One 8-year old day, I woke up too early in the morning in search for my slippers which I left in the living room of our home. I could get whacked for this, I said with my kiddie mind, I spent the wee small hours trying to copy Bridget Riley's optical art in my drawing book. It was the '60s and Optical Art was a fad. My Mama always said that I should have my slippers at my bedside when I wake up each morning, she did not like to see me unshod...I should be "well-shod". Lost in the images of my optical deviated drawings, I tip-toed to the living room.

They were there, those strange people, sitting in the "sala"(living room). Perhaps waiting for Papa to wake up to consult something about land problems or some legal advice...They must have come from a far off land, I thought...they had strange faces and looked tired in color...a sickly grey...but their eyes were too large to be considered as eyes...they looked like dark sunglasses the movie actors wore but they seemed stuck to their sickly skin..No nose, no mouth..but some vertical ridge, tiny holes and a slit.

I managed to smile a sleepy smile. These people must be some kind of breed, some kind of mestizo, perhaps as there are many breeds of humans as there are to dogs in Tito Dodong's kennels...Well, what of it...

The Mother (well, I guess she was a mama for she had a little one in her lap too that looked like her) was garbed in some cloud-like cloth around her and was sitting on the sofa near my parents bedroom. That was the Father beside her I guess, with the same big head and dark sunglasses eyes....but he had no clothes on! When they saw me, they rose and pattered towards our front door, which was slightly open, then some gaseous chute that took place of our stairway (we were living in the 2^nd floor of a rented home) took and gobbled them up...then the stairway was seen again...

I rubbed my moted eyes..I wasn't dreaming! I know I was not! Here I am in the sala, unshod and my slippers are there under the sofa! And who were those people with such strange faces, clothes and gait? Papa really got weird clients!

That was a childhood experience I never forgot and I do not fail sharing it to my friends who think of me as an oddball. It's okay, I'm telling the truth, for till now that strange experience gave birth to many strange experiences I encounter in my life..from adolescence to adulthood...

Last November 2004, I was on my way to Bacolod to attend the ViVa Conference. When the Cebu ferry I was riding was nearing Mactan island, I felt it again...I mean..those encounters. Up in the dark cloudless night sky I saw something long and shaped like a dog bone (an Alpo dirigible, a friend teasingly guffaws when told about this incident). It had two untwinkling flourescent-like lights on each end. They were too big to be called stars and too near to be called planets..But that "thing" was stationary in the dark night sky. A handfull of people where on the "barandilla" (railings) of the ferry, some stared at it but many of them DID NOT WONDER! I thought: they SEE but do NOT BELIEVE WHAT THEY SEE and dismiss it instead, so they HAVE NEVER SEEN IT AT ALL.

A man came and stood two arms length away from me in the barandilla. I knew he saw what I saw and we were waiting for each other to strike up a conversation. I guess he wanted to ask me but he thought I'd think him daft, so I broke the uneasiness by saying: "What is that?" I puckered my lips and used it to point to the object...

So I am not the only sentient one in the boat, we struck up a conversation of many things while watching the object in the sky...then the strangest moment happened:

When the suns first rays of light lit up the graying sky, the silhouette of the object just VANISHED! There was no whirring sound of movement on that object, but only the stillness of sunrise and the lapping of the waves...Our eyes were glued on it as it just slowly disappeared with the rays...But both of us knew IT WAS STILL THERE, but invisible.

In Bacolod, while enjoying the Conference proceedings, I got a text message from a Wiccan friend in Cebu that the Coven in Iloilo saw a UFO in the sky two days ago while they were having their retreat in the beach. That was exactly the same time I saw the object in the sky near the Mactan-Cebu channel. I have never told of that experience to my Wiccan friends then..

This phenomenon has always been with me. This puts my mind to think: why are "Papa's Clients" or the "People Next Door" with me all the time? After Whitley Strieber's Communion and Transformation novels came out, I knew I wasn't the only Oddball around here..It made me think the same way Janet Bergmark, in her book, In the Presence of Aliens that these encounters are a gift, a gift of a Search for a Purpose in this Human Life..That deep in the "Alien" soul within us we search for the true meaning of Human Life...that we are all experiencing a unique reality in our many multi-dimensional universe. We must live it well.

(part 2: The Dulce Papers and Seeming Coincidences)