Snippets

A friend asked me recently, "So what do you do at your farm? What do you do when you wake up?"

My first hour is usually spent drinking coffee at the open kitchen or around it, while looking at the mountains. The birds keep me company. Then I take a long walk while sipping my coffee. I inspect the trees. The trees are so beautiful especially in the early morning. I tend the plants. I check on the newly planted ones. I help plant some more. This summer has been brutal to the plants. Unusual heat, a seemingly endless summer. It just started to rain yesterday and it is almost July.

Chopping firewood! It has become part of my daily routine. My arms (as my legs) have been getting so much exercise.

My toned muscles are my reward.

There is always something to do. I get around to doing my non-farm work after lunch, but that only happens when I don't cheat. These days working with nature is much more rewarding. I have no complaints. I have the best of several worlds -- the physical, the spiritual, and the intellectual. It is always a full day. Sometimes I cap it with a bottle of wine (or some other drink) around a bonfire.

When I finally go to sleep at night, my body is tired but happy. Until I fall asleep, my mind is full of ideas about what to do next.

Until tomorrow. Another full day.

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I call myself that sometimes. You see, wherever I go, I always pick up trash. I put it in my pocket or my bag, or I carry it in my hand all the way to wherever I could dispose of it in a trash bin. (Something my Grade 1 teacher taught me.)

When I first stayed at Ili ni Gaia, one of the first things I did was to organize a clean up. We collected so many sacks of trash -- all kinds, those that you usually see in a regular household in the city. How did such trash reach this remote place and a rainforest at that? The answer is, of course, the tourists came. They stayed, swam in the natural pool, held parties, and totally enjoyed themselves. Then they left trash. Always. They must have expected that a paid worker would pick up after them. But the trash piled up. Nature claimed some of them. Today, after nine years, I still see trash sometimes when I do my forest walk, albeit occasionally now.

It makes me think of our basura culture.

What is it that makes us throw away trash everwhere and anywhere that we deem convenient for us? I remember a colleague admitting that she would throw trash out of her car window while driving. I remember chasing after a private vehicle full of evidently professionals after they threw out a huge plastic of trash along the Marilaque Highway. Once, on a beach in Zambales, a friend and I could no longer take the sight of trash littering the entire coastline and so decided to do a two-person clean up. Tourists and locals watched us as we worked. Eventually, one approached us and asked, "why are you doing this?" I retorted, "why not?"

Once a friend came to visit with her driver. Throughout, the driver was gushing about how beautiful the place was. After he had left, I discovered that he left behind his plastic trash - fast food and drink containers - right on the spot where he stood while admiring the Sierra Madre mountains. A convenient place to leave trash behind.

I remember visiting an organic vegetable garden at UP Diliman. While I spoke with the manong tending the plants about his planting method, I could not take my eyes off the garden plots littered with all sorts of plastic, some sticking out of the soil. It was everywhere. I think that at some point they stopped seeing the plastics as trash. It was already part of the soil, of the (garden) landscape.

Do you still see the trash around you?

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My dogs are good listeners. Oso (for "bear") tilts his head to the side when I talk to him (as if to say, "what?") and his eyebrows and ears go up and down. Diwa (for "soul" or "spirit") looks at me with his eyes wide open. His ears and eyebrows also go up and down, although sometimes he walks out on me in the middle of a conversation.

Conversation? More like monologue. They don't talk back, but they do listen and react in subtle ways. No matter. I get to tell them what I think or feel without filter. I could write a book about my countless, encompassing conversations/monologues with them. It reminds me of one of my first dogs, who stayed with me the longest. His name was Plato. For twelve years, I had so many conversations with Plato. Not all philosophical of course.

Dogs have souls. I believe that. I have seen that. Their distinct personalities manifest in how they behave and interact. Are their personalities also shaped by their humans? I don't know. Maybe. Diwa is like my sometimes restless, often moving, often active self. He is keenly observant. He has learned how to open doors from simply watching us. Oso is like my gentle, quiet, reflective side, although he is fierce and scary to strangers. Both are sweet. Both make me laugh.

My dogs have taught me how to be a better person.

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It's a familiar image. It could represent many things. A swirling wave. The eye of a storm. A shape in nature. Tonight, it represents the swirling winds around the house. It also captures my swirling thoughts.

I try to avoid writing about negativity. But today my swirling thoughts were full of negative emotions - anger, pain, frustration, helplessness - all related to events and the state of the world and humanity.

This morning, I had an encounter with a young woman over something that I thought showed an utter lack of consideration and respect for others. A sense of entitlement in disregard of everyone else. I see it more and more around me, even in my teaching. What to do with it?

I remember an activist student telling me, "I try to stand my ground. I speak out about what I believe in even in social situations. I call out people on things they do that harm others. But it's exhausting!"

Indeed it is. It is easier to ignore or walk away from unpleasant and distressing situations. Or is it really? The problem is that sometimes it is impossible to unsee, to unfeel, to unthink, to close one's consciousness.

"Living is easy with eyes closed

Misunderstanding all you see

It's getting hard to be someone, but it all works out

It doesn't matter much to me.

Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to the

Strawberry Fields

Nothing is real

And nothing to get hung about

Strawberry Fields forever."

- John Lennon/The Beatles

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