10 a.m.

...just heard from relatives on a family Net forum, and read on the web that there were bombings in Manila (including one at the international airport) -- on the very day that my mom, dad and brother were traveling back to Hawaii. the airport blast had apparently minimal damage but the potential for havoc was much more severe (it missed an airplane fuel dump). authorities don't know if communist insurgents or Muslim rebels are to blame. rumors are floating as well that the current President, besieged by an impeachment trial, may be behind it as an excuse to declare martial law, like Marcos did in the early 70s.

for me, everything else rapidly recedes into insignificance, as i wait...

7 p.m.

...finds me profoundly relieved, as well as profoundly saddened. Relieved because my family made it out just in the nick of time... they were on perhaps one of the very last flights out of Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila, before the bombing attacks began -- their flight departed at 10 a.m. Saturday, a scant two hours before the bombings, which happened at noon. But I am also deeply saddened by this awful turn of events in the country of my birth.

Today was a real bad day. I tried hard to quell my fear and anxiety for my parents and brother as they traveled back to the U.S., but was only marginally successful. I literally tried to drown my fears, and I only realized this much later.

Immediately after I found out about the bombings in Manila this morning, I called my sister in Honolulu to ask if our folks had arrived yet. Their flight was scheduled to arrive at around 5 a.m. ... you can imagine how high my level of anxiety rose when she said they hadn't arrived yet. Of course, she was in turn shocked and worried when I told her about the bombings. I hung up shortly, and called our aunt in the Philippines; woke up someone in their house as it was 4 a.m. Sunday morning their time. Was slightly relieved to hear that my parents hadn't called them... which suggested to me that perhaps they were in transit, and that their flight was delayed, for obvious reasons.

But this is the Philippines we're talking about here, and if their flight had not left before the airport bombing took place, there would have been a delay not just of hours, but most likely of days. And if more bombings in the capital were to happen in the days to follow, and perhaps a state of martial law to be declared, then they were going to be stuck there for quite a while. So my fears went, and so they escalated, both reasonably (based on a firm knowledge of where I come from) as well as unreasonably (based on sheer panic and anxiety for my loved ones).

Much as it would have been the rational thing to do, I chose not to sit and stay by the phone, or online, for the rest of the morning and the afternoon. It would just have deepened my anxieties and frustration. Once you realize there isn't much you can do about any given situation, or one like this in which what is happening is so far away and so beyond your control, the choices are simple and draconian: sit and fret and be fearful, or try to master it. I tried to master it by going out to the beach, to meditate and to pray to whomever gods was there to listen, and to immerse myself yet again in the ocean, as I've been doing for the past month.

I free-dove deeper than I've ever gone before, and for longer. At one point I think I reached the reef floor below at about 16 feet, and was under for maybe 30 or 40 seconds but I don't know for sure. The pain from the pressure on my eardrums was disorienting, and none of the equalizing techniques I had read up on seemed to be working. Nevertheless, I dove to this depth on three separate occasions and on the last one achieved a kind of effortlessness to it that I found both shocking and exhilarating. It was still painful, however, but at least I wasn't struggling to keep relaxed -- which is key in maintaining your breath underwater for a while. That third time, I was able to look and marvel at the fish swimming around me, and to slowly swim around for a few seconds, before that feeling of incipient panic got to me and everything in my body and mind was a scream for air.

So I spent my afternoon thusly. Walking for miles up and down the Lahaina coastline, periodically plunging into the ocean at a likely spot along the fringing reef. Trying to not dwell, to not remember, to just be... empty.

When I got home, sometime between five and 6 o'clock, I called Honolulu again, and got the blessed news that my parents and my youngest brother made it back safely. In blissful ignorance of the tragic events in Manila, they arrived in Honolulu at dawn this morning, flight a bit late and, exhausted, immediately checked in to a hotel instead of going to my sister's apartment and waking everyone up. (Had they known of the bombings, they would certainly have called around as soon as they got in.) They apparently slept until noon or so (10 a.m. Hawaii time, when I called my sister, was about 4 a.m. Philippine time to them in their jet-lagged condition), then they called my sis. By that time, I had long abandoned the parsonage and the phone and the Net for my emptying exercise out there... in the ocean, and in the depths which, even while still alien for me, possesses a kind of clear nothingness which saved my sanity for a while.

So went my day.

I am deeply grateful for friends like Laura, Catherine, Chris and Candace who offered up words of concern in their weblogs today... which gave me hope, even though I wasn't here to read them. But I felt them. Out there, I felt them...

And to Trev for talking me out of my funk tonight... whattakid. Btw, he wrote the FIRST last weblog of the millennium (on that link to his name). Heheh.

{ net.casting }
^