Sounds of this season

I really don’t know what to make of all these sounds. The President, not even six months into a six-year term, now says his running for president was a mistake, and practically invites, dares even, impeachment or assassination. He confesses to daily migraines and pain from a spinal injury, sometimes so severe he had to take pain medication for cancer patients which his doctors made him stop taking. But his trabajantes, his mouthpieces, claim he is in “the pink of health,” with nothing to worry about as he is energetic and can work even up to the wee hours.

Further, one day he insists he is not a killer, and another day practically boasts about actually going around shooting people. His minions say he is prone to hyperbole and we shouldn’t be so naive as to believe everything he says. so what are we supposed to do, each time he speaks decipher which sounds are real and which are just clanging cymbals? Ambot ah.

*** As toother sounds, my kasambahay frequently points out that in my parents’ house inside the gated subdivision where we used to live, it was very quiet, especially at night, when only the calls of the tuko (gecko) and sometimes a dog barking to disturb the otherwise slumbering neighborhood. This is in comparison to where we now live, which is in a building on an almost major street; I say almost because it is one of those “Mabuhay Lanes” or alternate routes that gets quite a bit of traffic at certain hours of the day but is relatively free the rest of the time, especially at night.

Her complaint mainly stems from the blaring sirens of ambulances and fire trucks, which are really most pronounced in the nighttime (although I don’t see why they need to go with sirens blaring since there are hardly any cars on this road at night). We have learned to distinguish between the wang-wang of an ambulance or a police car and that of a fire truck; the former is more shrill, the latter comes with bells. When there is a succession of fire trucks, we get up to see where the blaze is; from up where we are we get a view of a good part of the metropolis and can see the thick black smoke and even the fierce red flames.

My complaint, on the other hand, are the motorcycles, especially those scooters that are more sound than speed or substance, letting out an irritating wheeze as they skitter along. Kulang sa pansin is really all these guys are.

But one welcome and wonderful sound that we do get to hear now is church bells. With the start of the misa de gallo (dawn mass) last Friday, the bells from two churches about a couple of kilometers away call the faithful to mass, their peals carrying through the crisp pre-dawn air. Funny how I have sometimes slept through fire engines (must have been really deep sleep) but wake up to hear the church bells. It is, I like to think, a call of the season; it is a gentle reminder of the blessedness of this season, of why we celebrate Christmas.