Natural love stories

High up in the mountains of Sierra Madre, when clouds seemed to be just inches away, when cold is both a physical and an emotional feeling, I realized that life can be so hard but never too hard to bear. The closer you come to death, the more you hold on to life. As things turn more and more uncertain, I become surer of where I want to go. I want to go home.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not going back. Every trail is a tale to tell, a story that will endure old age. I maybe a slave for science, but in the end, I will always be a story teller by heart.

I love Ocean and the turn of tides. Like a great archive of the past, Ocean is like a group of secret scrolls which may hold the keys to great knowledge and wisdom hidden from this world; each wavecrash to the shore… a trade in of secrets with Earth.

What about the turn of tides? Turn to physics for explanation and what you get is an explanation on gravitational attraction. Turn to me, and I will tell you that it is the saddest love story never told. Moon has been circling the globe before time was even invented trying to get Ocean, the greatest love of her life, join her in the sky. She’s been pulling him to herself forever refusing to let go despite knowing the painful truth—the Ocean is bound to love the Earth even outside the limits of forever…or maybe I’m just overdoing the storytelling stuff.

But nothing…well there’s one thing but that would be a different storyline so for the purpose of coherence and exaggeration let me say that…nothing can surpass my interest on Forests and Rivers. These two make up this galaxy’s ultimate love team; way, way better than the Moon-Ocean-Earth love triangle. Death of one means death of the other. Kill Forests and Rivers dies soon after it.

Forests dedicates all her life looking after Rivers. During the scorching anger of Habagat, never a day passed that she failed to replenish him (the river) and prevent him from drying up. During the stormy anger of Amihan, she will summon all her strength to spare him from massive siltation. On ordinary days, Forests made it a point to profess her love for him in the form of bird songs, insect melodies, frog calls, and leaf hush.

Now Rivers…Rivers is a bit passive. They say (don’t ask me who were these “they”), in a relationship, there is always one who expresses more and by relativity, the other expresses less. So, as much as I wanted to, I won’t doubt Rivers' love for Forests…I told you…he will die after her and that’s proof enough for me.

Forests is always under Rivers’ constant watch. He stalks her (I believe she already had an idea but doesn’t entertain it). Her face is even reflected on his very own face. If there would be anyone in this world who knows her layers of secrets…from emergent to forest floor, from leeches to wild pigs, from leaf budding to withering…that would be him. He had traversed every inch of her through the rainfall. As rain journeys in a cycle as old as the beginning, it stores information in a droplet and when it reaches him...the he holds a memory of every info bit…and trust me he never forgets it.

When you look at Forests and Rivers from the air or from an elevated position…Rivers will look like a giant circulatory system, with all his tributaries acting like blood vessels. Despite his lack of action, he is still undeniably, her reason for living. And for all she did and will do, she is, indeed, what keeps him alive….

Or maybe…I’m just overdoing the story telling stuff.

Now, I just want to go home.