The 3 Questions Asked by the Great Gardener to Men

I REMEMBER the dream of Lady Arwen when men tried raping the forest and the garden of trees and everything that breaths therein. When the Great Gardener arrived, he called on those responsible. He asked:
       1 - WHERE ARE YOU?

Then when men showed up in fear and trembling, he heard them out reasoned:

    "We heard your voice in the garden and we're afraid. We saw ourselves poor and naked so we hid." 

Thus He asked them again the second time around:
       2 - WHO INFLUENCED YOU?

They chorused in reply blaming other than themselves. Then in sadness, He asked them in finality:
      3 - WHY DID YOU DO IT?

Still defiant, they insisted that they have been forced to doing it out of deception.

Such are men since the time of Adam and Even. Always fast to draw, wanting to have the cake and eat them too; wanting to be gods, knowing good and evil. Precisely that when the appointed time arrived, His only begotten Son heeded the call saying, "Here I am, I come to do your will."

(A reflection on Genesis 3:9-13)

A Reflection on the Master's Piano Sonata No. 8 in C Minor Op. 13

   BEETHOVEN'S Symphony No. 5 in C Minor Op. 67 is playing in my head. Alive! A movement so sure of itself (technically, there are four movements in the opus). How I wish I am that kind of music!

Well, I suspect that I am on the road to recovery. No. The wound's tender scar still hurts. But I do not know where this sense of tomorrow comes from albeit the pain I am enduring that shied my psyche from considering the possibility of a morrow.

I have been alienated from Ea or to say it more aptly, technologies have alienated me from Ea. And there are restless sleepless nights to contend with. Such are manifestations of fear and worries, and of failing to grasp the graces of those hypocritic days.

I am still sad like the Master's Moonlight Sonata (Piano Sonata No. 14). Yet I know that someday I shall celebrate Ea's company and we shall dance and run across the fields of lilies as if enchanted by the Master's Pastoral  (Symphony No. 6). Then we shall be one once again, and in perfect union, we shall be enjoying the panorama of the valley of trees and the fields yonder, mesmerized by the glittering beads of diamonds on the wet grasses on a summer's morn. Playing like two innocent children in the Garden, we shall be holding each other's hands dancing and laughing out loud amid the flowers abloom. Up over us in the wide expanse of blue sky are birds singing and cheeping their kind of song.

As the sun sets, we will sit side by side each other watching the sun as it kisses the horizon in silence. We will be speechless as well to commune with this manifestation--for a long moment, sitting quietly, thinking of nothing, pondering the quietness. Just being in that momentous present, aware but not judgmental of each other's presence, contemplating and experiencing the beauty of being alive, of being present in that instant as the sun sets.

Filled with hope that a new day will dawn upon us, we shall embrace each other with certainty that we will make it together to the end of our time (be it that we experience its reality differently as in Lorentz transformation).

Such is my reflection (or if you prefer, daydreaming) of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 13.

The Unconscious Rowed on the Jal-o River

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 overwhelmed me. 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 Morning Sun Breaking Free

     YOU ARE so lovely today and dashing in yellow. Hypocritic is your dawn and yet as you breaks, you unfurl your radiance and show us the blue sky and the birds sunbathing in festive jubilation.

Meeting Einstein and the Elves Somewhere in Time

     WE GO BACK to our layman's and contextual erudition about Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, this time, by taking into considerations those "experiences" of a number of people who were privileged of "straying into elfland".

Consider this one. The other day, I met a weirdo for an old man who claimed that he is already a young man when Balete was made into an arabal of New Washington in 1904. I was conducting an interview to supplement the materials available at hand about my town during the time of the Americans when I chanced to meet the man. Sensing my skepticism, he qualified that the secret of his long life is that he visited elfland when he was just turning 16. He intimated that he had a special relationship with an elfin lady who invited him into her abode for a short visit. As far as he can recall, he whiled the night in that "wonderful place" and hesitantly went home the morning after. Upon meeting his family though, he was surprised to learned that they had been frantically searching for him for more than six months and after a year had given up hope of finding him alive.

A visualization of the Lorentz transformation
(Photo credit: Wikipedia org) 

Tay Jose Dandoy, in a separate interview I made in 2000 explained this phenomenon based on the cosmology of our folks mapping out our world into 7 layers (sanib) with our existential world being in the middle of it (We are from the middle earth, not Frodo Baggins, mind you. Hehehe). He avers that to "wander" into the other layers then requires us to travel in the speed of light. The old man and his relatives must have had experienced what physicists termed as "Lorentz transformation" where their respective frames of reference had affected their sense of time. Is that possible?

There are other fantastic stories from a number of people who claimed to have visited elfland. The common denominator for such claim is that they all lost track of their time in the sense that time seemed to run slower "in there" than in our world. The other denominator of course is the sense of deja vu and the sweet voice in one's "pocket watch" that pleads: "Come back to me."

Chocolate Pig

VERA, my youngest, aged 3, loves to eat what she called "chocolate pig". She often requests that I buy the ingredients whenever she learned that I'm going to the market. I can't recall exactly how she invented those words. "Chocolate pig." Have you heard about it? I seldom prepare Dinuguan (Blood Stew) not because the kids don't love it but due the fact that we make it an option to limit our pork consumption to only once-a-week.

Lately, the request has turned into demand, and I’ve had to devise means to lessen the frequency without dampening her joy. Sometimes I distract her with White Rabbit candies or a slice of cassava pudding, but she circles back, determined. To her, “chocolate pig” is not a dish—it is a promise, a ritual, a taste of comfort.

I smile at the thought: how language reshapes food, how a child’s tongue baptizes tradition with new names. Dinuguan, once a dish of restraint, has become in our household a symbol of persistence, of Vera’s stubborn delight. And I, caught between health and happiness, find myself negotiating with a three‑year‑old philosopher whose wisdom is simple—if it tastes good, why not call it chocolate?

Einstein and the New Years

VIDA, my 9-year old daughter, came over my study the other night to ask me about the difference between "our New Year" and that of the Chinese.

Now that's a though question to answer and elucidate to a 9-year old inquisitive mind. How would you talk to her about the relativity of time, the lunar and the Gregorian calendars in such a fashion that she would be able to grasp them by their horns? Ah, the dilemma of Ms. Enriquetta Vidal of the Supreme Court is far easier to handle than this one!

What is new is old and vise versa. The illusional gaps between the past, the present and the future are indeed convincing ones. They give us something to differentiate, something to discriminate, some memories to retrospect, some expectations to look up to. Nevertheless, they remain such an illusion. And I am not ready to spoil the joy of this illusion from the young psyche of my daughter.

So I told my daughter that there is hardly a difference between the two. "It is just like you and your Nanang Vita. She's the Gregorian New Year and your are the Chinese New Year. Both of you are life. It is just that she 's ahead of you by one year but then, you are all my daughters and I both love you. So here we are in polka dots gathering round fruits to celebrate and welcome the new years together."

A Directory of Bisaya Rice Grown in Upland Balete

 THERE have been some animated discussions concerning the effect in the biodiversity of our environment vis-a-vis the introduction of genetically altered rice to supplement the staple food in the impoverished and Vitamin-A deficient countries such as the Philippines.  Its repercussion reached the far flung mountainous sitios of Benitinan and Dayas when then parish priest of Balete, the Rev. Msgr. Pedro C. Frac collaborated with Prof. Dr. Klaus Becker of the University of Hohenheim sometime in 2000. The collaboration brought forth some developments that benefited the people of Balete and the academe, among others was a thorough and insightful look into the aspects of nutritional values of indigenous upland rice varieties grown in Balete and Libacao. Several scholars came over to help out the collaboration. One of them was Michael Frie, a German national who managed to come up with his diploma thesis on the subject at hand. The chemical composition of rice grain identified hereunder are based on his work done sometime in April 2002. 

Name	Crude Protein (% DM)	Crude Lipid (%DM)	Gross Energy (kJ/gDM)	Beta-carotene (ppm/DM)	Phosphorous (%DM)
Aromatic Brown	8.1	1.9	17.8	0.030	0.41
Bagoean 1	9.9	2.2	18.0	0.028	0.35
Bagoean 2	10.4	2.6	nd	0.040	0.37
Benibi	9.8	2.9	18.2	0.033	0.40
Bihud 1	11.6	2.8	18.1	0.007	nd
Bihud 2	9.2	1.5	17.6	0.019	0.36
Bihud 3	9.9	2.3	nd	0.000	0.28
Binangdan 1	8.6	1.6	17.2	0.023	0.16
Binangdan 2	7.0	2.0	nd	0.000	nd
Buhangin	8.9	2.4	nd	0.009	0.32
Burok	10.4	2.6	17.9	0.000	0.28
Calulay	10.0	2.6	nd	0.000	0.24
Camoros	13.7	2.0	18.3	0.020	0.32
Canato	10.3	2.5	17.8	nd	0.30
Capukao	9.6	2.5	17.8	0.023	0.26
Dayuyo, Sticky Rice	10.3	2.9	17.8	0.011	0.35
Diamante 1	9.8	2.6	nd	0.000	nd
Diamante 2	8.6	2.4	17.8	0.016	0.22
Di Castilla	10.9	2.7	17.8	0.061	0.43
Dinolores 1	9.0	2.5	17.8	0.035	0.41
Dinolores 2	8.5	2.3	17.9	0.028	0.39
Dinolores 3	10.2	2.1	nd	0.000	0.25
Entang 1	8.2	2.1	17.6	0.016	0.32
Entang 2	10.5	2.1	17.8	0.000	0.30
Guyud	10.0	2.5	nd	0.000	0.22
Inabaka	9.9	2.0	nd	0.000	0.24
Ininyam 1	9.5	2.4	17.6	0.024	0.35
Ininyam 2	9.1	2.6	nd	0.000	0.24
Kabalbag	7.6	2.1	17.6	0.055	0.28
Kabiray 1	9.9	2.5	17.8	0.015	0.38
Kabiray 2	10.0	2.6	17.9	0.018	0.21
Kabiray 3	9.8	2.5	nd	0.013	0.32
Kabiray 4	9.6	2.2	nd	0.013	nd
Kabugna	8.9	3.0	17.7	0.013	0.27
Kabunbun 1	7.6	2.3	17.6	0.029	0.27
Kabunbun 2	9.4	2.3	17.8	0.031	0.26
Kabunbun 3	9.0	2.0	nd	0.000	0.24
Kabunbun 4	9.3	1.9	nd	0.023	nd
Kaburok	10.1	2.1	nd	0.009	0.34
Kalonggo	7.5	2.0	17.4	0.000	0.25
Kalesod	8.4	2.6	17.6	0.018	0.25
Kapino 1	9.5	3.0	18.1	nd	0.35
Kapino 2	11.0	2.5	18.1	0.010	0.29
Kapino 3	10.0	2.8	18.0	0.022	0.45
Karaya	9.9	2.8	nd	0.000	0.30
Karibo	8.4	2.0	nd	0.009	0.25
Kasilag	8.3	2.2	nd	0.125	0.27
Kenaw-Etan 1	11.0	2.5	18.3	0.022	0.25
Kenaw-Etan 2	9.6	2.2	nd	0.013	0.27
Keong -Go	9.0	2.4	17.9	0.022	0.26
Kinabuno 1	9.8	2.3	18.0	0.014	0.21
Kinabuno 2	9.1	2.7	nd	0.000	nd
Kinabuno 3	9.5	2.1	nd	0.000	0.25
Kinaures	11.1	2.4	17.5	0.013	0.19
Kinta	9.9	2.7	nd	0.073	0.33
Kutsiyam 1	9.1	2.4	17.9	0.005	0.28
Kutsiyam 2	10.8	2.2	nd	0.013	0.17
Kuragang	10.7	2.9	18.3	0.021	0.021
Mabilonia 1	9.1	2.2	18.2	0.010	0.24
Mabilonia 2	8.3	2.3	nd	0.000	0.31
Malagkit 1	10.3	2.2	nd	0.032	0.21
Malagkit 2	8.3	2.3	nd	0.000	0.31
Malero	9.9	2.3	nd	0.019	0.20
Manumbaeay 1	10.9	2.3	18.2	0.033	0.34
Manumbaeay 2	9.2	2.6	18.0	0.021	0.27
Manumbaeay 3	10.7	2.6	17.9	0.000	0.22
Manumbaeay 4	10.3	2.4	nd	0.009	0.22
Manumbaeay 5	10.3	2.1	nd	0.023	nd
Milagrosa 1	9.3	2.3	17.8	0.017	0.36
Milagrosa 2	8.5	2.4	nd	0.000	0.33
Milagrosa 3	8.6	2.3	nd	0.000	nd
Milagrosa 4	8.0	1.9	17.2	0.013	nd
Minantika (Malagkit)	9.5	2.9	17.9	0.036	0.37
Munahan Bungduan	8.8	2.1	nd	0.000	0.27
Purple Glutinous	9.6	2.6	17.8	0.042	0.38
Quiaidonse (Bisaya)	10.0	2.1	17.6	0.023	0.36
Tabao	9.7	2.0	nd	0.009	0.28
Tipakla 1	8.7	2.4	17.7	0.016	0.26
Tipalka 2	8.4	2.2	nd	0.000	0.26
Tukhaw	9.1	2.5	17.8		0.26
Vinernal 1	9.4	2.2	17.5	0.009	0.37
Vinernal 2	11.8	2.0	17.6	0.000	0.33
A (no name)	9.1	2.5	17.9	0.019	0.29
B	10.5	0.8	17.7	0.007	0.36
C	7.4	2.4	17.9	0.006	0.17
D	7.5	3.2	18.0	0.015	nd

I do not pretend to fully grasp their impact on the issue of environmental ethics much on its scholarship. My bias however is for the preservation of these varieties and the greater appreciation of their unique nutritional values that makes the taga-ilaya (the highlander) the more resilient as compared to the taga-ilawod (the lowlander).