[av_one_full first min_height=” vertical_alignment=” space=” custom_margin=” margin=’0px’ padding=’0px’ border=” border_color=” radius=’0px’ background_color=” src=” background_position=’top left’ background_repeat=’no-repeat’ animation=”]
[av_heading heading=’MY LIFE AS ART ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=’30’ subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY PETER SOLIS NERY
[/av_heading]
[av_textblock size=” font_color=” color=”]
Wednesday, October 4, 2017
[/av_textblock]
[av_textblock size=’18’ font_color=” color=”]
- BOAT RIDE
He stepped out of the house.
And didn’t come back for fifteen years.
Now, he just wants to go home.
*
At certain depths, the sea between Iloilo and Guimaras shimmers into a magical mesmerizing blue.
The waves are big, but calm.
Clean, quiet, self-sufficient, blessed.
Almost like a child in spirit.
Pure. Like you can see the face of God.
*
At sunset, the sea becomes opalescent, an eternity trembling with fierce excitement, sexiness, benevolence.
The reflected sun’s golden rays on the water, rich, tidy, Homeric, ethereal, unafraid of being divided.
Imagine what wondrous tales the waves would tell if like pages of a book they could talk.
*
For now, the sea is blue.
Deep, quiet, almost innocent as the white forward of the Saudi Juice slices the waves.
Decent, but rather crowded, Saudi Juice, the pump boat, presumably named after some sacrifice of a family member—
Father? mother? son? daughter?
To work in the desert kingdom as nurse? engineer? domestic helper? wet nurse?
—is overloaded with passengers: young men in white beach clothes, older men in jeans, white shirts, young women in frilly brown clothes, a group of giggly young women in white dresses, a particular young man with a guitar slung across his back, men in frilly costumes of blue and green, an old woman with big bags of groceries, a mother breast-feeding her infant.
*
Only the guitar man noticed the boat’s white, lavender and blue-violet color scheme.
- MATEO
The storyteller named him after the evangelist.
Because some names tell a story.
Still, he prays for his epiphany.
*
Scraggy but handsome, even angelic-looking, Matt Feliciano more than noticed the color of the boat.
He looked pensively at the sunset, his special time between day and night when he quiets down to pray.
Or if pray is much too big a word for a simple man that he was, at least reflect, ponder, think about his young complicated life.
In the end, after six years or so, he decided to come home.
He is twenty-two now, not an impulsive sixteen.
*
The sunset told the story of the sun.
It was gold and yellow today. Cheerful, happy, gay.
Life is one big story, Matt thought. Each one of us thinks he’s the lead star in his own story.
Sometimes, we even think we’re the co-lead in another’s life story.
But, what if, we are, in fact, nothing but support, dispensable extras, in someone else’s biography?
*
He looked at the baby sucking from its mother’s breast.
Who is the lead in this picture?
Who is the extra twenty years from now?
The mother dropped a cloth diaper.
Matt picked it up, handed it to her.
She nodded in gratitude.
He smiled remembering his maternal grandmother.
*
The only grandmother he knew. His only family, Mercedes.
Mercedes Luces who had named him Mateo.
Mateo Luces Feliciano, after the first book of the New Testament.
The first gospel, according to Matthew.
*
She thought Matt would bring in something new, some good news to his young parents’ lives.
Luces means light, as in celebratory fireworks, too.
And his father’s last name, Feliciano means happiness, or something like that.
So, he was supposed to be the good news of a happy light.
Matt only wished.
*
There was a time when Matt was pure like clear running water.
Innocent, like a freshly sprouting plant.
No ulterior motives, no lust for immortality, no drive to be extraordinary, no need to make efforts, no need to be anything. (To be continued/PN)
[/av_textblock]
[/av_one_full]
