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Many stories are being told about climbing a mountain; this one's about faith. |
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For your patience during the delay of juding for [Link To Item #1102921] . Thank you!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/general-Appreciation-1985.gif) A question often crosses my mind – how do I want to be remembered? I have so many thoughts on this because, simply, it always crosses my mind. But, you know, I try to treat this as imaginations. I will never know. You will never know – that we are being remembered. Do our heroes know that they're being adored and honored? Rick Warren said, “You were not put here to be remembered. You were put here to prepare for eternity.” Nevertheless, the image of my papa always comes across. He was a simple man with nothing – but everything – to give. “Just be happy.” Despite the scarcity of things and opportunity, he was happy. And he was misunderstood - by me, my siblings and mama. When I was nine or ten years old, old enough to remember those memorable days, he brought me to the center of a mining village. The mine was to us a real blessing, to my boyish mind, it was a gift from heaven above. Dusty road and yellow water, and an English speaking (American) manager, the environment is still inside here. I was proud to hear my papa converse with him. We rode in a truck used to transport lumber to our town. It was my first long trip as a child, and I saw the mountain, the rigorous terrain, and the beauty of God’s creation with the backdrop of a yellow water. My eldest brother was one of the laborers. At salary time, he’d present to mama his pay slip, a summary of earnings and deductions. “Well, my son, better luck next time,” she said with a kiss on his forehead as she stared the contents of the slip. Maybe a few pesos to buy a ganta of rice. The innocence of the place could be pictured in my face. “What are we doing here, Papa?” He couldn’t give me a clear answer. He simply muttered things like he was applying for a job because he was suspended as policeman of our town. The American manager was too kind to accept us, not kind enough to give us a job. And so we walked from that place back to the nearest town, some twenty to twenty five kilometers, maybe more. We trailed a vast wooded area, rivers, up and down, long and winding. An exhaustive, long trek for a ten-year old kid like me. When we reached the first house in town, we asked for food and water. I felt how it was like to be a beggar. Mama kept on nagging: study, study, my child, so you can’t inhale the mountain and the color yellow. And now I know why I have to study and strive like what she said. Life is a very difficult subject, more difficult than the trigonometric principles in college. Now I know why the earth moves and revolves like a spinning ball. It’s because life also revolves and spins. Sometimes you are poor, sometimes rich. I was called Amerkano because as a young boy, I had those features, genes I inherited from my grandfather who lived in the island, and later left for his good, native land after espousing one of the natives. He left a part of his gene to become a writer like me who struggles to coin words everyday. Now I know why I speak good English. A brood of five and all boys was mama’s ticket to heaven; she had her purgatory on earth (to be aggravated by my papa’s drinking). Sometimes, she would just scream in the middle of a peaceful morn. The five brothers didn’t really have peace in the kitchen. My vivid memories are focused on the rainy days of my childhood, so full of nature. How happy we would have been if those drops of rain were real manna of the Jews, because the five brothers always longed for them. I feel nostalgic when rainy days are here, or drizzles outside the windows come at times. During those wet days, we used banana leaves as umbrellas. And tin cans protected us from pouring rain that flowed like water falls on the holes of our nipa roofs. The cans were hung on the ceilings to catch the water when the rotten nipa leaves could not anymore protect us from the pouring rain. High school was full of action, hungry stomach and memorizations. A teacher forced us to memorize history notes, word for word, including periods, commas and question marks. No wonder, she too could do it even with colons and semi-colons. I could memorize long sentences and stanzas of American and Filipino literature. We did it under the shades of coconut and guava trees, reciting facets of world history, word for word, facing the woods at the back of the school. The hollow-blocked fence separating the school and the wilderness looked like a long bridge adorned with young, ambitious "memorizers". College? Less thrilling than high school. I copied one whole article from a magazine and had it published in the school organ, with my big by-line. From that time on, I became the writer and future attorney. After college, I joined an army purportedly to serve my country, but which later turned out for goons and gold. I took with me some wealth I wanted for a lifelong adventure, forgot everything that was left behind. Slowly, my foundation deteriorated, eaten by rats and mice I kept in my subconscious. All the enigma, excitement and endless dreams and ambitions suddenly, to my mind, became positive. Now here in this world of my own – I can call my own – away from the land of poverty I started to build my dream world. A real one. A fantastic recreation of my childhood dreams full of adventures and escapades. How did these all happen? It was just like a dream. The earth, seen from above, is a beautiful stone, a mighty rock, thrown by a powerful hand from an ocean of nothingness. It will be there forever. But to be destroyed slowly, and slowly by you and me. Haven't you imagined yourself a spirit? You can regard yourself as a spirit floating over the universe, watching at the earth, slowly and slowly deteriorating, until it collapses into nothingness. Like a mountain with mines. Like a river with chemicals. Like the air that you breath. Slowly they will go back to the mouth of God. WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF GOD SPITS THEM ALL, MAKE ANOTHER BLACK HOLE FULL OF EVIL SPIRITS? CAN YOU IMAGINE? ASK YOURSELF!!! (This is the introduction - somewhat - to a book about me, of course, and it's like a summary, don't you think? Our life is like an island, there are rivers and seas and mountains, and mines. It has a beginning and an end, and the end seems to be the beginning of another. Don't you think?) |
| We try to remember of the past, what you were, what you were doing and aspiring to become, and then think and ponder of what you have become, you will never think that you have become what you are today. It's a different thing, a different time. Yesterday you were aspiring to be somebody. And now you ask, "what happened?" You blame God. You can't blame yourself, because if you start blaming yourself, you go back to the past. This is the monster inside us. This is evil lurking us to stop living. So stop thinking. Just go on living, and savor life to the fullest. There's no point in stopping. Life is full of failures. And you can't fail again. |
| It's a material world. What is this? Man exerts all efforts to pursue what is not spiritual: career, money, fame and power. But all these will go to waste if we don't look at the spiritual side. Man tries to avoid his destiny, but destiny is where he is going. He is in a point of no return. Man works for something that he doesn't need in his destiny. He's looking for something useless in his journey. His pilgrimage is going to end. The road can not avoided. Death is certain. |
| I'm hooked, I'm stuck,I'm addicted to - what? - thank God it's writing. Yes, a few minutes I don't write, I would miss it. Whose fault? Maybe it's WDC. Still, thanks to you Writing.Com, I've awakened my Muse who's been here since the beginning of time when I thought there was no time or I didn't know how to do it. Writing now becomes an easy chore. I just write, and I don't care of what they say. But of course I care sometimes of what my readers think of my writing. I like them reading me and my life. The internet is full of opportunities to publish your work. Just write your blog, and you're there. You see you name in print. You see your life, your thoughts, the things you want to do with your life. This is fantastic. Everybody write, write. See you in your writing. I'll meet you in your thoughts and dreams. I'll write you, you write me. |
| I've just been enlisted into an entirely challenging world of writing, loaded with lots of knowledge, contests, trials, tests, etc. This allowed me to be creative and more creative, read and read, and explore other worlds through this modern technology. I have downloaded many of these "super knowledge" and uploaded, at the same time, what have been kept in my mind's warehouse of ideas and insights to make it an exciting database of data and ideas. Hope people read and download mine into their own databases. |
| I've been staring at this blank space in Writing Dot Com for several minutes, no ideas come to mind to get me to type the keyboards. But I've also learned from here that one of the ways to fight writer's block is to write about it. So here ... still nothing. Anyway, I'm just searching for some prompts to write about, I found several, in fact lots of them. We only need a word or two and then other ideas follow. I think the mind is just like some kid who needs a candy and the moment you give him, he gives out what he can offer. But it is also a computer which needs a coin or two so it can give ideas. Somtimes, in fighting writer's block, I also tend to look at the mirror and watch myself for several minutes. Hey, look at that. Just kidding. |
| Thank you for this thing called the web. Whatever you call it - internet, the net, worldwide web - this has revolutionized the information technology, the whole world is now connected digitally. And for how long, maybe forever, maybe until Christ comes? I imagined sometimes, what if Christ came, of course nobody know when, or if the end of the world just happened right now? The impact can not be so devastating with this technological advantage, should I say, that we have. What will God do? Well, we do not know. One thing is sure, God may shorten our time, or make this quick. Is it not? And one thing is also certain, this has revolutionized my writing. Now I'm a published author, here at Writing Dot Com. |
| I didn't realize I marked my first year anniversary on October 6. I just noticed this when I saw my community recognition the (9) beside my handle Alimohkon. With this I would like to explain the story behind my Alimohkon. The original Alimohkon is dead. He's my uncle who survived his family, through thick and thin, as a school teacher. His salary wasn't enough, and how could it be for a family of more than a dozen kids, I have failed to count my first cousins. Well, these first cousins are now "a bunch of school teachers" themselves, tools of education in that small island "so far, far away". This uncle whom we called Uncle Joe was a story-teller, a "joker", and, of course, an uncle, in the truest sense of the word. He simply looked like my mother, a little taller than 5'6", and always gay. In his lifetime - in our days, should I say - whenever the family was "in a roundtable", he was there in the middle, holding the mike, telling stories. Moreover, when he wasn't in good terms with school administrators (for him, there were several administrations - private or public), he was out there in the river or in the sea, fishing. He lived a legacy - education. His children became educators. During his wake, teachers and educators flooded his small hut thatched with nipa roof. Though we didn't often see each other when I was already an adult busy with my own career as a uniformed man, Alimohkon left a mark on me. His memory lingers on. He's the reason why I became a writer, though not yet a full-fledged author. |
| I smell halloween. What are the smells of halloween? The horrifying smell of a vampire. In the Philippines, there is a manananggal. This creature, who is usually a woman, turns half at midnight and flies with bat-like wings and wreaks havoc, though silently in the night, in the neighborhood where there is a pregnant woman. She sucks the blood of the baby inside that woman. Going back to the smell, that creature has a really bad scent. Local folks counter it with spices or salt so that she couldn't come near. A foul odor is usually related to this creature. Am I smelling this creature? Sounds. It's halloween. |
| Here's what was left of my blogs, I mean my blogs that have not been written. They're just kept here inside. Maybe, I'm burned out already because I have been writing and reading all day. But I'm just in the mood to read and write because it's the birthday of my son, MJ. And I want him to enjoy. He's there drinking and enjoying with his friends. I want him to be happy. That's all. |
| Been here for quiet a while, since October of 2005 to be exact, I can say I'm enjoying my stay here at WDC. It's so nice to know people from all walks of life, from other nationalities, different kinds of people, professionals or non-pro. I can say now that I have learned how to write the right and professional way. Thanks Writing Dot Com. |
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I'm sorry, but I really would've! That was hilarious.