The Simple Life

While some people prefer the night trip for long-distance road travel, I, when alone, like traveling during the day. While comfortably seated by the window, I draw the curtains up the bus window and take in the view. The countryside has always had this calming effect on me. I see not skyscrapers but mountains. Not huge billboards but never-ending fields dotted by trees. Most people outside are not making quick, long strides but less-hurried, relaxed steps. Looking out the window is like watching a movie—The Simple Life.

I like this movie. The plot is uncomplicated, the setting, plain. So what if the stars are not as glamorous-looking as the box-office queens and kings? So what if the stars in this movie have creases on their foreheads so deep they don’t have to frown for the lines to show? Rural folks who couldn’t care less about the movement in the stock market, they’re more concerned about when the next rainfall for their crops would come.

Why this affinity with the rustic?
Maybe because I once was part of this movie.

Contrary to what most people probably think, I’ve not always been a Manila city girl. Spending most of my childhood years somewhere in the north, the event for me was not going to the amusement park, or going to the mall but to the beach (it’s just a shame I didn’t learn how to swim even with a chunk of my lifetime—and a third of my body—spent submerged in seawater). Before I met Cinderella in glossy storybooks, I was already friends with Niknok from the newsprint Funny Komiks. (I was also reading comics like Filipino, Aliwan, Wakasan, among many others. This probably started my love for the printed page.)

Now, many years later, and hundreds of kilometers away from the setting of the earlier movie, I play a different role, act in scenes set in the busiest part of the country. But then again, once in a while, I take the chance to enjoy the simple life, albeit as a spectator.

Ahh, The Simple Life. Sometimes I wonder if and when I will get to be a part of this movie again. Not my call. Only the Scriptwriter of my life knows.