leaf

once, as all leaves were, it began as a bud on a branch. heeding the call of relentless evolution, it began to grow; cells differentiating, specializing. till, at some stage, it had unfurled there; a minor miracle on a twig connected to some branch that in itself was connected to the trunk and thence the roots in the earth.

and from those roots came the water and trace minerals, up, in defiance of gravity by capilliary action; to the leaf where by chlorophyll's might light was converted, combined with the water, carbon dioxide split - and from that chemical reaction the food came to being, that food that the tree would grow with.

one wonders at the events without that the leaf, indeed the tree, would be a mute, deaf, blind witness to. it may be said that the leaf would be naturally attuned to the light, that source of power for the chemical reaction within. but there were also the other forces, some of nature: rain, wind, earthquake, fire...

of fiestas and marching bands, of incessant honking and the diesel rumble of jeepneys and trucks, of conversations between myriad humans, of the twittering of the birds; the nigh-microscopic pattering of insects and the like - of these the leaf might only have trembled, perhaps aware at some cellular level...

and if, by some stroke of random chance it was not bent into service as a webbed home for a colony of ants, nor for a colony of spiders, the leaf spent its life alone among it's brethren in the sun...

...there would be a time when by some clock of chance design its workings would begin to falter, and the flow of water and nutrients from the twig would begin to wane...

and there it would be, still attached by cellular bonds; but those were now brittle with the onset of decay.

and then, a gust of wind, and that bond was broken. now the brittle thing gave in to the force of ever present gravity, physcially held aloft by the impact of millions of atoms of gas in the atmosphere rushing along in that selfsame gust; leaf spiralling ever downward, but not to the earth, no, not at this time.

it fell, and came to rest at the junction of metal and glass, at the point where a car's hood met the windshield.

the driver got in, early morning. car started and began to move. of the little brown papery thing no attention was paid; there, lying just before the wipers.

and then it caught the driver's eye. as the car got onto the highway and began to speed up, somehow the leaf did not blow away. there was a pocket of still air there, at the junction of the hood and windshield just before the wipers.

somehow this little observation made the driver smile. wonder how long the leaf will stay there? all the way to the office, perhaps.

but then, circumstances demanded an abrupt lane change, and of a sudden the leaf was gone.

some accidental mornings

i'm not sure i mentioned this before, but ever since i got the deed of sale for the car, it seems to me that nearly everything else on the wild streets has a propensity for hurling it/themselves in front of me.

...either that or i'm not paying adequate attention.

take yesterday, for example. my commute from makati to alabang requires that i use the south superhighway cloverleaf interchange at edsa. to that end, i take a few turns in the innner streets till i get to a point just shy of the onramp of the bridge. now, this being a place where drivers operate on the notion that giving way is an alien concept, getting on the onramp can be an exciting thing indeed between the cars rushing for the side road to take them to edsa and the vehicles committed to getting on the bridge with all speed unabated.

so: i get car in position, look left for a reasonable opening that won't require me to gun the engine to get into the traffic flow...

just as i get the car moving, and swing my head to the right so that i can see where i'm going, there's a guy on a bicycle directly in front of the car.

gaaah!

good thing i didn't jam on the gas. but that left my nerves queasy the entire drive to work.

must remember to look both ways all the time.

...

and today, on the corner of our street and evangelista, there was an accident between a 1992-era lancer and the previous generation cr-v. based on the geometry, the cr-v was crossing evangelista, and the lancer was in either no mood or condition to give way, resulting in the mitsubishi mashing its front against the left front quarter of the honda. the impact must have been significant, as the car's front had crumpled to the front wheels.

on reflection, perhaps the lancer was overtaking one of the jeepneys that habitually clog that portion of evangelista that choose not to get in line and then crawl along, picking up passengers. if that was the case, it then becomes no surprise that the cr-v and lancer had their "meeting". if not, and it was the result of the no-give-way mentality, then that's all the more unfortunate.

either way, for all you drivers out there: look both ways, and drive defensively...

perhaps not wise...

...to continue eating at a place we call charcoal

it's a burger joint near the office, and i'd say the burgers are decent enough; the rest of the menu i really can't speak much of - other than to say, perhaps, that if you're hungry, it will do.

at the very least it's a bit different from the daily fare at the other eateries on the street.

now, this is not the first time that elements of an insect-like persuasion have been in or near food in charcoal: once before, there was a tiny roach in someone's coffee...

but this was a sort of eye-opener, as if the roach-coffee wasn't enough.

just had lunch there, and my technical co-worker's order arrived first, a roast beef burger. as he's eating, i notice another small roach on a walkabout, antennae twitching as it obviously smelled the food. now, there's a bit of tilework on charcoal's interior, and to this my eye was drawn.

first, one, then two and then more pairs of antennae began popping out of the bottom of the tile band on the wall. i stopped counting at 8 pairs and we then moved to another table.

...apparently, a regimen of regular insecticide application may not be part of the place's operational must-do's...

but that's just an assumption on my part given the evidence this day.

so it's either mcdo or hotshots or brothers for a burger fix from now on...