Se Souvenir des Belles Choses (august 2002)

I had another dream this morning, it was still in French with English subtitles.

Se Souvenir des Belles Choses. The last title in the film festival lineup that ran for two weeks during the French Spring in Manila. At twenty pesos per, it was a better deal than queuing an hour for a free foreign film and much, much better than wasting a hundred bucks on the crap they were showing at the Manila filmfest.

It was a good French film, as French as a film can be - the heavy theme dripping behind the comic scenes, dreamy cinematographic sequences, reality camera angles, the nude shots, the little death at the ending. It was a good film.

Which was just as well because it would have been too devastating if we had discovered our house broken into and stolen from, while coming home (and getting away) from a bad movie.

For the second time in five years that we lived in our compound, everyone was outside their apartments and talking loudly to each other. The only other time that happened was just three weeks before, when Jun, the person who was then still living in one of the units at the back, started coughing up and spew out blood, then sprawled dead right outside his door.

Someone from across the street actually saw our things being loaded into a red vehicle around noon but thought nothing of it, as it was quite unlikely for thieves to be doing their work during lunchtime.

At about that time, we were having our meal at this organic health store in the middle of this unhealthy looking building right smack inside an old commercial district that refuses to be reborn. It had been a nice surprise that they had a bottle of pure honey for sale at that time, because a friend who was then in the Cordilleras could not find us an unadulterated one from Baguio to Kalinga.

And! Surprise, surprise! Or, Et! Surpris, surpris! We also found there a copy of The Once and Future King! Used, tattered, yellowed, dog-eared, in need of glue and a new cover, it was too ugly to pay forty pesos for, but even for five hundred pesos it would be a steal…er, a good deal! Niza, who fortunately loves books, bought this copy that was probably the same book that got away from me another penniless day ten years ago in another second hand bookstand.

It had been a good day actually, with the movie and the honey and the round table that came with the book, until we found out upon coming home that night that there had been people inside our house who helped themselves to our TV, video component, eighty CDs (including a friend’s Coltrane), jogging shoes (who would steal used jogging shoes?), a watch (my sister’s), thick clothes (I have nooo idea), some silver rings, and a big bottle of mineral water (thirsty work, stealing stuff).

We had been expecting the cable guys to disconnect the wire attachment from our TV and take it away because the Los Angeles Lakers got their three-peat already, and we lack the patience and riotous impulses for the world cup. The fact that somebody disconnected the cable wire and took our TV instead, would have been very funny if it wasn’t so sick.

The video component was a product of Niza’s six months work away from home and they took it just six months after it was bought. They left its operating manual, I hope they go nuts trying to figure how to switch from PAL to NTSC and back.

They also left the jackets of the Gorrilaz and Café del Mar Volumen Siete CDs that were left inside the disk tray. It was the same Gorrilaz CD that kept Niza company during her stay in Bangkok, while the other CD was a soothing keepsake from a long afternoon walk around the Intramuros-Binondo-Tutuban Old Manila area. Each of the CDs was like a Polaroid photo album, they held irreplaceable memories of people, places and moments. Their loss is made more painful because of that.

As for the shoes (except for mine having been a memento of my ten long years with a human rights organization) the memories of the huffs and puffs and pants and grunts and nicks and clicks and miles and smiles of our runs aren’t deposited in them alone, but their loss sure keeps us from further making fond remembrances of more tortuous runs.

Other creatures do not cherish memories the way humans do. But the human mind is a curious thing, it compels us to sentimentality but it also easily banishes the sweetest of memories away into oblivion. We forget to remember, hence the need for all our symbols, mementos, memoirs, movies and markers. Hence the word – remind.

The opposite is true with hurtful things, it’s hard to forget even with the absence of any reminders.

So there’s the rub, our remembrances of good things were stolen from us and we have nothing left to keep those memories alive, but the recollection of their theft most probably won’t be forgotten even if we try.

Se souvenir des belles choses. Try to remember nice things.


In memory of good times with:

miles, coltrane, simone, ella, billie, dinah, getz, gillespie, astrud, wes, bird, mclaughlin, koko

marley, dylan, clapton, beck, joplin, hendrix, allman bros, walker, bream, r.l.jones, stanley, buddy, knopfler, cocker, otis, charles, taj, georgie fame

fairground, specials, clash, weather report, snl, police, jam, grand funk, ccr, airplane, selecters

moby, dido, no doubt, beck, macy, vai, vega, frente, sixpence, sheryl, enya, ray, ebtg, gorillaz, del mar 7, bullworth, p.o.t., radioactive sago, indio-i, cabangon