Corners have a certain comforting element – at least that is how they have been to me as of late. I am rather unaware, though, from where this want to wedge myself in a corner stems, but I definitely know that corners will always take you for who you are, and will take you places – most of the time, into your childhood. It isn't so much as a desperate act; it's just a funky tasting cup of coffee in the morning.
Take this past week, for instance. As is my ritual, the shower is the day's first visit. The cold and unfeeling room has lost its appeal to me, though, when I began to take my baths in the last portion of our house: the laundry area. At first it was out of convenience that my housemates and I were forced to take baths in this area, because MCWD began cutting the water off in the mornings, and would have it running again some time after lunch. Eventually, however, despite the abundance of water in the pipes, I would choose to head for the laundry area for a bath.
Before the first tabo of water that I would dump on my head, I would stand there, feeling the air on my skin. The past mornings have constantly been drizzled with rainshowers; the air would be cold, but very much unlike the cruel apathy of the bathroom. The air outside would transport me to Katibawasan Falls in Camiguin, where, when I was sixteen, I fooled the guard into thinking I was twelve, and so was spared of the thirteen-and-above rate of 20 pesos. Other times, it took me to the beaches of my Misamis Oriental, and that feel of the wind on my skin just right after I came out of the water, and then buried in Mama's towel; or similar backyard baths at home when I was a kid, playing with the hose, snug inside a palanggana, pretending it was the beach.
After about five minutes of mind travel, I'd realize I had been staring at empty space through the grills up above the wall. Through it, you can see birds perched on electric cables, and farther ahead, more birds perched on a water tank. I'd be off again to another trip to my abandoned hillside landscape (which was to be called Mountain Meadows, supposedly) – that unfinished construction of a subdivision on a slope just behind the place where I grew up in Cagayan de Oro.
When I was fourteen, my childhood friend and I would hike up to Mountain Meadows at 4:30 in the morning, and sneak up on one of the ten or fifteen-meter high water tanks standing there. We would sit on the ledge, and watch the city awaken: the Macajalar Bay, dotted with little turtle-like ships dragging themselves; and the rest of the city, mirroring the star-scape in the sky, slowly twinkling “Good Morning” in a yawn. As soon as we were sure Cagayan de Oro was awake and illuminated by the sun, we would trudge down the slope, and to the gasoline station across the highway; share a hotdog and a drink, and watch the mundane events of the road until 8 in the morning.
This is perhaps why I have a certain affinity towards gasoline stations. Back in college, I would walk along Banilad road here in Cebu to that Caltex station in A.S. Fortuna and spend either the whole morning there or the whole night till sunrise – with a friend, or just a book and coffee.
It has been about a year since I hung out with myself in a gasoline station's convenience store on a cold morning; about eight years since I last climbed up a water tank. A trip to the beach has also been long overdue. So until I find the time to pack my bags and rush to the coast, or until I find my water tank, I'll take my baths in my little corner in the laundry area.
