Falling slowly

The buses leave at 1:30. By that time, I'd still be in my polka-dot flats, velvet-ish black vest, with a gold pleather bag slung on one shoulder -- not exactly rally outfit.

I don't know why I feel like I have to be there. I've always been apathetic, dismissing politics with a Pfft! from my marshmallow tower. I shake my fist and hurl invectives at the sorry state of our country, only in the comforts of my home, or when I've drank enough to giggle at every little thing. Possibly the conviction of two nights ago, drinking mass wine by the tumbler: "Let's go to Makati," we all said, all of that filtering down to today. I have to be there, I think, and this saddens me because I do not trust the man that was instrumental in creating this movement. Cynical, jaded -- who knows who is telling the truth? But does this truth really matter, when it will probably, eventually, bring on the bigger, biggest truth most of us are clamoring for? I do not trust this man. I'm sorry, but he looks slimy. It is easy to see him rubbing his hands together in some cobwebbed corner while some Man-in-the-Shadows performs the Steepled Finger Pyramid of Evil Planning. I do not trust this man. He is lying about something. He must be. About the same conviction here as I have of being in Makati today. Cynicism, jadedness. Whatever. I feel that people are holding on to the catalyst he is offering because it's the best thing we've got, the only thing substantial enough to lead 50,000 people out of their fist-shaken homes and out to the streets. Hope, I think, the rather tarnished kind of hope. The way gravedancers dance to a looming Liar's Moon and hope for rain. I am mixing my folklore the same way I am mixing my convictions. Fuck it. I'm eighteen, I'm reading Ann Beattie and doing papers on Francis Ponge and Kerima Polotan-Tuvera. I am not to be bothered with this, because nothing ever changes, we'll be stuck in this quagmire until we all have enough money and willpower to ship ourselves over to the nearest first world, and the Philippines will just be bitter air at the back of your throat. Fuck it. And then. And then. Then this slimy guy comes along, muttering passwords to big-issue acronyms. Supercilious. Greasy. I cannot trust this man. If I had children, I wouldn't let them near him. But he holds something in his crowd-waving hands, something that'll wrench me out of my siesta later tonight, after all the Modern Poetry and Non-Western Literature have swam within my underused, paranoid mush of a brain.

Some of the girls and I are heading on over to Makati later tonight. I knock on your Makatian doorsteps in case something dreadful breaks out, and my appendages aren't strong enough to carry me back to the buses. Sanctuario, my darlings.

Possibly later, I'll head back home with nothing to carry with me but the memory of a swaying crowd, most of them unable to give a sound reason why they are bothering. A part of me knows that tonight won't be recounted to my grandchildren. I'll mention it to a man, perhaps, in the future, after some inane argument about the lights left on, and I'll just suddenly lash out with something like, "I fucking went to Makati, you fucking dick, and I didn't believe I'll get something wondrous there either!" But that's about it. My mother is not to know. My roommates are all a-twitter.

I have to change into rubber shoes. Polka-dot flats simply won't do.