Fear is like a wilderland
Stepping stones or sinking sands.
-Joni Mitchell
IMAGES of mornings. Rays of warm light entering the open window and illuminating a thin cloud of steam from a coffee cup on a table highlighted against a room still in soft shadows.
The world of silence outside is only broken by the faraway chirping of birds, and like the clouds from the coffee, the mind now wonders, after this relative peace and quiet, how does one get through all that comes after?
“We can’t return, we can only look behind from where we came…” Yes, everything is right in the last song playing in one’s mind. Always forward, and turning back around is not an option. Morning chores follow and ever slowly, hell breaks loose. Ye be worker, politician, mother, father, employee or boss, you gotta serve somebody, says Bob. That is just how things roll.
I often think that sometimes, this must be the main source of all the dynamics in the world. And the noise. All resulting in an insatiable drive that is without contentment. As a bitter counterpoint one could say, the world is a totally different animal, right after the kind of peace that comes with morning coffee.
I’m not suggesting we try resolving our differences with the wake-up brew while the day wakes. The precious silence of those few moments must remain sacred at least, although of course there will always be people who are just yakiti-yakitiyaks at the times when one is enjoying his/her contemplative coffee mornings. As you’d have guessed it , that is just “how things roll”.
Consider this short flashback. The narrow street of F.R.Hidalgo after San Sebastian Church in Quiapo during the late 70s, had always been where jeepneys started and ended their trips. However, to start the day, this was always where most of them lined up before plying their routes around Metro Manila.
I would be there around 5am, after a brief ride from Malate where we played every night and spent a few hours sleeping at Paco Park. In that smoke-filled one way street in the early morning, I found refuge in an air-conditioned establishment that served the best coffee then. I remember it had the icon of a smiling bee, still unpopular at that time.
Thing is, as one sipped his coffee within the silent confines, you could spy and anticipate that a busy world was up ahead. This is made clear as the jeepneys lining up Hidalgo rev their engines non-stop, like battle tanks preparing for war, as one by one, they slowly flow out into the main street. Thus, that starts their day.
And every morning, this is how I, without much ceremony, start mine. Imagine replicating us a million times over. Even with all the different time zones that separate us, a quiet time at daybreak just spent on pondering what we have planned for the day ahead, might be something to think about. Think of Theoden as he says, “and so it begins.”
