Walking to work

Written weeks ago

Today I did two things I seldom do. First, I walked towards home from work (I regularly walk to work but hardly walk from work). Second, I went home while there’s still sunlight, though fading.

Yes! I walk to work! I finally deserved to walk to work! 

It is a 15 to 20 minute trek involving flats…gentle as well as steep (and extended) inclines (mala UP Diliman campus’ heartbreak)…descents (notably the one from corner Sct. Reyes and Umbel, the street where I live)… down quick step down (this because of ever-present vehicles, private cars mostly) and keep going down to the bridge linking Roxas District to the Kamuning-New Manila area.

Except for when I was in elementary, I never really went anywhere solely on foot on a regular basis.

Early part of primary school in Sta. Barbara saw me, my sisters and brothers walking to the big (everything is big when one is little) central elementary school in bustling spacious charming Sta. Barbara-ja (as my Tagalog father would add in jest, mockery as well as admiration). Truth is, I didn’t enjoy taking the seemingly near yet “why does it take long to get home from school?” route by the highway. What I liked though was taking the shortcut along the back of the big houses especially when I was with classmates and other schoolchildren and we would play on the dried up rice paddies.

Forward a few years later, it was a shorter distance footlegwork to another elem school (where I attended intermediate level education) in the exciting, congested,  “real-world”, 5 minutes from Iloilo City Proper community of Bo. Obrero.

So it is with gladness and nostalgia that I quietly rejoice in my present still-a-novelty walk to work!

I have this walking exercise even if a bit of a quickie at 15 to 20 minutes long.

I take my time and make it brisk only when I have to (as in baka masagasaan o masagi so be quick and alert on the narrow sidewalk parts and especially in crossing streets). I try to present a casual formality to my appearance so while walking promotes health I do not want myself sweating profusely as I cross the street from the St. Luke’s carpark area (or the footwalk beside it) to PranaLAB, the pranic healing clinic and diagnostic services center where I heal professionally.

It is only 16 pesos (two minimum jeep rides) that I save from walking to work but I feel as if I am getting a whole lot bigger and better from this morning trodding across paths I only ever wondered about years before.

For more than a couple of decades, I have been taking the Chuatoco-Roces-Pantranco or Roces-Cubao routes to get to my various destinations in the metropolis and beyond. Then, I was not much into taking the Umbel road down to the bridge, walking past middle class and masa neighborhoods to E. Rodriguez Avenue…I found it a rather dank way and in my mind far too long a walk even for a walk-lover like me.  I rejected what I didn’t know much about.

I get to walk, now, minimum effort compared to yoga, my years ago fitness of choice, and before that, jogging-running, but it keeps the blood flowing and I get to somehow sweat along the way.

I walk on different terrain even if almost all spaces my feet fall on are paved in concrete or asphalt.

There are pockets of really lush trees and plants, in particular, the right portion of a part of my street just before reaching the grotto of Mama Mary where there are always bouquets of fresh flowers offered.

Also and importantly, there are tall leafy trees with accompanying green foliage of plants among the tall-fenced houses in the New Manila area, on the first right turn after I have crossed the bridge. I often look up as I walk, get my fill of  and marvel at the chlorophyll, the oxygen, the quiet at almost any hour I pass through this lovely part of the walk. (At least two houses to the left have a charm about them that makes me want to slow down and soak up the serenely beautiful ambience.)

Best of all or at least one of the pleasures walking to work affords me is that I get to physically move as I invoke, call on to God and other Divine beings, to ask (and be grateful) for blessings.

As I start to do this I often recall some unfinished business, an anger (or other pent up emotion) I need to feel and release, a person or persons I need to forgive and/or ask forgiveness from that I forgot or didn’t feel ready to do the night before. When this is done, it is easier to continue with my morning invocation, asking & thanking for blessings and blessing my concerns & tasks for the day.

Sometimes I get distracted by a detail along the way and lose track of where I am already in the St. Francis prayer I am intoning so that I would keep going and going “Where there is darkness, light/ sadness, joy/ Thank you Lord God for blessing the Mother Earth with light and joy” Oh a really nice flower up on the window sill! What vivid color! What kind of red is that? Maroon? With orange? An unnameable combination of tints.

So where was I? “Where there is despair, hope, doubt, faith/ Thank you for blessing the Mother Earth with hope and with faith”…But I am done with the next line!

But I would continue “Where there is darkness, light/ sadness, joy/ Thank you for blessing the Mother Earth with light and joy” and on “Thank you for blessing people who are sad, with light and joy/ Thank you for blessing people who are in pain with light and joy/ Thank you for blessing people who are depressed with light and joy” …

I go on, inspired, positively urged because I know that I am blessed as I keep blessing (even as I in a general sense want the best for all humanity and creation as I belong to this.). Yeah I know it all comes back to me, aye? (or as my brother Sani had in the past often lovingly mocked me with a line in a song that we modified and goes “Everything seems to remind me of…me!” hahaha!) Oh well, I am evolving just like everyone else, I allow myself some self-indulgence and a certain self-centeredness at this point (and other times).

So what was I enumerating? Yes, that walking to work is such a gift to me at this juncture in my life. Just as some people get to the alpha level through swimming (biking, too?), or surfing, I,  too, get to meditate and receive (come up with) bright ideas on any number of things while I walk that relatively short distance between home and work.

Sometimes I remember to pranic heal my hair so it comes out beautifully black, soft and curly.

I hope I release many things I no longer need as I walk along parts serene and green and even in parts chaotic and kinda dank.

Along my path there’s a small portion that   so far never fails to always be colorful and perky…the hedges on the right side entrance to Cathedral Heights, a residential condo place (just behind St. Luke’s) with land space occupied by plants and trees. Iba ibang really deep red, peach (gumamelas all) flowers amidst the healthy thick bush greenery. A sight to behold everytime. Haaay…