I'll tell you all about it

 

But not tonight. Tonight, I still have to read, I still have to write, I still have to clean my copy of verbal flabs, garbage; I still have to clean my desk, I still have to untangle the tangled threads of my earphone. Threads because I could not remember the right word for it. I'm running out of words nowadays. Maybe, one day, I'll remember. I failed to take the picture of that tall ugly woman in a brown dress and with a bun hair-do, who thought she was young and pretty and she owned the world because she was a Filipina working for the Polish Embassy.  

Beautiful Balete at the Makati Circuit

Just to honor this old Balete tree inside the Makati Circuit where I used to jog every morning maybe five years or so ago because it's only recently that I recognised it to be a Balete tree.  I used to hover and stare at it when I went to take a look at the nearby Pasig river just a couple of steps away and those strange cargo boats passing by, I would turn around to find the tree, fascinated by its thick trunk that looked like roots or branches, wondering what it was, wanting to communicate to the tree because I, too, felt totally abandoned, cast off in that place. I wanted the tree to communicate to me and I never knew it was actually talking to me at that time and it's only now, years later, that I finally hear and understand.  I hope you thrive, beautiful Balete!

 

Old Baclaran Church

Where the tortured face of the crucified Christ hovering over devotees lighting candles  (not in the photo; I'm not supposed to photograph scenes like those) remind me of the face of my Pa as he was battling the advanced stage of adenocarcinoma. 

Then, it dawned on me that the Baclaran church was actually the church of the Mother of Perpetual Help, where part of the suffering humanity come to seek help in the midst of desperation. It was among the first churches in the country to speak up against ejk.

 

Stories old buildings tell

Ja and I were walking along Juna Subdivision on March 22, 2021 when we passed by this old SEC building which was abandoned since the series of quakes that hit this part of Mindanao in the last quarter of 2019. (I've been a sucker for abandoned buildings; the ghastlier they look, the better. Maybe, they remind me of myself, abandoned, neglected, forgotten). It felt like a long time ago when I first came here as a reporter wanting to interview the SEC director and thought this building a very imposing structure--with its white paint and all. 

But looking at its state as we emerged from the long pandemic lockdown, I thought it happened a century ago. 

Though, if you just study the timeline very closely, the series of quakes happened just a quarter before the discovery of a strange coronavirus in Wuhan, China. The news spread only in January 2020 although the disease already raged in that Chinese city in December 2019. So, in a sense, it was not that long ago.  The structure also looked like it was deserted for a hundred years instead of only two years or so. 

My desk during the pandemic