i took a drive today
time to emancipate
i guess it was the beatings made me wise
but i'm not about to give thanks, or apologize
i couldn't breathe, holdin' me down
hand on my face, pushed to the ground
enmity gauged, united by fear
forced to endure what i could not forgive...
i seem to look away
wounds in the mirror waved
it wasn't my surface most defiled
head at your feet, fool to your crown
fist on my plate, swallowed it down
enmity gauged, united by fear
tried to endure what i could not forgive
saw things
saw things
saw things
saw things
clearer
clearer
once you, were in my...
rearview mirror...
i gather speed from you f**king with me
once and for all i'm far away
i hardly believe, finally the shades...are raised...
saw things so much clearer
once you, once you...
rearviewmirror...
saw things so much clearer
once you, once you...
rearviewmirror...
I'm trying to keep my spirits upbeat as best as I could in the wake of so many unexpected setbacks --- the first being the sudden death of one of my batchmates, Atty. Rommel Quebengco. He suffered a stroke while driving home on the South Luzon Expressway. Like one of our managers here in Saudi Arabia, he had the time to stop, catch a few breaths, and then let the Grim Reaper come and take him.
Now, I wasn't close to Rommel or anything, but I knew his mother well from her established position as part of the Lasallian community. I didn't like him all that well, incidentally, judging from a short episode where we were thrown together while we were waiting for our rides home (his was still at school, working...). Then again, that was almost twenty-five years ago and we were most likely still playing with our boogers. It was that chance meeting where I, being the prissy, judgmental kid that I was, found that it wasn't all that hard to dislike someone on sight. But all he was doing was just being there, trying hard to be himself.
It was only later, as we grew up, that I came to realize students whose parents were teachers or administrators (because of their public status) had the burden of finding a defining quality for themselves. No one wants to be remembered just to be so-and-so's kid. So it made them try harder, whether at being noticed or being ignored. At the time, he didn't seem to handle the burden all too well. But what certainty did my child's eyes have back then?
Anyway, we were kids. In the intervening years, I never really got a chance to hang out with him because we studied in a big school, and from then on, we went to different schools, from where he joined the legal fraternity, and I, well, I wormed my way to where I am right now. In the end, I never knew him though he was a batchmate.
Regardless of what good ol' Eddie Wedder says, we can't escape death. We seem to see things with clarity for that moment when we see Death behind us. But maybe we should stop looking at the rearview mirror --- past victories stay where they are, the past. The present is an ever-ethereal wisp of smoke that disappears --- the past expands, the future contracts, and sooner or later, we have to take a leak, go to rest, or fill up on gas.
There too, lies the certainty that road conditions could change all so quickly before our very eyes, and before we know it, we spin out of turn, and Death would catch up and lay his final claim on this life.
Nothing should then, be ever taken for granted. Nothing.
