Crabs Crossing

Me and peter had been doing jogging rounds at the local stadium since early this year, it was a good idea though because at least I've been doing something worthwhile healthy. But I did skip jogging for a month when my liver got really sick and I was so much in a mood to hit the tracks again the past few days. My liver doctor said something like I shouldn't put too much physical effort and crap like that in whatever I do but what the hell, its been a month that I've been in death camp without liquor, cigarettes and doing nothing, and all liver doctors will agree its better I start breaking a sweat from jogging instead.

I felt that it has gone quite a bore lately running around in circles over and over at the local stadium, though I hadn't been there in a month but it was probably the same old goddam stadium with the same sight of the empty grandstands and frogs that cross all over the tracks, especially those rainy days when the frogs go swarming to the finish line, you'd have to manuever and dodge them from your lane along with those phonies who just walk like the whole stadium was a sunday park, but it beats running on a treadmill like a stupid hamster though.

So a couple of days ago I decided to hit this new kilometer long riverside walkway, for a change. I ran at the place at six in the morning and the view is pretty nice, the road was built on some dike that separated the river from the left and this big marsh from the right and all those waters and leaves around already made you feel healthy just by being there at sunrise. The road started started with a towering sign that wouldn't let anything taller than two and a half meters pass through, I dont know what the hell was that for because the road is only open for pedestrians and it left me running the first few meters trying to figure out why somebody as tall as three meters can't get through, maybe I would find out soon if the walkway will go under a bridge or electric cables or anything that would bump into yao ming's head if he also ran there, in case.

None of the people running there were as taller than 2 meters though, but almost everybody running there looked old, you could tell from their grey hair and from the way they ran, old people move slow. And mother nature too had the animal kingdom over my jogging route again and this time there's crabs on the pavement instead of frogs, and they'd go crossing the road from the marsh to the river maybe to get breakfast, there'd be plenty of food there because its a city river and that's where all sewers lead to, and it wouldn't take a crab to know that people throw in a lot of leftovers down there for the ecosystem. I got my mobile phone camera and took a picture of this one.

The crab stopped on its tracks and the goddam thing must be smiling under those mandibles for the camera.

I could have stomped the crab dead to a roadkill but I didn't, it was too early in the morning, besides some old guy was already fishing down the marsh and making a killing that he probably hooked up crabs by mistake and passed them judgement to crab heaven, he was just reeling in fishes smaller than a calling card, and I'm sure as hell it will take him the whole day to reel in a catch's worth with fishes those small, and I dont think he will get any bigger fishes there since the water only runs through his ankle, he had a fancy fishing stick though. That's what you get from roads that lead to riversides, people who find fun pulling marine life out of the water, one fish at a time.

There were so many new sights to see here, I must have ran for almost a kilometer when I saw another old guy down in the marsh, he wasn't fishing but was taking a leak and you could tell he had a hard time doing it because he had to go down the slope of the road dike with all those mud and crabs, and there aren't much bushes to hide in down there so he must probably be lowering his aim and trying not to make much ripples too. If there weren't other people jogging or fishing or crabs crossing, he'd probably try to find out how far his bladder jetstream can shoot or spell his name with it. I'd swear I'd spell my goddam name on the water if I was down there.

I didn't feel like taking a leak anyway and I was at the end of the road, but then hell I didn't find any overhead obstacle that first sign told me to watch out for eversince I started running there, they should have written crabs crossing instead or something useful like that.

Tales from the Decabiography

4 I collect coke cans

My recent acquisitions:

I got this coke can from turkey, istanbul no longer constantinople



And this one from egypt, land of tutankhamun and the pyramids

Yellow is for Cory

Cory, who is one of our most well known presidents, passed away more than a month ago. She was so popular with the whole country that the color yellow she used to campaign with twenty three years ago became so popular again right after her death, people wore yellow shirts and tied yellow ribbons anywhere and was close to wrapping the whole country in yellow. I remember it was discussed in our political science class ten years ago that the whole yellow thing came from this song "tie me a yellow ribbon on the old oak tree" by tony orlando, the guy who looks pretty much like ringo starr in the beatles let it be cover. I wasn't into the whole yellow fad a month ago, its not that I didn't admire her but I just didn't want to hop into the yellow bandwagon.

Then I got sick the first week of september and this was one of the worst fevers I ever had, I was wondering how I even got sick in the first place because I had anit-flu shots a month ago that was supposed to make me invincible to fever. It scared the hell out of me thinking it was the new pig-flu virus I got from someplace, I did get home from manila two days before I got sick but I didn't go anywhere where fever or pigs were particular, in fact I was just having two beers every night in my room after work over cable tv and I swear I was because, I could recall the movies I've seen the last five nights. There could have been pork in those chinaman take out foods I had with beer, but I suppose my fever came from fatigue after a couple hard day's work.

It was strange because my fever was reacting to the time of the day, like around eleven in the morning until four in the afternoon, my tempreature would be normal and I feel like going back to work for a while. By sunset I would start to burn all over again and come midnight I feel like hell is freezing over in bed, it was during the fourth night that my body tempreature went as high as 40 and I could hardly breathe, I felt like I was going to die, seriously. From what I was seeing, the edges from my field of sight was turning black and I was gasping for air, I was slouching on the floor with pain like I was doing those muslim ramadan pose where you have your ass higher than your head, it looked like I was already turning my life over to some god, just in case, but no one showed up to take me away though. Then I threw up a lot of water, I wanted to give my parents a call in manila if I should get myself to the goddam hospital before I pass out, so I got to the telephone but while sitting there and giving death some thought, I felt better from breathing the midnight air from the open windows, I ended up sleeping there instead with my blankets.

It took me another day struggling with that fever until I finally got better and went back to work, the fever pinned me down for five days and paperworks were stacking on my desk, I did feel better though I started having terrible heartburns just below where my esophagus ended, probably from loosing my apetite and not eating much when I was sick, I could feel it being twisted from the inside. It wasn't til the seventh day that I resolved what this goddam fever was, I was brainstorming over some employee's inventory report when he pointed at me

Sir, your eyes... look... all so yellow

I stared at the mirror and my eyes did look like werewolf jacko's in that thriller music video, hell my whole torso had turned yellow too and it dawned to me that there is something wrong with my liver.

Everybody told me that I've been drinking too much, it could have believed it too but I'm half the drunkard I was for two years already, nevertheless it was about time I see a doctor, finally. First they took a lot of blood from me in the laboratory that I think was enough to feed a leech for a week, by the time a third lab rat went over to my left elbow to suck more blood with those big goddam syringe, I told her to use my right elbow instead because they already made a lot of holes from the left. The doctor could now tell a lot about my fever more from those blood results than me figuring out things by myself the past few days.

The doctor was somewhere around his fifties and you could tell he had the knack for livers, he read through my blood tests which were just full of numbers and integers but to him it seemed like an encoded distress call from my liver, he ask how I felt and I told him I felt fine except for this heartburn over my chest, he pressed it and I yelled in pain to sound a yes, he told me that it was my liver and began writing some notes. I would have hated it if he was the kind of doctor who would take longer to read through my blood results and press around my body a lot and couldn't figure out what the hell was wrong, and send me back to the goddam laboratory to leak out more blood from me and turn me into a hospital crash test dummy. Anyway this doctor said that its the hepatitis A virus and I probably got it from eating contaminated food from wherever, he said that there's no need to worry about it and my liver will just return to normal, just eat more of anything and get more sleep and drink some vitamin tablets.

The doctor's advice sounded pretty much like to wait until I shed my yellow skin, I feel fine though so I just went back to work with these yellow eyes, It was pretty obvious because people keep on yelling about my eyes, they would go on asking me how I feel and all that crap and I tell them I'm busy or I feel like having a cup of black coffee, but I tell them stupid answers that its from seeing too much yellow after cory's funeral because I don't want to go on explaining about hep A virus. In fact I have overheard yellow so much that I'm humming that goddam tune about the yellow ribbon in that old oak tree over and over.