Detour

de⋅tour [dee-toor, di-toor]
–noun
1. a roundabout or circuitous way or course, esp. one used temporarily when the main route is closed.
2. an indirect or roundabout procedure, path, etc.

I don't like detours, especially when the huge yellow sign with a twisted arrow makes a surprise appearance in a place totally unfamiliar to me. When I was learning to drive in Manila and every street corner was as strange as the last one, detours scared me to the tips of my hairstrands. I then had to make use of my inner sense of direction as I'd navigate streets that were totally unfamiliar in order to find my way into a road that I would recognize.

I remember when I had to get a new OR/CR for my car two years ago in some obscure LTO branch located somewhere within the labyrinth that is Sta. Mesa. The streets were narrow, cars were parked along the sidewalk and a couple of streets were closed so I had to take one back road after another until I saw the familiar throng of jeepneys along Aurora. As I made one turn after another in those little side streets, all I could think about was getting out of that maze.

If that was one detour I never want to go through again, there is another detour I wish I relished being in. In Cebu, there was a detour we took by mistake which saw us driving through a breathtaking view of the mountains and a rushing river. But because we were in a hurry to catch a Ro-Ro to San Carlos, all I really remember about that trip was the sound of my fingers angrily drumming on the glass window of the car. All the blah about view of the mountains and the river was just something I tried to reconstruct in my head.

Last week, I turned 26 and everything about this new stick added to the little tally board welded to my brain is a detour. A couple of years back, I had plans of how things would go about at this time of my life and now, those plans are a few blocks away, obscured from my range of sight. Like jeepneys honking their horns, like a train roaring through the tracks, I can hear them, I know they're there but I can't get to them just yet because I need to get in touch with my Inner Compass and work my way through these streets.

For someone who has pretty much mapped out his destination ala the Human Genome Project, being greeted by a detour is like getting whalloped by a thousand pound animal in the face with such intensity that he starts seeing psychedelic stars dancing the cha-cha-cha before his eyes. It is easy to get carried away with the "whys" and the grunting and the whining and the complaining and the scuffling of shoes down an unknown curb. Theseus must have felt the same way as he worked his way along Minos' elaborate labyrinth had he not had Ariadne to guide him.

But no matter what a detour is, despite the extra effort, the longer distance, the expense of time, it still is a journey, no matter how short or how long it may turn out to be. And in my world, every journey thoroughly deserves to be enjoyed with all its peaks and its valleys. Though unexpected, it is littered with little packets of possibly everything which could make this walkabout worthy of every memory cell's mitochondric activity.

Everything that happens in the year that I turned 26 will all be a surprise, pretty much like Jack jumping out of the box, like getting an extra strawberry chunk in my strawberry ice cream. It is good to be in unknown territory once in a while and I easily forget that I had one of the best times of my life when I was thirteen, alone and walking around in a new city in a foreign country.

I am looking forward to a year of long walks
and even longer talks,
tough lessons for the mind
and even tougher lessons for the soul
pealing laughter to rival church bells
endless songs to sing
beautiful mornings
and even more beautiful nights

A year for bones to be broken
and dreams to be restored,
for first chances
and even more shots at a second,
for strawberries to be picked
and for grain to be sown,
for unexpected arrivals
and graceful exits.

A year of tears in battle,
perhaps more tears in victory,
for family, for friends,
and anyone else along the way,
A year for the weary minstrel
to find his song,
A year for the stream of promises,
waiting in the silence of fulfillment.

That should be enough to turn those psychedelic cha-cha-ing stars into black holes.