umuulan

the big hand held me down again this morning, and i slept.
i only woke up to complete my passport renewal paperwork.
i’m expecting the courier. whether or not they actually show up is another matter entirely.

i was supposed to do my laundry today.
thanks big hand…
it’s raining in sheets.
it’s so hard that if someone were with me and we needed to talk, we would have to yell.
this is what my friend leo would call “bed weather.”

relief of the rain.
the air was heavy this morning, pregnant with wetness and anticipation.
i ventured out only to buy load for my computer, hurrying because i knew the rain was coming.
i’m getting better at reading the sky.

earlier, my new neighbors were blasting pinoy pop hits.
a decent selection, i must say.
now, i am blasting opera and cello adagios.
my little speaker is proving her mettle as she takes on the rain.

i see the sun shining despite the continued torrent.
and i feel the occasional errant microdrop that bounces off the window glass inward and lands on my cheek or my arm.

and i smell the wafting perfume of the humus in the soil, mingling with the air.
it’s the smell of wriggling earthworms.

i remember my room in the old Center in Oakland. it was in the basement, right underneath the zendo.
whenever it rained, the earthworms would wriggle underneath the gap between my door and the floor.
i’d come home sometimes from working a shift in the ER at San Quentin to find to 2 or 3, sometimes 4, dehydrated little worms who could not find their way out again.

i remember i taped a pink post it, at the level of the gap.
in brown ink, i drew a wriggling earthworm and wrote the words,
“turn back! there’s no earth here!”
i did notice that the number of earthworms did decrease after that.

my ribs hurt from coughing so much.
i’m taking lagundi. it’s from betsy’s farm in makilala, Mindanao.
if i weren’t already sick, i would go take a bath in this rain.