Afternoon flight [SWF]

@ mirandablue

When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.

@ mirandablue

When the people look like ants---Pull.

When the ants look like people---Pray.

@ mirandablue

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky. 

- Rabindranath Tagore

Posted for Sky-Watch Friday

Kissing Rocks - Watery Wednesday

This place was our playground when we were kids---a small rocky tip of a cove locals call "kabatuan". In my teenage years, I heard people call this place "Kissing Rocks", referring to two huge rocks behind the mangrove that moved closer through years of wave action. But my friends and I credited the name to the fact that lovers rendezvoused at these rocks before sunset. I returned to this place on Monday morning with my siblings and cousins to reminisce the countless summers our grandmother brought us here. We buried our grandmother, Lola Fanny, on Sunday afternoon. She was 97.

Posted for Watery Wednesday

Going home

a favorite past-time

This morning, I woke up in a panic, thinking I was going to miss my flight. I reached for my cel phone to check the time and noticed the post-it note hanging from the lampshade. In the post-it is the list of the things I need to pack. Realizing that today is a Tuesday brought out a sleepy smile…I lay back and savor another 20 minutes in bed. Tomorrow, I’m going home.

Holy Week usually brings me to places I’ve never been before. Instead of meditating at home during Lent, I find new places more conducive to reflect on my faults and virtues. But this year, I decided to go home for the Holy Week holidays, to be with my relatives in Negros, visit my 96-year-old grandmother, catch up with old classmates and childhood friends, and explore my old hometown.

After all the journeys I’ve made, there’s a primordial instinct to go back to where it all began, where I came from, where my roots are. I am a firm believer in the old saying, “Huwag maging dayuhan sa sariling bayan” (Let’s not be strangers in our own land), so I explore the archipelago every chance I got. But paid little attention to my hometown’s nuances that makes it different from all the other places I’ve seen and visited. In a way, I’m a stranger to the place that nurtured my childhood, been away for most of my adult life. I know a week is not enough, but I’m going home and try to rediscover my roots, and perhaps, in the process, rediscover myself.