By the Jal-o River

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

   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 agai

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.  

     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.

     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 surp

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 l

 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 hereunde