A Story in The Wink of An Eye

We sped past the scene too quickly for me to take a snapshot, but it remains in my memory. Yes, even the briefest, tachistoscopic, glimpses at the world provide us with stories we can develop in our minds.

Riding from Guiuan to Tacloban the afternoon of Tuesday, I saw from my window two, unpainted houses: one on the roadside, the other, behind it. On the house nearest the road a young man, a cross-dresser actually, was leaning on a railing outside and gazing out into space. I was able to read his mind. He was unhappy where he was, and he was mulling over the possibility of moving to a place with faster action, like Manila. Yet, he was unsure as to whether he would survive such a milieu or not.

In the house beyond, another young man was standing outside and looking at him. I also read his mind. He was trying to comprehend the psychology of a cross-dresser, and was being thankful that he had no such concerns.

Both young men were cousins, and were neighbors.

Both young men were immobile, while the car sped by at least, like characters in a rural Edward Hopper. The mobility occurred in my mind--an upright domino fell against an adjacent, upright domino, triggering a chain of associations that I could later work into a short story or a novel.

I saw how the first young man was lonely and confused. Society frequently made fun of him. He'd fallen in love several times before only to be treated as a sex machine, and with sadistic sex at that. He would receive affection and tenderness only by a long shot.

My companions were chatting about trivial things. I did not bother to break their mood by telling them about what I saw, and about what I was thinking,

I merely wondered whether they also see such scenes in the wink of an eye, and, since they are not creative writers and probably never will be, I wondered further what they do with them.