34

Dear Portia,

While looking for something in my email (which is the alliteral translation of the needle in the haystack), I was able to find this: My places to visit for the Year 2010:

1. Corregidor
2. Sagada
3. Camarines Sur
4. Vigan
5. Palawan
6. Bislig, Surigao

Nearby Areas:
1. Camotes
2. Bantayan
3. Pandanon Island
4. Nalusuan
5. Moalboal


I had this stubborn notion that I could visit one place every month. But then I also realized I didn't want to conquer this list for the experience but for the prestige. How artificial. Sometimes it's better to digest things slowly.

I'm sad to say that I haven't made a substantial cut to this wishlist yet, but I am happy to note that I am now nearer to my authentic feelings of why exactly it is that I want to travel.

As Jim Paredes once said, 'Tama na yung pagpapa-pogi'. Let's experience things because we want to experience things, because it makes us more substantial in our own eyes, because we just want to.

Still, I'm happy to note that Camotes and Moalboal are closer than I thought. A distance between today and next week, in fact. In travel, let us choose to count not in distance but in time, and when counting time, it's never the quantity but how we choose to use it.

Be well.

33

Dear Portia,

I'm learning to love questions. Isn't that the most wonderful thing? Now, when I look at my window, chewing my pen and looking at leaves fall, I ask not anymore how to solve the perils of the world. It escapes me completely. I realize this whole time this Save-Everything-and-Everyone mentality has been nothing but been pretense all along. I've been so successful at it, I didn't even know I was pretending.

Now, I look at my window and actually see leaves. They fall on our sidewalk and bunch together like soft pillows waiting to be touched. It's beautiful, these questions. They're like leaves falling one at a time, and sometimes we're too busy immediately trying to find ways of sweeping them off that we don't notice their incredible aerodynamics, their ability to fly.

I read this beautiful quote by Rilke today. I feel like it was written for me. He said, 'Try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers which could not be given to you now,because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything.'


Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.'

Little girl, don't fret yourself with too many answers like I did. Asking the right question is a reason for celebration in itself.

Watching leaves fall,
Mom