Diary 25

Mig too was doing his part. His mind was dead set in making a good investment out of me. He was preparing me for a modeling career in Manila starting with the Model Search Contest. He provided me better clothes, expensive too, and made sure I had food and sufficient rest everyday.

Everything happend so quickly that when Thea returned from Hongkong, she was taken aback by the physical changes in me. She cynically chided Mikael for his new "Catholic Social Rehab project". To her, I was simply that - a project.

From then on, I promised myself to get even with the bitch. I'd climb my way to the top.



PROFESSOR ASUNCION



Mikael advised me to avoid Professor Asuncion. He was the 85-year-old Quantum Physics professor reputed to have shaken hands with Einstein, Plank, and Edison in his heyday. "He's just too senile," Mikael said about the Professor. But I failed to get a slot into other Advanced Physics classes and as much as I wanted to heed Mikael's warning, I was left with no other choice. Professor Asuncion became my professor.

Besides Quantum Physics, he was the pioneer of Eastern teachings in the Philippines. He was the first to link Eastern tradition with the most advanced Physics; he elevated it into Philosophy. He was convincing. This did not go without the public noticing. It placed him at odds with the church authorities. Most of his teachings were generally anti-religion. The Church, for years, had petitioned the university to either fire or retire him. The Archbishop accused him of ruining the young's minds.

Actually he was destroying the Church' hold on the populace more than they would admit.

Professor Asuncion turned my life upside down.

When I entered his classroom, I found only a handful of students who, just like me, ran out of slots into other classes. It was dark and quiet. Strange. As my eyes got adjusted to the dim, I figured an image standing at the back of the room. I turned my head around to check it out.

"Stop!" exclaimed the Professor. I was jolted by his thunderous voice and quickly turned my head back. I caught a glimpse of him though; he appeared more like a chieftain in a tribe in Ifugao, with long grey hair, he was tiny and very old.

His thunderous voice continued to rumble. "In this class, I want all your thoughts to be left at the doorstep. Forget everything you know about basic Physics - don't talk to me about mechanics, torque, vectors, Newton, gravity, etcetera - for I am telling you now, all these basic theories can be disproven. Close your eyes . . . " his voice was now becoming milder and gentler. Like a grandfather. I thought him to be suddenly so cool.

"Empty your minds, think of pure blackness or whiteness, nothing else. Follow me with your thoughts. Imagine being lifted up, above the earth, into the sky, into an empty space . . . "

I was beginning to have a good time.

"Do you see anything?"

"No." The class answered.

"Now move your bodies in space." I imagined myself floating, circling, soaring high.

"Are you moving now?"

"Yes."

"Stupid!" he yelled. "How can you say you're moving in an empty space?"

"Because you told us." The students answered.

"More stupid." He turned on the lights. "I told you, in this class, take out all your thoughts. In this room, there is no concept of time, space, movement. Open your eyes."

I almost burst into laughter when I did, for this eccentric professor, this master of Physics was wearing a mask.

"In here," he continued," Newton is dead. Socrates is back and I will murder Aristotle. All I need is an empty mind, because an empty mind is open to any possibility. All you need is a good imagination."

He walked briskly pacing left to right in front of us. "What am I doing? He asked.

"Walking." Of course, I thought.

He faced us wearing another mask! How could he change masks that quickly? Abandoning his strut. He started dancing. The students couldn't control their laughter.

"What am I doing now?"

"Dancing."

He turned around. His mask was changed the third time. "You are all wrong," he announced.

Now, this really captured my attention. Whatever this old professor was about to say or doing, I was dead excited to hear and know.

A student asked, "How come, professor? Aren't you just dancing?"

"Because when I was walking, I was dancing; when I was dancing, I was walking."

The students shook their heads in puzzlement.

"Listen to me," he continued. "All you did was judge my actions based on your experiences. You answered me according to the line of thinking taught to you since you were kids. Let me tell you what my course is all about. It is all about Imagination and Descartes: "I think therefore I am."

"Throw your books away. I will discard all conventions - no exams, no grades, no stupid homework. Learning is the only task ahead of us."

"Going back to my theories, let us analyze them one by one. First, time and space are relative. You move or you think you move because you have reference points. From left to right, up or down, point A to point B. What if all these reference points vanish as in the case of empty space? In emptiness, you cannot determine your direction, your time, your speed, even movement. What if I get suspended in the air here while the rest of you move side to side - which moves you or I? Who between us determine the direction? Now watch me carefully."

I don't know what devil took over him or what voodoo he used but when his legs moved, he appeared as if ambulating and dancing at the same time, suspended above the floor, and his facial masks were transformed into different images, carrying different emotions, all at the same time. It was like, magic. It was very theatrical. How in the world did he do that? While in the midst of this magic, he went on with his lecture, "Whatever I think I am doing at any time, THAT is what I am doing TO ME. Whatever you think I am doing at any time, THAT is what I am doing TO YOU. Whatever thoughts we possess are usually true and real. After all, everything, including me is nothing. If you will break me down into the tiniest particles of atoms, I will be converted into an empty space. What is left is the thought, the energy, the light. Right now, whatever we think or see or act is all ILLUSION. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Quantum Physics."

We all stood up in loud applause.





That afternoon in the university, I met with Mikael in the main library. "I was thinking," I said to him as I mulled Professor Asuncion's lecture, "I was just thinking . . . all his perceptions are logical."

"Oh no, were you ensnared by the Wizard's witchcraft too?" Mikael answered.

"But don't you think he was right? I often wonder what cause us people of Manila to turn psychotic. Our society is in chaos. It reeks with corruption, low moral, prejudices, and stereotypes - all the social viruses imaginable. How did we turn into this? When the Professor quoted Descartes - we think, therefore we are - it just dawned on me, yes, we are all thinking the same. Propagating the same thought, the same destructive traditions. The same ascent and decline. If perhaps we all move to another city, where there are no references to wealth, or talent, or beauty or sophistication or preconceived notions of how the society functions; where we could start all over in a clean slate, perhaps, we will find order."

"A Utopia in your dreams," Mikael said. "That is what Prof turns his students to be. Too imaginative, too idealistic. Losing practicality. Robert, get real. What you see is what you get. If Manila is this way, then it is."

"I don't know . . . there was something in his lecture that affected me."

"If I were you, I wouldn't wreck my brains thinking about his lectures. He is an old man. He is no longer in touched with reality. He should retire."

Professor Asuncion's succeeding lectures would impact me heavily. The idea that all this world was just a product of imagination, (of whose imagination I did not know), was tantalizing to me. Illusion was a neat concept. It removed the burden of reality on me. I wanted to spend my days suppressing my reality. I wanted to have a reason or at least an escape from what I was going through in Manila. Mig helped me in the score majorly.

Mig asked me to free my Friday for photo sessions to prepare my "portfolio book" for Isla Group which was the major sponsor of Male Model Search competition due in a month or so. The session took place in Arnie Photo Studio, "A legitimate place," Mig assured me. I had to be clear with Mig about the legitimacy of this, after what I went through with my roommate Ramon. Despite all the assurances though, I still had concerns about nudity.

The shots did not require me to wear less than Bano Underwear brand, but Arnie Te reminded me that if I'd ever win, I should be ready to go bare-assed outdoors. He was good in taking my body shots - he offered me wine to relax. It was obvious form the start I was as nervous as a chicken. With clothes rented by Mig, I tried all possible apparel combinations which was meant to "perfect my look" - Mig emphasized. But wearing turtle neck and sweater? . . . Who will wear this in the Philippines?

I was made to pose in different angles. "Perfect!" Arnie Te kept saying. I was too embarrassed, especially when I wore the boxers and briefs. It wasn't easy, how many underwear pictures must I have? The entire session took almost four hours. I was out of breath in my rush back to school.

I was late for Zoology.

Thea was sitting beside Mikael in the Comparative Anatomy lab, they seemed to be having a heated discussion when I barged in. When Thea saw me, she abruptly returned back to her Anatomy table. Mikael was obviously irritated with her.

"Some people are just born evil, " he said, tapping my shoulder. Like saying I was fine.

I smiled. "What did she do this time?"

"She's asking all sorts of questions about you. I think she has the hots for you."

"Oh no, take that trash out of my life. After all the hell I've gone throguh with her."

"That 's what girls are, when they start asking around about you, it leads to the first base."

"Shhhhh," the lab assistant interrupted. "Tone it down."

Mikael whispered to my ears. "Thea wonders where your parents are. What they do . . . "

"It's none of her business."

"She's spying on you."

March, 198-

Dear God,

I could not believe it! Professor Asuncion killed himself!

I should have been forewarned. I heard the University Board of Directors forced him to retire, stating that the rigor of teaching was putting stress into his body and teaching. Of course that was not true, Professor Asuncion was sounder in mind and body than all those Directors combined. The Directors buckled under the pressure of the Church, who charged his teachings as blasphemous.

He took the news calmly, said goodbye to all the staff of Physics Department, went home and hanged himself.

During his last lecture he discussed about light - I should have seen the warning signs - a premonition of what he was about to commit.

He said - "Light and life go together, they are inseparable, they never die, they just go through transitions. The light we see at night, from the stars had been released some millions or even billions of years ago. It persists even after the sources have died. Because the distances from them to our eyes are so far, it takes that much time for their light to reach us. If I die today and become light, this light will develop its own mind and go anywhere . . . for light has its own mind. Light knows where to go and what to do. My light will mingle with the bigger Source of light and we'll go travel together."

His death caused heaviness in my heart. How I loved to listen to his thunderous voice, turning Physics into some magical Philosophy, making it a social issue, applying its rules on life, death and God. He made death so beautiful and exciting.

Laughing disrespectfully at his distorted face hanging from a rope, the policeman allegedly reported, "That looney was wearing a mask."





Alex Maskara