Travel Writing

It was past eleven in the evening. A heavy downpour earlier that night has left much of the city under flood water. Drenched, (I forgot to bring my umbrella so I used my bag to cover my head) I boarded the fifth jeep I passed by. An FX from Ortigas won't be coming.

Besides, it's getting late.

The jeep was snarled in traffic. The four lane avenue was overwhelmed with cars and trucks trying to squeeze at the middle. A few blocks away, the road had sunk beneath the murky torrent. A nearby creek has overflowed again.

I could have taken a nap while waiting for the vehicles to untangle themselves. But the thrill of seeing the jeep wading through, with waves lapping against a surface kept my mind awake. Despite being in my 30s, some childish wonders remain. I used to get upset when the jeep I am riding deliberately avoids passing through flooded streets.
   

The cars were still not moving. To keep myself busy, I thought of drawing the rosary and use the idle time to commune with the almighty. But prayers require a special time. It is as if everyone inside the jeep shared my faith. The attention I'd be getting might cast me in a bad light. 

So the next thing I did was to press the keypad of my Samsung phone. It's easier to pretend texting someone instead of running my fingers on the wooden beads, half-exposed inside my backpack. But composing a message to a friend wasn't my idea of passing time. I was penning the words of the blog entry you are reading right now.

I have always known that the mind travels inside a moving vehicle. Maybe its the change of landscape that allows a person to ruminate, or perhaps the dizzying passage of objects in a frame drowns a writer in contemplation. I have experienced it before, inside a G-Liner Bus going to Recto. The last rays of sunlight ached my hungry soul. So strong was my urge to write a poem, but to do it in a piece of paper using a green pen will only give me a headache.

Lately, I take advantage of the mind-speak to write articles for the raketship. The swiftness of translating thoughts into sentences outruns anything I create while churning words in a study. A 500-word essay gets done in 30 minutes. Minus the editing, the time saved enables me to do other things.

Including harvesting of good thoughts.

For some reason, this lullaby of the head never gets broken. Even right now, when the jeep parts the deluge  in front of the Jose Rizal University. Any moment, the engine may go kaput and we, the passengers may be forced to dip our feet into the icy waters of Kalentong. But here I am, bent on making this disarrayed thoughts a solid narrative.

There is a reason for the flowering of words. The heart becomes eloquent when the mind finds clarity. I cannot say how it is done, but the words seem to flow, like a river on its transit to the sea. The trip is like a short story. The plot can be told in many ways, but the idea is what's driving the storyteller to reach the port.

I am getting closer to home now and this mental monologue is coming to an end. Two more road crossings, a bridge over a railway and a metro station, whose underbelly becomes the basin of Manila and I am off this vessel. To publish this musing in its pure form depends on my fancy. Perhaps, I may find it too pretentious, too cluttered, or its soul maybe lacking. Disappointed, I might ditch the exercise completely. What is important is that I got myself a blog entry at a time when my voice threatens to disappear under torrents of other worries.

To wade through, like the jeep inches me towards my destination.