listening to matsuri (live) by fujii kaze
it’s the second day of my break and i’m able to finally take care of my beloved sari-sari store. i’m breaking the discipline of capitalization, btw. outside of formal and school writing, i don’t find the point of it anymore. queer!
apart from the new form of trauma, anxiety, and loneliness law school has blessed me, i also developed carpal tunnel syndrome from writing down too many cases. it’s not like life to give it to you easy, isn’t it? so that’s something to look forward to.
but the joy of quietness and no communication from school outweighs any kind of pain. i’m happy where i am.
in my beloved store, i checked the inventory and found we were in need of soft drinks and cigarettes. so my beloved store boy/assistant and i drove of to buy some. as always, i’m the driver; he’s the runner of chores. i park patiently, he goes to the designated stores, refers to the list i give him, and buys the needed items.
i have always wanted to continue my series of observing boys posts. so far, i have made my observations about gym boys and carwash boys. i’m happy to add to the list these kinds of boys that i have always observed in the small town i live in.
i remember my korean friend once observed how weird it was that we pinoys ate our fried chicken with rice. rice, she once remarked, doesn’t go with chicken in our country. fries, yes. some form of leafy vegetable, yes, but rice was never for consideration. to that we were opposed. any kind of alternative to rice with chicken was never for consideration or debate for us as well. chicken must always go with rice.
i can argue that rice, along with coffee, is a form of addiction in my country. Think about this: i have been eating 3 cups of rice, everyday, for maybe 34 years. no-rice diets almost always fail for me and for many of us. amazingly, the philippines can compete with bigger countries with even bigger population (india and china!) in terms of daily rice consumption. and, korean friend, we don’t just have our chicken with rice. we love rice so much we have wine made out of it. we have it as snacks and even desserts. we already produce so much rice on our own but it seems not enough. we also are one of the biggest importers of rice in the world, just right after china!
another point: my first cousin, handsome, built, successful, who knows he will never have a flat tummy, because of his “addiction” to rice. he can consume half of the cooked rice in the rice cooker and that’s just breakfast.
but large tummies are not a problem for our rice frontliners.
the market that morning was as busy as it ever was. the sun’s face lit every store and ours were bowed because of the heat. most of us were in cars, wearing hats, hijabs, and/or holding umbrellas and, apart from walking and talking, were doing the least amount of energy-consuming activity possible. which was why i immediately noticed this mighty man, half-naked bare, flailing his strong arms to and fro and he and his gang re-supplied a client store’s rice supply.
i very much envy the people who look fit, are fit, who never have the need to go to the gym. the answer has always been passive, physical work that’s integrated in one’s lifestyle. that is why i try to be as physical as i can with cleaning the room and volunteering for the heavy lifting in the store. far from enough for sure! but it’s a start. also,complicated explanation in the gym always irked me. aaahh.. i’ll never have a great-looking body lol
soon, they shined as gloriously as the sun, sweating away freely as the carriers on the ground would stack 1, 2, 3, 4 sacks of rice! on top of their heads and carry them to the store. These men can balance 100kgs of rice at any single time. not just that, the preparation it takes to carry a ton of rice (in a single delivery) into their trucks and having to carry them, sack by sack, into stores… no wonder all of them are herculean.
these man had perfect, lean bodies, biceps blowing up, defined muscles on the ribs, six packs to boot, all while eating a ton of rice and sugary soft drinks themselves. because i have talked and dined with rice truck boys during our store transactions. they always took the most scoops of rice, always drank their cokes fiercely, maybe knowing full well they’ll never gain a pound with the physicality their work demands. we can even argue that they need the coke and the rice for them to be supplied with energy. to these men, carbs burn easily.
soon enough, my boy almost cantered carrying a plastic bag of cigarettes, the rice kings lit their cigarettes, wore back their shirts, and off the truck went.