Day 07
Sunday Silence
Walking on Makiling one can see the stark contrast from walking along laguna bay in terms of silence. Waters is community, the mountain is solitude
Guard stares down
Birds
Helicopter hovers
A child calls from across the hill
A firecracker exploses
A woman picks up stuff on the side of the hill
I love Lb because I could retreat on the mountain when I am overwhelmed from the noise of the sea
Talk ilaya ilawod
But wherever the person goes he cannot be completely alone. The body is made up of so much foreign objects one ought to ask whether it is still one’s own.
Cutting grasses
Children waiting clothed well. Where are they going? Doesnt seem to be church.
Walked this in the past on night. The lights were amazing.
Jarod cafe: A cafe with a good view
Silence once more
Los Baños is the only place I’ve stayed longer than three years which isn’t Baguo and Pangasinan. It is difficult for me to take root, to find home away from home, so to have this connection with LB is not something I take for granted.
Why am I able to stay here?
I started this series of walks with a question: What sustains me in LB?
Here, while sitting on the Jamboree Road overlooking Laguna de Bay and the fishing communities I visited in the previous days, I feel like I have a good grasp of what sustains me here.
LB gives me the freedom to change: to be someone who I am not yet tomorrow. It gives me a place to retreat from people when I need to but also a space to sit with them either in silence or in laughter. It reminds me that I am a unique individual and reminds me when I begin thinking too highly of myself that I forget I am interconnected with the place and people I am around.
Because of all these, LB allows me to doubt myself, to change my beliefs, to change my identity, to be in this perpetual liminal state where I feel the freest and most actualize.
Everyone of us needs and LB, a place where we can be our truest self.
Funeral hones
I met a fellow walker
Old perhaps almost 80
S Walks slowly
I asked him why he’s walking at bhis age He pointed his time he said it’s still early
Where are u going? He uttered a place I didnt catch.
I told him to take care. Lots of vehicles behind him.
15101 steps