by Lorena
I can’t stand to fly
I’m not that naïve
I’m just out to find
The better part of me.
I love animals. I’ll bet you anything that no one—not even my best friends—knows that. I never told them, after all. They’re not mind readers, and I don’t think they’ve even caught on to any slips in behavior I might’ve had. I’ve been pretty careful.
The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is stand beside my window and look out—watch the sun rise in the horizon and count the number of birds that fly by. I usually try to keep an eye out for blue jays. I’ve always liked them—but, of course, they’re nothing compared to hawks. The first time I saw a hawk was the spring term of my freshman year. That was a bit of a sad confession, wasn’t it? To think that I’d never seen a damned hawk till then—it’s pathetic.
I remember pressing myself against my window at that moment, when that magnificent specimen of a bird sailed by. There was something breathtakingly majestic about that hawk—maybe the way it stretched its wings out as it glided and allowed itself to be carried by the wind’s currents. It looked so confident and so natural sailing the way it did, using an element to guide itself with.
I thought that it embodied perfection. I still do. Every time I see one fly by, I’m always enthralled. I try to study what I can as it glides past me, hoping that it would somehow give up some of its secrets.
I wondered how it felt like being master of nature. I wondered how it felt manipulating elements to one’s advantage instead of being under their control every day of every month of every season of every year. I wondered how it felt like sitting on the winds for once instead of hiding behind a thick coat or jacket when they start bearing down on me. Or how it felt like absorbing and being hydrated by the rain and getting sustenance that way instead of cowering under an umbrella to stave off the water and keep it from ruining my uniform.
I love hawks. I can’t think of any other animal that would embody perfection—whether it be literal or metaphorical.
The morning isn’t the only time of the day when I’m in touch with nature in that sense, though.
I dress up carefully, methodically. I can’t help it. I’d watched my father prepare his clothes the same way, following a specific sequence every single day for as long as I can remember. The night before, he’d have his clothes pulled out of the closet and set up according to the sequence by which he’d be dressing himself: underwear first, then socks, then shirt, then pants, then belt, then tie, then blazer—all laid out in a neat line on the chaise in my parents’ bedroom (I used to wonder what it was doing there—now I know).
I’m more than a bird
I’m more than a plane
I’m more than some pretty face beside a train
And it’s not easy to be me.
Just like me, Dad believes in perfection. Everything in its place. Everything following a specific sequence. Everything making a hell of a lot of sense; otherwise, it’s not worth a damned second of his time. Why waste your breath and your precious energy grappling with something that’s completely out of whack with order? If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t belong. Toss it away and move on to the next thing.
I start with my underwear, then socks, then shirt, then pants, then tie, then blazer. I comb my hair back, following the same methodical approach—comb the right side, then the right-upper side, then the top of my head, then the left-upper side, then the left side. Repeat while pulling my hair back with my other hand, making sure to move my fingers constantly to catch every single strand that falls out of the comb’s teeth. Give my hair a firm tug, then confine with a band.
When I look at myself in the mirror, I see perfection—not in the egotistical sense, but rather in the technical sense. Every inch of my uniform’s pressed smooth. Every pleat crisp, every button showing. Every single strand of my hair’s pulled back—absolutely nothing’s out of place.
I see my father in the mirror, and I usually leave my room feeling a little tired. I haven’t even had breakfast yet.
I meet my classmates in the breakfast hall, and I always sit beside Quatre—or across the table from him. I lose myself in his chatter. He’s got enough energy for the two of us, and I allow him to lead me wherever he wants to go. I don’t care. For a few minutes in the day, I want to be in someone else’s mind, not mine. I want to wander through Quatre’s thoughts—see what his mind sees, feel what his mind feels. And at six-thirty in the morning, it sees and feels a lot.
Hell, I don’t even give a shit if he starts bubbling about Trowa and what a wonderful little sketch he’d given his boyfriend the previous day in the library.
There’s something so unaffectedly sweet in Quatre’s way of expressing his love for Trowa even if he tends to stumble and grapple with words a lot (he’s not exactly a naturally eloquent speaker). It’s that unself-conscious spontaneity that I admire—and envy—a lot in my best friend. Quatre doesn’t care. He speaks his mind, no matter how awkwardly he does it.
I, meanwhile, can’t. Words that come out of me feel just as methodical as the way I dress myself in the morning. Everything I say makes sense. Everything I say is taken by everyone like the Word of God. People listen to me. Hardly anyone argues with me. The only ones who dare challenge my views are my best friends, but even then, I tend to win arguments more than I lose them.
I wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
Find a way to lie
‘Bout a home I’ll never see
Perfection—linguistic skills I seem to have inherited (or learned) from my mother. She’d always been weaker than my father in the way she projects herself to everyone. She’s a little more spontaneous and less rigid in her habits and behavior, but she’s as logical and articulate as one can get. I think—if I were to really stop and ponder over this—I think that developing her language skills was a way of compensating for her weakness, to raise herself to as close a level as my father. Dad, after all, isn’t that much of a talker. He’d speak only when necessary, and he’d always allow Mom to be the family’s spokesperson, which was—is—a job she performed beautifully.
Perfectly, like I’ve said.
But to be like Quatre sometimes…
As the poets say, “Alas, alas.”
On our way from the cafeteria to the lines just before the first bell rings at seven-thirty, we’d pass by the chapel and the pine trees that stand guard around it. As we walk, we’re always pleasantly surprised by the occasional squirrel skittering across the pavement, dodging students and running like hell toward the nearest tree.
When that happens, I slow down (sometimes stop dead in my tracks), watching the tiny bundle of fur dart across. I can’t help but feel both impressed and annoyed with it—impressed by the fact that for such a small thing, it’s got some balls the size of cantaloupes if it thought it worth the effort to run out of its cozy little corner and brave heavy traffic caused by mammals twenty times its size just to get to the pine tree across the way. Annoyance comes from the realization that with every effort it makes, it just places itself directly in the path of total annihilation for what? For a goddamn tree? No wonder squirrels end up being roadkill half the time.
Still…
I’ll have to confess that its foolish, courageous spontaneity tends to tip the scales in its favor, and I find myself feeling impressed more than annoyed.
Ridiculous, isn’t it? For me, an animal with all this brain power, to feel admiration for a dumb squirrel. But I do. I just don’t say anything to anyone about it and continue to take dignified, measured steps to the junior class section and then finally to the Section A line, with my dependable clipboard and pen on hand, ready to take roll when the morning bell rings.
It may sound absurd
But don’t be naïve
Even heroes have the right to bleed
Just as expected from Wufei Chang, Section A President.
Then we all go through the entire day as though we were shopping, with a list to guide us. We tick off every item we pick up from the shelves and then head off to the checkout counter. Here in Victoria College, we go through each class on our schedule, ticking off each one (mentally, perhaps). Two classes back-to-back. Then recess. Then two more classes. Then lunch. Don’t forget the Angelus at exactly noon. Then three after that. Final bell rings, then it’s housekeeping time for whoever’s assigned for that day.
I go through each class the same way I’ve done the last three years since I entered this school.
I’m perfect. I wipe everyone out with my test scores. I finish answering quiz questions well before everyone else, which gives me plenty of time to take on extra credit ones, thus boosting my grade beyond the maximum points possible. It’s not unusual for me to earn 105 or 110 points out of 100.
I can answer every question posed by every teacher in every class. I’d spent several hours yesterday, after all, reading and reviewing past, present, and future lessons on top of doing homework. I even have a set system for that: homework first—get the dirty work out of the way—then read the rest of the time, taking down notes from the book for future reference. Jot down questions I have about the text, marking them according to priority. Once done, I go back through my notes, tear them out of my notebook, and rearrange them into a neat lesson outline.
Anal-retentive much?
Maybe.
The system works. It always has, and it always will. My sister taught me that when I was in third grade, and I’ve been using it ever since. It’s become a part of my system, and I’m not talking about anything academic here. This has turned into something almost biological now. It’s a part of me. I know for a fact that there’s no possible way I’m going to be able to separate myself from this methodology if I wanted to. It’s become part of my blood. Hell, it is my blood—my lifeline.
I may be disturbed
But won’t you concede
Even heroes have the right to dream
And it’s not easy to be me
With order comes structure. With structure comes success. And with success comes possibilities that other people can only dream about.
That’s always been my sister’s mantra, whether it be about school or work. And it’s a philosophy that’s now just as much mine as hers. I’m sure that, when the day comes, it’ll be something that I’ll be passing down to the next generation.
I never fail in freaking out my classmates with what I say in class—especially when I’m called on to bail people out of sticky situations, that is, when I’m called on to give the answers that no one apparently knows. My teachers have learned to ignore me till the last, frightening everyone even more by calling on people in spite of the fact that I’m the only one who’s raising a hand to answer the question. I’m their last resort. I think I’m starting to bore them to tears. I even wonder if they’ve ever wondered when the day will come when they call me, and I won’t have the right answer ready.
So I frighten and intimidate my classmates, who only end up being so impressed with my performance that they never fail in voting to have me represent Section A for whatever competition I happen to be qualified for.
I’m an easy win for the section or even the junior class. Stick me up there on the stage, and give me a topic to argue over, and they’re home free.
I think I’d even caught a few people doze off in their seats during a competition. Yeah, they were that confident that I was going to slaughter my competition.
I’m perfect—can never go wrong. And I’m predictable as hell.
When I walk past Trowa’s mural, I sometimes stop and stare at it, wondering how it must’ve felt creating something like that—just like the novels I read and absorb, I never fail to feel this almost crippling awe for the creative energy that went into the making of a work of fiction or music or art.
When I look at the figure of St. Francis and the animals and the trees that dwarf him, my mind reels. I can’t grasp the mechanics behind artistry and creativity. What happens in Trowa’s mind right before he paints or draws? Does he “see” the finished product? Or does it piece itself together first, discarding details here and there and replacing them with better ones till the perfect picture’s finally formed? Or is it simply blank space that my friend fills up as he goes along? Trowa’s never been exact in the way he’s explained his methods before, and I’ve long given up on prodding him for more accurate, measurable or quantifiable terms.
Up, up, and away, away from me
Well, it’s all right
You can all sleep sound tonight
I’m not crazy or anything
I’ve never told anyone this before, but one of my favorite pastimes is to sit beside Trowa and watch him draw. I don’t care how long it takes him, so long as I get to see the creative process from start to finish. I think I unnerve him sometimes, but he has to get used to it.
There’s something oddly thrilling in watching an artist at work—at seeing something (as Quatre would describe it) magical happen, when a blank sheet of paper and a pencil would suddenly yield a landscape or a portrait with a few lines and curves. Like the morning chat sessions with Quatre, the minutes spent in Trowa’s company, carefully watching him draw, is my way of losing myself in his mind. I want to experience—or conjecture about (which is the closest to the truth, really)—the inner workings of an artistic mind.
I love it when Trowa makes a careless sweep of a hand once, twice, three times—and out pops a cat cleaning its paws. From what I’ve observed, artistry’s a lot more complicated than people tend to give it credit for. I mean—how could a movement that, by all outward appearances, looks so casual and insignificant suddenly be something that actually creates the necessary lines or patterns or shades for a figure to take shape?
It takes a special skill—and a mind that’s close to genius—for a person to execute something that deceptively simple.
I don’t come from an artistic family. Not an ounce of creativity flows through my veins. For me to succeed in any project for our art class, I need to have something solid as a model for me to follow—if not a set of written instructions on how to draw a man’s head, for instance.
Structure. Order. Predictability. Those are my talents—my own brand of genius.
My own method of rebelling against the rigid structure of prayer sessions is to quietly recite lessons to myself. Unlike my friends, I can’t allow my mind to wander into daydreams as a way of coping with the tedium of certain activities.
I once tried. During a rosary rally (which was taking us about an hour for us to do), I tried to stare at the pavement and observe the cracks and think of the different patterns that I see (sort of like a Rorschach Test). I only ended up counting cracks and calculating angles and length.
Now, when I feel the weight of the activity bearing down too heavily on me, I simply look up and scan the sky for birds.
I can’t stand to fly
I’m not that naïve
Men weren’t meant to ride
With clouds between their knees
When we’re in the chapel for prayer sessions, I try to look for birds that stray inside via the chapel windows. It’s difficult, though, since we always sit in alphabetical order, and I’m always at the front, where Mr. Richards can see me. I try to look around whenever his back’s turned and watch birds fly back and forth from one window to another, sometimes playing tag.
Sometimes I close my eyes and simply listen to the flapping of their wings and wonder how it feels to be able to keep oneself suspended by virtue of the body’s natural function and nothing else—that such a small creature could defy the pull of a force much greater than it is simply by flapping its wings repeatedly.
I wondered about the freedom.
I wondered—conjectured—but I can’t fully imagine.
Heero, with his brand of scientific genius, is even more creative than I can ever be. He loves robotics and plans to go to MIT someday. Even with a mind shaped by the more rigid lines of science, he still can, through a series of careful calculations, create a robot or a prototype of something that actually works. He’s like Trowa. Only this time his medium is data, and his canvas is the entire world.
And this might sound odd, but I envy his relationship with his mother.
Don’t think that Heero and his mom have the perfect mother-son relationship, though. They don’t. I can’t even tell you how many times Heero and his mother spent an already rare moment together during family visits arguing with each other. Mrs. Yuy clings to him too much (according to Heero), and he pushes her away.
So what’s so enviable about that?
My family’s always been perfect, after all. My parents have always been supportive of what I do, and so has my sister.
But I’d like to experience—if only just once—a phone call or a visit from them—where they don’t follow their initial “hello” with “how are your grades?” or “how’d you do in your chemistry exam—better than last quarter, I hope?” I’d even prefer that they pick a fight with me, just like Mrs. Yuy with Heero, if only to show that there’s something else in me that they care about.
Oddly enough, though, I never feel any resentment or bitterness toward them till after the fact—when I’m alone, with all the time in the world to reflect on whatever family-bonding moment I’ve just had with them. Then, of course, what immediately follows that pang of resentment is massive guilt. How can I be so ungrateful to them, for Christ’s sake? They’d done their best to make me who I am now. The least I can do to show my appreciation is to be the good, obedient, overachieving son.
I’m only a man in a silly red sheet
Digging for kryptonite on this one way street
I’m only a man in a funny red sheet
Looking for special things inside of me, inside of me
Inside of me, yeah, inside of me, inside of me
What comes after guilt is a studying frenzy. I lock myself away from the rest of the world to lose myself once again in my books.
A 4.0 GPA is fair. It’s nothing special.
A 4.10 is better. Not perfect, but better.
A 4.25 is a given. An unspoken rule in my family. Something to bring home every time but not to boast about.
Perfection is the norm. Order, structure, and perfection.
It’s a habit now. No, not even Duo and his casual, nonchalant attitude toward his own talents can break me out of it. Duo and his unpredictability and depth, his bursts of spontaneity balanced with an intelligence that he’d always tried to shrug off or put down as a “freak of nature.” Intelligence seems to be a chore to him, and he’d rather go about the day being one of the guys than being singled out every time for his skills in math and his sharp wit and talent in debate.
Sometimes I think that he puts on the frivolous, devil-may-care façade to downplay his being special. He purposefully irritates people to advertise his normalcy. Shit, I think he even puts on a front for Heero just so his boyfriend wouldn’t think of him as anything else but normal.
Me? I’m too predictable to irritate people. If anything, I either scare them away or put them to sleep (as noted before).
He reminds me of a cat the rectory used to have. It was an old animal. It was, I think, about fifteen when I first stumbled across it in the rear garden near the library. It was a powerful predator—I could see that from the way its body moved and the way it bared its claws and teeth. I’d even seen it stalk a bird and kill it in one fell swoop.
But it also acted silly when I was around, rolling around on the ground and then pausing to stare at me, its body contorted or its legs bent this way and that or even spread wide open—just overall looking ridiculous and yet behaving as though it were posing for my benefit. I could just hear it say, “Look! I’m not really a vicious killer! See?”
I’m only a man in a funny red sheet
I’m only a man looking for a dream
I’m only a man in a funny red sheet
And it’s not easy…
It’s not easy to be me.
I could only respond the way a human, I suppose, is expected to respond to a cat. I bent down to rub its stomach or pet its head till it purred contentedly.
It died a few weeks ago, though. Father Brian told me when I asked why I haven’t seen it for a while now. He’d even led me to its grave (Father Brian being the one who buried the cat).
I felt regret—as expected, I suppose, from someone who’s had some contact with it before. I guess I can even say that I must have grieved as well though I can’t really be sure about it.
All I remember was walking through the sprinklers on my way back to the dorm from the rectory, getting myself soaked and not giving a shit.
Yes, I must have been grieving. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have done something so—well—spontaneous and out of character. None of my friends saw me that afternoon. No one knows about it. And I doubt if they ever will.
But duty called, and I simply took a shower and retired to my room for yet another evening of intensive studying in preparation for the following day. I had lessons to learn, notes to write, questions to anticipate, classmates and teachers to impress, and a 4.25 to maintain.
I combed my hair into place after dressing methodically down to my shirt and sweats. I saw my father staring back at me from the other side of the mirror, and it was all I could do to turn away.
I’m tired. But I’ll keep an eye out for more hawks.
Notes:
“Superman” is written and performed by Five for Fighting