The blind eyewitness

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 03/25/2017

On the way to the parking area at the basement of a mall, I would notice people sitting outside a room. They seemed to be waiting. One day, my curiosity at last getting the better of me,…

Love stronger than thirst, water deeper than desire

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 03/18/2017

I find in this poem, “Like the Water,” by Wendell Berry, meanings that I can only describe as transcendental. Like the water of a deep stream, love is always too much. We did not make it. Though…

Raphael’s last painting

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 03/11/2017

Giorgio Vasari called it Raphael’s “most beautiful and most divine” work, this painting—“The Transfiguration”—which now hangs in the art gallery of the Vatican Museums. When Cardinal Giulio de Medici, who later became Pope Clement VII, commissioned it,…

The poem as objet trouveé

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 02/25/2017

There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money, either,” said Robert Graves. It’s a charming chiasmus, which someone like Graves was bound to weave sooner or later — sooner, it turned out. Still one…

An ironclad message for a skeptical world

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 02/18/2017

In the morning of September 11, 2001, planes slammed the North and South towers of the World Trade Center complex in New York City, killing 2,996 and injuring over 6,000 people. Within two hours, both towers collapsed.…

Salt and light

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 02/04/2017

Our hands, as well as eyes, Meet when you pass the salt. Indeed, life is encounter (Buber has it down pat). I could have asked you for Your name, but you’re my wife, My cure-all, like salt-water,…

In search of the perfect rose

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 01/28/2017

Years ago, by way of thanks, I decided to write a sonnet to give to friends and relatives. I composed the poem inside a mall, in a coffee shop with a view of a lawn with paths…

The colors of the mind

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 01/21/2017

Ever since I saw a mosaic of the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in a seminary garden, I have always had the desire to make something similar in my home. I told the wife about…

The sleeping Sto. Niño

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 01/14/2017

On the sixth day, the wife and I finally made it. Earlier concerns about our not getting parking space and lacking the stamina to keep standing throughout the Holy Mass at the jam-packed Pilgrim Center made us…

How I almost met the three kings

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 01/07/2017

I take my constitutional on a paved area adjoining our house. I walk back and forth, from the terrace to the gate. When I face the latter, I get a view of the road, the vacant lot…

Leonardo’s unfinished painting

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 12/31/2016

In March 1481, the Augustinian monks of San Donato a Scopelo in Florence commissioned Leonardo da Vinci, then 29 years old, to make a painting for their altar. Leonardo began working on the Adoration of the Magi,…

The angel of recovery

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 12/17/2016

In 1794 William Blake published “Songs of Experience,” the second part of a two-volume work, the first being “Songs of Innocence.” Both were later put into a single compilation, entitled “Songs of Innocence and Experience Showing the…

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