PINSAL FALLS

THIS blog about my trip to Pinsal Falls has long been overdue. My first and only visit to the tallest, if not the most beautiful waterfall in Ilocos, was way back in December 2011. Some of my snapshots of the place, now with a good number of likes and comments, had been in my Facebook’s Timeline photos for quite some time now. But with my recent trip to Cambugahay Falls in Lazi, Siquijor early this month and to Balite Falls in Amadeo, Cavite in April last year, I cannot help but compare these two falls with Pinsal Falls.

It’s an easy verdict for me: Pinsal Falls certainly stands above the two, not only because of its size but also because of its rocky landscape and the challenges it offers, a number of other interesting natural features of the area, and its accessibility (it’s approximately 30 minutes ride from the town proper).

Now, with the advent of summer, you might think of a perfect getaway for your barkada or family, and Pinsal Falls may be a good place to go. Having visited the place myself, I can assure you that a summer break to this place gives you some fun climbing, picnic, swimming, and exploring.

CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK NUT

To-be read books, all second-hand 

MY love affair with books did not start until I was 13. I was a first year student of a private school in the poblacion (Sta. Maria, Ilocos Sur), and it was my first time to see a real library. I was from the barrio and I could just count with my fingers the books that I had read, and suddenly I was in a place surrounded by an impressive collection of books, a wide variety of titles, stacked up neatly in series of shelves and glass cabinets.

I knew right then what I really wanted to do, and that was to read. Soon, I was in the library devouring fantastic stories, children’s fiction, anthologies, encyclopedias, adventures and history, to the point that I had been forgetting to review for exams and submit my school projects.

I become a compulsive reader. I would spend most of my vacant time in the library. There were just too many books to read. That started my most dearly cherished ambition to live in a big house with my own private library. I even had this secret wish to stay in prison surrounded by lots of books to read, just like the young lawyer in Anton Chekhov’s “The Bet,” who spent, because of a crazy bet, 15 years of solitary confinement reading books, from novels with a complicated love plot, sensational stories, to volumes on languages, philosophy, history, and religion, thus educating himself.  

A “NEW NORMAL” HOLIDAY

Christmas Tree 2010

I DID not display any Christmas ornaments in my house this year, just like the last. And my kids were not asking me why. Only once did my nine-year-old daughter mention about putting up our old Christmas tree at its usual corner in the living room, but it was not a question of why I wasn’t doing it, but it was rather a reminder, or maybe a command, for me to obey.

It was just a week before December and Roseya thought I’ve easily forgotten what our family has loved doing at this time of the year. She missed the whole family tradition of preparing for Christmas, such as decorating the tree while playing Christmas CD’s—Paskong Pinoy and Jose Mari Chan’s Christmas album were all-time favorites. It was a wonderful time together as a family. She has been looking forward to setting up the little star or an angel on top of the tree, all decked out in its Christmas finery.

MY PEN PAL

“PEN PALS“ maybe a strange term for the younger generations who have been living almost day to day with instant messaging, chat rooms, and social networking sites. To them, pen pals seem to come from a by-gone age. What do you need a pen for when you can reach your friends, old, new or potential friends, by just a click of the mouse?

As the term suggests, pen pals are two people, usually from different places, originally strangers, who regularly exchange friendly letters, mostly handwritten, and pictures with corny dedications at the back. The relationship would reach a major turning point when one would eventually travel across the distance to finally meet the other. They may fall for each other, that is, when physical attraction overpowers the emotional attraction they may have intimated on scented stationery. Or like with any friendship in life, they remain pen pals for only a short time. They would get to the point in their lives where they have too many things to take care of.

Today, however, there is an Internet version of the same thing. It still has its original meaning of remote friends in different parts of the world who write to each other through e-mails or private messages on social networking sites. The “pen” now means the electronically written communication. There are also pen pal sites for many single males or females to meet their “pals” online and later set up dates for themselves.

DAYBREAK

DURING a brief vacation in my hometown in Ilocos early this month, I forced myself to wake up before light just to see the familiar panorama of dawn in the barrio. Though I was sluggish after an eight-hour trip from Manila a day before, I braved the chilly air to watch the yellow strands of light above the mountain range to the east. I observed the breaking sun as if I had not seen it in so many years.

It’s easy to fall in love with the dawn. I always do. I would have my eyes transfixed to the radiating pink and faintly golden plumage of daybreak, like a beauteous lady smiling enticingly at you, or with rosy arms outstretched for a motherly embrace, dispelling any restlessness and grogginess of your tired soul.

It’s the kind of affection you miss so much, but sleepless nights and hectic obligations make you forget about her though. But the moment you try to reach her by the path of the night, you look east again and you’d find her as before.

There’s always this solemnity of her presence, when only the light moves, slowly from gray of a withering night to streaks of orange, and yellow and shaft of silver breaking from the clouds. And I can only have such lingering moment when I was in our old place in Nanguneg. Unlike in my house in a subdivision in Bulacan, where my view of the east is blocked by row of houses on elevated ground across the street, our house in the barrio would give me a clear view of that Homeric “rosy-fingered dawn.” 

5 BEST MEMOIRS THAT I’VE READ

I ENJOY reading books and read a lot. When I have this craving for reading, I succumb to whatever book that is available, so that qualifies me as a bookworm. My choice of books is eclectic, so I read everything that piques my interest.

I have my preferences, though, as an order of priority whenever I have given so many choices at one time: historical novels, award-winning books, and books that are made into outstanding movies.

But lately, reading narrative non-fictions, or first-person accounts that read almost like a novel, is an added delight. I’m always thrilled by personal truths written not only by famous writers, thinkers, and celebrities, but also by ordinary persons who examine themselves as they navigate through life, or ones written by those who can honestly talk about themselves in a purposeful way. And I am equally amazed by those who mythicize themselves, unraveling their exploits or histories as only they know them, and by those who start as a total no-gooder, but ends up as a total expert.

I am referring to memoir, which is different from an autobiography, though both words are sometimes used interchangeably. Unlike autobiography that is laden with dates and facts of the author’s entire life, a memoir does not delve too much into life details. It only provides a record not so much bound with timelines but of a random set of events that occurred and influenced a person’s life.

According to some authors, a memoir is a self-written account of selected events and phases in life that stands out in the memories of a person. It is a true story with a real-life plot, characters, setting, a couple of sub-plots, focusing on the part of the writer’s past that has universal appeal. It should be interesting in itself, as a novel might be.

The best memoirs, for me, should contain witty, interesting short stories and feelings or events that I can relate to in my own life. It should follow a story line or compile several anecdotes, such documents of honest thoughts, with a related theme, touching a subject that is either transformational or inspirational. It should have some kind of emotional impact that an ordinary reader like me should care. And finally, the writing has to be good.

There are five captivating and awesome memoirs I have read over the past few years. I picked up these memoirs because I believe they have permanently changed somehow the way I think about certain things, and gave me the idea that all lives worth living are interesting to read.

My list here was arranged in the order when I read them.

1.      Out of Africa by Isak Denisen

      When I first got hold of the book, I thought it was a novel, which is the basis of the Oscar Award winning movie of the same title   starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. But  the book is actually   a memoir written by a Danish baroness (real name: Karen von Blixen) who took over the management of a coffee plantation on her own in Kenya after she and her unfaithful husband divorced. It’s a vivid snapshot of her life in Africa, or rather a lyrical expression  of her love to the wonderful people and nature that touched her life there. But more than that, I was touched by her relationship (though she did not clearly define in the book the nature of such romance) with Denys Finch Hatton, the British farmer and hunter whom she met in the country. The pair had a tender affair, but not that of a “permanent partnership” that Blixen would have loved to happen. Hatton would use Blixen’s farm as his home base. And they would fly over her farm and some parts of Africa using Hatton’s biplane. The relationship ended when Hatton died in a plane crash. I feel for Blixen in her anguish and infinite longing, for the loss of a person she adored so much like a soul mate, and the loss of the coffee farm due to low yields. The book is a slow read; for it’s also an account on the charm, the majesty, the beauty of the vast continent, and the culture of the tribes therein; but it’s definitely a worthwhile read. 

2.      One L by Scott Turow

This is a journal-like narrative by Scott Turow, telling his experience as a first-year student at Harvard Law School where freshmen are dubbed One Ls. I first heard about this book when it was recommended by one of our speakers during our orientation as first year law students in a premier university. But I was only able to read it when I  was already in third year, or after I got kicked out and transferred to another school. Still, it was not a totally waste of time. I came to understand where I failed or what I lacked in my freshman year. I realized that first year in law school is the most critical in the life of a lawyer. Early on, you have to survive the terrors, depressions, hazing, compulsive work (e.g. reading up to 20 cases for a two-hour long recitation in class!), and very intimidating professors. One memorable account in the book is one that deals with the Socratic method of lecturing, where there were no clear answers. It was a familiar experience in my first school to be grilled with questions by the professor using that method. I suffered anxiety over a single exam that may determine my future in law school. The book narrates not only about law school but about being human in an intense, often grueling, situation. It is a must-read for first-year law students and law school applicants, or by anyone who has ever contemplated going to law school. 
                                                          

3.      I Know the Caged Bird Sing by Maya Angelou

       I didn’t hear about Maya Angelou until she recited her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration of US President Bill Clinton in 1993. So when I read her memoir more than 15 years later, I was amazed at the kind of life    she had endured and how she overcame her inferiority complex, trauma and racism, to become what she is now, a self-possessed, dignified young woman, and a multi-awarded poet and author, and playwright. I have read    fictions and stories about the origin of slavery of Negroes in America, the courage of black men and women, proud and strong under oppressive circumstances, and issues of rape, molestation, lynching and racism in their quest for independence and personal dignity. I read them from Alex Haley’s Roots, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Beloved, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and Richard Wright’s Native Son to name a few. And Angelou’s memoir covers topics common to these stories, particularly the era following the civil rights movements. I was no longer shocked and saddened by them. But it was a new experience reading this autobiographical story, written in the perspective of a young girl, as a three-year old then up to her early teens in a small, rural community during the 1930s. I admire her strength, her candor, poignancy and grace, all told in her powerful language, vivid scenery and emotions. It is a good book but not recommended for young readers.  

    

4.      Red Azalea by Anchee Min

My love for historical fiction leads me to Katherine, a novel about a Chinese girl and a seductive American teacher,  and aroused my curiosity of what was life in Mao’s China during the Cultural Revolution, and to Anchee Min, the author of  the book. And this has inspired me to pick up Red Azalea, her honest and frightening account under the shadow of Mao. It is her own story of inner strength and courage as she grew up in the rigid context of Communism, and living up with ideology and gender issues, sex, suicide, humiliation and political subterfuge. The drama unfolds like the convoluted plot of a telenovela. As a child, she was taught to be a good communist and was sent to a labor camp to work in the rice fields. Consistent with Communist dogma against any type of individualism or expression of emotions, communal laborers like her were forbidden to speak, dress, read, write, or love as she pleased. She entered, however, into a secret love affair with her female supervisor at the labor camp. Later on, she was selected to be trained as an actress for the film version of one of Madame Mao’s political operas. But Mao died before the film was completed, and Madame Mao was sentenced to death. It was then that Min realized that she was just a victim to the craziness of the culture like anyone else in her country, and that life might be better elsewhere. With the help of a friend, she left China for America. It is an interesting book.

5.      Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

      I have so little knowledge about the book or its author when   I picked it up in a bookstore. Without the gilded seal bearing “Winner of the Pulitzer Prize” on its cover, I wouldn’t have taken a second look, and wouldn’t have the chance to experience glorifying this gem of a book. This is an honest narration of a young Irish-American boy, crushed under the oppressive conditions of impoverished childhood, heartbreaking struggles with his father’s alcoholism, and his mother’s attempts to keep the family intact, the death of three of his siblings, and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors, but narrated by him with eloquence and remarkable forgiveness, and in astounding humor and compassion. That’s a big wow for me. The story happened in the Depression-era in New York and the war years in Ireland, where the family moved after they left America. The story, seen through the eyes of the author’s younger self, makes you laugh and cry with his heartbreaks and near-starvation, and keeps you rooting for his family’s survival. It highlights abject poverty and unemployment, those devastating conditions faced by millions around the world, but as a whole, it tells a story of hope and triumph rather than one of misery. Deserving of my five stars.

Just to round up my top ten, I must also confess an appreciation for the following autobiographical books: From Barrio to Senado by Juan M. Flavier, Nothing Is Impossible by Christopher Reeve, The Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier, America is in My Heart by Carlos Bulosan, and Born on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic.

I would love to write one of my own someday. I will definitely make one if only to help me make sense of my life, confront the truth, and provide myself new perspectives in life. But for now I just enjoy finding pieces of myself in other people’s lives revealed through their well-written memoirs.    

A LIFT FROM AN ANGEL

MY wife and our two-year-old son Nathaniel just came out of a children’s party at Jollibee along Quezon Avenue in Quezon City. It was the first week of August of 1999. The gray cloudy sky, cool heavy wind, and low rumble in mid-afternoon presaged rain.

“It looks like rain, do you have umbrella?” asked Weng, my wife’s officemate and the mother of the birthday girl.

“No it won’t rain,” I replied as if I was that day’s weatherman.

  

“Yes, we have an umbrella,” my wife countered.

Instead of going home to Malate, Manila, we proceeded to Uncle Rolly’s house in Quezon City. My uncle, my mother’s youngest brother, had been asking us to visit them if we have time. So here now, we have this spare time after the party. My wife and I were also eager to see my uncle’s two lovely kids. It would only take one jeepney ride from Jollibee to his place in Project 3 anyway, and we might reach the place before the rain. If it would rain at all.

We arrived at my uncle’s rented studio-type apartment just in time for dinner and the drizzle. Nathaniel had fun playing with my uncle’s precocious children, Jap-Jap, 3, and Paula, 2. I think it was around 7 p.m. when the drizzle gained up strength, followed by wild gusts of wind. The strong rain grew even stronger, and it fell without letup for another hour.

I wouldn’t want to stay very late at night with my baby away from the safety of our home. My uncle would love to accommodate us, if we like to stay through the night, but when we decided to go home no matter what, he only allowed us to leave when the rain had stopped.

After more than an hour of continuous rain, the sky became quiet but the cold stormy breeze still lingered in the air. We waited for another hour without rain then we went out the house, bidding my uncle and his family goodbye. At the street corner, we caught a jeepney going to Quiapo. It’s almost 10 in the evening.

While our jeepney was traversing the busy street of Kamuning, the rain fell, this time harder and more fearsome. The rain drummed on the roof of the vehicle. The roads were covered with rain water in a short period of time. The traffic came at slow. We waited patiently amidst drastic rain, cool wind, and darkness.  

The driver made a shortcut to minor streets, yet we were still trapped along with other vehicles trying to evade the floods. Suddenly, we came to a dead stop, and he told us that it was very dangerous to drive any further. “I’m sorry, but you have to get out and walk,” he said, pointing out the sudden lull from the rain.

My family went out of the vehicle, and walked until we reached a corner of the road where we could see passenger jeepneys passing by. It’s not yet midnight, I thought we’d have no trouble getting a ride. After we waited in the corner for a while, a jeepney with only a few passengers pulled up and the driver asked where we were going. “Quiapo,” I said. He told us that with the floods, he was not sure if he could make it until that place, but he could just try.

So we hopped in. A big portion of Quezon Avenue ahead of us was already submerged with floodwaters. The driver made a shortcut to the road parallel to the main thoroughfare until we reach Sampaloc district in Manila.

The weather turned nasty in a split second. It began to rain again drastically. Our travel had become a long and tortuous wading through the flooded streets. Floods were nothing new to this densely-packed part of the city. Being drivers and commuters, living under the mercy of floodwaters during the rainy season, meant developing survival skills and prayerful spirit worthy of a survivalist.

The driver, just like the first one, saw the danger ahead and said that he wouldn’t want to push his luck. That means, we have to be on our own, go down the road, and brave that super-filthy flood with my small child in my arms. Wading through flood waters is dangerous. Flood water can contain hundreds of different chemicals, along with bacteria and other microorganisms that can cause disease and infection. And there’s that open manhole waiting for its victim. But I have no choice. 

We joined the remaining passengers as they alighted from the vehicle and went to the direction of España Blvd. There’s only a drizzle now, so my family had to huddle in my wife’s small umbrella as we groped our way to the nearest shed. 

Good thing, the drizzle stopped after about 15 minutes, giving us the chance to go on with the trek. Fortunately, the flood along the side of the street was only just as high as my ankle. From Dapitan Street, we waded toward the direction of an intersection going to España Blvd. I could see some vehicles traversing the street toward Quiapo. So I rather take my chances than have my family spend the night in the middle of the floodwaters.

The cold, dark night stretched dauntingly ahead. We were stranded at the corner of Blumentritt and España. We stayed in the corner, with Nathaniel in my arms, seemed heavier than before. There were only a few public vehicles braving the floodwater but none had stopped to take us in. Tricycle and pedicab drivers, taking advantage of the flood, offered their services to stranded commuters; while some men pushed stranded vehicles to higher grounds, for a fee, of course.

Then a dark blue SUV passed by with steady speed at first, but slowed down in front of us, then he stopped two or three meters away. Perhapsthe driver changed his mind to move on, then he backtracked very slowly. It stopped in front of us, and the driver slid down his tinted window.

“Where are you going?” asked the driver, a young man about thirty.

My wife told him we were waiting for a ride going to Malate.

“I am going to that direction, why don’t you hop in before it would rain again, well, if it’s OK with you?” he said. His welcoming smile eased my apprehension of a stranger.  

“I happened to see your young child, so I thought, he badly needs to be at home at this time,” he continued when we were already inside his vehicle, with our soaked pants and a dripping umbrella. My child was now asleep in my lap. 

The driver went on with his friendly chatter. He was on a hurry (yet he found time to stop and pick us up in the flood) to fetch his boss from an important meeting in a place near the US Embassy along Roxas Boulevard, and his boss might be worried by now. Just like the previous jeepney drivers, he made every shortcut that he would find, but unlike them, he didn’t stop at all.

As the SUV negotiated the swirling waters, I suddenly found myself praying to God and all the saints: to keep the car from conking out, and let us make it to higher ground. The speed was moderate and steady, and murky flood started creeping into the car. But the driver wasn’t worried at all. He told me that he’d used to this kind of flood and he had a full trust with his vehicle.

We reached the end of España, and there’s no more flood after the next street going all the way to the underpass connecting Quiapo. I knew that our ordeal was about to the end. We went ahead with normal speed going to Lawton, then to Roxas Blvd until we reached Kalaw Street.

We alighted, and thanked the man profusely. But our angel shrugged off our profuse thanks, and refused to accept any payment. In our haste to go home, we forgot to get his name. But I watched the car sped away, sending him a prayer for him to reach his boss safely and to his family after his work was done.

Whoever he is, I’m very thankful for all his effort. He went out of his way to help my family in a desperate situation, and perhaps, his only motivation is to help or to do an act of kindness when opportunity so provides. That man has done a very honorable act.

We made it safely home. We were blessed that August night in España to meet a nameless angel in the road. He saved us, especially my child, from spending the night in a flooded street.