LAKE PLACID
By:  Iris P. Concepcion

It was mid-afternoon and I had wagered beforehand with Nature that the rains will not fall. The newly washed bed spread had been hanging from the clothesline for a long time now after meeting the Laundry Gadget Of The Hour, Haier, that needed to be folded. Briskly, the world succumbed to the forces of Nature.

Hence, I jumped like an awakened kangaroo upon a timely invitation to roam around Yala, yesterday, being a holiday. We hopped in a motorcycle to experience boating in a man-made lake.

I had been furtively advised by my nephew to try this after his months of immersion in this exact place. The boats are pretty. They looked like bump cars in the mall arcades, only, they are breezed atop the green shores. They are not motorized which explains for their environmental sanity. They are maneuvered like bicycles. All moves are done through footwork. I am not afraid of water, beaches being my natural best friends, even if I could not swim for the life of my evolving self. I am not in love with swimming pools though, except to admire their malleability to sculptural designs.

We paddled without the paddles. We paddled using our ten toes that are attached to our sturdy ankles. We paddled with our teeth shut. We paddled with our molars untouched. Clutch gears are provided similar to cars. There is no traffic here as my seatmate driver moved back and forth the imaginary clutch.

I silently noted to myself: Holy Mary, this is how a fish lives like.

If I were bringing a transistor radio with me for added drama, a Placido Domingo could be wailing as we approached a bridge reminiscent of Italian waterways and its gondolas. It is a writer's sentence ignition. The comas, hyphens, punctuations, similes, metaphors cymballed joyously, freaking my head in a gush of phrases, slapping my hair, pinching my waist, pulling my arms, twisting my elbows, fossilizing my fears.

We had been clicked in amateur photography, at this precise trance, but the words accompanying them would surpass a Pulitzer's.

Industrialized cities make me edgy with my short skirts and berserk hair; rustic heavens make me want to wear my empress-cut white dress forever. The luminous water, with its arrogant claim to beauty, provides a calming balm that converts the mind into an eye. Trees, bird catchers lined up magnificently, bridge-rainbows, gigantic tree barks, people trapped in 70s couture.

A suit shall not be misplaced here. It only needs a song to be sung, wafting up in the air, whistling like kettles at the freest animals on Earth.

Humankind does not deserve this if it only defaces its surface. Plenty of structures await for people in transit but they shall never be prepared enough when God's artistry superimposes Itself into this lustruous ground.

As an aside, I have been following the art furor that is happening in the Philippines, particularly CCP's choices of artworks.

The Philippines has a superfluous supply of these natural magnets.  While preferring to capture hemlines and peddling gossip on a routinary basis as a matter of shaping our cultural destiny, art and culture is slowly creeping its way onto the headlines.  Reality bites, however, as I am ever conscious that the picture above (taken by myself using my sister-in-law's digital camera) shall always be tossed away in favor of the salacious, splitsville arms of a separating, famous couple on the front pages.  I assume we have the most prolific editors who could choose patiently the visual superiority of shots even in political stories.

I lament over the fact that I could not write pensively like my Thailand sojourns in railways and Nature back in the Philippines when its riches are clearly abundant. I know the reason now.  We tend to ignore our natural reserves by making them unpalatable to the eyes. We prefer to ignore our innately effervescent and cascading  waters by making them unkempt.  Here, a silent hand guides the storm through its eye and makes this radiance bloom in the forefront.  Even an amateur clicker like me can take pictures like these without using expensive lenses.

Even in music, I had often wondered where the golden pipes had gone. My present pre-occupation is listening to Vic Damone, he of the bygone but enduring era. His voice is impeccable and almost faultless. I had re-discovered him via You Tube as I was waiting for my clothes to dry.  Hear his renditions of Begin the Beguine and As Time Goes By (with very touching still videos of drawn dolls)  then shift to Taylor Swift's You Belong To Me. I need not even go to boybands with skinny jeans mouthing off foreign words.  If you feel a numbing, almost senseless downgrade in auditory ride, I shall not blame you. Damone can eat Taylor alive in terms of musical range and perfomance. Hear Damone's elocution of the word fundamental in ATGB. It becomes "fandamental". Sheer mastery, eloquent brilliance.

Art, as it gains a new way onto our national consciousness, need not be literally  highbrow. I am a nobody but I could write about this wonderful lake and its immaculate nuance to my own self-discoveries. William Blake had written about these visages himself and everyone had praised him as a literary giant.  It is my favorite subject simply because it is an arena where I could make my choices very clearly.  Evidently, I grab my fists and open them to art alms, to be swayed up high, as my assent to Heavenly Art.  Here, no hesitation is possible.

Clear as the blue skies, this is proper condescension to, as Imelda Marcos had phrased it, "the true, the good and the beautiful."