momentaries: the dismembered white
By Jan Philippe V. Carpio
Just past two in the morning, two men stand on the pathway that lines the Greenbelt 3 perimeter. One of them clutches a beer in his right hand. He hops up onto a ledge framing the window of what appears to be a sportswear shop. He starts tapping the glass display with his index finger. He turns to his companion and says something about the dark gray jogging outfit draped on the dismembered white mannequin.
As I walk past the two men still on the ledge, a Chinese looking woman in a long, pink skirt hops into my path suddenly. Too many drinks after a ballet, she pirouettes, arms in the air, full extension. She gets down on one knee, and takes a bow, her head almost touching the pathway surface. She rises to her feet and glides past me, a sleepy smile on her face, her eyes half closed.
Something falls onto the cement behind me. I turn around and miss the man with the beer jumping back down onto the pathway.
In the fountain area with its waters shut off, human remnants of the evening out hover around the tables beside the coffee shops.
Perhaps they look for reasons to remain and somehow extend their bright night now turned into dark morning. Security guards make their rounds in silence only broken by the scraping static of their radios. Waiters turn the restaurant chairs over at a flip ninety degree angle, resting their seats on top of the tables. Their backrests hang off the rounded edges as their legs thrust upwards in surrender to the early morning sky.
A double date staggers out of one the bars of Greenbelt 2. They lean against each other’s shoulders. Their eyes soft from the alcohol, squinting, as if they are trying to look through lightly frosted glass. With each string of words, they take long, deep breaths before and after speaking.
One of the girls says, "Look, let's decide. What do we do now?"
Her man echoes, "What do we do now? What do we do now?"
The other girl goes, "Hey, let's just all go to the car because I have this fucking feeling -"
Her own man interrupts, "What feeling? What fucking feeling?"
The girl repeats, "We should all just go to the car ..."
Her man adds, "My car is nearest. My car is nearest."
They lean further into each other - toppling trees held up by their own collapse towards a common center.
The first man asks, "Whose car is nearest?
The second girl goes on. "Because I just have this fucking feeling ... I have this fucking feeling ..."
She pauses.
"... that something is going to happen ..."
The four end their discussion and walk away from me in the direction of the parking lot. They are soon out of earshot.
No cars move through Legazpi Street as the blue tiles of the condominium come into view. Then I hear voices coming from a side street where, just a few weeks ago, an old woman fell to her death during a fire in the building she lived in.
I see a young woman standing on a second floor balcony of the same building. She converses with the security guard sitting in front of a high rise construction site just across the side street.
I double back to cross Legazpi street on my right. The construction site's cream colored iron sheet fence hides me from their view. I want to hear what they're saying, but am too far away. So instead I try to imagine their "wherefore art thous".
Near my feet, four week old kittens sleep in a pile of their own fur against the fence's cement base. They open their eyes and begin to meow themselves awake.
After a while, I give up on trying to listen in on the conversation. I walk back towards the condominium.
As I cross the last street in between me and my building, something white flashes above my head. I turn around to eye the street light.
16 November 2003 – 9 June 2008