lost and found

by Jeneen R. Garcia

to be published (or maybe not) on 26 April 2008

 

 

I don’t have a mole on either foot to prove it, but I’ve been called gypsy, nomad, and other tribes of similar occupation too often to deny it. Instead of a caravan, I have my backpack with essential clothing, toiletries, and electronic gadgets to keep me covered wherever night may catch me. If I’m moving house, I tow along my suitcase of books and diving gear as well.

 

I’m in the middle of yet another move to another city. In the last two years, I’ve lived no longer than five consecutive months in any single place--something I didn’t realize until THIS transit. I’ve shipped my stuff from one city to another so many times that packing up has become second nature; my suitcase is always on standby for quick departures.

 

Relocating? It’s easy: post an ad in Friendster and other social networking sites saying you’re looking for a place to live in whatever city you’re headed for, contact the local freight forwarders for their cheapest rates and range of services, book a flight or boat ticket online, make sure your bank account works where you’re going, and you’re all set. All you have to do next is find the right size of boxes to put your stuff in (the local grocery is a good place to look)--wrap the breakables in clothes and sheets, line the carton with plastic in case it gets wet--and wait for the information you need to come in. You can set up everything in a day without having to leave home.

 

I’ve done it so often, I’ve become immune to goodbyes. And why mope over goodbyes, when there are unexpected adventures waiting at the other end? In my last move, I got to meet relatives I didn’t know existed, shedding light on parts of myself I’d wondered about. I learned how to draw water samples using a Niskin bottle, why moving objects in the Northern Hemisphere always curve to the right instead of going in a straight path (a.k.a. the Coriolis effect), which multivariate statistics are useful for analyzing ecological data, and where to find the cheapest MP4 players in Quiapo. I even got to go to Aparri on a lark. Then there are all the fascinating people you meet along the way.

 

Well, I haven’t been entirely honest: there’s one thing I can never get used to. Every time I prepare to leave, wherever I may be, I fall into panic and an implacable sadness that I always fear I may not get out of. It is a sadness that comes from knowing I must leave fragments of my heart behind, so that I may reunite myself with those pieces I’ve left behind elsewhere. Just as my books and clothes are now scattered on different islands across the archipelago, my heart is strewn all over the map, probably never to become whole. Saying goodbye doesn’t get easier with practice; I’ve just learned to say “see you again somewhere” instead.

 

My friends and family have long stopped being surprised that I’m never where they last saw me. But each time I move, I myself ask why I do it. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and look at myself in the mirror to make sure I’m still me, even if I’m not quite sure where I am or what I’m doing there.

 

I am adrift in the world, and the biggest question indeed is: why? Why do I uproot myself and set up base in another place just when I’ve started to forge meaningful ties? Why do I risk the loneliness and the stress of endlessly starting a new routine in a strange city? I do not have real answers. I only know that when something inside me tells me to move, I must.

 

The French poet Charles Baudelaire knew this well. For how else could he have written of it so precisely? “But the true voyagers are those who leave only to move: hearts like balloons, as light, they never swerve from their destinies, and without knowing why, say always: ‘Flight!’”. I have learned to heed this unnameable certainty, with only my faith that it will lead me to where and who I am meant to be--losing myself in unfamiliar spaces, to find myself at last.

lost and found

by Jeneen R. Garcia

to be published on 29 March 2008

 

 

Late afternoon is my favorite time of day, when the breeze blows seaward and the birds roost noisily on the electric lines at the boulevard in Dumaguete, where I used to stay. In Manila, where I’ve lived these past four months, the rich warmth of sundown pours out onto the streets, coating the acacia trees and the wide fields of the UP Diliman campus with honeyed light. It is at this time that I put on my sneakers, bind up my hair in pigtails, and go out for a walk.

 

It’s not just late afternoons that I go walking, of course. With the constantly rising cost of transportation and the temptation to be too busy to exercise, I try as much as possible to walk to where I need to go. More importantly, I walk to pace my thoughts that otherwise would need to rush towards my next destination before the jeepney can get me there.

 

As soon as I step out of the house, my lungs fill with oxygen, and with it, freedom. My head starts to clear of muddled must-do and want-to-do lists; ideas get unstuck. I revel in the feeling of my blood throbbing, feeding my starved muscles as I walk briskly past sidewalk vendors, tricycles, the din of the weary workforce on their way home.

 

Walking is especially essential to me when I travel. With map in hand, or sometimes just directions from a stranger, I form my sense of place by traversing the length of roads and alleys. I get from point to point by understanding the city’s character in how its neighborhoods cluster or spread out, in its dominant smells and signs, in the way its streets either turn with precise regularity or meander like a dream. I learn more about a place by walking than I ever could by riding an air-conditioned bus with a tour guide.

 

On weekends, I have the leisure to explore Manila’s less congested side streets. I take this opportunity to find alternative routes to get from one place to another, as well as have a look at what the rest of humanity is up to. Stretching my legs stretches my mind, too, an exercise in seeing. The games this generation of six-year olds plays on the street, the kind of flowers that grow by the roadside, the number of karinderyas from this corner to the next, the best spot on the sidewalk from which to view the moonrise--details one would never find in a census or street map, yet details so necessary to making sense out of the insanity of city life.

 

Sometimes, I am blessed to have a kindred spirit along. Then walking becomes the means for luxurious conversations to unfold and take full shape--the kind that always get interrupted by goodbyes when you’re riding the bus or train. Walking, you can go as slow as you want. As slow as you need to without needing to stand still.

 

The bigger the city, the harder it is to find quiet sanctuary. In my walks, whether solitary or in good company, I create my own sacred, moving space. It no longer matters where I am, whether in fast-paced Manila or laidback Dumaguete, or even in Cebu or Davao, all the places I’ve called home. When I walk, time is only a measure of how far I’ve gone, and how much further I need to go to get back to where I began.

 

The true gift of walking is that it reminds me how I am constantly in the middle of a long journey; I need not rush nor despair that I am too far behind in the race, or that I will get to my final destination sooner than I am ready for it. As Robert Frost said, I have “miles to go before I sleep”, each footfall a balm for my cramped feet.

Text and Photos by Jeneen R. Garcia

published on 28 February 2008

 

 

“I give you good price, lah!”

 

The Chinese vendor was eyeing me from underneath a bunch of bead necklaces hanging over our heads. Across the street, a dark-skinned Indian had said the same thing about a pack of souvenir magnets, which I later got for a lower price at another stall.

 

I was at Jalan Petaling, at Kuala Lumpur’s famous night market. Said to be the domain of Chinese merchants, the street was surprisingly peopled with just as many Indians, Malays, Pakistanis, and dan lain-lain (other races) peddling the same wares. This was truly Malaysia--a melting pot of Asian cultures with nobody losing their native identity and everybody getting along just fine despite. Which made it all the more important that I drum up my best Asian bargaining skills.

 

“Five ringgit each for four,” I said. A European couple stopped to check out the necklaces. I kept silent as they bargained and bought one for RM 18 (P234). “Eight ringgit,” the Chinese vendor said after they left, “I give you good price!” He shook his head in disbelief at my obstinacy. Finally I conceded, as the other stalls were packing up for the night, and I was only halfway through the throng.

 

Just a few hours earlier I was at Bukit Bintang, an avenue of classy malls, towering five-star hotels and upscale bars--seemingly worlds away from this noisy, packed marketplace. Yet around me now I could see the same tourists I saw there jostling and haggling as if they had never shopped in a mall.

 

Kuala Lumpur is visited by millions of tourists yearly for its nationwide mega sales, Formula One races, the larger-than-life Petronas Towers, and Asian fusion food. I myself had come here not to shop, but to discover the true face of Malaysia, if it could indeed still be found amidst the traffic jams and urban sophistication.

 

Almost everywhere, the women wore scarves that covered their hair and neck, an indication that Islam is the country’s official religion. Near the city’s Lake Gardens is found Malaysia’s biggest mosque, with a unique umbrella-shaped roof having 13 points that symbolize Malaysia’s 13 states.

 

Yet also common are Chinese temples all lit up with red lanterns at night, while just at the outskirts of the city are Batu Caves--large, natural limestone caverns that house Hindu temples and altars. Here Indians go up the 272 steps to the caves barefoot, usually with heads shaved, bringing sugarcane and fruits to offer thanksgiving for answered prayers. Government buildings still proudly bear the old British colonial architecture.

 

Despite this distinct diversity, however, in fast food joints or grand buffet spreads, whether the dish was Indian roti, Chinese bihun or Malay ulam-ulaman, everyone would eat with their hands and speak the same language, a mixture of Malay and Chinese melded into something not quite either one or the other. Most people spoke English well, but it was unnerving to hear some of them say “Mahal kita” once they would find out I was Filipino. After all, how many countries can you go to where both street vendors and store owners speak Tagalog so familiarly?

 

My last night in Malaysia, I attended the Chinese New Year Open House, which meant that everyone, whatever their race, culture or religion, was welcome to celebrate the festival. As dragons and lions danced to the drumbeats, and chingay acrobats balanced impossibly tall bamboo poles on their foreheads, a multitude of Orientals, Malays, South Americans, Europeans, Eurasians, Middle Easterners--even women with just their eyes visible through their black burqas--joined in on the festivities.

 

It was the same, I was told, whether the celebration was the Muslim Eid ul-Fitr, the Hindu Deepavali, the Buddhist Wesak, or the Christian Christmas. Whatever the cause for merriment, everyone in the neighborhood was invited to the party. The spirit of fusion and harmony is not just in the spicy food or the hodgepodge Melayu language. In Kuala Lumpur, I had found not the face of Malaysia, but the many faces of one multicultural nation, its arms opened wide, always ready to embrace the world, lah.

 

 

SOME PLACES TO SEE AROUND KL

 

Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC)

Here you find the 88-storey Petronas Twin Towers, which allows visitors free trips up its sky bridge if you come early and don’t mind the queue. Other things to do are shopping at the malls and gaping at live sharks and exotic animals at the Aquaria.

 

Menara Kuala Lumpur

The KL Tower gives a 360^o view of the city from 276 meters above the ground, and offers nature-friendly activities at the large forest reserve right below it. Admission is RM 20 (P 260) for adults and RM 10 (P130) for children.

 

Eye on Malaysia

This 60-meter high giant ferris wheel at Taman Tasik Titiwangsa affords those who are not afraid of heights a view of KL, the “garden city of lights” at night, and its relaxing hills and lake gardens during the day. Admission is RM 15 (P195) for adults and RM 8 (P104) for children 3-12 years old. Free tickets if you fly Malaysia Airlines.

 

Malaysia Airlines flies every Thursday and Sunday from Cebu to Kuala Lumpur via Kota Kinabalu. For inquiries, contact (032) 2313887 or 2314359, or visit www.malaysiaairlines.com. For more information on places to go, visit Tourism Malaysia at www.tourismmalaysia.gov.my.

lost and found

by Jeneen R. Garcia

to be published on 23 February 2008

 

 

Rolling in with the Chinese New Year this month were boxes and boxes of Mandarin oranges, popularly called ponkan, from China. This has brought down the fruit’s price from the usual P10 to P15 to a more reasonable P5 apiece. Either it’s the season for ponkan harvest, or there’s really a great demand for them this time of year.

 

And no wonder: oranges don’t just possess that round shape evocative of money, the Chinese word for “orange” sounds similar to their word for “gold”. Displaying ponkan in your house as you welcome the New Year is supposed to bring good fortune. Traditional Chinese hosts inviting you into their homes will send you off with more oranges as a blessing.

 

New Year or not, I always make sure I get a good dose of oranges for natural Vitamin C. I’m not Chinese, but I certainly agree that being healthy is my good fortune. On my way to Malaysia’s New Year celebration the week before Valentine’s, however, I discovered a little-known Chinese superstition about ponkan: to attract a good husband, throw oranges into the sea. So they’re not just a delicious source of Vitamin C, after all.

 

When I got back, this little tidbit proved to be the most interesting to my girl friends. Long past 25 but not yet 30 and still single, we’re at that stage where we’re desperate-but-not-quite and already quite exasperated by all the people who ask us, in varying degrees of politeness (or rudeness), how we could possibly not be married. I’ve had just-met acquaintances ask me unbelievingly why I don’t have a boyfriend, as if finding someone to fall in love with were an everyday phenomenon, a matter of hooking up with some random guy off the street.

 

It’s not that we’re hard-core feminists declaring that we don’t need men in our lives. Nor are we the type bent on building our careers at the expense of romance and marriage. It just happens that we haven’t yet picked--or been picked off the tree, so to speak--by the person we’d love to share our kids’ genes with. These things are a matter of right timing, and the time obviously isn’t ripe. Or have we indeed been remiss in not throwing any oranges into the sea the past 25 years of our lives?

 

It is hilarious--if not frightening--to think that the appearance or non-appearance of our future husbands depends on a couple of ponkan drifting at sea. Throughout history, humanity has not tired of believing in signs or creating rituals in a desperate attempt to control fate. It’s probably to make ourselves feel better about things that we know in reality we’re at the mercy of. But I’m sorry to say that when it comes to love, ponkans definitely don’t cut it for me.

 

I’ve recently taken to buying dalandan for my Vitamin C, to support the local economy. They cost one-third the price of ponkan, have no toxic chemicals sprayed on them, and can taste just as sweet. We have way too many cheap products coming in from China, I feel, which has killed off local industries and promoted wasteful consumerism. Nothing like making the right choices to shape your own destiny.

 

So next Valentine’s, if you catch me standing by the sea, you can be sure there won’t be any ponkan bobbing in the waves. You just might see green oranges instead.

 

 

For Iris and Kahlou, whose oranges will be sweet in time ;)

lost and found

by Jeneen R. Garcia

to be published on 24 November 2007

 

SOME THINGS COME without being called. Like cats. And love letters. Or, happily, a precious poem writing itself in the middle of a crazy, hectic week.

 

This past year opportunities have been dropping onto my lap, unexpected—people who turned out to be the very ones I needed to meet at just the right time, trips to the remotest places I’d always dreamed of going to, but never thought I’d reach for lack of funds and logistics. Opportunities, too, for sources of income, at the times my own funds were running low. Certainly nothing short of miraculous for somebody unemployed and studying full-time.

 

It’s been Murphy’s Law turned upside down. Everywhere I turn, things fall neatly into place. It’s perhaps what they say about all things working together for good for those who love God, or the universe conspiring, the fates converging.

 

To what do I owe this seeming reversal in fortune?

 

I haven’t made any drastic lifestyle changes that would make me a candidate for sainthood. For sure, I haven’t signed any deals with the devil, nor stocked up on good luck charms. In fact, the most remarkable thing I’ve probably done so far is to realize that I deserve none of this.

 

How else do I explain it to my brother who cannot believe that, while he slaves away in an office he does not like, I get paid for diving for a whole month in some of the best reefs across the country just by emailing a few people? How else do I accept as real the wonderful people I did not seek out, who love me as dearly as their dearest? How, knowing all the things I know about myself, could I claim that a swim in the warm sea at sunset on a Monday, as a light rain falls, is something that I am entitled to?

 

Grace, defined by theologians as the unmerited favor of God, goes against everything we’ve ever learned about reward and punishment, no-work-no-pay, karma, and all the other laws that say for every action is an equal and opposite reaction, what goes up must come down. Grace says, Ask and ye shall receive. No payback, no fine print. Its very nature is that it’s there for the taking—but only for those who see the gift for what it is.

 

Most times, we miss out on grace because we can’t believe we could ever possess something we did not suffer or work for. We pride ourselves on our abilities, our goodness, our “likeableness” perhaps, forgetting that gifts say more about the giver than the receiver. The world offers up its abundance every day, freely, for anyone to partake of. But we see only a tiny bit of it—if at all—because we choose which gifts we receive by measuring the things we have done to “deserve” them.

 

How arrogant of us to think that the insignificant little we do would actually count for something, would buy us love or happiness in a universe that runs perfectly smoothly without our help! If only we learn to comprehend the generosity of the Giver, we would graciously accept grace upon grace with as much gratitude and humility as we do life’s bittersweet aches. Graciousness, especially, to receive the things we do not think to ask for, but are nevertheless granted to us exactly when we need them.

 

All that is required of us is faith. Faith that we WILL find happiness and love and everything good we’ve ever wanted, not because we’ve done anything to deserve them, but because grace flows infinitely for those who trust and wait.

 

We create our own realities; we only get as much as we dare to hope. We see as much joy in our life as we believe is possible for us to have. Pain and disappointment, of course, are part of the natural order of things. But just because they exist doesn’t mean that extremely, amazingly good things can’t happen to us, that we can’t have happily ever after.

 

It would seem that just when I’ve turned a year older, I’ve begun to believe in fairy tales. Defying the laws of Murphy and gravity, I float on the hope, humbled and grateful, that the best is yet to come—just for the asking.

 

For Jemi, who can have her cake, and eat it, too, on our 28^th year and beyond

 

lost and found #37

by Jeneen R. Garcia

to be published on 20 October 2007

(with new column pic at left ;)

 

 

 

It has been a year and five months since I left the routine of office work for a different way of living. And how different my life is now!

 

Two days of the week, I am in class, either teaching or being taught. Four days of the week, I am in the laboratory searching for tiny corals--one millimeter in diameter, sometimes smaller--that have settled on my experimental terracotta tiles. I fight my way through a jungle of filamentous algae, bryozoans, barnacles, sponges, and other encrusting marine critters, hoping to find the slightest sign of coralline growth.

 

Hour by hour, I run my thumb and forefinger along the surfaces of each tile as if it were the lip of a cherished lover, feeling intently for a certain fine sharpness that can only be the delicate skeletal structure of a baby coral. Now I can tell, from the look of the jungle-like growth on the tile alone, if I am likely to find one coral or many, and if there will be none.

 

I have examined almost 500 tiles since the middle of the semester. But instead of making my vision poor from strain, it has only trained my eyes to be keener underwater. Where before I saw only rock and rubble, now I see a Pocillopora, two weeks old, beginning to claim its place in the world. Today it is barely a millimeter wide, but in a year it will start to branch out and provide shelter to seastar, crab, fish--a visiting turtle, perhaps.

 

When one knows what one seeks, it does not take long to find. Exploring a sandy area with a group of veteran divers, I had not been down five minutes before they spotted a rarely-seen ghost pipefish with its young. It was suspended beside a fern-like crinoid that it was using to camouflage itself. A minute later the group was rushing towards a pair of dragon sea moths that someone had spotted partly buried. On and on it went throughout our three dives, one discovery following another.

 

A boring underwater landscape with practically no corals was transformed, in my eyes, into a treasure trove of fascinating creatures I had never yet seen. I began to look in places I normally ignored. It was not long before I, too, could spot a brown flounder gliding discreetly over the sand, or a baby cuttlefish that had turned green to match the algae it was hiding behind.

 

Sometimes, finding is a matter of studying the habits of what is sought. Then we learn precisely where and when to look. The mandarinfish, for example, emerges just after sunset in geisha-like splendor, magnificent orange and green, then hides again as darkness descends.

 

Other times, it is that split-second glimpse out of the corner of one’s eye--a quick movement, an unguarded gesture--that reveals there may be more to the scene than what is seen. A closer look, and we discover intricate beauty hidden in plain sight.

 

And then there are those we do not seek, and yet find. Such as the bittersweet delight of looking everywhere for something urgent, and finding instead a precious thing we have forgotten or thought had lost elsewhere, long ago, irretrievable.

 

For me, it was looking for terracotta tiles underneath the Sulu Sea last summer and, after a tiring week’s work, finding a red moon rising from the stillness of the sea at the edge of the archipelago. It was seeking solitude to grasp the meaning of a friend’s death, only to find the friendship of unexpectedly beautiful souls who now give deeper meaning to my life.

 

In all my seeking and finding, I have learned this one thing: to find, whether or not we seek, we must first learn how to see. May our eyes stay sharp then, that we may not go through this world blind, searching in vain our whole lives for what is all along right before us.

 

For Sheila and Vince, especially, who taught me to see in Dumaguete

And for all of Ana’s beloved who have welcomed me as their own--you know who you are

lost and found

by Jeneen R. Garcia

to be published on 28 July 2007

 

 

As you can see, it has taken me awhile to get my thoughts together. It still feels strange to be writing this, never in my life imagining I would be writing this. But I found there was no other way to say what must be said, but through this overdue letter.

 

Letters--you always found a reason to write them. All throughout your life, you kept writing them, kept the ones that were written back in precious boxes that moved with you to wherever you made your home. Even when email became the popular choice, the impersonal fonts on a white screen did not diminish your eloquence and warmth.

 

I know, because that is how our friendship started, with an email about cats and words and mothers. Even when we lived less than five minutes away from each other, you would send off a letter in the middle of a drab work day to celebrate the afternoon light, or a new poem about the rain we loved.

 

Love. We talked about that, too. And shopping. How you “goforitgoforit in a big way, and soon the fever burns itself off,” while I, you said, “holdbackholdbackholdback until...until when nga ba?”

 

This courage of yours I have yet to grow into. While transience has made me fearful to call anything my own, you claimed an entire room in an unfamiliar city as your library, writing room, refuge. You did what you had to do with the conviction of the anointed, though frequently you expressed doubts about your abilities and your worth. As boldly as you painted your guitar and the doors of your house with cats and moons and words you loved, you had no qualms about naming yourself poet, artist, lover, dreamer. What does the future matter, your lived-in spaces seemed to say, when I have all this. Here. Now.

 

This is what I have now, on this side of eternity: it is a delicious afternoon outside, the kind that makes you want to lazily stretch your back like a cat on a tiled roof. The pines along the boulevard have been struck golden by a sun that clings longer than it should to this delectable day. Are you here, too? I am learning to see with your eyes.

 

A fiftyish woman talking to a white-haired European by the seawall for two hours now (the first date, maybe?). The strange arc of light over Siquijor on the horizon. A two-year old boy walking barefoot on the brick pavement, a sandal in each hand. The stench of brine faintly reeking of sewage. Rats scuttling over the rocks on the beach below. Two men with guitars serenading the fishball vendors with songs of God.

 

Above all, I wish for your courage to stare the world in the face--beauty and sadness and grotesquery and light--though your heart be constantly broken into fragments from being full, throbbing with the wonder and the weight of it all. To learn how to keep all the fragments close. To embrace everything--even the parts that hurt you--as if the world itself were on the brink of death.

 

May I rise up to the task of keeping my flame as fiery as yours.

 

For though many may say that, in the end, you succumbed to the darkness, we both know that darkness is simply another way to bask in the light. I may never know why you chose the less certain path, but I know God welcomes you back, with the same joy you have taught me to live and love with. As surely as the moon burns starkly through the night sky. As surely as summers end with rain. As surely as cats go to heaven.

 

To my soulsister Ana, who has taken on the last great adventure, barefoot as always.

forgive me if i have no words for now. they have never come at my bidding as easily as they did to you, but especially now, when i myself refuse to listen and to receive them.

because to listen would be allow myself to grieve, and to grieve would be to say that you are no longer part of my world. and i cannot do that just yet. not when so many still grieve and need to be comforted. they need to hear the stories first, how you made this world beautiful, and all the unanswerable questions about why you decided to leave it without even telling us you were planning this new adventure. i will let them have their time with you. and when everyone else is done, i will embrace you one last time, and perhaps finally know how let you go.

when i held your hand at the hospital, it was still warm, and i could not believe you would ever choose to leave. how would you expect me to when we have always both believed in the constancy of the moon and the early mornings? somehow, during the course of the day, i understood that it was no longer you lying there, that you were already free of that encumbering body long before that heart stopped beating.

some consolation i found in keeping busy for you the past five days, these two tasks especially, because i know you counted on me to do them: make sure caesura and her three kittens find a good home, and let you do one last dive.

my first time to wear your stuff, my dear sister, and i was happily surprised they fit me (except at the shoulders) =) 11 July 2007 - 125 ft. my deepest dive yet, and it was with you.

caesura and the three white kittens live in a big house now, with sprawling grounds. exploring the whole thing will probably keep them busy for the rest of their lives =)

it was great finally meeting your sisters, and talking to your dad, and letting your mom know how important she was to your writing. pippa couldn't make it, though =( i WAS looking forward to meeting her because you always said i reminded you of her. i never got to tell you that YOU have always felt like an older sister to me, what with you blazing ahead in all the things that i, too, love. a lot of people asked if we were sisters, though. for me that was really the highest compliment. even your dad kept saying i remind him of you =) small consolations in a week heavily drenched with sadness. but as you said in one of your last essays, i will take what i can.

and i finally got to meet sheila =)  i wish you'd been around for all of that. especially to hear your mom speak and read your poetry. your heart would have been full to overflowing. but no, i wasn't amazed at all at how so many people came to see you (although i'm sure, in your usual naive little girl way, you'd have stood there wide-eyed and unbelieving that you have so many fans. even the waiter at fine cusine asked me about you, you know =)--snow white in a glass box, poet dreaming. isabel said you're prettier than snow white, of course.

i'm sorry, but i'm not officially saying goodbye yet. not for awhile.

+AMDG

My Lakbayan grade is B+!

(i know, i know. have to work on my travels up North. next stop: Batanes via La Union, Ilocos and Cagayan!)

And here's my all-time favorite invitation to travel local. Be sure to watch the video!

How much of the Philippines have you visited? Find out atLakbayan!

Created by Eugene Villar.

lost and found

by Jeneen R. Garcia

 

 

On Sundays, I’ve learned, the two-kilometer academic oval in the UP Diliman campus connecting the Oblation monument to the edge of the Sunken Garden is closed to vehicles both public and private. On this sacred day, joggers and bikers rule the road.

 

And not just college students clad in shorts and running shoes wanting to stay fit. Aged 3 to 63, small, tall, thin, and large, leather shoes, rubber shoes, slippers, and sandals, bicycles, tricycles, baby strollers, walkers--the diversity of UP’s Sunday exercise crowd spans the spectrum of middle-class society on a break from the necessity of a workaday routine.

 

Serendipity has brought me back to Manila this summer, almost ten years since I was a student calling it my transitory home. To this--a late Sunday afternoon walking across the wildness and the oldness of UP’s cracked sidewalks and grassy fields, which I have always preferred to my own university’s well-kept lawns and modern buildings.

 

Happy, sweaty faces walk past me in a slow-motion blur. I bask in the same exhilaration that fills them at the sight of this long, long avenue shaded by acacia trees, in my mind stretching once again to endless possibility.

 

I walk at an even pace on the center of the road; fathers and daughters share laughter in the right lane. Further along the way, a toddler learning to run, two sisters taking turns at a bicycle. A grandmother alights from the curb to join the stream of motion.

 

I am alone, as I have always been for as long as I can remember. But lonely? How can one be in this tacit celebration of space and pure movement? I find solace in the nameless faces passing by me. A smile or a nod, perhaps, sometimes not even a glance. And on we go on our way. No judgment of past failures or future capacities, for we are strangers, after all: we know nothing of each others’ lives. Only the comforting thought that we are fellow travelers on the same journey, though our parallel paths may never intersect.

 

Before I reach the end of the road, the sun sets orange through the leaves of the hundred-year old acacia trees. The road is dark now. I can barely make out the bobbing heads of the people walking ahead of me. The cool of twilight descends, the sky turns lucent blue, the sodium lights come on one by one, casting shadows on the streets.

 

I rest on the steps looking out on the highway, the headlights of cars coming and going the only sign of humanity. Out there, somewhere. People coming home from work, sitting down to dinner, thinking perhaps of the next day and the next, each one blending into the other. As for me, I have many miles to go living out of a backpack, walking with this familiar strangeness I now call home.

Text and Photos by Jeneen R. Garcia

 

 

When the heart is scarred and the spirit barely breathing, the only balm is distance and open space. And so I found myself on a late Tuesday morning at the start of summer standing at the pier in Dumaguete City, looking for a ride to Siquijor.

 

I had just missed the 11:30 am boat; the next departure was by pumpboat. In a way, I was glad. I wanted no fussy boarding procedures or annoying action movies, wanted only to be close to the wind and the sea. I sat down on a wooden seat across a student whose face looked as weary as my heart. We each have our reasons for going away, and though we may be strangers, often we find ourselves seeking the same places for healing.

 

Isla del Fuego, the Spaniards had called it. Island of Fire. But under the fierce summer sun, it was the sight of Siquijor Island’s long, white coves and blue-green waters that comforted me. Surely I had come to the right place.

 

“But all the resorts are fully booked!” a local told me, “There’s one that’s available later tonight, but it costs more than a thousand. You should have traveled with someone so you can share the cost. Why did you come here alone, anyway?”

 

I shrugged. “I just needed a break from schoolwork,” I said.

 

“Ah, you want peace of mind.”

 

Yes, peace of mind. Something so precious that I was determined to find it, even if it meant a cut in my monthly budget. Fortunately, God was on my side.

 

At just the second try, I came to a quiet place just a few minutes away from the pier that had cottages made of amakan and bamboo sitting on a grassy outcrop. A smiling Japanese couple welcomed me as I stepped onto a wide, wooden patio shaded by coconut trees. “We have one cottage available, only for tonight. But one room upstairs is available for two nights,” they said. Best of all, the price was perfect.

 

Happily, I decided to stay for two nights, and went down to the beach for a walk. The sky was lavender, the brilliant sun beginning to set behind the mountains of Negros. I could see as far as the ends of the island. By the curve of a rock in the distance, children were walking home after an afternoon of gathering suwaki and sea cucumbers.

 

Blades of seagrass and flower-like algae littered the fine, white sand. The tide was coming in gently now to sweep them back into the sea where they had come from.

 

I, too, sat on the long stretch of beach, wanting to return. To return to the nurturing sea where all life was first formed. To return to the self I had lost underneath the wounds. To return to the God I had forgotten, but who had never forgotten me.

 

I sat through the chill of wind, basking in the full moon’s light, patiently waiting. For two days I sat by the beach, alternately writing, reading, praying until my heart was spent. On my last day, I looked at the sea and felt a familiar throbbing in my spirit. I was still alive, after all. And by God’s grace, I would be alright.

 

Three summers ago, I had come to Siquijor for the first time for some exciting exploration with friends--rented a motorcycle and went around the island in a day, jumping off waterfalls and cliffs, walking through a haunted convent, and emerging from a witch’s cave in the dark of night.

 

Some summers, the greatest adventure is the journey we take deep into ourselves.

 

============

Trips to Siquijor leave Dumaguete almost every hour starting at 6 am, with the last boat at 6 pm. For bookings at Villa Marmarine in Candanay, Siquijor, Siquijor, contact Toshito (Dagman) & Marmarine Harada at  0919-465-9370 or dagman38@yahoo.co.jp.

 

Text and Photos by Jeneen R. Garcia

 

 

People who go down southeast on Cebu’s scenic coastal road--perhaps to take the ferry across to Negros, perhaps to rest in one of the seaside towns, to come home to family and the sound of the waves--if they go far enough, will come to a bend in the road.

 

It is a bend so unlike any other in these parts that those who have gone around this bend are sure to know exactly which one I am talking about. For those who have not, let me tell you about it.

 

Just before you reach this bend, you come down the road right next to a cliff, which is right next to the sea, blue-green turning abruptly deep blue where the reef drops into the Bohol Strait. The water can be calm or ferocious against the rocks, depending on what month it is. On a clear day, you can see Bohol on the edge of the horizon.

 

The bend itself is marked by a high limestone wall on one side, and the sea on the other. Morning light rises slowly over this bend. The road is shaded by the green of trees. It is a restful passage.

 

As you make the turn, you will come upon a quaint town nestled in a cove. When you do, you will have found one of Cebu’s most precious treasures: Boljoon.

 

Boljoon is a fishing town about two and a half hours away from the city. Fishing boats dock on its orange shores after the full and new moons to bring hundreds of tons of fish that will then be brought to different towns in southern Cebu.

 

Its wide coves give sanctuary to the smaller bancas reaping a rich harvest from its waters. Two fish sanctuaries, one on each end of the town, keep this harvest abundant year-round, like guarded gates keeping a secret wealth. On the west, steep hills protect Boljoon from strong winds.

 

It is here, between the calm of the sea and the constancy of the hills, that you find Boljoon’s 407-year old parish still watching over the town’s inhabitants. With its thick, limestone walls, distinct baroque architecture, and murals painted by the master artists of its time, the church was made both a National Cultural Treasure and National Historical Landmark by the Philippine government.

 

The adjoining convent has been turned into a museum, while still serving as quarters for the workers in the church. The old wooden school still stands outside, now a place for the band to practice. On its large lawn are bell towers that used to warn the town of invaders. Now, the bells still toll, but only to invite the residents to hear mass.

 

What has not changed, though, is obvious from the vantage point of the hills, easiest to climb of which is Eli Hill, just before you reach the town proper. This same view you can see painted on the ceiling of the convent, Boljoon as it must have looked to the artist hundreds of years ago.

 

The paint is faded, but the figures are still distinguishable. Fishing boats sail on the calm water, as people dressed in typical Spanish fashion walk on the orange shores of a cove. A flock of birds flies over some hills. In the distance, the church, and further beyond--an unmistakable bend in the road.

 

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how to get there. Take the Bato-Oslob bus at the South Bus Terminal and get off at Boljoon. Buses leave every 15 minutes.

 

where to stay. Cebu Club Fort Med, right across the bend in the road, is a cozy resort with facilities for teambuilding sessions, diving, and island-hopping. Call 482-9050 to 51, or 262-9147 for reservations. For more information, log on to www.cebu-clubfortmed.com.

lost and found

by Jeneen R. Garcia

 

 

Where I live now, it is December, and the nights are warm and heavy, and the sea is always calm, and the grass is fading yellow on the field. A man stands along the boulevard, his feet treading, it seems, on the horizon itself. On a bustling Monday afternoon, only sky and sea matter.

 

January had offered only the anticipation of the unknown and the uncertain--possibility! It was the beginning of the end, I sensed. Only, I had a vague idea of what it meant. Four months later, I had moved out of my office of four years, moved out of my rented place, and moved out of Cebu.

 

I was adrift for the first time in my life. I had no source of income or guidance about where to go next. All I had was a restlessness I couldn’t define telling me that my life as I had known it till then had to end.

 

But surely the end of the present must mean the beginning of the future. The problem was, I could see only a frightening dark wall before me. So instead of moving forward, I turned around to face a past I had avoided for so long. The next five months saw me going back to Davao and then to New York to play daughter and sister to a family temporarily reunited and still getting used to each other’s stark strangeness.

 

It was at this time that my thoughts began to turn seaward. It was deep into the year, and in the life I had known, sea and infinite possibility belonged only to the realm of summer. Perhaps it was because my breakaway from the real world had over-extended this year’s summer, bringing me to a different shore almost every weekend, even as far as the Puget Sound on the eastern Pacific; perhaps my return to the past had also given me clear sight of my heart’s truest ancient desire. Though I still couldn’t see my future, I could hear it now in the silence of the depths of the sea.

 

Dumaguete, surrounded by rich, reef-fringed islands and the sea itself right beside the main street of the city, was a natural point to start from. I first came here for three weeks in May five years ago, and have come back almost every year since, in celebration of a season when I could taste of the islands as freely as did the waves. This time, I would be staying much longer than one season of warmth.

 

What I did not expect was that in this city by the sea, summer is eternal. While elsewhere people are already wearing jackets, here the days and nights are still stiflingly humid, stores and libraries close for long noon naps, and the grass, strangely enough, is as dry as if we were in the thick heat of summer. Students wear shorts and slippers to school. Now I, too, cannot bear to wear jeans.

 

Every weekend I am at the beach, the nearest one only five minutes away by tricycle or bike ride. Sometimes to dive and swim with the fish, sometimes just to feel the salty air on my tongue. The rest of the time, I have my nose to my books, studying what science has to teach about this sea and its elusive creatures.

 

First night of the Christmas break, before leaving for home, I lay on the sand under the stars with a new friend trading stories, about islands we have yet to bury our feet in, and long drawn-out loves we’re still working up the strength to end. With words we held out traces of lives we’ve left behind, releasing them for the ebbing tide to carry away. At our late dinner in the city afterwards, I rubbed the sand still on my calves and toes--a now familiar, comforting roughness.

 

The wind was warm, as it has always been since I arrived. In a field of withered grass, another season of beginnings.

lost and found

by Jeneen R. Garcia

 

 

 

Just as I do not know when I first learned to use words to name the world and make it my own, I do not remember a time when I did not have the sea.

 

Perhaps it was an ancient stirring in my cells that had me walking the shores of Samal Island in the summers--nine years old, magnifying glass in hand to peer at the curious creatures stranded by the tide.

 

Even going to college in hilly Quezon City, I swear I would sometimes smell brine in the air while walking under the acacia trees. Summer kept me in school, too, but it was during that long separation that I found the sea spilling over to--no, totally saturating--my poetry. I fed on words like perigean spring tide from enormous libraries that said so much about the sea, but had not a single drop of it on their shelves.

 

A few years later, after getting my diving license, I would lose all the words as I drifted in awe for the first time beneath a huge cloud of jackfish, 90 feet underwater, a tiny speck in that infinite, encompassing blueness. I did not know it then, that I belonged to the sea, simply because every part of my being had always ebbed and flowed with it.

 

Meanwhile, there was the real world I had to figure out and learn to flow with. I had a dream I loved telling people, about wanting to work on a beach for the rest of my life. In the back of my mind, though, was a practical voice that said I couldn’t have what I wanted and actually get paid for it. After college, I learned to compromise: bits of fieldwork and a better-paying desk job over a field job that would probably lead nowhere career-wise.

 

Up until two months ago, I had even decided to spend the next four years of my life studying to become a lawyer. No more starving-writer-environmentalist-NGO-worker drama for me. Twenty-six going on twenty-seven, with probably more than half of my generation married-with-kids and halfway up the ladder of worldly success, I felt I had already wasted too much time on fanciful things. It was time to take on the real world, for real.

 

The future suddenly looked wonderfully secure and respectable. My parents, though taken aback by the sudden decision, happily told all their friends. Everyone was glad for me.

 

Except that every time I told someone I planned to go to law school, I would feel my heart cringe. I thought, maybe I’m just not used to saying it, and indeed, the feeling became less and less distinct over time. But it never disappeared.

 

I am an extremely practical person, the type who needs to see the pro far outweigh the con for sure before making a decision. Although it was the natural choice, I did not take up Marine Biology in college, nor did I consider it for my Master’s degree, because I felt it was too narrow a field of study, with no immediate use; surely, the world was so much more than the sea.

 

I had to rationalize my finally buying an underwater camera this year by resolving to earn from my underwater photography, when really, all I want is to share with people all the amazing creatures I see when I go diving. Feeling that heart cringe like never before, I knew I had been too practical far too long.

 

I took a deep breath, dove in, and applied for a Master’s in Marine Biology. The moment I made the decision, an incredible wave of peace washed over me. I didn’t have to struggle anymore. I was a child again holding my breath underwater, the warm waters of the sea wrapping me in its comforting silence.

 

Still, my grown-up mind fidgets as the start of classes draws near. I’m not getting any younger; I might just be wasting time and money on something I THINK I want right now. I might end up jobless and starving because there’s no space left in the world for someone who knows the names of fish and corals and the different kinds of tides; maybe I’ll scratch my head at age 40 and wonder where I threw my life away. The pros cannot even begin to compare with the cons.

 

But my heart--it tells me now it is certain, as if I have finally deciphered a message written deep in the nucleus of my cells millions of years before I was born. I have taken the plunge, and in the coming months, I will be totally immersed, going deeper and deeper to know fish, sea slug, the very heart of the sea.

 

I might sink so deep, I will never find my way back up again. But to know at last where I belong, and to live the life I am called to--that, I think, will be worth risking drowning.

   yep, folks, as i type i am on flight KE623 from seoul to manila. my personal touch screen says we are at exactly 38998 ft over taiwan, crusing at 552 mph, with 1 hour, 21 mniutes and 687 more miles to go. and i have free wi-fi. woohoo! korean air rocks!

on the 15-hour flight from new york to seoul, i watched four movies and ate two meals. could've seen more, of course (To Kill A Mockingbird, especially), but i thought i was being crazy tiring myself out like that. i didn't discover till the end of th