New Year at the top

When was the last time you went to Tops? At night, you look down on the city lights. They sparkle like specks of jewelry or a galaxy of stars. You gaze down to see if you can identify the  landmarks. In the distance, two lines of lights crossing over a bar of dark space are definitely the two bridges to Mactan Island. In which case, another line of lights would be the new road and bridge that take you to Liloan. The Capitol and Jones Avenue are easy to find. So, too, V. Rama with its never-ending line of cars and traffic. Then to one’s right, the South Reclamation Project.

Daughter Linya and son Elias hug you in the cold, competing with their mother Estela for body heat. Not all of you are here. Isagani has discovered his own life and is now, this very moment, tormenting the neighbors with the amplified music of his own live metal band. But it is the eve of the New Year. The lone, single time the neighbors cannot complain or call the security guards to close down his impromptu concert. Isagani and his band were not going to let the opportunity pass. They are down there, somewhere.

But up here, there is a refreshing coldness quite appropriate for the season, good excuse to don your expensive coat, which for the whole previous year begged for precisely this opportunity. Budoy’s music is playing from the sound system to a fashionable crowd of locals and expats. Your friends Mark, Denisa, Russ and Gloria are here somewhere circulating. And then the countdown by way of the large crowd of young Chinese or Singaporean or Japanese or Korean begins. It is a countdown fractured obviously by the accent and too much alcohol until it hits the number 10. And then more join in and the count proceeds in earnest.

In the distance,  some of the fireworks had begun already. The lights of the city define more or less a flat plain. Rockets shoot up from this plain in a fountain of lights. You hear the explosions as a slight drumbeat at first. And then as the countdown moves to zero, sight and sound erupt in a clear reassurance that we all keep more or less the same time. It is as if the stars rise up in unison from what had been just a single flat  plain. Everyone cheers. There is a lot of hugging and kissing. We are transfixed. Happy New Year!

Yet we remember all these in the sense of metaphor. Any new end and new beginning will come to us this way. So, too, every redemption and doom. It will start at first tentatively and then erupt suddenly in some short explosive instance. And then in a run of time equally as short, it fizzles out.

Of course, there is something to be learned here. But it is only old learning requiring no repetition. The first day of the New Year is a day like no other. If there is anything unusual about it, it is only the fact that you are up with your kids this late and hugging and kissing friends. You are, of course, drinking more than you should and generally just having fun, talking, as you did the day before when it was not yet New Year’s Eve but the day before it.

Humans are funny that way. They can take just any day of the year and create a whole system of claims about it to construct something, which while apparently real, is also inherently fictitious, inherently just construct, inherently just myth. We can construct the truth just simply by having so many of us believe. This then is how things become real. Not just real real, but real in the most physical sense. Real as if in the sense of physics, which is the first and last bastion of science. As one contemplates this explosion of sight and sound, what else can one do but ask: How much more real can anything get?

And this is not the end of it. It is only the beginning of a whole season of it. Soon comes the Sinulog, Valentine’s Day, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, April Fool’s Day, more days than can be remembered, though we could give it an exact count if we so desired. It is all very foolish really. But it is also fun foolish, these cycles that mark our lives and give it a collective accent. They are the run of the seasons. And we will all be back here again. God willing. Hug. Hug. Kiss. Kiss. I love you.