Awaiting Rain

(for Preston Mark Stone who, in our Usenet days, kept encouraging me to keep writing)

Clouds stingy with rain gather over the restless city.
The monsoon is nearly upon us,
But not quite. The weather is a terrible
Tease, the odd drumbeats of thunder signifying
Nothing, yet. For an interminable while,
We are hostages to this pregnant gunmetal sky.

More than grasses have died,
Where there was no shade or where
There has spread an unintended fire.
Dry throats plague all travelers;
The roads need their dust tamped down.
The northern winds are late in coming, but
They can banish the still air that imprisons us
And this parched country. We quiver
With impatience, waiting
For the wash of water.

How reluctantly rain falls,
Flashing us now and then
With a lightning sneer,
As if we owed a debt to heaven
Impossible to repay.

We need the rising smell of
Moistened earth to call out the cicadas,
Whose song is the sound
Of the monsoon announcing that
A cool twilight has finally come.

25 May 2005

Copyright Pomona Caccam. All rights reserved.

T S T A

My closest friends and I have been together most of our lives. Half of them are in Manila, and the other half are overseas. We keep in touch via yahoogroup, where correspondence can be on any topic from the quality of Darna starlet Angel Locsin's skin to NBA games to world politics to virgin coconut oil. In fact we're averaging about 1000 posts a month! Another friend of mine (from college) is including us as subjects in her masteral thesis on "Computer-Aided Interpersonal Communication".

Lately the guys were dredging up the names of women in their past, just for fun of course (their wives have access to the yahoo group as well). At a certain point in the email exchange, someone invoked, "TSTA!"

TSTA - Thou Shalt Tell All

When TSTA is invoked, one has to tell the other person the truth. When one chooses not to, the other person can invoke, "TSTATA!"

TSTATA - Thou Shalt Tell All To All

This time the person is required to tell everyone the topic at hand. When he/she demurs, everyone is free to invoke, "TSTATAAT!"

TSTATAAT - Thou Shalt Tell All To All At All Times

This puts the person on the hot seat, and he/she has to tell everyone everything.

There never has been any malice attached to TSTA, mostly mischief and curiosity. This is a measure of how close we are as friends, all embarrassing truths render us equal to each other. The counterpoint to this is that we should not judge each other, because we all have our idiosyncracies, and who is to say we are better than the next guy? Of course now we are more mature we hardly invoke TSTA, we usually wait for the person to volunteer the information. It's not that we don't have any privacy from each other, it's more like we're family enough to accept each other for what we are.

Execution Dream

Last night I dreamed that I was in an office building with a group of people. Suddenly there was an explosion outside, so we all ran to the balcony window to see what was happening. There were armed men in the courtyard, in military camouflage. They ran up the stairs to the room we were in, and announced that we were all political hostages. They made demands over a cell phone and announced they would be killing one hostage soon.

They picked me. I was frightened and my mouth felt dry. They took me to the balcony and made me kneel down, and then they shot me in the back of the head. Before they shot me I was thinking, "I hope this isn't going to hurt."

Oddly enough, I felt the cold entry of the bullet, and nothing else. It felt like my consciousness shattered into millions of pieces, parts of me becoming shining fritillaries being showered across the universe, and then coming back together again. I was still me, but only in spirit. Then I looked at everyone in the room I had just left. They were all pale with fear. My consciousness went over to each one, trying to see if I could communicate with them after death.

I found my ex-boyfriend A. in the room and waved my hand in front of his face. He frowned and shifted his eyes from left to right. It was like he could almost see me. I tried talking to him telepathically, and it felt like my broken up thoughts were entering his brain much like white noise. Then I saw a tear roll down his face, and I thought, "I knew you'd miss me."