She was fading away in the shadows in the distance, the red Gabu sun enveloping her.
She had come to my place at the bank of the Padsan. We wanted to clear things out. But it was not a productive encounter.
And she went away, leaving words that needed no response from a young man who suddenly grew old.
"You have to grasp this," she said, a hint of the anger she was trying to control, her brown eyes blazing.
"You have to grasp this," she repeated, pronouncing and grating every word in a slow cadence.
"What? Have I not understood you? You are impossible You are a brat, a very selfish brat."
Her smile was naughty, if not sarcastic.
"You said you love to read the poems of Pablo Neruda, and you have just read one."
"And did you say yesterday you can recite from memory 'I can write the saddest poem?'
"Forget it," she said.
A breeze rustled the leaves of the nearby balete tree.
"You said you love music, the best music of that classical Italian composer--what's his name?"
I was remembering a time in university days in Diliman. She was sitting on a chair at the lobby of the Liberal Arts building.
Her voice was cool and deliberate:
"If you love poetry, if you love music, how could you be so rude? How could you be a barbarian, an animal?"
The footprints on the white sands were clear, following a straight path.
 |
| Grandchild Margarita Denise Julian |
The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. --Soren Kierkegaard
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