to make the angels weep

If I stare at the mirror, I see my face - a forehead slightly pockmarked with pimple scars, a somewhat crooked nose, a distinguished mole. It does not look like the face of a twenty-year old. The eyes are way too muddled - both with myopia and confusion. My eyes are not my own.
What is there to laugh about?

My weary and seemingly blank mind is trapped in this place where each yesterday is left behind like the broken shells I once took pictures of in Apo Island - lifeless, forgotten. "Shells," I thought, as I looked out at sea. I began to imagine the bleached whiteness of the shells, the pale grainy sand, the sparkling blue water. Then I sighed.

Right now, I am sitting on a stone wall at the Boulevard outlining the city of Dumaguete, side by side with a ten or eleven year old girl I have just recently met. It was a gloomy enough day, the perfect day in my opinion to eat some fries from Jollibee facing a calm-on-the-surface sea.

Little Girl seemed content but thoughtful. Her dark brown skin was a startling contrast to her white dress.

"Why bring a camera with you these days but not use it?" she asked, glancing at my backpack.

I fiddled with the camera strap poking out, and answered, "Several years ago, I saw this guy on his knees at a park, aiming for the best angle possible, taking pictures of toddlers on the playground.

"He would load chrome color film into his Canon, adjust the tripod, and take endless shots of innocent children's smiles. Then later, he'd chat a bit with the mothers, then walk away, a solitary shape amidst all the laughter and family get-togethers." I faced her thin form. "Those were my rainy moments. Have you ever had one of those?"

She looked at me. "Did he make you sad?" Little Girl asked.

"No," I said. "We became good friends, and he made me happy."

"But why rainy moments?" she asked, dipping a limp fry into her ketchup.

I looked at a small boat in the horizon and thought.

When I was a kid, the only thing I loved in the world was a Pao Chicken from Mos Burger down the street, and an ice cold buko shake. I used to love Backstreet Boys, John Grisham books, and kissing strangers, in succeeding order while growing up. But that was so long ago; their former significance to my life has been forgotten.

Then my friend G.B. got me a somewhat misguided St. Bernard, Nathaniel. I still love Nat dearly though, even if he never seems to figure out that the place to poop is outside, right by the neighbor's planter.

These days, I am not so sure what I love. Things change, you see, as G.B. loved telling me until a month ago. "Sometimes we forget that the world changes all the time," he said. "But you know what? The things that should change are not given any voice at all. We keep on harping about our trivial little lives; who cares about family and happiness? Why is there such a big need to discuss it, when everything is only going to be one big irony after another?"

I remember one night when, over two cans of Kirin's Guava Sparkler, he said in his usual raspy fashion, "Do you know what is happening up in the world right now? In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, all armed forces use children as soldiers, which is said to compose 40 percent. The really sickening thing is that child soldiers, boys and girls, sometimes as young as seven, are often sent into war or used as sex slaves. Some are forced to kill their own families; others are made to eat or have sex with the enemy's dead bodies. Can you believe that? Where is Africa's God in all of these?"

I proceeded then to tell him that most Africans used to have a traditional folk religion but now became Islam converts. To which he then said, "Still! We shouldn't be so passive all the time, you know. Nothing will happen to the world if we just walk around half-empty carcasses of what we could be. If we could take pictures of those kids, and show the world that it is happening, things will move. It would look great in black and white, like at our last photography lesson."

We were having a usual Friday night back then, when after a dinner of spicy burgers, we would usually hang out in the middle of the university's soccer field, dissecting his idealism. Only a few people were around, probably hiding in the shadows of the trees. The sky was gray with a full moon behind the clouds. I was on the verge of contradicting him then but trailed off. It began to rain lightly, and we were sitting cross-legged dead center on the grass, with our food wrappers forming a circle around us as if to create a defense from the realities of the world.

"Hey, by the way, are you okay by now?" I asked, looking at him, unconcerned with the rain.
"What did they tell you?"

"Do you not care that we are getting wet?" he asked with a small smile as our faces became misted over.

I lay down on the grass, with its thin film of wetness, and breathed deep. "Not at all. Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could take a picture of how rain on grass smells?" With a grin, I glanced at his somewhat forlorn figure; his eyes were closed and his face was tilted to the sky.

"It would be an accomplishment, that's for sure. Pictures are simple but special," he sighed. "Everything is there, millions of pixels forming the images, skillfully captured, focusing on the smoothness and brilliance of any subject. A portrait, a little shrine to the muses of chance.

"I can see it now, butterflies and the rain, green on the grass. Maybe you could get Nat to pose; the dog always looks sad. In the darkroom, his brooding eyes would be the first to appear on paper. Then the raindrops on his fur. I know how much you love the rain," he said somewhat wistfully.

I gave him a small smile. "You still haven't answered my question."

I tasted the rain on my lips. The scent of the grass was swirling all around me. Our clothes were damp; I was cold. G.B. became a bit blurry with the drops in my eyes.

"I'm sick, Dani," he said.

My startled eyes met his. All the while, the rain continued in its own pulse.

Little Girl tugged at my shirt and I snapped back.

"Oh right, sorry," I said. "Well, imagine that it is early morning and it is raining. You know, those times when, even if you don't get up from your bed, you can tell by the wet, green scent soaking your room. The cold makes you burrow more under the covers. The drops, beating like little feet, dances on your window.'

"You are alone in the room, staring off into space, thinking of how the smell of rain can be a miracle sometimes. You are held in that moment, lying there breathing it all, trying to catch the slightest hint of peace." I shrugged. "That is a rainy moment."

Little Girl stopped munching her fries for a second, and looked at me thoughtfully. "I wish I had those."

I don't really know much about Little Girl. On the Sundays when instead of going to church I go walking around the streets of Dumaguete, I would see her walk behind me in her Sunday best.

She has huge brown eyes and her chin-length black hair is neat and tidy. I assume that she goes with her family to the University Church, but how she slips out and goes back home without her parents getting angry, I never found out.

This morning, as I was rounding a corner to the marketplace, I waited for her. Hours later, we just ended up hanging out here, me in my shorts and slippers, she in her shiny pink shoes. She didn't tell me her name, and I didn't give mine.

I picked up another fry and said, "Don't worry. You're still young. There's is still a lot of room in your life for rainy moments. You will need them for the problems you have to face, the versions of reality, the heartaches, the difficult choices."

"You loved him, didn't you?" She looked at me searchingly.

I stared at the sea, and didn't answer. But to myself, I thought, "Perhaps I did, but it doesn't matter now."

After a while, Little Girl said, "Some nights when I am just lying in bed, I wonder how my life will end out, if I would ever reach my dreams or become cynical, like the rest of the world, like you."

"I am not cynical," I said, tracing a finger on the rough stone wall.

"Why did you think I kept on following you every Sunday?" she asked me with a furrow in her brow. "I am not an expert on loneliness like a widow or... an old maid might be, but I know we all have our share of ups and downs at some point in life. Some just know how to cope and look at the big picture, and others, well don't."

I was about to talk when Little Girl continued, "You walk out of your room thinking of stars and rainbows and trees. Every Sunday. You think you're happy but deep down, I can tell you're sad. Why is that?"

"Sometimes you get the feeling that life doesn’t really turn out in the best possible way," I replied. "If you think of that in the middle of the night, you'll logically come up with the fact that life is basically a monument to the choices you have made, a game of trial and error, only you never thought of it as a game. It is a trial and error with your future at stake, with your happiness on the line."

"What are you trying to tell me?" she asked, frustrated.

"I am sad because he died." I said in a soft voice.

"Who died?" she inquired.

"A good friend. His name was G.B., and he loved taking pictures. If he was here now, he would be on his knees again, adjusting his tripod, focusing and refocusing at the two of us against this backdrop of the sea." I smiled sadly at the thought.

Little Girl went quiet for a few minutes.

"I didn't mean to intrude," she said. "I mean, we barely even know each other. It's just that when I saw you, I don't know. Mama always said that I should realize that all my 'self-proclaimed grief' is no match to the rest of the suffering out there. The world keeps on moving, changing, dying, living; it does not revolve around me. I thought that maybe I can make you remember that too. And tell you that everything is going to be okay in the end."

She touched my hand. I looked at her, and said "Thank you."

My tears blurred the waves in front of me. I held her small hand, and we were quite silent for a while.

I never saw Little Girl again after that. There are so many questions I never thought to ask when we talked on the stone wall. I can only tell myself that maybe that one time, that one conversation, was enough.

I never even found out her name.

A few days later, I was on the soccer field at five thirty on a softly raining dawn, with a trusty Canon EOS Rebel K2 in a waterproof case in one hand. I was trying to make my dog lie on his back with his paws curling in front of him, and his head tilted sideways to the grass - hopefully, with what seems like a fascinated expression on his face. Fortunately for me, Nathaniel is a good dog and understood that there was a method to my madness in bringing him here. I put him in position, and he stayed still.

I aimed G.B.'s camera at him, just as a small red butterfly flew in the background, hovering just above the grass by Nathaniel's left ear and the rain fell just a bit harder. The colors were awesome as I took the picture - the clear raindrops on the green grass, as Nathaniel lay there looking at it with dark eyes, his nose wet and pointed down, as if he was smelling the earth, and pondering on it. Red, blue, brown, white - in Elite Chrome Extra Color 100 film to emphasize the color at F3.2 aperture, 1/15 second shutter speed, with a wide-angle lens.

I stowed the camera away. After a while, there I was, in the middle of the soccer field like I used to, hugging Nat to my chest. The dog moaned softly and cuddled into me and fell asleep. I could see the sun with its reaching rays, and I smiled.

G.B. would have been proud of me.