At Tops (again)

I find myself coming here often.

It’s been very taxing, these last 2 months. March ended quite on a sour note - at least, that’s how I thought it was going to end - then I landed at Tops (again).

That last March sunrise has left me quite ambivalent. To think, I’ve been trying to get a shot of the sunrise at Tops for weeks since January. Whenever I did go, the sky was always too cloudy and it would rain the night before making it too foggy for the sun to come out in all its glory. I was always left with a dark morning top with a silver lining ray of daylight dawning over the city.

This time, I needed to breathe. I needed to release all the built up tense in my head. I literally felt like a kettle that was piping hot from the stove - except I couldn’t let anything out and this time I wanted to witness the sun rise. I thought that if I could finally get my sun rise shot - March wouldn’t be that awful, that what has been happening would feel justified with a sun rise photograph/video.

Prior to getting my cam set-up, I sat in the car and started drafting a long ass email - I wanted to get a part of my troubles out in writing. I wrote down the things I wanted to say, who I wanted to say it to and I thought that if I did that, I’d feel a slight relief. Instead, I find myself feeling more pressure on my head as I’m typing my words down, more anxiety, but my frustration was, somehow, lessening. I felt as though I was finally starting to get the thoughts in my head somewhere (not just getting stuck in my head) - but why did my head feel heavier?

As the time for sunrise started to close in, I decided to start walking around. It’s worth noting that Tops can get really cold at the wee hours of the morning as it’s on a really high point in Cebu - and I’m quite hypothermic. At this point though, I didn’t care. I needed to “walk it off” let the “cold sit on my head” and just “cool me”. Me, being the hot head I was at that moment, not caring of what I was wearing and what I was doing, went out in the cold with no Jacket. Imagine the cold I would normally be complaining about if this were any other moment. I walk and walk and wait. I try to get myself busy and play around with my camera stand, trying to figure out which place I should set up that would get me a really good shot. Which angle, Which point, From afar, from close range. etc. As I try to fill my head with even more things, I start to get confused if I was feeling heated or cold. Here’s my body, physically telling me it’s F*cking cold - and my head telling me it’s ready to burst of heat.

Ever get that feeling when you feel your mind is multi-tasking its multi-tasking thoughts? Like an inception of multi-tasking thoughts (if that makes sense). Meanwhile, your body is trying to comprehend all that but it’s confused. Yeah, that.

Well, there I was - waiting for my redeeming moment, to capture the sun rising, when I notice the moon in its beautiful crescent form and a star (which has been widely claimed to be Venus just shining so bright and is usually the last “Start Light” that you see before night turns day) and to the horizon, the suns rays starting to peak. In that moment, I knew I wanted to capture this.

And it was beautiful. Everything about it was beautiful.

I’m not a great photographer but I feel I’ve captured something rare - which to me, most things rare are beautiful. And why I felt this way? because at that moment, I felt that nothing else mattered anymore - except for that moment and how I wanted to capture this moment - and then I knew that it was this that I had been waiting for. Not the sun to rise, not the blue skies, no - not those - but this.

I’m reminded of master Oogway’s line in Kung Fu Panda "You are too concerned with what was and what will be. There is a saying: Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.” and this line has never felt more real than at this moment.

I guess what I’m really trying to tell myself is - there’s always going to be a moment of misfortune but there’s just as much fortune as there is misfortune and we just have to deal with what we have now, what we’re going through now, and what we’re looking at now. “We’re never going to make it out alive” anyway and I’m happy that I have moments like this that allow me to realise and remember this. Rather than trying to find a “redeeming moment” and trying to figure out what that is, I have to look at now, at this moment, at the present. Because this is as far as I’ll ever get to for always.

If I could live out my days always in this moment, I think I could make it out happy, at least, knowing I can never make it out alive.