Tobira no Angou 2014

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Tobira no Angou 2014 [Plain Edition] Gio Basco

Contents Passing Through………………………………………………..1 Apart-ment……………………………………………………..2 June Night Rain………………………………………………...4 Gaps…………………………………………………………..13

Passing Through

A 2011 research1 at the University of Notre Dame explored the concept called “the doorway effect”, which links certain kinds of forgetfulness with the physical act of walking through doorways.

“Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an ‘event boundary’ in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away,”2 said Gabriel Radvansky, a psychology professor and member of the research team. Results of the study conclude that some sort of information-discarding occurs as one passes through a physical doorway and encounter spatial changes to free up memory for new information.

This, I guess, is what one risks when passing through thresholds—the inadvertent discarding of things, an unconscious forgetting.

Beyond the four corners—at every shift and transition, turn of the page and movement in sequence —there awaits the danger of losing.

1

http://www3.nd.edu/~memory/Reprints/Radvansky%20Krawietz%20&%20Tamplin%202011%20(QJEP).pdf

2

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/21/walking-through-doorways-forgetting_n_1105871.html

1

Apart-ment

There’s a song from across the corridor, “take you away, from that empty apartment…” and I listen to it grow louder and louder.

It’s not so bad. At least I know someone’s there, behind the blank walls, listening.

I get up from my bed and listen to it, until it feels closer, the walls and the ceiling constricting, my apartment room shrinking, until I can’t breathe. *** Then I open the window to the sunny street outside.

It looks beautiful.

Sometimes, I try to go out, but it suddenly rains, or the sun becomes too unkind.

It’s better under the sheets.

I try to tell this to everybody, but everybody’s outside, so I just whisper.

It sounds louder when there’s nothing around you.

It sounds more true.

It’s better here. *** The song repeats from the other side, and I listen until I get tired.

2

It says it’ll take me away from the empty apartment where I stay, over and over, but I know, it isn’t true.

This is not an empty apartment.

I am here.

I am here.

July 2014

3

June Night Rain

It was the man in moss-green coat’s turn. He was standing at one corner, near the glass window, around an hour or so ago before the freak storm came. He was looking at a green and red motorbike parked outside.

He agreed to share something per the coffee shop owner’s request, the last of the nine, including the owner and cashier, stranded in the shop to say so.

He approached the small group of eight other people waiting at the large table near the counter where nine candles stood burning brightly, deliberating his footsteps, wary of them at first. On the table were nine cups of coffee, one for each person present, with matching teaspoons and saucers of pastry. He sat farthest from the light, facing the darkened window, and gazed outside the entire time while he listened to the others.

He only moved closer and faced everyone when it was his turn.

“Since I have been given the opportunity tonight, and the weather outside seems unlikely to let us all out and go our separate ways any minute now, I guess can go ahead and tell it. The story happened years ago, but somehow, it began to occupy my thoughts again recently. It’s like, it has been waiting there for a long time.”

He looked like he was around thirty, with a clean haircut and a morning’s worth of unshaved stubble.

He stood five feet-four or something near that, and had on him an oversized coat which hid his seemingly thin body frame from plain sight. He wore a pair of large, circular glasses which concealed his tired eyes when hit by light. His eyes wandered around slowly, as if surveying, testing the effect of his words.

“I think I have to start by saying we all have something to say about certain things we didn’t expect to happen in our lives. Those things easily get stuck in our heads, no matter how trivial they are.” He paused, looked around without staying his eyes at anyone in particular, then continued speaking, a slight quiver in his voice betraying hesitation.

“You must have observed in your stories that these things change us. Not conceivably, or immediately for that matter of course, but it happens. They arrive without warning and pass quietly, but they leave such profound impact on us that we are usually oblivious of. It takes a lot of time before we realize them, and they take on such strange and mundane forms through time that we hardly recognize them when we finally notice.

It takes a long time before we figure out what they mean.”

The man went silent, just as a streak of lightning from nearby lit the street outside, revealing the debris scattered all over the place. Everybody flinched except him.

“You see, it’s like a riddle I cannot quite solve since I got it. But tonight I’ll tell this story to you—my unusual experience during a storm. Certain kinds of revelation come to me only when I speak about things, and talking about things with people I’m not fully acquainted with is not something I do a lot.”

The small gathering of people returned to their semi-absorbed state, warming their hands and 4

listening, the sound of the rain filling the spaces left by the absence of their voices. The man spoke again after pausing, adjusting his spectacles as he did.

“And it just makes perfect sense—the randomness of this situation, and this kind of weather outside. I have a feeling this riddle will be solved tonight.” *** The man took off his glasses for a while and cleaned them with a pink and blue handkerchief extracted from his right coat pocket. He did this rather slowly, painstakingly rubbing the lenses as if there were intricate grooves on them which need to be cleaned with particular motions. Everyone waited in complete silence, some sipping their free coffee, or munching on a piece of pastry. Nobody made any kind of excess noise, no chattering of any sort.

“There’s something I must tell you before I proceed, since we’re on the subject of telling stories anyway: I have always wanted to start random conversations with complete strangers when I was younger, but I really had a hard time doing that before.”

It was almost nine o’clock in the evening, and some of those huddled inside the tiny coffee shop were already exchanging yawns, discreetly, made silent by the din of the steady, heavy rain pandering on the roof.

“I have had a lot of real-life conversations with people I know very well though, some of them spanning a day or two even. I have always loved the idea of talking to those people about anything, especially those things that mattered to them—those that randomly come up when you talk to people. You see, I believe people don’t talk about certain things without reasons underneath their seemingly random façade.

There’s got to be a reason for them, and it never fails to clear up eventually.”

“That’s why I think hearing other people’s stories about their lives is like uncovering something about themselves. It’s exciting, in a way, like solving a riddle to understand a new way of seeing things. And it confounds me back then why I seem to shirk away from the idea of being in that exact, same situation, where people just basically listen to me say something and unravel what’s up.”

Despite the growing atmosphere of boredom inside the dark café the man maintained a measured pace as he talked, facing the small congregation of shadowy faces with silent confidence and looking at everyone with a grim sort of calm, like that of someone prepared to face a death sentence. Every now and then as he spoke he would stare outside, gazing at the window, towards the raging storm, as if reviewing a final will written on the wet glass.

“I have been trying my best to work around this for a long time now. Back in elementary school, I thought of stories as only those existing in books, magazines, newspapers, etcetera—local textbooks, my aunt’s Reader’s Digests, my father’s Newsweek magazines, smuggled Macmillan-McGrawhill illustrated glossy books from foreign donation piles my father was given back then, indecent tabloids features, and everything I was able to get my hands on—all in print, and all took time before they got to their faceless and nameless audience. That’s where I got this idea of telling something I just thought up to other people I barely even 5

know as a really serious thing to do. You can just imagine how absurd it was.”

A streak of lightning sent a few of the huddled people swearing in surprise, interrupting the talk. The man maintained a subdued kind of composure, and simply fell silent, letting the excitement die down. A few of those who noticed him looking at the lightning caught sight of a light colored scar on his left cheek. The man said nothing when the store’s cashier, who sat across him, pointed it out. *** It was a June night, like this night, and I was waiting in line at a fastfood place inside a run-down mall in Guadalupe, Makati. I lived somewhere there a few years after I graduated from college and started working, together with some of my aunts and uncles at my grandfather’s house. I was about to go home then.

It was raining outside then too, but not as hard as this one. The wind was strong, and there were very rare lightning flashes. I had sixty pesos to spare and was looking at the menu glaring above the cashiers’ heads, contemplating. I was a bit fidgety—probably because of hunger, I can’t remember now—that I bumped a random girl’s elbow. She stood at the other line to my right.

I remember the girl’s face pretty clearly. What comes to my memory at present clearly now is her face when she smiled after telling me it was alright. Her face had a cheerful glow to it, like what’s on people’s faces when they appear to be getting ready for a hearty laugh. Only more natural, as if it was something that comes to her as easily as breathing. It made her face distinct in my memory because I was just on my way home back then, and from the train ride to the streets I passed by earlier all the faces I saw looked exhausted and unfriendly.

But I distinctly remember how she looked like too, for some reason. The girl was a few inches shorter than me, around four feet, I think. She was a bit pale, had no makeup on, and her shoulder-length, colored hair was tied to a ponytail, leaving out a few clumps in front of her ears hanging freely like her bangs. She had blue jeans and a grey blouse on, over which she wore a green and white varsity jacket. She had a pair of green and white chucks on too.

Back then I really thought it was strange. I find it awkward thinking about one person at a time sometimes. I believe it is a creepy thing, to be thinking about another person’s face, especially that of a stranger, someone who you don’t care about. Don’t you think so too? I was mulling over these things while there were a few more people ahead of me in line. The thought kept me from being bored, at least, but it still felt strange.

Glancing around, I noticed there was this paperback sandwiched between the left arm and shoulder bag of that girl I bumped in line. I blurted out the title without thinking, recognizing the familiar book jacket.

Unfortunately, it came out louder than I intended.

The girl heard, apparently, then asked me about it. The thing is, I lied about what I said; I only saw the book review in a magazine and browsed through it in a book store branch when I came across it years ago, during the time the Hollywood film adaptation was being screened.

6

Her face brightened up again, like she found a member of a lost tribe she was part of, and asked me about it. It was difficult covering up the lie I just made. *** I have never imagined myself talking with a complete stranger over a topic I barely know for many years. But it turned out to be a good conversation, really. We talked about a lot of things aside from that book she was holding back when we were still waiting for our turn at the counter.

We sat at the table by the window, and were in the middle of talking about bookstores when she asked what I do for a living. The question was thrown out of the blue, it derailed my efforts to show a casual stance.

You see, I was trying to pretend like her starting a conversation was nothing unusual for me, but I was really very nervous then. I’m not the type who goes after strangers who catch my eye when I’m out in public. I prefer to keep to myself and bother no one.

I was working as a researcher-writer for a local politician, but I’ve long since resigned. I was actually contemplating about changing jobs then, in fact. I was having a lot of doubts about what I was doing to earn.

But talking about that wasn’t part of my plans for that particular night. I returned the question to move the conversation away from me, asking her if she’s already working.

She merely looked towards the large windows. Rain pelted the wet glass, sending clinging droplets sliding down in jagged, branching lines like veins, replacing those streaks with short-lived droplets which would repeat the cycle. Her eyes seemed to study the visage with a calm clarity, but there was something disconcerting about it, like a formless, infectious excitement welling up inside.

After a few seconds I stammered and coughed. She glanced at me, and I apologized, naturally. And then, she looked at me like I just said something unbelievable, then laughed. It was that strange laugh again— there was no sound, but I wasn’t sure if it was because she had such a silent laugh or there was a strange mixing of the noise around us and the strong rain outside.

“Can I ask you something?” She suddenly said after getting settled. “I have something to confirm. Can you tell me a random story?” *** “I don’t know how it happened, but I was able to tell her a story. I heard it from a friend a long time ago. I can’t remember now how or why that particular friend shared it, can’t recall some pretty important details in it too. Can’t even remember who among my friends shared it, to be honest.”

“But this particular story suddenly struck a chord in me after the request was given, while we sat there —the girl staring at me, seriously waiting, and me, searching for something from the dark veins of the wet windows for something to start with. Something went snap all of a sudden, and then it got out. It was like the story just floated up from somewhere deep and undisturbed.”

7

“It goes like this: there was this girl who claimed she caught the scent of love in a public train, inside the MRT. She found it on a guy, one day during a rush-hour trip where she bumped him on his back and smelled his shirt. The guy thought it was destiny. They started a correspondence after that. Soon, they fell in love. After a few months, the scent of love began to fade, until she cannot catch it anymore, even after riding trains and trying to recreate the day she found it, the day he thought destiny suddenly manifested. Then finally, she found out it was her own scent. There was nothing to do after that, nothing can be helped, so she broke the guy’s heart, took away his t-shirt, and disappeared. People they knew say the girl never rode trains after that, but they never really saw her again anywhere. On the other hand, the guy, it was said, continued riding trains every day to work, hoping to find a similar kind of epiphany.”

“I do not know if it was a bad story, or just a badly narrated one, but somehow I felt good sharing it.

It felt good listening to myself talk about it, even if it wasn’t my own story. It was probably not even my friend’s, either. That sudden outflow of idea just came out like an improvisation of some sort—I wasn’t paying much attention to details, I made them up along the way. It was like, there was this thing inside me, and I just had to let it. It didn’t matter what came out in however manner, all I knew—all I felt—was that I should say it. And I did.”

“I looked at her after recollecting my thoughts. That regular feeling of embarrassment slowly crept back after that strange euphoria, and I worried about what she must’ve thought about me. As I have said earlier, I have a hard time talking with strangers, let alone telling a story. And yet I was able to narrate something, and felt happy about it.”

“I saw her looking outside with a funny smile on her face, that strange, inexplicable glow emanating from her suddenly back again. I asked her what was up with that, trying to sound amused (although in hindsight I believe I sounded more nervous instead). She looked at me straight in the eyes after chuckling, declared nothing’s the matter, she just found the thing funny, and then told me casually that the girl in my story was her.” *** “There were these strange coincidences all of you shared before I began telling my own story, and this is probably not different. Stories are tweaked and become affected narratives, their pure forms are slowly changed, and the versions formed are what were told as we tell them over and over. Sometimes, it’s pretty easy to see through the gaps those changes create, but there are instances when they pass as truthful easily.”

“I will not say I totally believed the stories you shared—for all I know you might just be inventing them for the sake of conversation, or the free coffee our good host offered us—and neither am I going to ask the same from you on the account of what I am sharing right now. All I am responsible for in this sort of conversation is to tell what I have experienced and nothing more.”

“I guess it’s the same with that conversation I had with the girl. I was dumbstruck with what she said, but it was just a reaction, in a way. It was a story I told after all, what she says and thinks about it doesn’t have any immediate bearing to what I say. I was going to play the idiot in return though—ask her about it, act 8

wonderfully surprised, etcetera. But all I felt was this strange, prickly feeling inside, like being interrupted while speaking about something I feel passionate about. It felt like some sort of insult was hurled at me without me catching it at first, I guess, something that I haven’t experienced a lot back then. I don’t know what unnerved me, so I tried to shut up and simply replied with an indifferent shrug.”

“She followed up quickly, trying to salvage whatever was left of that imaginary trust I must have shown her earlier. She told me this strange idea about her being not where she’s supposed to be. Like a timespace warp sort of thing you watch in movies. To be honest, I was calling it all bullshit in my head the moment she began to mention things like ‘continuum skips’. It’s pretty easy to dismiss such thing as a big joke, of course, or some really strange encounter with a deranged person.”

“But you see, I stuck with her recounting of the situation, the story behind of her claim, you can say, and listened. I wasn’t keen on brushing her off after that, too. It felt like she doesn’t deserve that.”

“Again, I would reiterate that I am not going to ask you to believe whatever I say, but I want you to listen to this. The girl explained to me a strange occurrence in which people jump from one thread of time to another unconsciously, something so common but undocumented in our daily lives. The story of the girl who found the scent of love in the train occurred somewhere else, but it was a story that already happened in a different time, and which could occur again in another.”

“I was curious, of course, but skeptical. You understand how incredibly absurd her claim was. I asked her how she figured in the entire story, seeing that she was, in fact and truth, there in that particular time and place, talking about something which already happened. She simply replied, without any trace of concern, that it was a sign of the anomaly in fact—she was not supposed to be there. It seems like there’s a problem lying in having two similar people existing in a similar thread of time, according to her. People can jump to another thread of time, she said, but nature will have to correct it because it can cause problems in its natural workings.”

“In her case, she said, hearing the story I told her from a random stranger was the specific signal that she was not supposed to be there because another her existed prior to that—the girl in the story disappeared at the end, and was never seen again. She couldn’t—shouldn’t—be existing anywhere in this thread of time after that. I shouldn’t have seen her, just like what the story says about the girl who found the scent of love in the train.”

“I continued with my questions. How it works, what rules that phenomenon follows, a lot of things. I was beginning to feel strangely attracted to it. It seemed like the peculiar feeling of telling that story she said was a signal of some sort to her that I felt was somehow connected to what she was claiming. I wondered about the strangeness of the circumstance, if it meant anything, if it can be explained. I was about to ask, when she suddenly said it was something I would forget anyway, then told me she is one of those people who “jump” threads of time to make a living. She said this nonchalantly, as if it was a normal thing done by people.”

“You might think I have had enough back then and walked away, and I wouldn’t blame you if you think that way too. Again, it was too absurd to believe. But there was something that kept me on my seat to 9

listen. I’m not sure if she knew what it was, but it was as if my body was convinced of the story that even if my mind was raising red flags at every strange idea she said, I hung on to the conversation. She was really a student—a part-time researcher, in fact—but she was, as she said, studying how to erase memories. It was something possible, she said, because memories are tied to existences, in theory at least. By removing an existence in a thread of time, everything associated to it are also eliminated, leaving gaps that are filled by natural forgetting. Her research, she said, was to be used by the group she was working for. To what end they were gonna use it for, I wasn’t able to ask.”

The man paused to sip from his cup silently. Then, he scratched a spot hidden by shadows on his forehead, near his glasses, before resuming. The rain outside continued pouring heavily, the sound of its distant thunders punctuating the continuous drone of falling water it could muster.

“I asked her how the story became that signal she was talking about, and again, she smiled, that distinct glow back on her face. I was going to point it out to her finally because there appeared a literal glow on her face again—it encompassed her bleached-looking hair, going around her head, barely missing her green jacket’s collar. It was like an unnatural halo. I was about to ask her about it, when this happened.”

The man abruptly stopped, and with one fluid motion, slid the oversized moss-green coat off his left shoulder and pulled the collar of the black shirt he had on away from the base of his neck. On his skin a large, hideous burn scar, mostly concealed by his clothes, stretched from somewhere beyond his shoulder up to his left temple. There were a few surprised gasps from the huddle, but they quickly died down as the man readjusted his coat and motioned he was about to speak.

“I woke up in the hospital three days after. I cannot remember a lot of things clearly at first, but when my sister told me people in the fastfood where I was at witnessed me get hit by a freak lightning, everything fell back into place in my mind, like jigsaw puzzle pieces with magnets. I asked my sister if witnesses found a girl with me there, but she said nobody seems to mention someone with me there. They said I was alone when the freak lightning got me.” *** “I never met her again after that strange acquaintance we had, and several times I tried to recreate the circumstances just to get to find her again only to fail. It was like I was trying to find a way to have a pretty clear conversation with a nonexistent person. It’s crazy, I know. Who would want to get hit by a crazy lightning inside a fastfood the second time, right? But there were a lot of questions left in my head after that it seemed like I wouldn’t be able to get my mind off of it for some time.”

“Weeks after what happened and a few interviews with the local media about it, the incident disappeared from everyone else’s memory. News articles by reporters to whom I remember telling this version of the story intentionally omitted parts pertaining to the girl. They even omitted details about me.

Even my sister and my mother seemed to forget those parts of our conversation in which I detail her—the strange girl with a familiar novel I talked to before I got hit. I don’t remember telling them the things the girl and I talked about, but just the same, she never really figured in the conversations when we talk about that freak accident. I got used to it soon enough, in fact, and months later the incident got lost in history, along 10

with the girl. It was as if she didn’t exist, along with me.”

The man looked around him slowly, and then turned his attention outside as the rain increased strength. He pushed his glasses up and scratched his nose. Everyone seemed to be waiting for him to speak, but he remained distracted by the howling rain outside, by the pandering raindrops that formed larger splatters on the glass wall every minute.

“I’m sorry. I was just thinking when this storm’s going to weaken.” He said, suddenly aware of the anticipation brewing in the air inside the candle-lit cafe. But it seemed like he was already absorbed by a different concern, like he was already done with his story.

“So, um, do you think you have learned what it meant? Meeting that girl, telling her a story, and getting struck by a lightning after?” It was the stranded cashier who ventured out to ask for a closure of the tale. Everyone turned attentive again.

“Aside from accepting the existence of all these questions in my head, I thought about something based on my memories of that day. If what the girl said was true, then that strange meeting, me getting hit by the lightning and surviving that day, and my appearance here today to tell you my story—all of these must lead to something else, something more important.”

The man stared at the remaining coffee in his cup.

“There was something the girl said, I believe, moments before the lightning came.” He took the cup to his lips and drank slowly, pulling it away a few heartbeats later. He laid the empty cup with a curt tap on the saucer in front him with a contented expression on his face.

“It was after I exhausted all questions, and asked her how mere coincidence figured in all of the things she told me.” The man paused and scratched his scar, looking outside. “Coincidence is merely an observed chance. Everything happens, and those that we observe, are those with reasons.”

He fell silent, eyes steady on the dark street outside. “You don’t really get a lot of chances getting struck by lightning your entire life, but believe me, you’d wish you’ve said a lot of things before getting hit after surviving one.” He finally said.

Another flash of lightning lit the darkened room, followed by violent thunder and angry, howling wind. Everyone looked outside with a strange feeling of anticipation showing on their faces, watching the bleak, wet street like something was about to happen there. They gazed at the water droplets hitting the glass window, gazed at them as they formed dark veins that continuously pulsed with such vital force, branching out into hundreds of jagged, downward streams that diverge and converge as they flow, slowly losing awareness of each other as their eyes drifted with the waters, slowly getting lost under the infinite sound of the downpour.

A clap of thunder, and then they were back, all eight of them, still stranded inside the café.

11

*** It was the cashier who noticed the extra cup, saucer, and chair. Across her, on the table where the store’s stranded staff and guests sat and talked about strange experiences to pass the time while having free coffee, the chair looked as if it was just recently vacated.

She stood and leaned forward a little, checking the cup under the light of eight candles. It was already empty.

ď‚–

12

G A P S

13

14

The code does not intend to lock you out of the door.

Once you step beyond, you might lose something.

Stop and take your time, and make sure you are ready for what the other side will bring

ď‚–

15

Tobira no Angou 2014 is a collection of drawings and texts made and compiled by Gio Basco.

The maker lives alternately in Makati City and Rizal.

He can also be found in the internet.

16

[This copy has extensive drawn material not included.

Complete version available in print only.

Contact me if interested.

Requested copies will be produced for free.]

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