(Note: I wrote this prose while traveling from Concepcion (Arteche, Eastern Samar) to the town proper this morning on a three-hour boat ride.)

When you’re riding a bote –
that kind of boat without whatchamacallit,
those sorta wings attached to the rear
to keep the vessel in balance
(resembling, duh, a bottle) –
think of a Lav Diaz film
Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis, in particular

It only takes about three hours
to get to poblacion from Concepcion
across Oras River,
much shorter than
to watch Hele in one sitting –
that eight-hour bitch –
but (feels) much longer
without a book
and/or bathroom breaks

So rather than despising why
the entire walking and finding some hero’s bones
have to be shown,
or loathing why the three-hour ordeal has to be dealt with:
Revel in the long shots
of seemingly never-ending lines
of coconut trees and indigenous grasses
from the shaking boat’s window

There may never come a time
when you can take pleasure in this
tranquility of the nonmoving
while you’re moving
but if you really feel like it:
You may take heaps of sleep
but not too much, I warn you!
OK to miss some parts
but not the eventful ones –
those parts where
the boat is about to take a wild right turn, or left
or when the center of gravity shifts to
God knows where
jolting the bottoms of a number of dozing passengers (the boat leaves at 3 a.m.!, by the way),
or when the morning light switches on
from the specks of dawn,
when the gray blanket of space becomes cerulean

Speaking of which!
Should you feel blue
Think: there’s a lot more good
in appreciating the normally gruelling travel aboard the bote
sans storms or busted motor;
in viewing the film till the end credits
sans the colors and the yawning audiences

You may never find Bonifacio’s remains
but you will get there
to the station at the town proper
and you will feel everything around you becoming
busy again,
moving
fast again,
spinning like an auto dryer
or lovers in a Korean drama in a series finale,
while you stand still, so still you’re going to breathe in the freshest air there is, and
sigh the oligatory words:
I’m back in the real world!
– when actually
you’ve been in the real world all along.

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