dreaming EDSA

Dreaming EDSA 
        Truth never come in disguises, it was the bearers that do.
                                                                                                   
        Strange. The place is veiled by a soft silvery light, like of the moon’s, yet there were none that night. The land is bare as a desert, save from a few spurts of trees that grew like melting candles. An air of horrid desolation held the night into stillness.
        What was once a barren place suddenly seemed to be a town. One by one appearing in front of the young man—houses, roads, benches, and people; pale and sullen people, now are walking about him. If he was brought into their world or they into his, he could not tell. But there’s a strange kinship that is felt—he was one of them.
        Among that silent crowd of seemingly ordinary people, one appears to be different, absurd… and then another. Until they all change—into a carnival of grotesque creatures. Men, women, soldiers, priest, politicians: each with their own share of absurdities. Everyone is changing into his very eyes; like a sick phantasm of the mind. A woman with telephone cord tied around her neck calling him different names.
        “Hello Ricky, now you know me… did I say I love you? Even then! James… Matt…”
        A host of bloated men, all ugly and rank, wiggling their fat bellies into the most revolting parade he had ever seen. They sing, they dance; they lick the skin of whoever that approaches them. But not all the grotesque figures are horrible; some are beautiful, too beautiful in their grotesqueness that they look divine. Those that he thought ugly, are very beautiful indeed, and those that he thought beautiful—reeks at their unmasking!  Everyone professes their truth, not in words but in their feature, the more truth one declares, the more grotesque he becomes.
        David knew, right from the start that he too has some truth to tell, truth that he hides at the back of his mind, truth that he denies. He’s afraid of what will become of him when he lets them out. His truth burdened him, on and on like leeches and lice they creep inside him. He thought it prudent to be still.
        “One to normal, two to swell, three to shrink” a man without a face keeps on telling him as he toys with his camera, he seems to be covering the event.
        “One to normal, two to swell, three to shrink” he repeated.          
        “But you should be—!” Slime and rubbish suddenly gushed out David’s mouth, and his tongue forks, like to those hideous lizards he had seen in movies. He held his mouth, kept silent, until he’s ok again. “I’ll endure it,” he thought, “to tolerate petty falsehood is lesser evil than to hurt. And fortitude too, is courage.” His justifications shamed him, but he has to appease his mind. He is neither strong nor wise. He can never be like those beautiful people who exercise their grotesqueness gracefully.  Little by little he withdraws from the crowd, stays by the sideways, and sat.
        “’Tis a pitiful creature” an old man by the crowd utters, his four eyes have been studying him for quite sometime now, “he’s the sorriest jellyfish I’ve ever seen! —Always at sea…always at sea…” as he shook his head, not of desperation but of disgust.



EDSA; the main thoroughfare in metro manila where political rallies are held.