Selected short stories:
The Birdkeeper
My wife was a free spirit, an independent soul. She had an iron will and was used to carving her own path. When I met her, I wanted her, and she came to me, she came to love me… She went down to earth to meet me.
We built a home in the city, in a row of tightly connected houses inside a humble old subdivision. The weather was warm, so heavy, and so humid, but we dealt with it even if we complained daily. We raised our two children there. I also found a new hobby – keeping a group of doves that would daily fly out of five small holes from our balcony. They would launch over the basketball court in the middle of the subdivision, circle wide into the cloudy skies. After some time, they would come back with another loop in the air… (Read more)
The Heartsong
My father saw me in the crowd, ran up to me, and met me with a strong and hearty embrace.
His claws were velveted and his fur was comfort. (Like Aslan.)
My daughter! he shouted.
She’s come home!
The crowd applauded. But the orchestra kept on playing.
I’ve always been having this orchestra play for you, he said. I’ve conducted it and taught all the musicians to play my song.
It’s always playing for you. It came from my heart.
He opened up his coat and I could hear a separate noise from the orchestra. It was a song from my Father’s heart! It was like a little kitten starting to meow, and compelled by the music and his love, I put my ear to his chest to listen to it… (Read more)
Articles
The Fears of Filmmaking & Pursuing a Creative Life
I have been pondering about the push-and-pull of what it means to be a creative. Especially being someone from a third world country. Or maybe it touches everyone in general. Here’s my journey so far…
I have been invited by God to live a life of creativity. But there’s always been something holding me back from that as a calling.
The fear starts in Nepal, according to my memory. I lived in Kathmandu – a place that looks ramshackle-y in many corners, it was about as poor as my home city Manila – but it had so much creativity within it. I remember – O Lord, the 7AM walks with Tita EDs; it was just quiet and I would bring my tiny little pink camera borrowed from Mom (Tita Wendy gave me my own black one which I covered with a baby sock when I wasn’t using it). I would take pictures of dogs on garden walls, murals, children going to school, teenage boys making marigold wreaths… (Read more)
Beholding Autumn in Armenia
I have been wanting to go into nature for a long time. I longed to get lost in a forest or stare at a high mountain from afar… Blame it on the poets I’ve read or musicians I’ve listened to – those who went into the refuge of secluded mountainsides or plains to find themselves. Being stuck in the middle of the city, I had wanted this especially throughout my gap year (I’ve started my graduate classes now.)
I figured that my new task of tending seedlings and plants in our balcony was also about me learning to commune with God in nature as He taught me plenty of spiritual lessons through the metaphors Christ used in His parables that I experienced myself. I also did my Bible devotions in parks but I would be disturbed by cigarette smoke from 360 degrees around me. Finally, I got to go out again when my family and Filipino and Armenian friends went out to Dilijan (and a brief time in Sevan) to bring a visiting friend from the Philippines. He’d wanted to see autumn’s colours in Armenia so we happily toured him around.
Autumn in Dilijan, a province of Armenia, has been something I always desired to see ever since I moved here. I saw pictures of the trees dressed in red, yellow, green, and brown – looking quite fluffy on the hillsides and being reflected in infinite blurriness in the lakeside; a wonder I wanted to behold. As someone who grew up in the Philippines, we never have winter and fall and spring, only either wet or dry; and in Kathmandu, Nepal, we didn’t have this kind of colourful display. (Also, side note: I like using “autumn” over “fall” because of my synesthesia – “autumn” matches the leaves’ colours more than the plain yellow-pale pink of the word “fall,” which is a word that also signifies other concepts than this beautiful season.)… (Read more)
The Day Everything Changed
This is an account of my experience during the earthquake on the 25th of April, which shook the nation of Nepal, and after, the world. This article was also published in the Filipino-Canadian magazine, “Absolutely Filipino”.
It was a fine Saturday morning in the city of Kathmandu. Considering it was the only holiday everyone had in a week, a welcome breather for the youth who’d been burned out by studying and taking exams (as it was their gruelling Exam Month), and that, even though the upcoming summer was still giving us a cold shoulder, generally everyone was in a good mood.
I was at church, listening intently to an awesome sermon in our fairly small but wonderful congregation. It already felt like an amazing day, and I was looking forward to what else would unfold when we would go out into the city.
Then the earthquake came, and the whole city would never be the same again.
(Read more)