us kids love to climb the most and where we play catch-me-if-you-can games atop that huge tree, would you believe. It was so dangerous to play games while hanging on branches because a simple mistake or a broken branch would surely send the unfortunate kid plummeting down to the hard ground. It was so risky but as kids, we did not realize that.

Let’s go back to the dream. And so I was finally atop the leafless tree looking downward to the small but deep pond below me. I had gained enough balance on top of it that I virtually stood upright like I was standing on a diving platform. The height of the tree was a little mesmerizing to me, about the same height of a two-story house and this had made me more hesitant of jumping into the water. The particular inhibition I felt when I was atop the leafless tree always gets back to me as a familiar memory every time I was in the same circumstances in the real world, even when I was still a child. This dream of the pond happened only about four years ago but some scenes in that dream came to me as a form of déjà vu even when I was still so young and fond of bathing in many rivers and oceans that are found in Zamboanga. Perhaps just like any locality in the Philippines, Zamboanga has just too many places where one could enjoy the water, from the beaches in Cawa-Cawa (its so polluted now that bathing there is prohibited) to the gushing riverways in Pasonanca, far deep into the forest. It’s sort of a strange distortion of time and space when the scenes in a more recent dream came as déjà vu in my childhood days.

It took me some moments in deciding whether to finally jump into the water or not; until that final moment I held my breath so steadily and immediately dived into the water. I felt those moments while I was on the air, as if in a slow motion, as my body plunged right into the water. I felt those feeling of free falling again, like falling from cliffs and beds in my other childhood dreams. Finally, I hit the water and heard the water splashing just as I was entering it. I found myself inside the pond looking upward to the surface. Above me I could see a ray of light while down below was complete darkness. The water was so cool to my body that I felt a sudden elation and regretted for a while why It took me a while to decide to jump into the water. I felt a general happy feeling, an indescribable feeling that made me forget all those previous fears and hesitations I had earlier. The water was solid and thick like it wasn’t any ordinary water at all and I could feel them strongly on my skin. I did not sway my arms or shuffle my feet in order to stifle my fall into the pond for mostly, I had enjoyed being inside the water that as I fell deeper, while I just let my body gradually settle into its depth, the more feeling of elation I had felt. My body went deeper and deeper into the pond and I did not fight my fall even though there was some moment that I realized that the pond may be a bottomless pit that even while I was getting deeper and deeper into it, I could see nor feel any ground below it. Worry started to descend upon me when I could not still see the bottom of the pond. I started to panic but before panic had taken hold of me, I felt some hands grabbing my shoulders and suddenly I saw two persons pulling at me and steering me towards the surface of the water. The three of us swiftly returned to the surface of the water and once I came out from it, I paddled my legs so furiously to stay afloat and see for myself who were the two persons that pulled me out of the water. The two led me to the shore and I climb towards a drier area and stared back into the pond. I examined the two men who remained afloat in the pond as I realized how strong they were for they had pulled me out of the water in such a swift manner; they must have been learned swimmers. They remained afloat the water and yet I could not see them move their hands or feet. It was a cunning way to swim I thought then and I concluded that they were not just ordinary swimmers, but extraordinary ones. I gazed at the faces of the two men in the pond and then I started to realize that they both looked alike and that they may as well be twins and that they both looked like me although they had longer and much muscular body. I mistrusted them for a while for they seem to be mocking me by pretending to look like me and my distrust had become more emphasized when the two men maintained stern faces all throughout, like they were soldiers, like it was illegal for them to smile or show a gentler countenance. I turned my gaze towards the hill and wanted to ask the old man what was going on and I saw him still hovering and his white dress flowing steadily from a passing wind that I did not feel or see, as my immediate surroundings remained so very still and not a single sound could be heard.

The old man stared at me so meaningfully and then I could see how he had the gentlest of faces, one that evoked great love and adoration that I immediately felt assured that he won’t lead me to any harm or injury. He had seemed to be so fatherly and I could feel his great warmth even from a distance. He signaled with his hands to me once more and urged me to dive into the water. This time, my earlier hesitation and uncertainties had already vanished and I climbed the tree with great confidence. I dived once more into the water. I heard the water made the splashing sound again, a noise that was refreshing to my ears and once again, I felt the elation that remained indescribable; a certain feeling of sudden joy, like a narcotic perhaps if one could actually know how this element works.

I floated again inside the water and all around me was the thick yellowish-green hue of the pond and I could see no walls nor bottom but the water was clearly refreshing and my soul was lifted again. I still did not fight the gravitational pull of the bottom of the pond, which actually appeared to be without end, as if it goes on and on until forever. I had wondered what the bottom of the pond looked like and what it had to offer me. Maybe there was a lost kingdom down there or a secret hideaway that could give me more joy and elation. The feeling of elation was so addictive that I wanted to go deeper and deeper but the two men who looked like me appeared again in the scene and pulled me out of the water. This time, they did not have to grab me as I rose with them towards the surface of the water and I had risen on my own accord—they just had to notify me this time that I was already getting too deep into the water. I remade and remade my dive into the pond and clearly I had grown ponder of it all the more that with every splashing of the water—as I break into them by a nose dive—the feeling of elation gets more and more emphasized. The last time I went into the depth of the pond, the two men did not have to grab me anymore for I have already decided on my own to rise to the surface of the water when I had reckoned on my own that I was already so deep into the pond. I was left alone the moment I finally gained enough discipline and patience not to go too deep into the water.

The last scene of this particular dream was me standing on the edge of the pond and watching the old man swaying his arms to and fro, from east to west, from north to south, like he was dancing some sort of an exotic dance that was completely unique and never heard of. It was a ceremonial dance it had seemed. As he swayed his arms from side to side, the wind move more dynamically and the yellowish tint of the atmosphere vanished gradually but swiftly and became clear like the atmosphere that we have now. And clouds in the horizon suddenly appeared and moved like there was a swirling storm until they settled over the hills and mountains. The old man was apparently controlling the weather and he was making the environment more and more pleasant to the sight. The brown hills became green and grasses and bushes started to grow from the ground until all around me was thick with lush greeneries and there was a forest just nearby. Then the sky became blue from its former hazy shade of red and I could see winged creatures gliding through it and everything became brighter and sunnier.

That is why I have said once before that when I saw an angel dance in the Manila sky in the year 2002, while I was there preparing for the bar examinations, the dance of the angel was so familiar to me like I have seen them once before. Now I can now point only too well that it was in the dream of the pond that I had seen the dance first. Nights after I saw that dancing angel in the sky, I was alone in the boarding house where I stayed in Manila (the boarding house was named BH Boarding House, a former office building that was turned into a students’ lodge, and it is just right beside a catholic center named after St. Lorenzo along Legarda St. in Sampaloc, Manila) as the other occupants went for a weekend getaway. It was nearly midnight and I was still awake reading law books. I felt the urge to drink some coffee so I went to the kitchen to prepare hot water. As I entered my room, I felt that someone was following me and I turned immediately to examine my back and for a split second, I saw the image of the old man hanging just above the air, right at my back and he looked so much like the old man in one of my dreams, which is this dream of the pond, and no matter how I saw that apparition, the old man looked like Leonardo da Vinci with a very long white hair, sharp noses and a very old face. I should have scurried away out of fear of the apparition but it was strange that I had felt no fear whatsoever in that particular moment. It was a span of days in my life that angels started to appear in my view, whenever I stared at the night sky and shadows on the wall and a bearded man on a huge throne that perhaps, the sight of the old man hovering just above me was not that surprising to me anymore, that I just disregarded it and proceeded to read my law books that night.

In the morning right after I had dreamt of the pond, I immediately went to search for a pen and paper so that I could write down the details of this vivid dream. At that time, I hadn’t still an inkling that I would be seeing angels in the future but I had felt so strongly then that the dream was too real for comfort like it was a story by itself, complete with plot and characters. I had in fact written down the details of that dream that morning and even typed it in several coupon bonds in order that I may be able to keep and preserved it. The way I wrote down the tale of the dream was in the form of a short story that in fact when I finished writing it, I had mailed a copy of it to the popular magazine Free Press hoping that it would be published as a literary piece. But after waiting and watching out for over one-too-many many issues, I have given up expecting that it would be published. Maybe, if one has connections in the Free Press organization, you could confirm the veracity of my story by looking for that submitted piece titled “The Pond” which I sent through mail in 2001. I lost the only copy of that written narrative about that pond and so I have to reconstitute it this way, remembering the details even without any aid of past writings, and completely writing from spontaneous memory.

What did the dream meant to me? Perhaps you might ask this question. For me, it was a dream that foretold to me so eerily of the things that I have to encounter in the future and how every dream of mine has a certain singular thread in them that every one of it evokes important messages to me and to humanity as a whole. I’d elaborate more in the coming entries about these messages because this entry has gotten too long and long entries often go unread. So I hope you’d be watching out for my next entries.

This is a poem that I wrote when I was a sophomore college student in Ateneo de Zamboanga back in 1993. Like my other love poems, this work speaks of longing and desire. For a complete collection of my poetry,visit THE WANDERING SOUL.

I want to be with you always
While I continue to live for you,
Your innocent eyes strike me
Like warm lightning from the sky.

The sea is now a landless scenery
But your wind is present and I am comforted,
Further much to go,
I want you by my side.

If the sky hides the sun
This darkness abhors the wind,
When every sight becomes near
Each sound I hear is deafening.

I am afloat this wooden raft my sweet child,
I want to sail but I move slowly
The water that carries me
Contains a huge fearful creature.

When the sky is in thick gray oil paint,
The sea is icy solid water.
How I want you near me;
I want to be with you always.

NOTE: THIS WAS FIRST POSTED ON FEBRUARY 6, 2005. I WAS TRYING IN THE PAST TO DECIPER THIS PARTICULAR DREAM OF MINE ABOUT A JAPANESE BOY AND HIS SPACESHIP THAT DOESN’T SEEM TO FLY AS MUCH AS HE WANTED TO. NOW, I THINK THIS DREAM WAS ABOUT MY OTHER SITE “WHERE NOW IS THE CITIZEN ON MARS?” WHICH I BEGAN ON FEBRUARY 9, 2005–FOUR DAYS AFTER I HAVE DREAM ABOUT A BOY AND HIS SWIRLING SHIP THAT CAME IN HIS FAVORITE COLOR OF BLUE, RED AND YELLOW. PERHAPS THIS IS WHAT WE MEAN WHEN NOCTURNAL DREAMS COME TRUE.

What do you know; I’ve got another vivid dream last night. No angels though yet I feel it’s worth elucidating if only for reason that it is such a lucid chunk of visions in my head while I slept so deeply and it may evoke some meanings for me or for the lives we all live.

The dream started on a steep hill in a place I have never been to in my entire life but it felt like I was in Antipolo, because the rolling hills reminded me of the place called Cherry Hill, the site of a famous landslide disaster some years back and which I was able to have a glimpse of in television and newspapers. I asked in my mind what was going on since there were a lot of people outdoors watching some neighborhood event, out in the open field while the sun was shining so brightly and the wind was warm as the summer breeze.

Some bystanders answered me: “A boy from Japan was showing some flying ship.”

I stretched my neck out and see for myself what the whole fuzz was all about. As I heard the whirling sound that went “whrrrrrrrrrrrr….whrrrrrrrrrrr…….whrrrrrrrrrrr……….”, like that of a motorized toy, I saw then what was to my eye was a colorful contraption the size of a small-sized passenger car, say a Kia Pride, lunging directly towards the sky like a rocketship although it didn’t look like a rocketship at all, at least not the specific way it had looked to me. The flying contraption look like a very small version of the Columbus—the Nasa space shuttle.

I observed the flying motion of the “thing” and the viewer could actually see the boy inside it, probably doing some navigation through some control dashboard. But with the manner it moves from one side to another, up and down, in steep trajectory and then changing directions so sharply, you wouldn’t think that it is being driven by someone, it moves more like a remote-controlled toy helicopter, so unstable and without a clear direction. I felt a lot of concern for the safety of the boy.

Yet, despite the queerness of the flying contraption, it actually earned my amazement and glorification. When the boy alighted from it, I was among the throng of men and women who trooped to him like he was a hero or someone famous. I said to him in a loud voice: “ What you got there is a landmark invention!” The boy probably did not hear my declarations that he turned towards another direction without a hint that he noticed me.

I was slighted by the boy’s disregard but I really felt that the thing was such an important discovery and it may be the prototype of a transport that would change the way we travel forever. In fact, the way it was designed earned my fancy for it looked like a very huge toy that every boy or every man with a child’s heart would like to have from the downtown toy store. The color was also my favorite—blue, yellow and red.

I will describe to you how the thing probably works. The flying contraption would lunge towards the heights by a turbo on its below, just like any rocketship, and when it is up in the air, it’s outer core would swirl so fast in circular movement that you could hear its sort of annoying, but mild whirling sound. This motion of its outer core probably was the main mechanism that keeps the thing above ground, and it has a couple of protruding wings that are also attached to smaller turbo engines. These wings probably control the direction of the thing aside from helping it stay afloat. The flying contraption moves in a speed that I have never seen before and that made me a little doubtful of the thing’s design credibility, for the safety of the passenger may not be secured.

Yet again, despite its flawed functionality, I truly believed that the invention by the Japanese boy could be build up further if only he meets the right persons that could help him find some technology companies willing to put money for its development. If the thing could work, we may finally welcome age of flying cars and finally say goodbye to the monumental cruelty of traffic jams in our streets and highways.

The boy went to see some persons in a nearby building that looked like the station of the Armstrongs in the old anime series “Voltes V”, in short it was a science building with an ultra-modern look and hi-tech facilities with a very high-ceiling. Buildings in the anime world seems all have extraordinarily high ceilings. I followed him of course and went into the building myself which I found to be completely empty although the mainframes and other electronic equipment were running since the lights on them were blinking and some sounds are whirling, a sign that some automated machines were on. I reckoned that the boy was inside some highly secured rooms busy discussing with some important personalities in the tech world. So I went upstairs but I still find the place empty as a dune. I took the elevator and went down to the ground floor and as I headed towards the main exit door, I saw the Japanese boy coming out of a room that I was not able to notice before. His face was full of distraught and I could see that he was disappointed. I knew then that the talks did not go well.

I watched him tiptoed through the tiled floor and could hear the sound of his footsteps reverberating throughout the building, the heaviness of his emotions were easily felt. I approached him thinking that I might desire to shake the hands of someone who invented what perhaps may be the future of transportation. He shook my hands so briefly and went on with his heavy walk without even looking at my face. I followed this boy who was so young and yet so arrogant and said in a loud voice, “You should bring it to the attention of NASA.” At this, he turned back and I could see that he wanted to cry. He said, “I will try.” And he went on walking, now in a hurried manner, as if he wanted to get rid of me. I just reckoned that a genius boy like him could afford some bad manners so I did not took it so badly that he doesn’t respond well to my engagements towards him. I just wanted to help him.

That same afternoon, as the day approached twilight, the boy was in the field again with the onlookers still on hand. I went to see the show again. He was with his mother this time around and they were in stiff argument as to how the thing should be launched into the air. This was in stark contrast to the smooth and confident launching he had earlier in the day. After some words, both mother and son agreed on the manner the flying contraption should be placed on the ground, and the boy step into the thing and soon the machine hummed again in a whirling sound.

The flying contraption indeed went steeply into the air that my heart leaped a bit as I see what a wondrous thing it was that such a small machine could actually fly into the air—like seeing a flying car for the first time. Yet, after a while, the thing kept on lunging downward and it was a little painful to see it struggling to keep itself afloat. The boy might be horrendously dizzy by then as the flying contraption went up and down in the air. I myself became a little bit dizzy just watching the thing fly in the strangest of manner.

Soon, the boy alighted from the flying contraption and he was sweating all over. I wanted to ask him if the ship had some appropriate ventilations but I decided against it. I approach the boy again without any inhibition that he might utterly disregard me again. He did not. I meant that he finally talked to me more graciously than before.

“It was hard,” the boy said.

“Yeah. I could see that” I said meaning to console him.

I asked the boy “Why did the thing fly so bad the second time around?”

“ I was flying on a manual mode this time.” The boy said in a sad tone. It turned out that the boy run out of hydrogen fuel and it was too costly for him to source them in a huge volume, in order to keep the thing flying for a longer period.

As we walked together towards a more shadowy area, I could feel the sadness in his breath. He confided to me that that the scientists he was negotiating earlier wasn’t sold out about his invention mainly because they said that the thing could not retain enough fuel in order for it to reach enough distance. The scientists instead advised him to find out the solution for this major flaw of his invention.

I suggested to him to use nuclear fusion instead because this kind of fuel is light and with a small amount aboard, the thing could go far. I also advised him to go to America because in the Philippines, even our own inventors do not get much support from the Government. He just nodded to my suggestions and we shook hands as we bade goodbye.

At this point, I woke up to a cloudy morning where rain was threatening. The weather made me a bit heavy inside as I remember the predicament of the boy with the swirling rocketship in my dream. I hope he would listen to all my advices and go to America where everything is possible it seems. I hope his dreams would all come true. I laugh a little inside thinking how could I wish well someone who doesn’t exist at all but only a creature of my dreams. But I remember the boy well, and if there is some sort of a police line-up, I could point to him always.

After I took my breakfast, while sipping hot chocolate, I pondered what the dream meant to me. There were no angels in it but I felt that the dream wanted to impart something to me. As I analyze the visions I had that night in my sleep, I now believe that sometimes we all have some idea that could really fly but could not fly so high at first due to some major flaws and yet, if only we try a little harder and knowing where to go and what to find and whom to approach, that idea could go a long, long way and may even change the way we live forever. Amen.