Saturday Evening Posts
June 6-12 Edition
A Thousand Summers
Episode 12
So off we went. In San Pablo, Laguna, the town's biggest
grocery, Ultimart, was dwarfed by the billboard of the local politicians
pretending they're not campaigning.
It called to mind the years when I was a poll watcher as a youth volunteer for the Philippine Pastoral Council
For Responsible Voting, the non-partisan electoral arm of the Catholic Church
accredited by the Commission On Elections, and my eventual disillusionment with
politics.
Also, I felt that the thrill of
being in the countryside is somehow diminished when I hear Metro Manila radio
stations, not yet knowing that their regional counterparts imitate the same
format.
Or maybe I'm being too idealistic.
I have an open invitation from a friend in Nueva Ecija, in the remote town of
Papaya. The first time I was in that province was in the 90s, in a rest house
in Cabiao where I was chased by a giant goose.
I told him I want to swim in a
clearwater river; ride a carabao in the rice paddies; eat grilled fish freshly
caught, with steaming-hot rice cooked on a clay pot then served over banana
leaves on a long table outdoors. He said my ideas are old-school,
romantic visions of an idyllic, pre-War past. I pointed out that the generation
of our parents still remain married because they were able to find a love to
last a lifetime.
So, I told him, it's cool to be
old-school!
To Be Continued Next Saturday
Jonathan Aquino's Journals
April 10, 2015, Friday
I bought six books earlier this week. I finished Time Is An
Illusion by the spiritual healer Chris Griscom and K-PAX by Gene Brewer. Right
now I'm happily halfway through Nancy Nelson's Evenings With Cary Grant. I also
got a special edition of an NIV Bible. I'm looking forward to Robert Parker's
Spenser novel Mortal Stakes and the 1678 immortal classic The Pilgrim's
Progress by John Bunyan.
K-PAX
4 comments:
My life is a contuing journey of awakening and self-discovery. I love my early morning walks when I finish work. This is an excerpt from my journals for June 4, 2015:
All that garbage in the head, as Socs tells Dan in Peaceful Warrior which I've been watching in the company tablets everyday since last week, prevents you from experiencing the key to happiness: living in the present. The time is Now. The place is Here. Who I am is This Moment.
"Sometimes I don't know what I will find, I only know it's a matter of time..." ~ Foreigner, Waiting For A Girl Like You
"It's not how long I held you in my arms, what matters is how sweet the years together..." ~ Kenny Rankin, What Matters Most
It was Friday the 13th as I was reading Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 horror classic Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde near midnight of February 2015. "The creature who crept into my house that night," as Lanyon wrote to Utterson upon witnessing the ghastly metamorphosis, "was, on Jekyll's own confession, known by the name of Hyde and hunted for in every corner of the land as the murderer of Carew."
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