A DROWNING CHRISTMAS IN SATUN, THAILAND
By: Maria Charisma P. Concepcion (Christined by Fr. Tabada, labored by Dr. Magpantay and Perla Apostol, Wombed by Mr. and Mrs. Gauttier and Delia Concepcion. All from the rustic boondocks of a town called Magpet, Cotabato).

I never expected that the spirit of Christmas should be the absence of gifts and frills.

I had nonetheless developed sensory experiences of several flashbacks of memories that had spanned celluloid masteries that had been rightfully earned among the exponential buffets only fit for the brave, the humble, the creative and the unselfish granting of self to the universal world.

That it shall be called superior is the understatement of the century. All works of the highest order must always remain anonymous and they travel through time capsules in graded variations and improvements, unfettered by technology, immune to disasters, numb to taunts, courageous amid any catastrophe.

I was invited for a fellowship gathering by the local church here in Yala, Thailand for a three-day Christmas event of bible talks and meditation.

I was, instead, brought to works of art that are forever evolving. To call it massive is almost a cough to the throat. It is a whole continent of possible dreams and experience.  I told a fellow gatherer:

"Given time, this should become greater than the Great Walls Of China or San Francisco's Golden Gate."  My inputs had been properly recorded, with waterfalls as the finishing touch.

The possibilities are all there: I had experienced the gathering of doing everything in a grandiose but classic manner when I was a child: food, clothing, cutlery, artwork, plants.  The delicate and fine details kept on haunting me lately; ripe at 44 years as a woman of boiling mythical realizations, still undaunting and excessively hopeful. This is a field of dreams becoming weird realities for huge and big visionaries  like myself.

I have seen finer ornamental grass in the past but nothing prepared me for the crawling of ground ferns that had welcomed me.

These are the fine ground grass of my childhood with its giant eggplants, melons, garlic, fish, onions and vegetables.  I never knew the uses of cascading grass until I saw that they were hung beside resort huts like the hanging gardens of Babylon in clay pots and are made ornaments to magnify and illuminate the Universe.  I had made the water sprinkle like an ocean of fountains which had brought smiles to the visitors in wheelchair wearing perfectly crafted shoes and classically sewed socks.

Suntan here are lumped together like bouquets in great burst of orangey red.  The wooden benches are smiling and the uses of wood in their various varnished state appear like hardened and cut fine silk from the ranges of the Orient.  The hall is biblical like Noah's Ark and the sweetest of oranges greet the spiritual revelers at the front desk.  No registration fees are needed. All you need is a pure heart and mind to energize scriptures, improve hymns and bond with decently-minded fellows with noble missions for the World.

It is not Nirvana but a universe built by selfless and pious people.

The gist is this: Technology should mimic the natural course of nature. Roads lined up in pine trees, flourescent road lights made like the leafy ferns and must mirror the swaying ornaments in wattage glare.Alternately, a fern plant enjoys a sparkling support when lit up by lights looking like its twin.

A day before Christmas, I took the heavy current of river rapids on a plastic boat with big paddles.  I drowned and floated like a fish using a paddle.  I discarded my rower for a man who is frail and sick-looking, who was then assisted by a huge man with gigantic protein nutrients inside his body.

In rowing for the heavy torrents of water, I discovered several things: a life vest is a dud, paddles make you silly as they obscure the tree twigs and could make your boat capsize.  All you need is a brave man in front with a superior supporting cast of rowers to win in this kayyaking event.

I could not swim but took on the heavy rapids like a pebble to a stone. A beautiful young lady and his brother were the only people who were crazy enough to laugh at the currents.

Friends, ladies and gentlemen, it was easy: I simply rescued myself. I balanced myself, allowed the water to sink halfway the boat and laughed with strangers who had jumped in to join me.

Oceans never scare me; I had a five minute scare that went comical in terrible fits of heavenly misarrangements of nature and had survived. Credit the above-mentioned people for this fortitude and foresight.

When John Updike had preached in his Nobel Prize style somewhere in his book, Roger's Version, that God is a verb, not a noun, I take the mantra as a tablet of peace for my creative process.

God is indeed a verb, with steadfast apostrophes, perfect commas and eclectic semi-colons. God and his disciples usually converge in stunts that convert rather than insult, spread cheer rather than stagnate in gossip and uneventful talks.  As a scripture in the book of Romans had articulated: if your calling be teaching, teach.

I am my father's daughter and he had imprinted my words in golden covers with sash as bookmarks, with letters and paragraphs immaculately astounding.

Thank you to my family and its extended appendages, my Christmas was an eventual searching of self that had finally come into a ripening with no bacteria rottening my self-actualization.

Thank you. Satun, Thailand; thank you Bara Resort (its wooden structures would shame any upholstery outlet in an upscale hole); thank you wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people for the education on the eve of our Savior's birthday.

Unnamed Novel

By: Iris P. Concepcion

No one did notice the visual calumny except my skulled brain nestled between my two orbs: the elephant is the train.

I am __________, lone voyager to a world never been blitzkrieged by technology.  My best armory is my brain, my best skill my nervy fists, my best sight my pair of ears.

He has massive hearing anatomy: my craggy, wrinkly friend.  With two eyes on both sides of his face, he has seen both left and right vistas to my own straight, linear vision. We have never seen eye to eye as I view his elongated tusk, an arched trombone that could sniff a friend or foe from afar. His language is cavish in tubular enunciation that knows the only vowel, O.  Mine has mixed the west and the east of phonetics with no apparent periods in between.

Lately I have noticed his bony whiskers polished like immaculate porcelain as he mimics the soft, furry tigers of the wilds.  Fleas could not approach him, their diminutiveness splat frozen by his gaze.  He has never been friendly with the rest of the species in the mammalian world, preferring to pull his weight down to the ground as he shakes and arranges the dimensions of the universe.

I could not begin to understand why a man of my stature, barely reaching five feet, with ashen hair and small feet, could afford to be affectionate with a 6,600 pounder animal who remains unruffled; his tail curls but not to whip, his bottom blurs views but not to blind.

I guess our friendship started when I found myself lost in a barren field, with only a railway in sight. I sat on the ground, squatting with sprightly palm oil seedlings covering my hands and he had appeared from nowhere, like a mirage suddenly gaining a bodily weight. He too, had squatted and as I looked at the garish garland stuck in his fat neck, seemingly forlorn and abandoned, I had realized that he too, had been lost.

I had placed my plants on my feet, protecting them from worms, ineffective pesticides and typhoons.  He had discarded, funnily, his obtrusive necklace by wincing his head as it flew away, like a racquetball, to the rail.

My friend, the garland, my palm oil and I, anticipate for the train’s arrival.

                            ****************************

The State Railway of Thailand was designed in 1890s, an era bequeathed with divergent historical milestones ostensibly crossed-out and made  unmentionable in encyclopedias. This is an era when the United States population stood at a repetitive 62,622,250 million, the Mormon Church had outlawed polygamy, the first weekly comic paper, Comic Cuts was published in London and when the steak country Salisbury, Rhodesia is founded.

It is here, at this coach Number 8, where a pork noodle advertisement peeks through one of the boards as it surveys the passengers in hunger connotation where I had met __________________________. He is dark as a nightangle with prowlish eyes. I had noticed his feet, where his dead big, left toe rests, atop  his sunken slip-ons, in defying comatose phase.

I believe his age to be between 60-70 years old. Barely 4 feet in height, my cargo pants and clinging coins in my side pocket developed an urge to discover his world, with all its traces of blackened past down to his anatomical composition.

"What is your name, Sir," I had said haltingly, dipping my right hand on my pocket coins for supernatural protection.

He even barely heard me, gazing through my eye receptacles like a lost child, see-sawing between what is a carnal being who is myself, and the barren fields outside where rice granaries are absent, trees stolen and fishponds sequestered.

He, instead, took the plastic containers of rice and viands tied in rubber bands and opened them unceremoniously. The smell of curry and melancholy seeped through like weeping orchids about to get plucked. He dug his right hand unto them, eyeing me with unformed tears, judging my aberrance, my pleasantness, my cordiality.

I repeated my query, "What is your name, Sir?", aghast that I could not be heard by such a frail being with a dead toe.

He looked back to the barren fields, dewing his greyish lashes as he performed his painful and punishing, eating ritual.

‎He had choked on the viand, plausibly a pause from his chewing, and his eyes had reddened like the striking eyes’  fish in the wet market. His mouth had quivered as I saw a cod strip dangling from the corner of his clumped teeth. His sadness injures as his relentless stare bore through my hidden coins, clinging mysteriously to my right pocket like how his food had clung to his mouth. 

Stifling a cough, a rice grain ostensibly came out of his nose as he had struggled to contain his motioned, eating procedure. He had wiped it, along with a snot from the margins of his garb, still faithfully arguing with the Gods of Feasts as to why he had been singled out from the boisterous merriment of a festive, wedding banquet.

I had persisted like how a man would do when cornered to fly out from an area with wheezing bullets and massive tanks. I need his name to cast a portrait to his stature of curious diminutiveness, unspeakable anger and fulfillment deprivation.

"Sir, what is your name?" using my palms and fingers to signify the arrows between myself and himself that could yield a connotation of  identification by which to address ourselves.

He had opened his mouth then, revealing a mixture of  grinded saliva, rice and viand on a tongue purpled, short and wobbled, as he had raised carefully his trembling hand, waving it for my keep, while his head turned right to left, signifying that he could no longer mutter a letter, a word, a sentence to satisfy my frivolous query.

It was then that he had flushed out his recognizable tears, making his eyes glidier and hazier. He had allowed them to drop to his sunken cheeks, bowing his head while closing his cracked lips, wiping the weepy droplets of anguish to his palm receptacles, preserving his exposed undignity by failing to look at his solitary audience. I, who had been closely watching his ordeal, hastily performed a priestly function for souls to be identified like a chant from the hallowed grounds of secret mountains, in the  Prayers of Mourning.

I had named him Singood.

As things unfold in furling shifts of his laboriousn feeding task, I had formed what could have been his life before this __th day of _____2011, riding in coach number 8, looked over by a pig-flavored advertisement in his derelict version of Divine Chastisement.

                                                                  *************************

Singood at five years old had foreseen himself being banished from his natural habitat and surroundings.  He had gripped a frog by its neck. He was fully aware of the formed judgment of the Tableau of God's Justices that shall certainly befall him for harming an innocent creation.

He had been a pug with a few circle of friends while growing up, preferring to drag himself to the wilds.  Fairly literate that could pass off for intelligence, he had been adrift lately in chasing games with insects, of spiders and cobwebs, of flying mantis and centipedes, of lizards and ants.

He was a kid with a curious penchant to draw moths and fireflies while clipping their wings so that they could not fly.

His parents had been born poor with meager income, earning their keep by selling their backyard produce of cattle and homegrown vegetables.  He went to a public school with an airplane cemented near the gate instead of flag poles.

I am nonetheless drawn to the beauty of surroundings that could provide a mysterious setting to my imaginary story of him, this sullen, forlorn and sad creature with curry food.

Extremely disturbed by his silence, I had shifted my gaze to the open scenery of natural habitat of animals grazing the fields as what the Creator had planted them in the book of The Beginning.  The sagging breasts of cows are ready for milk squeezing, hefty and hale and sitting like ladies in prairies, waiting for their counterpart males to partake the doughs of bread, freshly baked from a bakery adorned with a figurine of a fat man sitting on top of a latrine with his butt exposed.

The ponds, replacing the barren fields earlier,  have flying fish swirling in its centrifugal space, forming circles beside the lush and green rice paddies covered in a backdrop of broccoli-like filled green mountains.  From afar, they appear to have been excised from the Book of Genesis, particularly the chapter where God had alloted seven days to put an architectural design to an infant world.

These mountains, expansive, haunting and ethereally arranged,  bespeak of an unmentionable natural wonder discovered only by the knowing eye festooned in an adventure of the visuals.  Leaves had crawled on the rail track, untouched and beholden to no one. They seemed to be surprised hitting the train wheel, perhps mistaking them for towed tree barks to be pl;aced in wooden trucks after.

Singood had lived here, this land of unending train track with its belt fastened all over Thailand, from the cold mountains of Chang-mai to the bustling city of Bangkok.  Its chugging chimneys stretch from the beautiful island of Champhon down to Khlong Chandi, Cha-am, Pran Buri, Phattalung to the crisply named place of the bread toast: Butterworth.

He had lived in Tanyong Mat, where the train station houses guards in starched, unwrinkled uniform, waving flags like men who are tasked to save historical frontiers of this protected territories to ensure them of their rightful places in atlases.

This place has evolved over the years from a sleepy enclave od small traders who had soon occupied and had given way to night, flea markets with their hand me down clothes, house wares and shoes.  Recently, it had seen incredible changes like the unruffling of leaves to brown the groundsd with chirpy noise once stepped on by rubber-soled boots.

It is autumn in this autumn-less country with men holding babies like statues.  The tots: plump, wide-eyed, anomalously healthy, dressed in kimonos, hooded swetashirts, pants, clothes and shirts, impervious to the polite surroundings of people treating the station as take-off points for airplanes.  They are, perhaps, wondering, if the wood panel by the station shall be replaced by a steel ten years from now, with happy and cartoon puppets peeking out from the rooftops.

HOW FASHION AND MAGAZINE PRINTING HAD SURVIVED IN YALA, THAILAND
By: Iris P. Concepcion

Exactly four days ago from scribbling down this aberrant note with an oblique title, I had craved for Twinkie Pops, the little quartered ice-cream fried in piping oil outside an internet-fax machine shop.  It only costs a surprising 15 baht.  My clinking spare coins can certainly afford this rare tummy indulgence, tipped to me by a woman who had learned not only English but teaching, inclusive economics, traffic management, aerophone and water resource from me.

She had been an engaging learner as I am to her. She had made me accept the importance of immunization vaccinations and health care.  All throughout our interaction, we had used the proper usage of grammar and proper tenses.  We had laughed at the paragraphs, subject of our examination, that needed to be refuted.

As I was gulping down my treat in cold mastery and sweetness then, this little nook gifted me with a cache of reading materials.  I am queer in a manner wgere a beautifully designed show or a masterfully crafted craving could make me intellectually drool.  To a certain extent, this compels me to weave words in auburn rhythm and melodious syntax whether or not I am a friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson or not.  These reading materials are eclectic and are all written in Thai language.

I took the little book of writing nuggets that had been sprawled around the childhood house by my parents: Readers' Digest. A new feature is given a visual soliloquy here: lens-based aesthetics churn out some surprises.  Colorful pictures in different make litter the pages.  I could have sworn I had missed a pulse beat upon discovering the treasures: men kissing cubs, old people striking lions' hinds, women cuddling gigantic elephants. Suddenly, I wanted to be a pet upon stumbling upon this discovery.

I sought permission to bring these pages home. Yeah, (it is a name) the kindly caretaker of the internet shop, relented.  I had promised to return the copies as soon as I am done browsing them.

Human interactions and experiences are finely shrank in these articles.

Even the glossy magazines with fashion spreads have undergone a curious lift.  Backgrounds with uninspiring wood flooring and discarded furniture are relegated to the margins and seams for the real knock-out images to emerge: dresses in wonderful cuts, models snobbing the traditional, usual poses. Their make up is different; their skin almost a tint with hues of pink glow.

These mannequins may have short-lived careers as textile endorsers but the outstanding dress exhibitors are those equipped with brightier and wider smiles.  They exude earthy, animal appeal without being overtly dramatic.  Plopped in abandoned surroundings, their frills and ruffles, in chiffon or satin, wear like acrylic paint.

I certainly know the difference now: these women make their dresses look like Louvre paintings.

Thus, I am back in this nook to reacquiant myself with the world of our design masters and supernatural faith healers, thinking of eating Twinkie Pops again, with its colorful gelatin topping and chocolate sprinkles.

Even the obscure fashion magazines survive here and I already know the reason for it: they are pieced together with only The Wonderful Heaven as their final printing press.

I mean: they are real knock-out spreads.