Thursday, November 23, 2006
During my Cebu sojourn, as was always my tradition, I would get a trip by the south, passing from Santander to Oslob and then on. It is not so much of the length of the trip that I would say that counts most but by the sheer and immense joy at seeing things you do not normally see around. The cliff that suspends at the side of the sloping Cebu province, the stiff ravine facing the sea that drops off into a bluish depth, and the sea breeze that catches your face as it finds its way to a head toward the picturesque mountain sides. I would not gladly trade it in any other way than to watch the immensity of beauty hanging around as one wounds his way at the sides of the inclining drop-off.
This is a love for the travel that shows no other comparison except for other equally unique experience by other travelogues too. The magnificent churches especially of Oslob, Dalaguete, and Argao will constantly reminds one of the great Christian patrimony of culture that blends with faith that is Western in nature. If you are keen enough to look at these churches, you will notice that its architecture majestically weaves with the place. The campanile of the church of Nuestra Senora de Patrociño evokes a kind of watchtower, lying in wait for the marauding Muslim pirates that would regularly assault coastal towns of the Christian communities. These are very pulchritudinous.
If I would have the chance always to choose my way, I would also go the other way, on the western side of the province of Cebu. It is equally captivating. The sea is all the more breathtaking. Where the sea meets the mountain is where the beauty meets the eye. The soul is the bulwark of man's definition of what is beautiful, true, and good. The great philosophers in Greece have always given time to thinking about the magnificent feeling of beauty's contribution of man's search for truth. Man's quest for what is truth in no way contradicts to man's apprehension of the beautiful. How can ugly mix with truth? How can one appreciate goodness of creation with the ugliness of povery and hunger? The sheer apposition of these words is enough to question the content of such words as beauty, truth, and goodness. That is why by man's appreciation of what is beautiful in the surrounding circumstances, art, song, poetry, prose, and nature, he is himself apprehending the soul's natural inclination towards which it has its natural due.
During one of these trips, I could not help noticing that one's experience of life creates perspectives of appreciation of the natural world. My emotions and feelings coupled with my understanding of the visible realities have a lot of influence on my admiration of the artistic natural things. My vacation years in Bohol have shaped my perceptiveness and hold of what is good in the creation. Of course, symphony in things around us is just one aspects of the inherent natural order of things in us too as humans. If we begin to realise that what is external to us in a way is just an extension of truth of what is in us also, we can ultimately gather that though diverse we are in many ways and that disparities occur in every level of the created world, the natural harmony of the world points only to one thing: a logical and harmonious Creator that breaths government of realities.
In more ways, I would wittingly accept easily a land trip than a sea trip. I would even more willingly permit myself if I could step off from a bus and walk around to breathe even just for a while the place of beauty.
As one nears Cebu City, one can feel the helpless change of place. The dank sides of the streets, the odor that knows no limit, the people whose heads are preoccupied with money to no end, the place where trees have become so foreign by the year, and lists of unpleasant things of no end are many things that technology and the modern living have encroached upon a once pristine place. There is so many things superficial and temporary in our age. I usually cannot help to think them as makeshifts of today. I do not know if they will remain standing forever on the place they are rooted, but nothing can ever compare on a standing edifice be it an ivy-covered churches, battlements where shrubs are a common resident, old cemeteries and mortuary chapels lying at the roadside just across the town churches, or trees whose splendid roots reach down to the deepest bodies of running underground water. These should remain because these are memories of timelessness that will always teach generations upon generations of what world had passed on them, of what age they have been borne out.
If you are close enough to investigating things more meticulously, you will almost always find out that narratives and narratives of accounts will not enough to spell out the histories of standing structures you will find so common in a corner or two, in sleeping town, or old sections of modern cities. One day in my visit to Manila, I could not sleep while my thoughts were on intramuros the following day. It is a great chance where what you read and what you see meet halfway. Surely, you are making yourself truer when you spend your searching soul its own natural disposition and tendency.
During my Cebu sojourn, as was always my tradition, I would get a trip by the south, passing from Santander to Oslob and then on. It is not so much of the length of the trip that I would say that counts most but by the sheer and immense joy at seeing things you do not normally see around. The cliff that suspends at the side of the sloping Cebu province, the stiff ravine facing the sea that drops off into a bluish depth, and the sea breeze that catches your face as it finds its way to a head toward the picturesque mountain sides. I would not gladly trade it in any other way than to watch the immensity of beauty hanging around as one wounds his way at the sides of the inclining drop-off.
This is a love for the travel that shows no other comparison except for other equally unique experience by other travelogues too. The magnificent churches especially of Oslob, Dalaguete, and Argao will constantly reminds one of the great Christian patrimony of culture that blends with faith that is Western in nature. If you are keen enough to look at these churches, you will notice that its architecture majestically weaves with the place. The campanile of the church of Nuestra Senora de Patrociño evokes a kind of watchtower, lying in wait for the marauding Muslim pirates that would regularly assault coastal towns of the Christian communities. These are very pulchritudinous.
If I would have the chance always to choose my way, I would also go the other way, on the western side of the province of Cebu. It is equally captivating. The sea is all the more breathtaking. Where the sea meets the mountain is where the beauty meets the eye. The soul is the bulwark of man's definition of what is beautiful, true, and good. The great philosophers in Greece have always given time to thinking about the magnificent feeling of beauty's contribution of man's search for truth. Man's quest for what is truth in no way contradicts to man's apprehension of the beautiful. How can ugly mix with truth? How can one appreciate goodness of creation with the ugliness of povery and hunger? The sheer apposition of these words is enough to question the content of such words as beauty, truth, and goodness. That is why by man's appreciation of what is beautiful in the surrounding circumstances, art, song, poetry, prose, and nature, he is himself apprehending the soul's natural inclination towards which it has its natural due.
During one of these trips, I could not help noticing that one's experience of life creates perspectives of appreciation of the natural world. My emotions and feelings coupled with my understanding of the visible realities have a lot of influence on my admiration of the artistic natural things. My vacation years in Bohol have shaped my perceptiveness and hold of what is good in the creation. Of course, symphony in things around us is just one aspects of the inherent natural order of things in us too as humans. If we begin to realise that what is external to us in a way is just an extension of truth of what is in us also, we can ultimately gather that though diverse we are in many ways and that disparities occur in every level of the created world, the natural harmony of the world points only to one thing: a logical and harmonious Creator that breaths government of realities.
In more ways, I would wittingly accept easily a land trip than a sea trip. I would even more willingly permit myself if I could step off from a bus and walk around to breathe even just for a while the place of beauty.
As one nears Cebu City, one can feel the helpless change of place. The dank sides of the streets, the odor that knows no limit, the people whose heads are preoccupied with money to no end, the place where trees have become so foreign by the year, and lists of unpleasant things of no end are many things that technology and the modern living have encroached upon a once pristine place. There is so many things superficial and temporary in our age. I usually cannot help to think them as makeshifts of today. I do not know if they will remain standing forever on the place they are rooted, but nothing can ever compare on a standing edifice be it an ivy-covered churches, battlements where shrubs are a common resident, old cemeteries and mortuary chapels lying at the roadside just across the town churches, or trees whose splendid roots reach down to the deepest bodies of running underground water. These should remain because these are memories of timelessness that will always teach generations upon generations of what world had passed on them, of what age they have been borne out.
If you are close enough to investigating things more meticulously, you will almost always find out that narratives and narratives of accounts will not enough to spell out the histories of standing structures you will find so common in a corner or two, in sleeping town, or old sections of modern cities. One day in my visit to Manila, I could not sleep while my thoughts were on intramuros the following day. It is a great chance where what you read and what you see meet halfway. Surely, you are making yourself truer when you spend your searching soul its own natural disposition and tendency.
