I was crossing the large sewage pipe over the Tripa de Gallina river, to cross over to Nichols Airbase or the airport, I should think. But even though the pipe was fairly wide, the cylindrical shape made it difficult to just walk casually over it. I walked rather slowly for I was afraid I'd fall off. I was even more afraid to look down and see the depth of this place I was trying to cross.
Mist was coming from below and with it a heavy smell of sulphur. As things are wont to happen in dreams, the scenery suddenly changed. The pipe became just a very narrow piece of earth and on both sides the fog became denser. I thought I saw some green color which I supposed were foliage or maybe even moss. The air felt cold. I ran and with each step the ground disintegrated beneath my feet. But I reached the other side. My feet hurt and when I looked down I saw that my feet were bare and I was walking on pieces of broken glass, much like the Smokey Mountain that has not even created yet when the dream first occurred.
The dream came back when I was twelve. This time it was longer. After walking through the landscape of broken glass, I arrived at a clearing. At the far end stood a single house. Even though it was daylight, I could see the flickering light inside through an open window. I start to walk towards the house. Suddenly I found myself walking through a maze, lots of turns here and there. Then the maze became a maze of houses on stilts, typical of the poor people houses in the Philippines of old. The houses, some made of wood, some made of cogon grass. The houses were built very close to each other and arranged like a maze. I walked in between the houses and each time there would be one or two people going the opposite direction, I had to stop to let them through. One thing I noticed, the people were faceless.
At seventeen I dreamed the dream again, starting from the narrow pipe bridge to the pieces of broken glass, the clearing, the single house, then the maze of houses and the faceless people. It is longer yet again. When after some time I got through the maze, I saw the house, with its windows wide open, the breeze gently blowing the white curtains. The odd thing was that the curtains were swaying out instead of in. There was an old man, American from his speech, who asked for directions to somewhere I couldn't understand. I said I didn't know so he decided to walk with me towards the house. Even though the house was only yards away, it seemed that we were walking for a long time. The American was asking me questions, and it occurred to me that he, like the other people in the dream, was faceless. I shivered from the cold even though the sun was shining brightly and the wind has calmed down. I saw that there was no cloud in the sky that was very blue. When I looked back at the faceless American, he was gone and I was standing right at the steps going up the house, the curtains still swaying out even when there was no breeze.
When I was twenty-one, the dream came back in its entirety. So I told myself I would go inside that house before this dream ended again. I went up and I saw that the house was empty except for a big box right in the middle. I went inside, curious to find out what was in that big box. The box reminded me of an old baul (army chest) we had at home when we were young children, only this was a lot larger. Suddenly the box opened and I saw my mother sitting inside the box. She was smiling.
"What took you so long?" she asked. It was bright outside but inside the house it was cold. "Who was that man?"
"Ma, how come the people had no faces? I talked to them and they talked to me, but they have no faces, and somehow, their voices seemed familiar."
She smiled again and said, "That's because you have yet to meet those people."
"Ma, what are you doing inside the box?
"Oh, I'm just resting."
A few months afterwards, my mother died.
The dream never came back in my sleep again but it was forever etched in my memory. I could never will it back but I understand that the story has ended. The old American man appeared again in another dream that was a precursor to a major event in my life. And, as I grew older, I realized that some of those faceless people were the people I had already met and became my friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment