"Everyone has their love story. Everyone. It may have been a
fiasco, it may have fizzled out, it may never have get going, it may have been
all in the mind, that doesn’t make it any less real. Sometimes you see a
couple, and they seem bored with one another, and you can’t imagine them having
anything in common, or why they’re still living together. But it’s just not a
habit or complacency or convention or anything like that. It’s because once,
they had their love story. Everyone does. It’s the only story."
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Thursday, July 18, 2019
I Wanted to Run
Thursday, July 18, 2019
What was I thinking, getting up at 4:30 am to run even if it’s
drizzling and then giving up after two kilometers when it started to pour
heavily and relentlessly? Why didn’t I just
stay in bed and luxuriated in the peacefulness of that early morning hour? It’s
because I wanted to do it. I wanted to run. I wanted to feel my heart accelerate
as I pounded the pavement. I needed the comforting monotony of running the same
route over and over again. I crave for that feeling of utter exhaustion and serenity—the
spent muscles and the clear head—after a long run.
I run because I can; I run because it makes me happy.
Friday, July 12, 2019
That Joyful Ride
Friday, July 12, 2019
I just needed to close my eyes and that train ride from
Colombo to Galle unspooled in my mind like it happened yesterday and not a year
ago.
We arrived at Sri Lanka’s Colombo Fort Station at six in the
morning, an hour before boarding time. The station, though bustling with
people, was not as chaotic as I expected, and we easily found our platform, from
where I watched with glee the coming and going of trains as we waited for our
ride. I could have stayed there for hours marveling at the endless ebb and flow
of people leaving and arriving at the station, but our train arrived on time
and we had to leave.
![]() |
Our observation car was attached to the rear of the train and gave us an excellent view back along the track. |
The train started to move, past
the commotion and the wearying tempo of the city, chugging slowly along the Indian Ocean through small coastal towns. Looking out the windows of our
observation car, I could see the sweep of the railroad tracks fringed by
coconut trees and flooded by the sun’s warm, golden light. That ineffable joy of experiencing something singular
for the first time seeped through me as the train rumbled on and the cool ocean
breeze wafted in.
Thursday, July 4, 2019
Often, they carried each other
Thursday, July 4, 2019
"Some things they carried in
common. Taking turns, they carried the big PRC-77 scrambler radio, which
weighed 30 pounds with its battery. They shared the weight of memory. They took
up what others could no longer bear. Often, they carried each other, the wounded
or weak. They carried infections. They carried chess sets, basketballs,
Vietnamese-English dictionaries, insignia of rank, Bronze Stars and Purple
Hearts, plastic cards imprinted with the Code of Conduct. They carried
diseases, among them malaria and dysentery. They carried lice and ringworm and
leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds. They carried the land
itself—Vietnam, the place, the soil—a powdery orange-red dust that covered
their boots and fatigues and faces. They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere,
they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all
of it, they carried gravity. They moved like mules. By daylight they took
sniper fire, at night they were mortared, but it was not battle, it was just
the endless march, village to village, without purpose, nothing won or lost."
~Tim O’Brien, The Things They
Carried, 1990
Tuesday, July 2, 2019
Rain
Tuesday, July 2, 2019
We live in constant terror. The ominous rumble of thunder triggers
that panicky urge to go home before it starts to pour. “Oh no, it’s going to
rain again” our minds warn us, as if rain is a harbinger of doom and not a common
element of weather.
We can’t
be blamed for feeling like this for everyone who lives in Metro Manila knows
that rain, even just a bit of it, will inevitably bring flood and flooded
streets mean hellish traffic congestions that turn a 30-minute commute into a two-hour
misery ride.
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