A sign of the times

There’s a lot of irony packed into “the holiday rush.” For all those mornings you struggle to unwrap yourself from your sheets and loosen your leg-lock on your pillow; for the hands-up sluggishness that turns simple work tasks into an ordeal; and for chipping at the crisp, caramel skin of a roasted suckling pig into a must-accomplish objective. And for the abrupt slowdown that comes ‘round this time of year, both economic — due to the downhill route our bank accounts take as funds are funneled into gifts for the carefully chosen few (boss/es, significant other/s, and parents, in that order), who will probably re-gift your gifts — and the grid-locked roads we cross, paying a hefty toll with gas-draining hours we’ll never get back again.

Diss the season, indeed.

You get a unique perspective on existence when you’re slumped in the driver’s seat — another bumper-to-bummer statistic of human folly chasing a cozy Christmas dream bordered by holly. I was on EDSA when this happened, inching behind a car with the plate number WHY***, its driver giving his undivided attention to excavating his nose rather than to moving his vehicle forward.

It’s unavoidable — how December owns you; knocks you into a coma of reflection no matter how much you try to dodge its blows; no matter how much you want to just skip to a new year of more work that’ll earn you enough cash to buy the next thing that probably won’t make you happy. For me, it almost always happens while I’m driving on this godforsaken “express”-way a few days before Christmas.

It takes 11 months of preoccupation and life, er, happening before I get back to this space; my beat-up Corolla bearing the year’s most visible scars (and light dents) on its four corners, from miscalculated turns and reversals (two under the influence, two out of sheer ignorance), with a faint side scratch or two prompting a “How the hell did I get that?”

“And how the hell did I get here?” I ask myself.

Maybe it isn’t so unusual that the succession of billboards that looms above you act almost like flashcards in spurring your memory. If you pass under these sentiment-urging giants a couple of times a day, Dingdong’s magnified dingdong brings to mind the high times of your own penis which, for me this year, seemed to have been kept refrigerated in shrink wrap, while the “I’m convinced my name is Nicole” billboards might incite a remembrance of bimbos past — every girl gone witless I’d encountered, by magazine interview or drunken acquaintance, in 2008.

But while the neon splendor of “JESUS (alone) Saves” has blended in with all the stomach signals towards hydrogenated noodles and calls for cosmetic enhancement, seeing the sign as my car begrudgingly made it through 7 p.m. traffic damnation proved to be illuminating.

A God Way To Go

Literally, the Holy Grail of signs along EDSA, the bright and bold-lettered “JESUS,” followed by the purple-script “Saves,” and the blinking red insertion of “alone” as a reminder, seems to have always marked the avenue’s midpoint for as long as I can remember. It had been quite a while since I’d actually beheld it — let alone since I’d actually pondered the big G.O.D. up there.

Of those times, I can recall that Luke Wilson movie that came out on dibidi a few months ago, where Wilson plays this sad, dying bastard who ends up keeping the faith through the water stain of Turin on his wall. The old lady who’d screamed “Hessuuuus!” on the American Airlines flight I took to visit my cousin in Nicaragua was also cause for my own shock-induced religious observation, which carried on ‘til we’d touched down on the tarmac. ‘Course, if you’re jetting through a thundercloud and your plane suddenly dips 10 feet with an awkward tilt to the right, you wouldn’t think twice about raising your sweaty palms toward the heavens.

In this bitch of a traffic jam, I could only imagine the drive-thru rumination people pay this piece of electric evangelism — maybe with reverence, maybe with scorn reaped from the sign’s possible mockery as cars crawl the brake-hardy stretch. So I resolved to find answers on the sign. After a friendly point of a finger by an online out-of-home media resource page (an obsessive amount of info on billboards), I’d rung up the House of Racor Ads, Inc., owners of the building on which the Godvertising beams from.

Thanks to a secretary named Lolit, who’s seen enough blown-up images of sanitary napkins and powdered milk cans in the 31 years she’s been with the company, this is what I know of “JESUS (alone) Saves”: It was once a billboard advertising Sony, after which it was replaced by a simple, painted sign by Racor’s godhead, a 64-year-old born again Christian by the name of David Dedel. Dedel then decided to enlarge the sign three times its original size and spark things up a bit, choosing a stronger set of colors and flicking the electric switch, “Para makita ng mga tao na malayo ang tinatanaw ang kanilang Savior pagdating sa pag-save ng souls.”

In the six years that the sign has been switched on daily from 6 to 11 p.m., the highway helpless have followed it, mistaking the building it sits upon for a church. Many have also called the company, praising the sign because “We’re running out of time, the Lord is coming.” And for the weary who drive by, Dedel has counseled some, saying ‘Hindi ito church, kundi opisina ‘to — but anytime you want to talk to me, just talk to me.’

Amid all the fleeting consumerist suggestions that appear overhead along EDSA, the “JESUS” sign’s become more a reflection of the truth, the way and the life. Well, my truth, my way and my life, really. If you find spiritual sustenance in the luminescence of the electric tubing, then God bless you and be on your way. But I’d come down this road often enough to be able to glance at the sign and be reminded of who I was on certain occasions in my life. 

A sign can do that to you — stop you in your tracks and remind you of how far you’ve come as well. From being 18 and rolling my eyes at it, thinking I was graced enough to be full of hate, to being 22 and still idiotic, heading home after one too many shooters, my impaired vision rendering the sign a squiggly neon mess. Of course, there was always that northbound drive home — in the wake of a career breakthrough, a date’s afterglow, or the enticing prospect of crawling into bed following a long day — the sign was a light of affirmation in my peripheral vision.  

And there it shone once more, marking the imminent turn of this year to another one signaling plans not yet achieved, the forward motion of the great beyond, and life just going ahead and happening. It’s a notice that amid all the work, bimbos, and endless advertising, I’ve got to rip open that box labeled “Return to Sender” and uncover myself once more.

And hey, maybe this time around, the reminder will stick. One sign of effective signage is that you remember what it brings to mind — even after you’ve passed it.