Apparition at our Balete tree

A day or two after I cut down the thumb-sized branches of the Balete tree,  Ja woke me up to see what hung from among the leaves in the morning of September 8. This was the amazing sight I saw.

It hung there unmoving for the entire day that Ja suspected it was already dead. "Butterflies die so fast," he said.

But it was not just an ordinary butterfly because it was five or 10 times as big. For three days, it hung there unmoving until it disappeared. As soon as Ja saw that it was no longer there, he went up the stairs to find if it was in Pa's old room. "Why did you do that?I asked Ja, who always saw some supernatural meaning to extraordinarily beautiful phenomenon. "Why did you have to check the moth's body upstairs?"  

"I was expecting to find a man with butterfly wings in the old man's room," he said.

Pruning the ailing durian tree

It was not exactly pruning--but the middle part of the durian tree near our house was rotting. I've been constantly looking up at it as Ja and I sit sipping coffee every morning since we arrived and settled here in Lower in April this year and I worried that there might be a strong wind that would cause that part of the tree to give in and land straight up on the roof of the house. So, I decided to ask our neighbor, a super climber named Nick, to cut the part of the tree above the rot, which was a considerable one. This is the second tree that I cut--or if you could call that prune--after we arrived. The first one was the part of the Lomboy tree that threatened to reach the electric wire. 

These experiences have given me valuable insights on how it is to live here, the attitude of people about trees, that extraordinary skill (and talent) to climb trees at such height, discovering snakes inside the rot and others that I could not bring myself to write yet. 

But here are some of the photos of this event in my life at Lower.

Going home to B'la

My Oregano survived!

Over the weekend, Ja was becoming restless and insisted that we went home to B'la to see the impact of the quake on the abandoned house. We saw cracks on the wall and decided it would no longer be safe if another strong quake struck. Water from the last rain had flooded the backyard and drowned most of the plants with mud but I was grateful that my Oregano under the care of Titing had survived!

Things that fascinate me

NOTES FROM MY JOURNAL
September 13, 2012 

What did photographer Nick Onken say in his book “photo trekking?” 

Choose the subjects that interest you. 

Don’t only photograph subjects just because you are paid to do it  but explore also those that naturally fascinate you and attract you for some reasons.

This is how you develop your style, he wrote. 

Just a bit like writing, I think. But what are the things that really fascinate me? 

Alleyways. Skies (although I just found  how their colors change at different hours of day, as Ja used to point out to me). Mirrors. Doors. Windows. Labyrinth. Churches. Buildings. People. Roads. Shapes. Sillhouettes. Books. Shadows. Ceramics. Jugs and Jars.  Signs and writings on the walls. Cats.

Roads. Especially roads.

Rivers.

I discover this journal because I was looking for traces of Pa among the things I wrote before.

Sunrise Breaking

This picture, taken when sunrise was breaking beyond the veranda of our home in B'la outlining the leaves of the Song of India, makes me think of my Pa. 
At the height of his ailment - those long uncertain months after his first hospital stay when we deemed it good to let him stay in the city - I used to leave Davao City at dawn to go to Bansalan to oversee the weighing of copra.  I was so insecure about the whole proceeding because: first, I didn't even know how to read the weighing scales used by the Chinese merchants to weigh sacks and sacks of our produce, so, you can imagine how strained I was, standing there, pretending to understand, when all the while, I was feeling like an idiot (of course, this did not last long because Pamela Chua, a Tsinay from Binondo, whispered to me the secret code--okay, this part is purely isturyang hubog, see, I put it inside the parenthesis?!); second, there was no one in the family overseeing the workers in the farm, which actually meant, we are slowly, gradually but surely, losing control of things over there.  So, to calm my nerves, I used to leave Davao City too early, when everyone else was still snoring;  to see to it that I arrived at the house at dawn so that I had enough time to be at the farm at 6 am, when everybody least expected me.  This would allow some time for me to get to know the people and to observe what was going on in the farm (though, I hardly had two hours to do all these).  During those months, I had studied the proceedings of the farm and studied the people there just like the way I read my books.  [Of course, I eventually developed a grasp of the politics and economics of the place, developed a feel of whom to trust and whom to be wary, honed my skills to read people's hearts and people's intentions; but I admit that up to now, I still can't tell a coconut ready for harvest  from a buko or a banana!  Uh-okay, I can tell a banana, but to tell a mature coconut fruit ready for harvest from a buko continues to be a puzzle to my untrained eyes! To compensate for this, however, I knew someone I can trust who can tell the difference.] 
Once, I overshot my target hour of arrival in Bansalan and had left Davao City at 2 am, which was rather too early. I arrived home when it was still dark and drank the loneliness of the house. I went to the upper bedroom and saw Pa's things and shirts scattered in different places in our frantic search for things to bring that day we left for the hospital. I felt this searing pain as I saw the pillow where Pa's head used to lie, the old Bisaya magazines he used to thumb through and had left in the corner, still half-folded; the glass, still half-full of water, where he drank that night, before he was seized by the pain which made him say, "Dios ko, Dios ko, Gino-o," as he made the sign of the cross; which made me send a text message to my sisters, "It must really be painful because I've never ever heard him say, Dios ko, before;" which made my sisters, hundreds of kilometers away, race for home days after. 
Still, I can't forget the sight: his slippers which were scattered in different directions, the discarded clothes, the poor state of his old shoes, worn, weather-beaten, gathering dust in a cordizo;  and even the dusty nito basket hooked to a nail on the wall, where he kept his documents.   

Why can't we just shut the door and only allow our dearest ones to enter?

The funeral did not really allow me enough room to mourn and grieve for my Pa.  There were so many people around; most of them someone I knew from childhood, but not all of them were offering a word of comfort. Some were there only to measure you and be critical of who you are. Some were really so tactless and mean that instead of consoling us in  times of grief, they only succeeded in upsetting me, and taking me away from thoughts of my Pa. For instance, there was this guy, who was so rude, he said I must have been so old by now because I was already far ahead in school when he and Eve were still in Grade One. Of course, he was Eve's barcada. "Day, ikaw ba, tiguwang na jud ka kaayo karun, Day, no, kay Inday na man ka daan atong naa mi sa Grade One ni Eve?" he asked. Of course, I told him, Hoy, I was far ahead of you because I was very young when I entered school! I was a visitor at age 5 but I was good enough to pass Grade One. (I should have told the guy this: I bet, you were still struggling to read your first alphabets at a very late age, while I only breezed through it at 5! But I was not quick enough to say that!)
Recalling it now, I realized, I was not quick enough to shoot back my killer one-liner (the way I used to) because I kept telling myself I was in my father's funeral and I had to be very careful not to make a scene with tactless and unwelcome visitors!  There was another guy, who was already drunk and started making some statements about the eldest daughter, because he mistook me for the youngest.  But our youngest sister said,  "Ah, she's always mistaken as the youngest," which immediately alerted the guy. I was curious what that drunkard was about to say about me before he was stopped by his companions.  Was he going to blurt out something about my political beliefs? Or why I hadn't married?! 
Then, the wake was really a wake, because it forced you to stay awake, even if your body was already crumbling for lack of sleep.  I had to get along with some people, including the driver who told me pointblank in between gulps of Fundador, I should be ashamed of myself because at my age, I still don't have a house and a car, I should strive to have one! As if those were all that mattered in the world. [But maybe, he was right?!] I told the foolish fellow those were not the things that I treasure most. What I treasure most are things that people like him could not see. But the guy was so stupid to even understand a word of what I was saying. 
Except for some kindred souls--like the two women friends from the Seventh Day Adventist, who offered me some beautiful verses to light up the dark moments of grief (and surprisingly, they belong to another religious sect and only came to pay their respect), most of the people at the funeral really upset me.  I was wondering why can't we just make the funeral a private affair?  Why not shut the door and only allow those closed to us to enter?

Lancelot By the River

Pa asked, "Why do you nurse such stupid dream of following a river? Of tracing where it came from, and then, following its path as it snakes around mountains, through ridges and ravines and meanders when it reaches the plains before it joins another river it meets along the way and form a bigger, stronger, and perhaps, noisier river, crisscrossing wide flat lands, sometimes, losing direction, forgetting its journey as it spreads itself too thin in some landscape and then, gathering momentum as it reaches some purposeful ravines that rushes onward towards the sea? Following rivers!" Pa exclaimed, "Isn't that a useless enterprise?"

Now, Back to Work!

B'la is a fictional place that doesn't exist only in the imagination. It exists in the minds of people who once lived or have always been living there even if they're no longer there physically.