My Camelot in the sky

Kai/Butones/The Wee One and I were both dressed warmly to catch another sunset in our lives. We knew how the temperature could take a sudden dip so we arrived at our special spot quite prepared with caps and jackets on.

Although the sun was so radiant at 4:22 p.m., when we reached our high spot, it was suddenly awash with gray--low clouds, fog rolling in, etc., the things that make the City of (vanishing) Pines so appealing to migrants like my family. These are the same elements that lured the American colonialists in the past to seek for their sweaty pale skin the coolness of a hill station. The Cordilleras' rich earth was (still is in some parts) a magnet for miners and mining companies with dreams of striking it richer than rich.

To me Baguio remains that special time-space continuum that allows countless others to come up and begin their lives afresh.

To those who love the Baguio that was, that still is and that, with all our hopes, still can be, here's my sonata of photos in the sequence that I took them, a vision of a sunset that looked like a moon rise.

This was a Holy Tuesday afternoon that was not entirely wasted.

Thanks, Kai, for keeping me company again in this city of my misspent youth, a city that hopefully will be haven for a graceful ageing.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

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