Time flies

In the small village in Las Piñas where I live, the sun rises every morning past six o’clock not from the faraway Alabang hills in the east but from the roofs of a neighbor’s house. I catch it when I go to buy my favorite newspaper in the street corner. I try to walk slowly, leisurely, to feel the warmth on my skin. I am told that early morning sunshine is good for the bones.

When it is midsummer, the sun burns fiercely toward noon, like a ball of fire. This time of pandemic, I stay indoors most of the time, as I follow the government protocols that do not allow senior citizens past 75 to go out unless it is necessary, or for what may be deemed by barangay officials as “essential.” It scares me that a new wave of virus infection is threatening to engulf the National Capital Region.

I have to do something to strengthen my resistance, and so I go out to the street late in the afternoon for a brief brisk walk. It also helps build up muscles around the slipped disc in my spine. This afternoon, the street is empty except for a few parked cars. It looks deserted. I don’t see the children playing with their ball on the clean pavement and shrieking in delight. I would often watch their games, their sense of innocence and freedom, the thrill of adventure and the sense of wonder in their play.

I see the tiny green leaves of the sampaguita hanging from the fence looking listless, as if waiting for the wind that does not come. The sun is gliding away behind the tall trees, and before I know it, it is evening. How fast time flies!

But I know that tomorrow the sun will rise again. And then again it will disappear. I have been wondering until now, in my old age, why things in the world come and go. Tomorrow and tomorrow comes this petty pace from day to day, till the last syllable of recorded time.

The fleeting nature of things is a recurring theme in literature. I have always enjoyed reading Shakespeare, who wrote about the eye of heaven beaming bright and its gold complexion dimmed. “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May. And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”

In April, I sniff the sweet scent of the tiny white sampaguita flowers. After a month or so, the fragrance is gone. Just like that. Everything becomes nothing.

What is the past, the present, the future? The past is gone, the present is disappearing into the past, and the future is not yet here. Even as I speak, the next word is rushing to my lips and, before I can say it, the word has escaped my tongue. Before I can ever hope to catch it, the wind has slipped from my grasp.

Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, speculated that the world before his eyes was an illusion. What you see is not there.

This inexorable passage of time has shaped the wisdom of human beings through the ages. “Vanity of vanities!” said Solomon. “There is a time to sow and a time to reap, there is a time to be born and a time to die.”

And so in this time of pandemic, I cannot pretend to ignore the inevitable as when I was a child. The malevolent virus is there. I am vulnerable, with comorbidities, and the hospitals are reported to be overcrowded.

My fellow senior citizens always like saying, good-naturedly, when we sit at a table for coffee: “We are in the departure area.” I feel afraid, like Prufrock. But then, that’s the way things are. Or else there is no God, there is no heaven.

——————

Mariano F. Carpio, 77, is a retired teacher from the University of Santo Tomas.