While most people know me as coming from Negros, I was actually born in Manila. Sometime in the mid-1970s, my late dad gave up his advertising and graphic design business in Makati to move me and my mother to Bacolod City.
This is what brought us here. I have ceased to question whether the move was right or wrong. In the end, the entire sequence of events from 1975 when I moved from La Salle Greenhills to La Salle Bacolod (in the middle of the schoolyear!) to the time my dad passed away in 1985, is what shaped me to become the person I am today.
These are the fields where I meet my 7 year old self. The little boy
who would always tag along with his father and try to shoot birds with a
slingshot, chew fresh sugarcane every visit, be fascinated with farm
machinery which I would endlessly draw sketches of on my Grade 1 pad
when I was in school.
These are the fields where to this day, old farm folk could still speak of how kind my father was to them and how efficiently he managed both the people and the farm as a whole. Stories of which I am grateful for, for these are stories which reinforce what have already been passed on directly by my dad as teaching or admonition to a young boy.
These are the fields which have made me remember what the writer of Ecclesiastes has said, To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.
These are the fields where I meet myself - be it the young boy or who I am today. And the most interesting part, is that this road, the Road to the "Fields of Memories" could also be the same road to the future.
These are the fields where to this day, old farm folk could still speak of how kind my father was to them and how efficiently he managed both the people and the farm as a whole. Stories of which I am grateful for, for these are stories which reinforce what have already been passed on directly by my dad as teaching or admonition to a young boy.
These are the fields which have made me remember what the writer of Ecclesiastes has said, To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.
These are the fields where I meet myself - be it the young boy or who I am today. And the most interesting part, is that this road, the Road to the "Fields of Memories" could also be the same road to the future.
