Chapter X: The day the Clouds Caught us

We climbed all seven-hundred steps to the peak of Mount Tapias and traced the scene of mountains and sea with hungry eyes. Greyscale clouds moved over the islands just beyond ours; how fast were they going, we asked ourselves. We did not know they would pass so quickly above us: together we ran beneath an over-flowing river, the torrent of rain through and through, the dark grey sky wrapped tightly around us. Descending the rocky cement hill, our soaked sandals splashed past the dogs with sad eyes taking shelter beneath painted metal roofs.

Through the gated wooden door, Tita Anabelle and Kuya Jhun were eating dinner by candle-light. Ka-in na! They waved to us and offered dinner. Since we arrived on the island, there were “brown outs” everyday. That’s that the locals called it. It’s what happens in the summers. The demand for electricity was too high. Kuya Jhun, my uncle, told us that he was good friends with the mayor, and asked her to spare their house from the brown outs. I don’t think we were ever spared.

Kyle and I shared a small room upstairs; it was their son, Buboy’s room. He moved to Manila to study pharmacology in the university. In it was a single, plastic chair, a small television set and an air-conditioner. There were pink curtains covering the single window. The room was still cold. We dried ourselves and lay together in the darkness.

The world outside sounded like millions of heavy, angry fingers rapping on the tin roof.

“STORIES TO TELL OUR KIDS” A (soon-to-be) Novel

I was inspired suddenly, at two-something in the morning, to write a blurb of a novel I have yet to put into existence. It feels so real to me. It is like a sleeping child that will one day grow older. I will make this tangible, one day.

The title of it, is called, “STORIES TO TELL OUR KIDS.” I hope you’ll enjoy it. Feel free to leave any points of constructive criticism.

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“STORIES TO TELL OUR KIDS,” manifests itself as a non-fiction hybrid, sketching a portrait of the seemingly-mundane life of a twenty year old named Claire. She retells, in skin-touching detail and breathtaking clarity, her whimsical and capricious experiences around the globe. Told in either first or third person, her unconventional writing style of quirky vignettes, prosetry and short stories strewn together as an unpredictable collage induces any reader into her metaphysical and lucid reality. She finds this comparable to the rhythm of a brief summer rainstorm, or the sensation of standing in the midst of an unpredictable wind.

Haruki Murakami, her most reveled, fiction-writing muse, puts this exact feeling into words: “It’s hard to tell the difference between sea and sky. Between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart” (Kafka on the Shore).

In no particular order her tales consist of metaphors and similes rooted in simplicity. They are cherished old photographs at the bottom of a drawer. Claire’s voice wields emotion like a great river. Running the length of the Garden State Parkway, through the intimate stretches of time etched between herself and her true love; It runs north to Montreal, a city of shimmering chartreuse and marigold scents and across the Mediterranean, where paper-skinned grandmothers smile toothless in stone villages on the Mars-like surface of Crete. Wearing the soles of her mother’s worn shoes, she finds herself traversing her heritage along the clear-water coasts of the tiny Philippine island of Coron. This is her unending adventure.

At the end of each day, Claire will watch the sky grow heavy in its tangerine succulence. And in this sweetness, wherever she may be, she will daydream of small children to lovingly tuck into sleep.

“These,” Claire will whisper to her lover, “are the stories to tell our kids.”