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<div><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">I got preachy on Friday!</font></div>
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<div><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Those interested, I made it a daily this week. If curious, log on to www.saipantribune.com, and go to the Opinion page, starting with Monday for Cinco de Mayo.</font></div>
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<b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: large;">APM</b><br>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">The title is not a
misprint to denote your ATM, the automatic teller machine that gets the
additional mullah when one scrapes the wallet’s bottom at the bar ‘cause the
price for the lady’s drink is a bit hefty.
And you want to down some more brew in disgust for letting the lady
leave with the guy with the necktie!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">The APM in our title
is the atmospheric particle matter that is in the air naturally but has come to
our medical profession’s attention because of the PM10-2.5 sized APMs threaten our
metabolic functioning. Specifically, APMs
get into the bloodstream and lodge to block small arterial and veiny passages,
or deliver toxic chemicals. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">This comes to mind daily
here in Dong Bei as I look up the skies that is seldom color blue. Gray as the color of my true loves hair is
cute in songs but the particle matters in the atmosphere measures perennially
at the alarming level above the tolerable line leaving the sky always
gray. Now, we do not mind this in the
six months of cold weather because it just comes with the territory but on
spring and summer days, I expect to get a break. No such luck.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Makes me nostalgic
over the taken-for-granted-ness of the blue skies in the CNMI as APMs from
exposed dry soil and vehicular carbon monoxide exhausts get blown off to the
ocean quickly, rendering the view of the horizon, like the vaunted blue flash
at sunset from Oleai bar, a venerable Marianas treat.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">I remember looking out
my window at the Riviera Hotel by NMC at As Terlaje on my first month as an
island resident and was surprised to see a plot of tobacco grown on the slopes
towards lake Susupe. That was probably
from an Ilocano Pinoy growing his <i>dubla </i>supply. That’s the rolled tobacco leaf that my
paternal grandma in Ilocandia made for herself.
She lived to be 95, hardly a poster girl for the Surgeon General’s warning
in cigarette packs but then, her tobacco was grown naturally without much of
the chemicals that pesticides and insecticides used with the new Virginia
tobacco then grown to feed the Marlboro man manufacturers in Manila’s environs.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">I am not pushing for
tobacco here. I cold turkey’d in ’84 and
lapses since had been sporadic though perhaps, not minimal in its effect. My genetics both in my maternal and paternal
sides are good for 95 years. I am only
going for 86, both as an estimate of the state of my health, as well as a
covenantal choice with Reality. Either way,
more or less of the 86, it shall be <i>c’est
la vie </i>for <i>j’aime la vie!</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><i> </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Some among my
acquaintances shudder at the thought that I might be teasing fate and
destiny. <i>Non, mon ami. </i>The choice is
actually deeply rooted in my faith, derived from the witness of those who
patterned their existence in the trials and trails of one Jesus of Nazareth who
spilled his guts after he marched into Jerusalem. In my appropriation of the tradition, he was
a god-killer. (Are you waiting for a messiah
to get you out of your predicament? Got
good news for you. No one is
coming. Pick up your life and live.) We substituted his image into the idolatry
that surrenders one’s existence to the external machinations of others, sometimes
named Pastors and Priests in places! I
know. I was in their number.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Since I am an
evangelist of the good news I know to the core of my being, here it is. Jesus was a Jew, deeply honoring of the
Levant’s YHWH, the mysterious affirmation of just the way life is! No magic here; nor does it require any
hocus-pocus from some ecclesiastical structure that claims proprietary
knowledge of profound secrets. “You want
to know how to really live before the supreme reality,” he said in my hearing, “look
no further. I am it! Reality and I are one.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Then he took the
33-years of his existence (broken and spilled-out, like those of the MH370 and
MV Sewol passengers, the tornado-flood victims of the US South, street
parliamentarian Thais, Ukrainians, Syrians, Egyptians, Iraqis, Brazilians; me
and you), and expended it to the hilt, all of it. In so doing, I make his example “good news”
till the end of time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">But it is not eternity
or absolute certainty that is my business.
It is my one moment in time, all 86-years of it, that is the subject of
my expenditure. Sure, we need to be
aware of the APM in our surroundings, as well as the chemical inputs we put
into our systems, but the ultimate question remains, “how will you live the one
existence that you have?” I follow the answer
echoed out of Galilee’s shores.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Now, there are many
who know and live by the same story without genuflecting to the icon dubbed
Jesus. That is fine. In the 21</span>st<span style="vertical-align: baseline"> century, those who attend their Mass and Worship Services, but live
their lives on the tags of appointed secret keepers of the way life is, are
driving the nail deeper on the outstretched arm of that carpenter in Golgotha
whose life is the real messiah, the living Christ! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Yes, APMs do threaten
the health of our breath, but it is the health of our soul that is at
stake. May you decide to live the one
moment of life that is yours, however you’ve drawn the parameters of its covenant. To paraphrase Nike, Just BE You!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Thus, spake the
ex-Reverend!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<br>
<div style="clear:both"><i>j'aime la vie</i><br>
<a href="mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com">pinoypanda2031@aol.com</a><br>
<div><i>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!</i></div>
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