A Pinay in Claude Monet's garden

This Pinay, inspired by the kerchief-covered heads of Anita Magsaysay Ho's farming and fisher folk, I painted in 2012 as a present for my balikbayan bro Junic who came home with his family (wife Amy and kids Sara and Christian) after an absence of over 10 years.

This was given in the spirit of "What can I give you, 'poor' as I am, if I were a carpenter, I'd give you animal shelter, if I were a wood cutter I'd gather fallen branches and not cut wood anymore, and if I were to pick just one European destination in my short bucket list, it would be Monet's garden in Giverny, France."

But since poems and short essays are not exactly tangibles that can be held as homecoming gifts, I painted this work. Bro got around to framing the work himself after it stayed rolled up somewhere in his house for some time. Today he grabbed a ready-made frame from IKEA. He'll send me more pics in the next days of my other works hanging in his Calgary digs. Photo by Junic Lolarga

Momentarily still

"Wake me up when the sun is here na, ha?" That request has been made almost nightly when The Wee One, I think, was able to figure out that with sunrise comes getting up and getting ready for nursery school. We've had to put aside our dark glasses and hats until the weekend when we resume our morning walks. I can think of no more poetic line than her utterance. It brought to mind this compilation of meditative essays, The Other Walk, by Sven Birkerts, wherein he opens his book with these words: "This morning, going against all conventions, I turned right instead of left...Still, going against the grain of my usual track, seeing every single thing from the other side, was suddenly welcome." We'll try that other track, hopefully without hidden dangers or surprises.