VIEW FROM A MOVING WINDOW

(From "A Weekend Note," the Editor's Letter, in Style Weekend, Manila Bulletin, Friday, 21 September, 2007)

From Manila Bay, you can view the city skyline, as though from a foreigner’s eyes. I’ve tried it more than a few times. Each time, aboard Justin Po’s m/v Shanti, for instance, it has always been as though I were in another time, another place. The last time, on a La Mer-sponsored sunset cruise, in which the group of brand manager Sandra Lacson introduced La Mer’s Eye Concentrate to the beauty and lifestyle press, I didn’t even recognize the SM Mall of Asia. With the setting sun tinting everything in gold, violet, and orange, I could really have made believe I was seeing some port in some strange city.

The traveler is the most important part of traveling. —Andrè Suarés

It helped, of course, that I was indulging myself with a glass or two of red wine and with more than generous helpings of caviar while some of my cruisemates, having popped Bonamine a minute too late, were unfortunately too busy trying not to be seasick on the upper deck. Although I was much better off outside, at the tailend of the yacht, where I could see the darkening skies overhead and all the foam the yacht left beneath us in its wake, I would not have minded watching the view from the cabin, where the dessert buffet was.

Indeed, the world looks quite romantically different when viewed within the frames of a moving window. Back when I was a student (and less jaded), watching Manila drift by from the window of even a rickety, roach-infested bus on Edsa was like reading poetry to me. The faces on the pavements, too fleeting to be real, were glimpses of lives I would never know, each a slice of the whole spectrum of human emotions, from ennui to worry, from longing to bliss.
Once, from the window of a car parked in Cartimar in Pasay City, where an uncle was to buy me some pet goldfish as a treat, I saw a woman balancing a huge basket on her head. Even then, I saw scenes like this as a magazine page, transporting the power of the image onto a page in Life or National Geographic. But, as I got older, Manila became too much of an everyday place to stir any strong emotions in me. It’s sad because I strongly believe it’s just me losing that eye that once saw beauty everywhere, even in sadness or poverty or emptiness.

Just a couple of years ago, on a 10-hour drive to Vigan, behind the wheel of a borrowed BMW, I tried desperately to pretend I was driving through the Italian countryside. I wasn’t exactly conjuring up orchards and vineyards, but I was trying to replicate the sense of enrichment that views of quaint villages perched on rolling hills a train ride between Milan and Florence once afforded me. It wasn’t so much Italy or Europe, which in most places, particularly outside the tourist traps, is postcard-pretty.

Even in the dark tunnel that bridges the gap between New Jersey and New York, there had been those strange feelings of adventure. I’d recommend first-timers to arrive in New York this way: Land in Newark (in New Jersey) and rent a car (or have a friend pick you up by car) and arrive in New York via the Lincoln Tunnel. In this tunnel, indeed, you are between worlds. At its New York end, in a span of minutes, you can sense you have arrived. The city’s energy is so palpable it is almost physical.
But then again, it’s just me. Sometimes, do you ever wonder what it will be like if you went to any bus station, picked out a destination that sounded the most strange to you, and boarded the bus that would take you there?

The unknown is an indispensable ingredient of any great adventure. I believe that’s the fine line that separates the traveler from the tourist. But is there any more unknown to explore, besides outer space, now that every global hamburger chain, every soda giant has beat us to practically every corner of the shrinking world? Pretty soon, we can all rest easy there’s going to be a Burger King in Patagonia, unless Mars proves to be a more lucrative venue for expansion.

A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com