Epiphanies On the Road to Someplace Else

Mae Hong Son's serene lake

Journeys along the Thailand-Burma Border

“I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over- a burning desire to go , to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any here.” – John Steinbeck in “The Urge to be Someplace Else”

And so it was that I found myself one cold December morning riding at the back of an open pickup truck, the wind on my face, up through the misty mountain trails of Mae Hong Son at the Thai-Burmese border. There we were all seated on a mat spread across the floor of the truck, shivering at every burst of moist wind that only gets chillier as we climbed our way up the slopes. To shield my face from the cold, I draped it with a shawl that I kept holding on tightly lest it gets blown about by the wind. Yet, after a while, I decided to let go of it gladly, no matter how biting the cold is, and let myself be swept in by the wind and sunshine, and the stirring beauty of mist and green.

There, before me, are verdant mountains rising up to the sky filled with ferns and pine trees, and here and there are bamboo groves lying hidden on patches of shadows swathed across the valley. As we moved deeper into the mountains, there would be more other shadows I would see and, too, I would learn that amidst this tender beauty, the forest has held secrets and borne witness to deep and abiding sorrows.

Moments before, we rode pass by villagers on single file hunched on the ground, their bodies in synchronized motion toiling the rice paddies, and every so often we see gaudily-painted Buddhist shrines on the roadside where smoke from burning incense sticks would waft through the air. We have set out from the town at eight in the morning, while it was still draped in slumber and fog, and as whiffs of mist drifted over on to the nearby lake and up across Wat Jong Kham and Wat Jong Klang, the twin temples of the Buddhist monks in saffron robes, some of whom as young as six or seven, whose heads are shaven, and who at nighttime would fly lanterns with lit candles shooting up into the sky in blazing flares to the cheers of the crowd.

Winged Notes

‘Winged Notes’: Remembering My Father

On New Year’s Day, during the early afternoon siesta lull when all is silent after a night of revelry, I found myself prying open the old brown piano stool that was once my father’s. Inside, dust had gathered on yellowed sheets of piano pieces, Papa’s collection which he lovingly kept since he was a young man. I know because he scribbled on one of the sheets the date “November 27, 1960” when he was only 20 years old.

I leafed through the piano sheets which faintly smelled of mothballs and arranged them according to the songs I love. The titles I know by heart since childhood, the lyrics, too, and the melodies. “Lemon Tree”, “Tammy”, “Run Samson Run”, “You’re My Everything”, “Till Then”, “To Love Again” were among his favorites. One of the earliest memories I have of my father was him playing on the piano and singing “Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet…” I could still see him swinging his head.

This was how I came to learn music at an early age, watching my father play love songs to my mother, for it was to her, whom he would call on to sit beside him, that he dedicated his songs. My mother would pretend to be busy with housework, embarrassed by my Papa’s open display of affection. But it was his songs played on the piano, my mother would later confess, that endeared him to her and my grandparents who had a beautiful Mercedes piano in their old house at General Luna. There he would woo her and, merrily, played all the way to her heart.