Finding Wonder Woman

Netnet Camomot

A HUGE spider is crawling. Towards you. Two choices: Stay or flee.

But then, it chooses to turn right to the cabinet beside you. Whew.

And then, there it is again, speed-crawling, with a renewed determination to scare you off your seat. Yikes!

Spider’s mission accomplished: you jump and flee to the sofa by the window. The window that the new workaholic househelp is washing with water gushing from a hose. Which has now shifted your thoughts from the spider to this: she’s wasting water. But it’s Maundy Thursday and you vowed to do nothing on this day and the next, so, let it be.

Meanwhile, you see the dirt on the dining table, the dirt on the sink, the dirt on the floor–lizard poop!–and you wonder if the new househelp has heard of the word “priorities.”

Then, you realize she’s exactly your carbon copy. This is how you work, too. You see a sheet of paper not aligned with the rest of the ream, and agonize over that until all sheets are in perfect harmony with each other.

Meanwhile, the bedroom’s center table is groaning with piles of newspapers, books, files, newspaper clippings, backpacks, tote bags, office supplies, sample T-shirts, old fatty jeans and tops, and most probably the lost and not found pink stapler, but the mountain of clutter only evokes a feeling of, O my gas, what if they will all crush down to the core of this oh so cruel world we call Earth.

But the focus for that Thursday and Good Friday was the healing of the left knee. No Seven Last Words, no Visita Iglesia, no Stations of the Cross. Thus, hot compress, rest the knee, hot compress pa more, rest pa more–words of wisdom from the wellness coach and the orthopedic surgeon way back in January when the knee had the injury. But work you must, despite the knee, and here it is now, two months later, with more injuries than it used to have.

Those two days were the first time in so many months that you could choose not to work, with no project, accomplishment report and presidential citation hovering overhead.

If you’re now used to waking up at 3am or 5am, depending on your workload for the day, waking up at 7am on Maundy Thursday with nothing to do can be, hmmm, awkward. It feels like the early bird not getting the worm.

But you see the book “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed sitting on the bedside table, and you know this is now your new “worm”–it’s time to go back to the page you left many months ago. It becomes your companion while hot compressing the knee.

Strayed’s memoirs of her hike across the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) is filled with hunger pangs, blisters, and dead toenails. The necklace she wore in some parts of the hike had her surname–Strayed–as a pendant, which others would read as “Starved.” With your knee and protein shakes, yup, can relate with that–a little bit, not much. Hey, you’re not hiking for miles in the wilderness with a humongous backpack on your back.

The PCT is a test of one’s physical, emotional, mental strengths. There are many parts in that hike where Strayed could have, uh, strayed, quit and returned to her usual sked, but she persevered anyway. A friend recommended its movie version since the story reminded him of you, but you chose to read the book first. Yup, you wrote about this many columns ago–that’s how long the book had been gathering dust on the bedside table.

Good Friday was not only for hot compresses and “Wild,” though. It was also the day that a miracle happened–the workaholic househelp found the pink stapler!

On the morning of Good Friday, the workaholic househelp arranged the things on the center table, thereby revealing that your suspicion was correct–the clutter had swallowed the stapler.

But the movie last Saturday didn’t have spiders nor Spider-Man. It starred Batman and Superman, with Wonder Woman in what a Pinoy movie may describe as a special appearance. Unless Hollywood also uses those two words for a movie’s character that manages to steal the limelight off the lead stars’ lofty perch.

The audience cheered when Wonder Woman finally appeared to help the men in distress–Batman and Superman–fight the villain. Well, hear her roar!

Oops! Spoiler alert? But with its trailers and posters featuring Wonder Woman, you should know by now she’s there.

Critics bombarded it with negative feedback but the audience still lined up anyway to watch.

Its first day of showing here in Pinas was on Black Saturday, that time of year when Pinoys would rather acquire sunburn at the beach. If you were as nega as the movie’s critics, you would have done an about face months ago and opted to reserve a block screening of another movie instead of risking precious thousands of pesos investing on a non-beach activity on a Black Saturday after at least one friend warned that “Out-of-town ang mga tawo ana.”

But you were absolutely sure of the movie’s success, convinced that people would shorten their vacations and come back home to watch it, and–voila!–the Law of Attraction worked again with you on this one. Achieve na achieve! Thanks much to looking at the glass as half-full instead of half-empty.

As usual, you should know who to ignore and who to listen to. Yup, listen to Batman. And to Ramil Caballero aka Jack Fryday of Magic 89.3, and Rotary Club of Kalayaan CDO “Batman v Superman” block screening chair Kim Daguman.

Then, there’s Kim saying that she heard this from someone: “Paniid instead of panaad.” Which some Pinoys might have indulged in during their Holy Week vacay. Hehe. But what matters is, all that sun and sea must have had a relaxing effect on you, enough to catapult you to infinity and beyond.

Wait, catapult, infinity, beyond… Another Batman-versus-Superman movie? Nah. The next will be “Captain America: Civil War,” starring Captain America and Iron Man, with the special appearance of Spider-Man. But not even Spidey or that spider crawling towards you can reverse your decision to have no more block screenings. Thus, you’re not looking for Dory anymore. You mourned the loss of having that as the last block screening for your term. But still, goodbye, “Finding Dory.” What have you found instead? The pink stapler! Your beloved pink stapler!