The two sides of paradise

Often I think this is paradise found, the other side of Rizal’s perdido eden (paradise lost, Mi Ultimo Adios). Ironically – life writes the best irony – I find paradise on the very fields Rizal explored as a child (we are told). This may have been where he found the specimens of lizard and frog that used to be on display at Fort Santiago. Without a doubt there is something different about this place.

"Plants don’t die here," Ofel, neighbor and subdivision doyenne, likes to say. "I think Maria Makiling takes care of them." Yes, this is a place steeped in legend. You see and feel it. Morning Glory planted from a seed packet purchased at a hardware store explodes in blatant bloom, in-your-face flowers that seem to dare you: Try to stop me from blooming, these teasing winking flowers taunt as they beam their bright blue faces at the sun. Maybe Mariang Makiling regularly visits trailing her white gown, trailing moisture and dew, blessing our gardens with her audacity.

Whenever I look out my window, and I do that frequently these days, Makiling sprawls generously on the horizon. A mountain, yes, but a woman surely, a voluptuous collection of curves and flows, hills and valleys that looks at the sky and dares it to come down and mess around. How about a breeze? My trees could stand some blowing. Rain? Torrents? A light drizzle? What do you feel like? How about a mist? A thick blanket of fog while I sleep? When I see her covered with clouds I imagine her sky lover has arrived, has succumbed to her irresistible charm.

Makiling! What’s in a name? Kiling is the Tagalog word for "lean," the language the body speaks when it inclines naturally, magnetically towards the beloved. Makiling cannot be impartial, she always leans toward, favors, is profuse, expressive, over-the-top, audacious. This is the spirit that touches everything in our place. The flowers are profuse and vivid, heady in their fragrance. The vegetables taste of rich earth. "What was the salad you served at lunch?" my son texts. Nothing more than blanched homegrown freshly-harvested kamote tops and alugbati dressed with calamansi and fish bagoong, ordinary fare transformed by Makiling’s magic. Paradise, nothing less, two kilometers off the road on a small plateau between Laguna de Bay and Mount Makiling.

Most of the people who live here – and typically I know the women better than the men – have led or are leading high-powered lives elsewhere. While we stop to chat when we meet on our streets, drop in on each other’s gardens, and enjoy a camaraderie that seems to be particularly sensitive to respecting privacy, the atmosphere within is different from the hostility beyond the subdivision gates.

My classmates were coming to lunch and we had agreed to have this event catered so I walked into the caterer’s restaurant and asked if he would do the job. He looked me up to down and left to right in true Pinoy fashion. Then incredulously said, "You want me to cater in Manila?" When I told him I had a local address he could hardly believe his ears. For the first time I realized that I was visibly not from here. I saw myself through the eyes of the locals: Clearly, I am dayuhan, the Tagalog word for foreigner.

The meaning of the root word dayo is to travel far or to make it a point to go far. There is a decision imbedded in this verb, an intention to journey. Perhaps dayuhan is more appropriately translated as immigrant, someone who travels far to be here. I am an immigrant in my own country and I find my host town more hostile to me than Burlingame (where I lived when I actually emigrated to California). The United States welcomed and accepted me more warmly than Calamba, my forefather’s hometown, does.

On the streets where we live, we pause and swap war stories. The fights with the local phone company. The struggles with the local suppliers. I win. The local branch of one of the top Philippine banks, rejected my application for a savings account. She claimed it was because there was a glitch in my credit records. An officer from another bank told me that more likely it was because I was so obviously not local. But this local woman didn’t even ask for my address. If she had then she would enjoy the caterer’s experience. He has had a steady stream of business from me.

So what have I learned? One, you can create paradise but only in your own garden. Two, it was easier to migrate from the Philippines to the USA than from Makati to Calamba. Three, I am going to give the locals unrelenting hell because they need to expand their horizons, they need to grow and save themselves. Maybe I can learn to enjoy giving the locals unrelenting hell. Then I would expand and extend my definition of paradise. Philosophically, how great would heaven be if we didn’t have hell?