New Chapter

It’s a Sunday afternoon and I have nowhere to go. I should have slept half-naked there in my tepid shelter with only a rusting industrial fan to ventilate it but my feet are yearning to stride somewhere my mind doesn’t know about. So I have decided to walk and survey the neighborhood. I live in the city and in this part you can rarely see empty spaces where your eyes could find rest. On every imaginable lot stands buildings, apartments, schools, all roads lead to high rise structures, so barren and distressing. A soaring condominium rises above the horizon surrounded by scaffoldings as it is yet to be completed and where the train lay near its base.

I have settled here for weeks now since I started working in a law firm as an associate. I commute every day taking two jeepney rides just to get to the office. Oftentimes, I arrive late because I have yet to adjust myself waking up early in the morning in order no to be caught up in traffic jams. I have no choice but to let myself be employed for the meantime and not to put up my own law office for lack of resources and experience. But don’t get me wrong, I enjoy working under the supervision of an Atenean. I am learning a lot of things including certain realities I have yet to digest and understand.

From here on, I will be transferring vignettes of my life to a new site entitled: The Fledgling Lawyer. I can’t help but be sentimental about this. I have lurked in this corner for years and have wept all the tears and shed all the blood that came with what Frost once described as one’s love quarrels with this world. I tried to trace back what made me decide to put up and start this blog and has realized that little has been really devoted to telling the story of the death of thirty thousand fishes.

The death of thirty thousand fishes refers to my childhood. It spans years of being with fishes every second of my younger days. We have this small fishpond near the river and miles from our house which I used to tend for years before it was later mortgaged and sold by my father. I have witnessed many splendid moments and miracles in that pond which I used to tell my sister will be later captured in a memoir I will write before I die. I used to be left alone in that small hut standing in the dike near the river to look for cranes which will dive in the pond and eat those little fishes which I tediously feed everyday. Those little fishes which I must protect according to my father because it is because of them that we get to eat three times a day.

There are many unforgettable memories among them is the fondling of a swarm of hungry fishes as I put my hands full of caked feeds underneath the water, the nibbling of thousand gentle creatures, the splashing of salt water, the scorching heat and the sparkling sight of fishes reflecting the light of the sun through their silvery scales…scenes I could not just leave behind the pages of forgotten reminiscence. The water spout which passed by the river on that stormy day in June; the sound of the motor banca and the feeling of its nearness in the middle of the night; the packed dinner which my father delivers to me every night, always late and leaving me starved; the bickering between me and my father and how he almost beat me to death; the sight of him lying in the banca prostrate and almost dead. Rich and haunting experiences that molded me into what I am now.

From here on, this blog will be devoted to those recollections. Whenever I will have the time to ponder and reflect on them, I will make sure to immediately write them and rush to an internet shop to post it here. I will say goodbye to this journal for now and make it a repository of my past. A cathartic activity I hope to share with you. It was a pleasure to meet all those who had time to visit this blog some of them fellow bloggers who share the same experiences in life. Ciao…