Poetry and faith

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 08/23/2015

Metaphor lies at the heart of poetry. I once explained what metaphor meant to our daughter, then in high school.  I started with simile, and gave as example – “Your lips are like roses” – which she…

Neruda before the blessed sacrament

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 08/16/2015

I do this every Thursday.  After a nap, I hie off to an adoration chapel, where the Blessed Sacrament is displayed, and there spend an hour of prayer. This practice began after I read about St. Gemma…

Field of miracles

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 07/26/2015

Hardly a week passes without the wife and I travelling to a southern town on the island. By this time we have acquired a certain mastery of the road, and the wife – because invariably she takes…

Cup of silence

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 07/19/2015

Thank God for corners. If this coffee shop were oval, at a busy time, people would tend to get in the way of each other, because movement strays from the center and follows a straight line. Or…

Walking stick

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 07/12/2015

I have, stashed somewhere, a short rattan cane, three canes in fact. I acquired them from a stick fighter who gave me, my son and daughter, instruction in arnis, a native martial art. The three of us…

Forever is a diamond

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 07/05/2015

When I woke up this morning and gazed beyond the balcony, something caught my eye. Across from us, next to the road and an idle lot, on space long ruled by weeds and wild papaya, posts stood,…

The art of Paolo Veronese

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 06/28/2015

Paolo Veronese joined Titian and Tintoretto to form the trio that ruled Venetian painting in the 16th-century. His works rest on narrative, portrayed with drama and color, and set in the majestic architecture of antiquity. The oil…

Upper room

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 06/07/2015

Three years ago, we visited the city of Santarém in Portugal. We left Fatima, our base, in the morning and spent a few hours at the nearby hamlet of Aljustrel, to visit the homes of the three…

Love in motion

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 05/31/2015

One table remained unoccupied when I went inside the restaurant. But I could see that in a matter of minutes a number of customers would stand up and leave. I could have waited for a while to…

Western wind

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 05/24/2015

Water has become scarce in our neighborhood.  The taps yield no flow from early morning to late evening, but towards midnight, let out a trickle, which we catch with our drums – three big, one small –…

Exing the Y

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 05/17/2015

Departures — life has many, too many of them. As well as arrivals, of course. But departures almost always entail sorrow, because they put an end to our desire always to have around us someone whose presence…

And to think it is May

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 05/10/2015

Many varieties of fruit trees, herbs and flowers grow around the house. We only have a small area but somehow we have managed to cram into it a good number of trees — limonsito, avocado, guyabano, nangka,…

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