Two hours of the day I love

The 4 p.m. sun comes through the translucent bathroom window and casts this kind of light on the beds in my mother's house. Photo by Babeth Lolarga

Foodie-food critic Ruth Reichl has been blogging lately about the things she loves, from New Zealand's extra virgin olive oil to Jacobsen salt. With the theme of light and shadow that I've chosen to get the composition of a daily blog out of the way so I can return to earning a living faster, searching for the images to go with said theme has become an exercise in serendipity. The images all call out to me; I hardly exert an effort to search for them.

Four in the afternoon, if I got it right from my informal photography classes under artist Tita Velasco Lim and from the photojournalists I've worked with off and on since 1976, is the golden hour for those who dare press the button and shoot with available light outdoors or indoors.

Eight in the morning in Baguio is also a treasured hour, especially when the sky is cloudless and wears the bluest of blue. This happens especially in December.

The leaves in our small garden create odd patterns--you can see them on the surface of the woman (she shouldn't have worn a printed sweater, but damn, it was cold even with the sun up).

When the next opportunity comes along, I shall put a white blanket over the chair or I shall wear something white to make the shadows more interesting. Here my husband caught me pretending that I'm sporting a full-body tattoo.

Soaking Vitamin D from Mr. Sunshine at 8 a.m. Photo by Rolly Fernandez

The ordinary and the ecstatic

Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.

-William Martin

On an ordinary day in the week just ended, I got up after hours of reading, sitting and trying to put words together to stretch a bit, see what's going in the world outside the nook where I do my work.

From a corner of my mother's kitchen, I saw this play of light and shadow. If I only knew how to turn on the video component of an old digicam, I would've recorded the dancing shadows of the atis tree from outside, how the sun during the sunset hour caused this shadow play to happen.

Yes, Mr. Martin, I feel like that ordinary child who happened upon something extraordinary.

Thank you, oh Divine Master, who leads us not into temptation but to visions of the ecstatic in the every day.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga