A pretty song--that's how I remember Simon and Garfunkel's "April Come She Will." It's the month "when streams are ripe and swelled with rain." But I guess the boys were referring to spring in their hemisphere.
I used to spin S&G's greatest hits on my parents' stereo back in college until I had memorized some lyrics. There was "I Am a Rock" whose lyrics struck me to my very core at a time when I was over-sensitive and in need of much desensitizing from a world that I thought I couldn't understand.
I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.
But years and decades have passed, I've somehow "moved on", achieved a certain amount of "closure", and the girl whose body I once inhabited is increasingly fading away. I put those words in quotes because they're, well, so current among those who would play psychologists.
One way of getting out of the prison of introversion is to take photos, to look at the world through a lens clearly. This I have discovered through the years of blogging and doing reportorial coverage for a living (correction: for survival in the big city).
I get near instantaneous results. These results make visible some inner conversations (more of monologues) I have with myself. Somehow I'm able to share the serenity or the turmoil (whichever I'm going through at any moment) with people out there. It does make me feel less lonesome, an alone-ness heightened when one is in the boisterous company of family and of friends.
Typhoon Chedeng is expected tonight or tomorrow. Weather forecasters predict that its tail end will pass through the province of La Union, not too far from Baguio. So before these pink roses are blown away, let them live through these images that I took two days ago while on a morning walk with my grandchild.
No comments:
Post a Comment