Fiesta!

Home sweet home…now back in Gotham with a flu that won’t ebb. Post homecoming stress. It was great to be back home, to see friends, visit old haunts, and be with family. ‘Haven’t caught the fiesta parade in ages.

As kids Fiesta was something to look forward to. School was put on hold and a lot was going on. Fiesta was all about colors and motion (and taste!); the perya, the agro fair, street vendors, photographs, food and people all over. It was festive and strangely cozy at the same time. The vendors at the fair were a favorite, they came from all over the country, each bringing wonderful goodies and their own fiesta stories to tell.

Living at the heart of the city, right on the main street, meant being right smack on parade alley (when you’re seven you believe Mulberry is secretly your own street). Our old old house was the front seat to the action. Cousins and friends came for the show. Everyone woke up early and slept late.

Some years later the family moved to another barangay, across the river. And then college happened. Coming home a few years after, traffic happened and got in the way. The kids grew older, had seen the parade often enough thought they had better things to do.

A few years went by again until almost becoming a stranger in one’s home town makes a tourist out of a local… which is good in some ways. It brought on a relish for the burning sun, for old-now-new scenes to catch, for the big and little events to relive, to commune. Uncanninly, the fiesta pulls one to participate; to join the dance, take a picture, paint on henna tat on the ankle.

I am grateful for home, our ever sheltering sky; for the lenses old and new to see with; family and friends, most of all, to spend time with.

thanks to Nikos for lending his telephoto Sigma!

 

mood: feverish but peaceful

music: constellations . jack johnson

~ by amats on September 13, 2007.