Is your name Hercules? By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo   IT is midnight. I woke up to the battering of the trees and the low-lying plants dropping to the ground. My heart sank. I tried to put some of them up, but the wind became stronger. The plants danced frantically with…

La La Land By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo    LA La Land teaches the importance of resilience and determination. And so do other inspiring movies. But what stuck in my mind is the struggle to succeed. La La Land is a nickname for Los Angeles, California, specifically to refer to Hollywood,…

All walks of Life By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo   WALKING back from my daily morning walk, I saw placards lined up at the entrance of Holy Family School of Quezon City (HFSQC). Apparently, some teachers had protested and left the placards there. According to the man at the gate, the…

The Block By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo   BONG and I are friends. We communicate occasionally and update each other and the progress of what we currently do. Several times he would talk about writing a book about his thoughts on art and culture, and its potential to change society. His…

The mouth of the river By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo   TRANSITIONS in life do not occur in abrupt phases. You do not suddenly become an adult at a given age, or become senior at another age. These are benchmarks that make it easier for others to understand and make appropriate…

The idea of a composite man By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo   EACH day, the first thing I do is to look at the sky, and look at the moon, and it was not there at dawn. It is there of course, only I did not see it, because the clouds…

Divine beginnings of beer and bread By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo   AMONG those translated from Sumerian documents is a poem with the English title, “A hymn to Ninkasi”. It is a poem describing the recipe for brewing beer, most probably with the intent to pass on a recipe for generations…

Blue dawn By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo   THE plants have grown so well in the tiny paradise I nurtured to honor the moonshine and the sunshine. Some people still gather the flowers and run away with cuttings, but some have learned to knock on my door to ask for the…

Wallet na maswerte By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo   TODAY, in my continuing effort to “travel light” in this world, I went over a pile of my past acquisitions and marked some for clearing. I have segregated and marked the boxes and bags to be passed on to whoever I think…

Lost in transition By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo   WE all forget over time. Some forget by sheer will, others by the passing of time. Uncannily, we also remember things we thought we have buried, encountering the same experience with either freshness or more pain, but not necessarily with the same…