kwentuhan 2008

            The stories I tell came from a child who knew nothing. He was in constant fear of getting himself out of the sandbox he was brought into. There, he started digging his way alone, in anguish. There, he found out that rainbows came from either side of heaven. There, he realized that silence is not always peaceful. He never had the courage to even touch the grass beyond the four-cornered chasm of his childhood. He would always fold his arms and legs neatly, careful so that the sand won’t get inside his shoes. And when he digs, he would always stop even before he hits the bottom. Such is the sad, sad life of the boy who told my stories.

          He started to feel things when he was about five. There, he saw through the imaginary windows of his childhood the other kids throwing mud balls at each other, taunting each opponent with a maddening scream, ducking each time a mass of dirt blob would come their way. He felt different. He wanted to shout, too, but no enemy would listen. He wanted duck, too, but no mud blob ever came his way. He and his sandbox were too far away. He felt different.

          He wondered about many things after that. He dreamt about many things after that. He marveled at the fact that he can draw his own rainbows, using a blunt stick and the sand beneath him to carve seven lines that would represent each color he knew, and marveled even more why the colors black and white were never part of this heavenly mix. He tried digging even deeper in his playground, looking for the same grass like the ones that surround him outside the box. Again, he stopped right before he hit the bottom. He never knew what was really underneath.

          He wondered about other things, too. He wondered why the neighbors would shout whenever they are mad and sweaty. He wondered why the stars would run away whenever the sun removes his warm blanket at dawn. He wondered why tears would run down his cheeks whenever it was cold, or when someone close to him would go to a place called ‘away’. He wondered why he longed for someone to take him away.

          And so, with his arms and legs folded in the same way as they did when he watched the sunset turn into sunrise, he started to amuse himself by carving yet another image on the frail sand. It was a horse, running around the small plane. He tried giving him a name. He began to ask himself why the horse was running around in an endless loop. He wrote a simple line: “Because he wanted to.” He realized that the horse was gone, the track empty with its movement. The horse ran away, but not its story.

          Armed with a stick, he began to draw image after image, each with a life of its own. And while the children down the road kept on teasing and taunting each other, the boy remained inside his sandbox, spending his time by concocting stories inside his head. He drew pictures of whales flying, of rabbits jumping as high as the tallest towers he could imagine, and of chocolate rivers that ceased to stop. Sometimes, he felt the need to stop, just so he can take a breather and continue with what he was doing

He grumbled at the fact that the sand only had one color: pale yellow. He grumbled at the fact that his rainbows never looked the same as those arches above him. He was annoyed that his dog didn’t look much like the dog barking on the other side of the road. What he lacked, he found out, was the essence of that reality he failed to grasp inside his prison. He looked outside, and there, like clouds hurling through each other in swift motion, are the remnants of a childhood he cannot even remember.

          He realized that it was his neighbor’s, the very last thing he dreamt of seeing. But what he saw fascinated him—it made an observer out of him. Inquisitive as always, he held his breath every time another cloud of memory would pass by his sandbox, oblivious of his existence. His eyes twitched with every story, his mouth watered with every promise of a new tale told through the eyes of another. And there, another lesson was learned. He was captivated by anything and everything his sandbox did not—or could not—offer him.

For years, only three things sustained the boy: his sandbox, his eyes, and his ability to make up stories. For years, he was happy and at peace. Always the one who stops whenever things get pleasant, he avoided the temptation of looking to other places, where, surely, countless tales await. He seemed content with what he had in his hands, and never bothered with everything else. He was happy that way.

But things do change. The boy didn’t know it at first, but he was beginning to get restless. He hunched over his creations, his breaths shallow, and saw something that wasn’t there before. Traces of longing were apparent in his stories. He thought of them before as nostalgia—until he realized that these longing for memories were not his. He looked outside his box; he searched for everyone he saw for years, but he saw no one, nothing.

That was the day when fear gripped him, and when he looked down at his feet with the sand playing mercilessly on his toes, he knew that his stories were already laid to rest, and that he needed to do something.

And with all his might, inch by inch, his heartbeat never ceasing to rest, he threw away his stick, far enough so that it would land on a patch of green with a satisfying thud. He shed off the anxieties that were once his blanket inside his prison. He took his first step outside, and felt something unlike any other. The sandbox called for his return, but he didn’t. The grass surrounding his former prison burned his feet at first, but it wasn’t long before he became used to this new-found freedom. He walked towards the place where the stick was resting in peace. He picked it up and walked towards the horizon. The horizon, he realized, never ends. His stories, he realized, do.

And then the words started to flow, an angry river of imagination and emotion. The words brought him joy. It brought him pain. It brought him everything. It was a powerful feeling.

So much so that he felt the need to write. He left his drawing stick, and picked up a pen, a piece of paper, and a passion. He wrote roughly at first, probably because he was used to carving shapes on the sand, but he persisted. He wrote his first words, his first tales.

And this is how he started to write my stories.