Strange People on Ordinary Days

lost and found (#22)

by Jeneen R. Garcia

 

In between travels to some island or other, between deadlines and meetings and other must-do’s, there are the ordinary days.

 

These are the days when I get off work early enough to catch the karinderya near my place still open, and on wonderful rainy evenings have hot soup for dinner instead of the usual late-night restaurant fare. The man there who gives me a discount at lunch (once, even feeding me for free) is replaced by his elderly sister who would frown at his habit, but who now likes to talk to me about politics and work while praying the rosary, and gives me P1 off the rice besides.

 

As I near home, the three neighborhood cats come running towards me--an almost tomcat with an impressively loud ngiyaw, a purring female kitty-cat, and a cute but scaredy kitten--all looking for love (and perhaps a little food), rubbing against my legs as I try to walk. On ordinary days I don’t have leftovers, but I have more time for scratching their bellies as they roll on the rough concrete.

 

Then I open the gate, glance over the fence at the neighbor’s lot, and sure enough, the Wolverine look-alike--sideburns, wild hair...no titanium bones, thankfully--is there puffing on his stick of marijuana, curiously watching as I talk to the cats. It used to feel creepy smelling weed at home almost every night, but one time Mr. Wolverine actually talked to me while I was feeding the cats, remarked that the kitty-cat was sick. I just smiled in reply, but after that I’ve found his presence to be a comfort, protection at least from robbers and other lurking evil creatures, and he’s never said another word since.

 

On excessively humid days when I need a cool, bright place to think, I walk up the street for dinner and take my pick of three restaurants sitting side by side: a Chinese place, a burger joint, and a deli. In this country, there are enough humid days so that now the waiters of all three places know me enough to predict my order. Near closing time, when I’m the only customer, they start singing loudly as if in a videoke bar, sometimes in a duet.

 

On the way back, I stop and say hello to a dog that has one leg broken and both eyes with cataracts. He barks at everyone else but always wags his tail at me. The resident perpetual street sweeper I pass in respectful silence. Each day he sweeps from early morning till one a.m. (which is the latest I’ve been out walking in the neighborhood--who knows if he ever sleeps?), stopping out of courtesy when anyone walks by. But one night as I went past, he asked, “Uli na ka?” I didn’t even know he could speak! He never has again, maybe because I had been too shocked to be friendly. Still, I will always cherish that night.

 

Perhaps he has his own strange stories to tell about me, how I take walks at odd hours in no particular direction. Perhaps marijuana-puffing Mr. Wolverine wonders why I take pictures only of the cats and not of people. Perhaps the videoke-dreaming waiters think me weird for staying till late writing furiously in my small notebook--about what, they can only imagine.

 

But I say, let me have my restless nights, my ordinary days of having nothing to do. Soon enough, the calls will come, the calendar will start crying for attention again. So thank God for boring nights when all that needs to be done is listen to the rain while I do my laundry, sit around and discuss hair with my housemates, walk aimlessly and talk to stray animals. Or write about strange people who perhaps, after all, are simply savoring these ordinary days as much as I am.