9 months
July 2, 2008“Some must go nowhere before they can go anywhere”
My thoughts have turned to what (if anything) I’ve learned on Mindanao in the nine months I’ve been on this island. As friends and family tell me to make sure I “bring myself home in one piece”, I grow to believe that there are pieces of me spread all over Mindanao- up the calichuchi trees and in the coral fragments, nestled in the tuber fields and floating on the waves of Lake Lanao. I shed the layers when I slip in the water and sink in the mud- it’s a slow process. Sometimes it hurts a little.
So what is being added? What keeps this vessel afloat as the planks are removed from its underbelly in the face of a storm. I’m not naive enough to believe it’s wisdom, or even intelligence or gumption. Maybe it’s just mud and pineapples, maybe it’s just salt water and flowers. I see the destruction of my emptiness like the coming of the rainy season. The air grows dense and cool and then the atmosphere purges- cleansing the world again.
I stand in the rain. I am 80 percent water.
People leak. Entrails of soul drift out of a thought or action, to settle upon the earth or onto masonry to be soaked in by a bone dry brick. Haunted places are strong with the essence of a single person, or a collection of people who have hung around long enough to transform the feel of the place: Quantum after-images.