By the Jal-o River

Handumanan I have been searching for you all along. This restlessness and those vain attempts to satisfy it were but manifestations of my searching. I've searched for you in the mountains, in Mozart's great opus, in many a woman's caress and among the carousing of the Friday Boys at Arlie's place. But you were gone. Some years back, I found myself running away from you. I was afraid to admit what I then perceived as a weakness. I dared asking you when I was already cornered: Who are by the way? Why am I so grateful that you're alive and well? Why do I kept on praying to God that you may have the best life can offer? Why can't I touch you and defile you? Why do I care so much about you? I do now have the answer to those questionings. I have one singular answer to all of them. But I reckon it is already late to tell what it is. Much of my life has already been spent in frantic searching only to find that the day is almost done. So for the sake of tho

There have been efforts on the part of my colleagues of holding trainings/seminars right in the island of Boracay. The regional league even managed of having catered the delegates to an "eco-tour" there after our hectic three-day National Executive Meeting cum seminar in Roxas City last March. I could not fault them for their resolved. It is open season in Boracay and typically since it had been "declared" as the national tourist destination, all roads lead to that sugar-fine white beach. All roads, except mine. I used to love beachcombing along the 2-point-something km beach front from Manoc-manoc to Yapak. That was when one seldom sees alien structures along its shoreline. Yonder, as the sun sets, one would only see a few fishermen's sailboats afloat in silence before the reddening horizon. It was a time when bats dominated its sky at dusk leaving one filled with wonder as she/he reclined quietly on its immaculate sand. The quiet of the day was broken only b

Responsible Parenting Movement and Natural Family Planning Program in Balete - Balete, Banwa Ko

There was a time when the early settlers by the Jal-o regarded the river with a sense of foreboding. While it served as the main thoroughfare, their public baths and laundry pond, the river held many mysteries kept hidden among its lush mangroves and adjoining swamps and tributaries. Rumors and reports of actual sightings of monstrous amphibians wading its waters had been told in every household. The authorities had warned the villagers to stay out of the water especially at nighttime. Of those crocodiles, Maeocong was regarded as the dominant bull--the king of the Jae-o. He was long as a boroto (local banca) and heavier than an adult carabao. It was said that he was more deadly if paired with his favorite mate, Pingan Nonay . Together, they wreck terror along the Anao and Bag-ot swamps. For a time, the settlers tolerated their fear. They lived their lives by the Jal-o with that ominous awareness that they were not the masters of the river. But such fears had hounded them even in th

I saw myself by the Jal-o River-or was it the Jal-o? I was into a tribal village where the people that populated the area were skeletal. I wondered what became of them for they seemed lifeless. I sensed though that they're all alive and that something evil ruled over them. So sensing the danger, I fled from their place and continued with my rafting into another place. As I reached my destination, the milieu presented itself as familiar. The place was abandoned for quite a long time. As I surveyed it though, a feeling of déjà vu came into my consciousness. I seemed to recall that I'd been there. Tried as I must, I couldn't figure out when and how. I was awaken by some noise when I was almost grasping that sense of familiarity.

A candle is burning in our makeshift altar. It overshadows a tiny bottle--a remnant of some injectible meds. Behind the bottle and the candle is a dead clock mounted on a replica of a Stradivarius violin. A religious person though would not consider it an altar. For one thing, no religious icon or image could be seen within its vicinity. For another, nobody is seen praying before it since it was set up by Mae this morning; no priest has blessed it and no god has taken noticed of it. But it is an altar. It serves its purpose. It gives me focus. The sights of the burning flame dancing up and about stabs my heart and holds my feet from rushing about . That tiny bottle before the altar which the candle is lighting encapsulates my child. So it is through it that I sent up my sighs, offered my weeping heart and hurting spirit to my God and my Friend. My child, it died even before it sees the earth's beauty. It was forced out of its mother's womb because it was alre