Sun and Llosa

Whenever I’m free, on a Sunday  usually, I often find myself sitting on a wooden bench I painted orange reading a book I had been meaning to read but never found the time under the heat of a 2pm sun. I am beginning to love sunning. I’d apply a generous amount of tanning oil on my chest, back, and thighs, then let the sun do its job. I chug a liter or two of water in the process. I do not leave my place until I feel my dermis has been burned crisp and my shoulders charred dark brown.

But what I love most about it is that I can be alone reading a nice book in my quiet balcony, enjoying the afternoon sun, knowing that it’ll soon kill me, but understanding that we’ll all eventually die anyway. Kidding.

All is amiss

I’ve been absent from this site for three days so that I could be with my brother at a hospital in Iloilo City.

Sef Daye was rushed there Sunday around seven o’clock evening after he was stabbed using a 6-inch double-edged knife a few centimeters away from his spinal cord. His girlfriend, together with some people who were more interested to watch a man dying than to help, brought him on a pedicab to a nearby government hospital. And to compound matters, he had to lie prone on a bloodied stretcher with the double-edged knife still planted in his skinny back until around four in the morning and was only sent to the operating room to dislodge the stuck knife after waiting for ten hours for his number to be called. In any government hospital, a number written on a piece of paper determines who lives and who dies.

His friends (gang members, actually, and some of their mothers) were with him throughout this ordeal arguing among themselves the best thing to do to my brother. I only learned about his state at around 11 pm when my sister hesitantly informed me that our brother was waiting to be operated at a government hospital beside their university. He decided against informing me and my mother about what happened to him.

I was deeply hurt by his decision.

My mom arrived Monday evening from South Cotabao and has not had any decent sleep since she arrived until later last night when my brother’s status stabilized. Everyone  in our family was emotionally traumatized by what happened to him. I do not think I’d be able to recover from the shock pretty soon.

Life’s so cheap.