LIVING AND DANCING IN DIMENSION U

1. When I was a teener, 15 or 16 maybe, somebody pointed a gun at me. That somebody was Somebody because he was a known hood and our town was a poor carryover from the gangsterhood of old wild west. I remember that day as much as our town (and us townfolks) which lies between 4th and 5th class: There were three of us friends sitting atop the concrete fence of a Catholic Church and waiting for another friend to get through his scheduled "panhik" when Somebody came to us and confronted M.

2. M, my childhood bud, was one of the gutsiest persons I know. He fought with men twice his size, age, and street-brawl experience, and never backed out from any fight except, I guess, with his father and older brothers. One amazing thing with him was that he always maintained the requirements of vanity and hygiene even in the messy world of caterwaul; whenever the dust cleared, the first thing he always did was comb his hair even before he knocked the cake off his sullied pants. M was also the life of tambayan, and due to his bangkero attitude, we lovingly called him Volume.

3. Mr. Somebody probably heard of the young Volume's tough acts and adventures and must not have liked it. The place where we were, after all, was his turf (the baranggay, I mean, and not the church; he was the devil incarnate) and he probably did not like some youth rising in toughery establish a cult following right at his very doorstep. It was an old code in gangsterism: "kanya-kanyang teritoryo".

4. S: "Bata, nakikilala mo ba ako?"
V: "Oo naman."
S: "Kung ganoon, bakit parang napakatapang mo?"
V: "Wala naman kaming ginagawa. Nakaupo lang kami dito, inaantay namin si Pikoy."
S: "Ah, leche! Alam mo bang marami ka pang bigas na kakainin bago ka makapantay sa akin?"
V: "Hindi."
S: "Anong hindi?"
V: "Hindi ako kumakain ng bigas. Kanin ang pinapakain sa akin ng nanay ko."
S: "Pilosopo ka, ah! Baka barilin kita."

5. I was having fun with the exchange and knew how capable V could stand his ground, verbally, physically, against this disenfranchised moron. V can put his money where his mouth was, and he can put his fist where S's mouth was - I knew that, though I wasn't aware of his next move. Alas, his next move was this: he feigned a yawn, stretched his arms upwards, and before anybody could capture his thoughts the full force of his anger, the full force of his body weight, the full force of his fist, landed on S's misbegotten face.

6. The grace of gravity was upon S and it would have been timely if the church bells rung at that very moment. It took S two lonely steps backwards before disequilibrium got the better of him. He fell on the pavement, flat on his back.

7. S was cupping his face with both hands which, if I may borrow from some movie, was just fan-bloody-tastic!

8. I was so caught in the moment like a kid with a favorite cotton candy that I realized afterwards V and my other friend were gone. I was stupidly sitting alone on the fence and, for sure, in all innocence if not ignorance, was simply waiting for trouble to my person.

9. S stood up, pulled a caliber .45 from his waist, came towards me and aimed the gun to my face. The tip of the barrel can't be farther than two feet from the tip of my nose, and the meeting of my skin and his steel can't be lesser than ten seconds. Out of anywhere but my consciousness, or probably with the full (literal) backing of the church, I challenged: "Sige, iputok nyo".

10. Suddenly the sign of rage disappeared from his convoluted face and ego, and without muttering anything, S put the gun back to its proper holster and went to the direction where my two friends fled. I was left sitting atop the fence, frozen in time, and thawed only by the sudden presence of Pikoy who asked for the whereabouts of the other two. In all effort to speak, all I could mumble was for him to help me get down the fence.

11. Ten years ago at the office we hired Ingrid, a Colombian, who claimed to have a third eye. On our first meeting, after I gave my name and shared some niceties, she said to me with a straight face and without logic: "I can see that you are protected."

12. As I looked out the window and into the darkness of the city I saw some strange phenomenon. Flashes of blue light from the horizon and across the dark sky appeared at a frequency of twice every minute, for about half an hour, accompanied by eerie sounds of tik, tik, tik. It was 6:30 a.m. Monday, October 24, 2005, and the winds were a whopping hundred miles per hour, whipping the population like some abusive, disgruntled, force of nature. From all directions I can hear these creepy sounds, at times like whistles of trains, other times like the muffled crying of beasts on their way to their butchery, and I was scared, frozen in time, like some scared teenager aged 15, or 16 maybe.

13. I asked myself, in everyone's absence, how in the world - how in my life - could I ever imagined being terrorized by the color blue. I asked myself, in Ingrid's absence, Protected by whom? And from what?