WESTOTH
We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. (T. S. Eliot)
Before I met her, a ride to home and office used to be just looking at billboards or signboards or reading them because that’s what my Grade school teacher had told me.
'Read the billboards so you’d become a fast reader.'
I would usually sit at the front seat of a jeepney where I could smoke, and view billboards. For five years now I have passed by that restaurant in Q.av and read its signboard. The restaurant was fine-dining type. This kind of stop is not for me. Food could be very pricey. Can't afford. So I never dined in there. But I always look at it when I pass by..."Westoth” I would read it. Five years, in my mind I named the resto as “Westoth”.
For a very long time, I have traveled this road alone. I would say i enjoyed looking at things just the way they are. The way they are to me. I never thought it could be possible that someone will come... and she would spell the word “Westoth” and read it that way, too. When the word came out of her elfin lips, “Westoth” the countless times I had to ply that route seemed to come flashing back. Exaggeration of course. But I remember exactly how I read it for the first time. It was with that same confidence in the way she read it.
But unlike me, she quickly realized it should be read differently. She laughed at her mistake. “Akala ko Westoth!” and she giggled.
I can still remember that short, sweet fx ride with her. Her face, the funny reaction on it, a picture of shameless, cute embarrassment! Whew, a thing of beauty!
“You’re just new around here. I have read it that way for five long years,” I told her, clasping her hand, looking at her straight in the eyes, our face so close I could kiss her. Oh, the sound of her laugh. Oh, her tiny lips. Oh, the joy of having her beside me! The joy of finding someone who went through your same mistakes then spell to you what things really are!
It should be read as West 6th.
this story was written year 2006. West 6th had been recently replaced by Office Warehouse in Quezon Ave. If you are someone who has a picture of that signboard, please post it here. Thanks.
