Cloistered

In my mind’s eye I see it clearly, white as the empty page I slowly fill with idle words and stray memory. An oasis of peace nestled in the grimy navel of a city best remembered in the past tense, a city once extolled by a 16th-century Spanish king as “insigne y muy leal” (distinguished and ever loyal). A secret garden located a spitting distance from the mobile barbed-wire barricades hurriedly deployed, when necessary, on the corner of Mendiola and Concepcion Aguila to keep protesters from the grand house by the Pasig, the seat of power in the Philippines.

Steady noise wafts in from the busy street outside. Blaring car horns, grinding brake pads and revved-up engines to distract drivers from standstill traffic compete with barkers, sidewalk vendors and the cheerful chatter of students going to and from the far end of the University Belt loosely known as the Mendiola Consortium: St. Jude Catholic School, College of the Holy Spirit (formerly Holy Ghost College), La Consolacion College, V. Mapa High School, Centro Escolar University, San Beda College.

All the noise and the cares of the world are muffled when you enter the dark porteria of the Benedictine Abbey. Here is no man’s land, an airless limbo between the world you know and another further within. From the porteria, double doors open into the dappled light of a cloister where one finds an oasis of calm that envelopes you in an unusual silence, a quiet most people find deafening and difficult to bear.

Enter and walk on the worn tiled floor following the order of chess pieces: Move like a bishop following a diagonal line on the tiles toward the center of the cloister, slide like a rook following a straight line to the same destination, or better yet glide like a queen straight or diagonally toward a garden, boarded by the cloister into a square, where, in another time, following a different custom, monastics faced the four cardinal points before retiring at night, to draw four crosses in the air, one each for north, east, west and south, to bring benediction on a world that has forgotten, or is too busy, to pray.

This cloister garden is simple. No ornamentals or herbs are found here, no landscaped labyrinths, unlike its older European cousins. All it has is a hardy carpet of grass punctuated with granite or piedra china to fill quadrants, planted with a sorry clump of trees.

Cutting this cloister garden in half is a long rectangular pond, filled with lotus leaves that hide small nimble fish, the color of lapis lazuli reflecting a strong afternoon sun. Nothing is left to chance in this garden; every architectural detail comes in numbers and their multiples, revealing sacred geometry. Its scale is intended to gently remind humans that they are insignificant in the greater scheme of things. Everything is in place, symbols expecting recognition, allusion in anticipation of understanding. The trees, the four corners, the clear water in the pond mirroring the cloudless blue sky—all conspire to recall a similar garden with a snake and a forbidden fruit.

This was a place where I spent many happy years. Having returned to the tumult of the world, I look back and visit it in my dreams.

I remember the fateful day I discovered this secret place. While most young couples in love would spend a Saturday afternoon in the air-conditioned comfort of a mall, a cinema, or a love motel, my girlfriend and I were on an expedition through the grimy stalls in the University Belt in search of old books on the Philippines. We looked beyond the fake diplomas and hardbound theses that cluttered the shops, but rare Filipiniana was not to be found that day. But we did not leave empty-handed: My loot consisted of the prewar “Philippine Readers,” with cheerful illustrations by Fernando C. Amorsolo—a painful souvenir of world that is no more.

As we walked on Mendiola toward Malacañang where the car was safely parked, bracing ourselves for the drive back to Quezon City, we saw a soft light piercing the darkness that had overtaken the tired afternoon. It emanated from the half-open door of a church we had never visited before. We entered out of curiosity and to claim the wish granted all who enter a church for the first time and pray one “Our Father,” one “Hail Mary” and one “Glory Be.” Inside, our eyes adjusted to the darkness to make out an impressive painted ceiling that made us gasp. It was the Abbey Church of Our Lady of Montserrat, better known as the “San Beda Chapel” referring to the college that grew like poisonous mushrooms all around it.

Monks were chanting vespers, the evening prayer of the Church, as we settled on the back pew and took it all in. Little did I know or imagine I would be someday be chanting in those choir stalls.

I remember being overwhelmed by what I saw and experienced that night, but years later, when the then girlfriend visited me in the cloister to pointedly remark on my “Monk-ey business,” she recalled that evening when I remarked: “Ang ganda naman dito. Balang araw dito ko gustong magpakasal (It’s so beautiful here. One day, this is where I will be married).” Famous last words, indeed. In retrospect, I had used the singular “I” instead of the inclusive “we.” She is now happily married to someone else. Me? I took the road less travelled. I stepped out of the world and back, to live in a monastery for close to seven years, like Jonas who spent time in the belly of a whale. [An excerpt from a memoir in progress]

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Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu.