fireflies and crickets

There's a creek about 50 meters away from the back of our house. surrounding it like walls are tress of mangoes, bananas and bamboos, homes of fireflies, crickets and geckos rarely seen at this part of Bulacan. When we just moved here and I was about to turn ten, they all wandered around our house as if they're in an expansive acacia tree. In years, relatives started to erect buildings to what now is a secondary school and a pest of a neighbor who had put up ugly lines of corrugated roofs and GI sheets for walls to house a poultry slaughter. Gradually, bugs (except from mosquitoes) and smallish reptiles disappeared. The other night, in my room, screened and airtight, there was a curious firefly floating about in the dark. In wonderment, I watched its light flicker as if it's battery is dying. I hear crickets, very load this time, like a lynchian droning sound, drone like the theremin in a mid century scifi/B movie, by this time Kafka's clerk is turning into a big roach. Again, a little past midnight, right in the middle of my sleep,I turn flapping my arm to face left, opened my eyes and saw the poor thing on my pillow near the tip of my nose lying there helplessly, still twinkling. I must have hit it with my hand. Lights more weakly, intervals more erratic than the broken Christmas light of our neighbor. Several days I walked outside and see 2-3 fireflies around small trees.Their natural habitat must have immensely disturbed by the flood Ondoy and were displaced. Anyways, you are all welcome to rest on my pillow.

R.I.P. Loula Angelica Lekas 1913-2009

3 more years and you could have reached a century. S'agapo Lula, thanks for teaching me a little Greek and letting me have a piece of Turkish delight from that little wooden box, filled with powdery treats,

Strawberry Burger

Breakfast was okay. burger, bread and butter. So, there is a strawberry burger , mom exclaiming the whole time how good it is and that i should try it.no thanks. But see, if i was just in the right mood this morning, I could have. You gotta be in a mood for such things as a strawberry burger. NHK is on. She wants to keep the matryoshka doll I got from Salvation Army, and gee, does she love stacking them. . . it was supposed to be a gift to someone who reminds me of a character in a Russian novel.

So,there, I woke up welcoming some almost strange facts of life, eating breakfast as I look outside the window,quite amused. I see the grease of what was once butter slathered over the burger patties and I imagine how many arteries it will clog as i devour the entire plateful of beef in front of me. I chewed the jelly vitamins after and went back to bed.

Waiting for a bus at the corner of Oakmont and Murfield drive

A flower at the corner of our street, have to check what kind of flower this is.