I am writing again. I discovered that I am discovering my poetry. A sign along the lonely road I thread.   Kalipay kung Taguipusoon Pananglitan nga rong aton nga daean Indi eon magsub-eang sa unhan Sa tindahan rong isda nga mub-ead Magapadumdum kimo Nga ikaw ro matuod nga mahae Owa eon it iba pa. Pananglitan nga rong aton nga eandong Indi eon makatao it handong sa hilamon Sa simbahan rong siga it kandila Magapadumdum kimo Ikaw man lang rong kasadya it taguipusoon Owa eon it iba pa. Ag pananglitan nga hilipatan mo Sa madueom, matapo-tapo nga kwarto Ro binaeaybay it kahapon magapadumdum kimo Ikaw ratong ginatumod ko, hinigugma nga engkantada Kalipay ag baeay ku baeatyagon nga nagapadayon Halin pa kato hasta sa gihapon. I write poems to express what is happening inside my heart. I write poems when the emotion is strong and wanting release. I write poems to convey my feelings of love and admiration. I write poems to tell you that you are...

My 12-year old daughter raised a question while I was nursing a hangover one Saturday morning. " Tatay , what does synchronicity means?"  I stammered for words understandable enough to her curious young mind. Here is my answer: Late in 2009, I was finalizing the idea of constructing a blog to be called "By the Jal-o River'.  That title is based on a favorite psalm of mine which begins with this word, “ By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept. ” I prepared the design of the header in MS Publisher as I was ignorant then of Adobe Photoshop. Hereunder was that design. Last year, however, a friend based from down under sent me a copy of a book by Paulo Coelho. The title of the book was, “By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept.” I was amused. But what took my breath away and paused to consider this " meaningful coincidence " (Karl Jung’s) are the similarity of the characters' circumstances with my own " personal legend " (Paulo...

      Gipos, my wife's distant cousin, paid us a visit the other day. The "brief" visit progressed into an excursion of various topics ranging from his application for an early retirement as bus driver of Vallacar Transit, Inc. (Ceres) to those nocturnal predators that raided our rabbits and chicken coop.  Gipos self-proclaimed to be one of the pioneers of Vallacar when Ceres Bus acquired a franchise for the Kalibo-Iloilo route more than a decade ago. Prior to that, he used to drive the R&K that once ruled the same route. When the former bought out the latter, Gipos together with a handful few was absorbed by the company.     Now in his middle 50's and still single, Gipos shows signs of getting burnout and to his mother and siblings exhibits what Dr. Jed Diamond called Irritable Men Syndrome (IMS) . He pays us occasional "brief" visit to unwind his frustrations, my wife and I being his shock-absorbers. At times, we would consume so...

Olympian Rene Herrera (Photo credit:  InterAksyon.com/Joseph Agcaoili )    He finished last. The diminutive veteran runner and navyman Rene Herrera was the Filipino representative to the 5000 meters race in the 2012 London Olympic. Kaibahang Butch of the DYRU however related that Herrera was much applauded not because he bested the other 20 runners (although he bested himself in the Heat 1 with a record of 14:44.11) but due to his determination to finish the race even if he is the last man running in the stadium. Such attitude is what a true Olympian has to exemplify. It is not to win, but to take part (cf. Pierre de Coubertin ). It is as what Agence France-Presse  wrote in July 18, 2008 and I quote, " True Olympic spirit is often found away from gold medalists with their agents and sponsorship deals -- it is found in its purest sense in those that come last. "  Rene Herrera did finish last because he never quits. And because he n...

Aragorn misses his Lady Arwen. The heavy downpour sets him in reverie. Rain. More rain. A dark gray sky. And yet I saw you smile. And I thought, you are weather-proof. Then something inside told me that I ought to smile back. I did smile back, appearing the fool. But honestly, I find our meeting a kind of sweet and memorable moment, although bordering to melancholic. You beckoned me to follow you to your place. Our pretext, oh, we do have lots of pretext to justify such meeting. We walked in the rain under the protective cover of your umbrella. That was romantic, I supposed. My subconscious though saw the two of us walking away with our reflections painted on the wet pavement and from a vantage point in monochromatic blue. That scene was lovely and yet lonely; so true and yet flawed. It was a sad scenery of a supposed happy moment worth remembering. Inside your place, you flooded me with your concerns, subtly informing me that I remain to be the man you can count on; y...

The conclusion of the Corona Impeachment Trial reminded me of a couple of stories told down the Jal-o. These stories illustrate two survival techniques espoused by those who refused any of the principles of life being taught by those great minds that have had walked the earth: Harvesting the produce of the pond Deny Even if You Got Caught.      The fishpond operator is suspicious that some of his harvest are being stolen by an insider. He spoke out his mind in a threatening voice before his turf: Sin-o kinyo ro kumupit it alimago? (Who among you took interest in my crabs?)  Knowing that the operator is a mean man, the honest thief volunteered: Sang saga man lang, Maninoy, ang ginbuoe  (I only took about a kilo of them, my dear Godfather.) The condescending operator thus responded: Gago! Sayod mong saea, akoon mo! (Stupid! You knew beforehand that it is wrong and you dare admitting it!) The produced of the brackish Jal-o ...

"Who is this Whitney Houston, Tatay?", Vida, my 9-year old daughter asked me one morning while I was watching the news on the TV screen. "She's a diva, the one who popularized songs like, "The Greatest Love of All" and "I Will Always Love You", my prompt reply. "Ah, does she own a pet?", came the follow up. I was puzzled where the conversation will lead us. My mind was searching the logic of her rejoinder. "I don't know. Why did you ask?", I answered sincerely. "Her eyes were always sad. She must have had been mourning the deaths of her pets." AV and her pet hen, Iyoy. Vida and Tat scouting the waterfall in our orchard. My kids love to have pets. Over the years, they have welcomed into their innocent lives the friendship of mice, rabbits, cats, dogs, pigs, chickens, lovebirds, ducks, fish... They in the process tolerated damaged toys and bitten flip flops, endured the presence of a few lice, animal d...

                  ( Here meet the young Frodo Baggins--er, Huck Finn. ) Tonight, I got the chance to refresh my memory of the film, " The Adventures of Huck Finn " (Walt Disney adventure film) on my TV screen--I've seen it in the wide screen sometimes in May of 1993 in SM Megamall. It is one of those attempts to cater to the later generation Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. The search of freedom from the conventional society prevails where Huck and his negro friend Jim seek their own way of finding it in their "adventures." The context is the pre-civil war America. The air was parochial. Everywhere, the director (Stephen Sommers) managed to portray scenes of rivers  (Mississippi--not Jal-o, hehe) and swamps, reminiscent of the Twainian panorama. The search for that which is worth dying for fills the scenes with magic that eludes the understanding of the superficial and the conventional. Huck's passion for...

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.  

     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...

A screen copy of my entry at WCJ I received a notice from the publisher of my other personal blog informing me of the following: Dear author,     After nearly 5 years and more than 7 million words written, WcJ is ceasing service. In order to give you a chance to retrieve your writings if you so desire, WCJ is now available again until the end of 2011. To retrieve the contents of your journal(s), you should visit the site and login and then select the journal you'd like to retrieve. Then click the Print button, and a new page will be shown with all your journal entries, in "New to old" order. If you'd prefer to see them in the order you wrote them, just click "Old to new" at the top of the page. When you're happy with how that looks, you can use your web browser to save the contents of the page, or you can click Print to print it, or to save it as a PDF if you have that functionality available. Kindest regards, The Team Reading it, something ins...

Sleepless night. Sartre came with a bottle of brandy. From the house of Pedro Domeq, I like to believe. I prepared and served grilled cured tapas-- a product of my inquisitive mind and something that he won't find nauseating. By and by, Camus' Facel Vega parked rather dramatically on the road shoulder in front of my house. With him was rather an unusual companion--Sisyphus who is still burdened with a load of rock! So I stood up and produced two extra glasses for the new arrival. "Wow! What a company I have tonight," I said to myself.  I wonder how will it be if Nietzsche and Prometheus join us. The beauty of being human is that one can always reconsider, take time out, socialize, recreate, wait and see for things to manifest themselves.  The quality of something is best tested by time. Wine for instance. But tapas, oh you have it consumed while it is still warm. Otherwise, Sartre will vomit it with the diluted ale. And oh, forget about the Facel Veg...

There are some dreams that ought not to come true--or better still, that one should prevent from materializing. Some dreams should not even be spoken of, or written down for others to know. Dark desires of Freudian nature which are disturbing, making one afraid of the secrets hidden in the darkest corner of one's subconscious mind.

When Panay Telecommunication Company (Pantelco) finally set foot in Balete on October of last year (2009), it brought along with it a virtual reality called "Farmville". Those Baleten-ons with access to the internet and who happened to have a Facebook account know what it is--or at least those who were innocently enticed by the gifts received from some "friends" or by those who invited them to be "neighbors". The game, I supposed, was developed for the city-dwellers who dreamed of the idyllic life in the farm, who are exhausted with the hustle and bustle of the urban setting, oppressed by the monstrous traffic and the indifference of crowd to the affairs of each person. A form of escapism actually; something to entertain or distract boredom and angst out of one's psyche. But the Farmville mania has invaded Balete, a rural/agricultural community which is regarded by those who visited it, both local and foreign as "paradise", "a beau...