Salt of the Errr...

Salt used to be so precious that they were traded with gold. Today, salt is traded with silver engraved with the silhouette of Jose Rizal. So much for price cut, aight? Anyway, that got to my mind because I traveled along a 38-km shoreline today: from Liloan to Catmon. I started out at the break of dawn and that really confuse me: who breaks the dawn every now and then? Why do people have to say break of dawn? Where does it pieces shatter when it gets broken?

We'll never find out who did it.

When I reached Danao, it was already bright and people were getting in and out of tricycles--from Mitsumi all the way to the town center. Tricycles are really curious vehicles. They are in a class of their own. They have these side cars that really reminds me of those trainers I had on my mini-bike when I was 5 years old. Except that these tricycle "trainers" can carry 30 people at a time.

Danao is an equally curious place. First, it always has this armada of fishing boats off its shore that always seem to be on the verge of attacking the town. They're in a perpetual quest for Helen except that they're not at all interested in pursuing a myth that never was. (but we love to believe in Helen. If the earth has never come up with a face that can launch a thousand ships, it sure is an ugly place. And we don't like that.)

A crowded parking lot.

Second, just across Danao church is a new park that has been inaugurated on the 28th. July 28: it has been five days since its inauguration but the city won't still allow people it. It's a queer thing about the Philippines. They inaugurate a place but they don't let people it. So I just decided to take a pic of my bike just to prove to people that I'm the one who's really doing all these stuff.

The public park nobody can enter.

When I got to Catmon, the sun was already making its presence felt--on my skin!!

Here comes the sun...doodoodoodooo..

I stopped by a shore to take a pic of distant people casting their nets to fish for fish. Apparently, being fishers of men can't support families anymore. And those who fish men in the biblical sense sometimes do so in the literal sense. Yes, we hear about it on the news e-v-e-r-y-t-i-m-e.


The place you gotta be if you want to be a real rock star.

It was about 7am and children were on their way to school. But these kids here were hopping their way to school. They know the classroom is such a boring place and they wanted to have fun before they get incarcerated.


Children should be kept out of school for their future's sake.

Just before entering Catmon's town center, I passed by a boy trudging his way to school all by himself. Well, he don't wanna be but that's how it goes for him each day. When I asked him where he goes to school, he says "kang pastor." This is the thing with kids. You ask them something, they answer like you were living in the same community. Distance does not make much sense to them. Ask them where they bought their banana cue and they'd tell you they got it from Nang Siding. Like Nang Siding made it to the Billboard Top 20 and everybody's expected to know her. These kids sure "walk in a world without maps," to use Ondaatje's words.

He's not contemplating suicide.

I didn't want to hold him long because I don't want him to get late. Not that I don't want him to get late for school. If I'd have my way, I wouldn't send children to school. I just didn't want him to get late for the whole damn sake of it. Not being like just for the sake of not-being-late, to me, more important than art for art's sake.

The boy scratches his head as he contemplates whether it is possible for protons to decay in a spray of particles and be virtually extinct within the millenia.

It was funny when I got to Catmon since there was a "this way" sign that points to a motorcycle. I bet the guy who placed that sign hated the owner of the bike so he wanted some 20-T bus to wreck it.


In between is the road where all vehicles heading north pass.

On my way home, I stopped by the park in front of Carmen Municipal Hall. It's on of those big parks where you can let kids play baseball and soccer and cricket and golf simultaneously without them running into each other. At that park, I met Mr. S: "S" for sweeper. You see, I don't ask for the people I meet because it would make me sound like a CIA agent secretly investigating how they grow their corn or sweep the leaves. So I figure out that I need to figure out a way to name them. And good ol' Sue Grafton provided the inspiration.

Mr. S earns 150 pesos a day for sweeping a portion of the part in the morning and in the after. In between his sweeping periods are his rest hours. Mr. S says what he earns is not enough to feed a family. I thought, yeah, but it sure is enough to starve your kids. But Mr. S is a responsible man, or shall we say, the park sweeper who has the brains of an experimental physicist. He does not rely on his sweeping for a living. He has a farm in Catmon and it gives him bulk of cash that he could stretch between harvest and planting time. His son who has already graduated high school looks after the crops.


He'd have more money if he were a mine sweeper. (And less limbs, too!)