It's Amihan Season: A critique on the poems of Sister Macarius Lacuesta, SPC

“Fly on my little kite

Do not let fear daunt you,

For the hand that holds the strings

Knows best and watches over you.”

Dr Abe V Rotor

Detail of mural by AVRotor

If imagery is more vivid than vision, take it from Sr. Macarius – religious, scholar and poetess.

“Fly on my little kite
Ride on the wings of the wind…
Over plains and dales,
Reach on to the heights,
Hear the whispers of the treetops,
And the secrets of the clouds.”

- Fly on My Little Kite

She samples us with the timelessness, and the vastness of imagery that transcends to all ages – the young and the old, the past and present – and beyond. It unleashes the searching mind to freedom, liberating the soul with the confidence of a hand that holds the string of that kite.

For who would not like to fly on that kite in order to see the world, or at least to be taller from where he stands, or to turn the hands of time and be a child again even only for a while? That child in all of us, it must live forever. It lives in a dragonfly many years ago we captured for fun.

“Ah, you bring me back to my yesteryears
When I would run to catch you…
The sound your wings did make was music to me…
And then the childish whim satisfied, I set you free.”

- You Naughty Dragonfly

Adventure, simple as it may, carries us to the open field, and its pleasant memories make us feel reborn. Sister Macarius’ unique imagery comes at the heels of virtual reality as one reflects on her poems. Yet, on the other side of the poetess’ nature, she is real, she is here and now, “through open fields she walked… tired and weary, she slumped on the stump of an acacia tree.” From here she journeyed to the deep recesses of the roots of the sturdy tree. How forceful, how keen are her thoughts, true to being a devout religious.

“For their roots journey to the deep earth 
Was a determined search for water,
Unmindful of the encounter with darkness,
Where cold and heat would not reach.”

- Journey to the Deep.

Faith is as deep as the roots of a sturdy tree. Such analogy refines the moral of the poem. It is a parable in itself. The poetess paused. In prayer she said in the last part of the poem, poignant yet firm and believing in the fullness of thrust and confidence of a Supreme Being.

“Lord, sink my roots into the depths of unwavering faith in You;
Help me believe that in my encounter
With darkness, hope may be borne
And my life will manifest all
The goodness, the beauty that is You.”
- Journey to the Deep

While poems do not drive a lesson like hitting a nail on the head, so to speak, they provide a mellowing effect, especially to us adults, to accept lessons in life. Such is the commonality of the poems of Sister Macarius, Sister Mamerta Rocero and Sister Paat, who are respected literary figures of the local SPC congregation. Their poems have a deep message to the reader in the ways of respecting and loving God. They often begin with reverence for life.

“All you peoples, clap your hands and sing,
The God of Creation has done wonderful deeds
And the earth is full of His handiworks
All for you and me.”

We picture God as detached, way above the level of man. Great writers in the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Dumas and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow can attest to that. More so with Michaelangelo as shown in his mural, Creation. And yet we believe that man is the image of God. The anthropocentric view is that man was created in the likeness of God, and that he is the custodian of His creation. How lucky is man indeed to be the center of God’s attention! In Sr. Macarius Child of the Kingdom, she starts with a question, “Are you a child of the Kingdom? Then she proceeded to answer the question herself.

“Even with a sense of wonder
Holding a cup full of surprises,
Reading out to share with others
The joy of His abiding presence
Nurturing within your being 
The hope of eternal life.”

We may not know the places and boundaries of eternity and kingdom. They are too far out there for us to grasp and believe, much more to understand. Yet we have learned to accept them, grew up with them, abstract as they are, in the name of faith and doctrine. They are there laid upon the path we all travel. At its end lies our salvation, which is as abstract as eternity and kingdom.

Our modern world has become skeptical about abstract things. It is moving away from rituals of faith to rituals of entertainment. Action demands reason. Imagination cannot be left unquestioning. Even science remote from technology is theory. Religions too, continue to evolve, breaking away from the moorings of tradition and dogma. Mystery and faith are no longer the perfect partners as they did for centuries. And the world has become more vigilant against conquerors using religion for their greed, sharing the bounties of conquest with it. And religion that keeps the colonial master in power, sitting beside the throne.

Just like Christianity replaced the long revered Aztec sun god, and the gods and goddesses of Mt. Olympus that survived Roman rule but vanishing with its fall, we ask ourselves today, “Will Vatican finally lose its global power and vast wealth? Will cultism create an exodus away from the church?” And now come the cybergods, riding on satellites and the internet and entering our living rooms at any time without knocking on our doors. And here is a hydra of corporate cultures, a kind of religion itself.

Sr. Macarius’ poems do not deal with issues about faith, eternity, salvation, kingdom, and the like, endorsing them to debate. She does not act like a doctor of the church even if she carries a doctorate degree in philosophy. Yet in her own gentle way she invites the reader to the fold, riding on that little kite, running in the open field after a dragonfly.

For what is eternity but to be “a child forever,” (A thing of beauty is a joy forever – Joyce Kilmer). What is kingdom but the realm we once lived before we became grownups, in the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’ in The Little Prince? And salvation? Oh, it is in innocence when the conscience is not bothered. (The Brothers Grimm)

“Naughty dragonfly…I am born once again to a child –
alive and free.”

“Catch the sight of a tree… and rest for a while.”
- Under the Fig Tree

“Speak to me in the loveliness of a rose
Fresh and sparkling with the morning dew.”
- A World Full of You

“You sing to me in the chirping of love birds,
Greeting each other at the break of day.”
- A World Full of You

“Listen to the story of that grand mountain
Like a faithful sentinel standing there.”
- Fly on My Little Kite.”

“How blest and gifted I am to be one
With a beautiful world.”
- A World Full of You

“Lord, help me become the child of Your Kingdom.”
- Child of the Kingdom

It was a bright morning some two years ago when Sister Macarius visited me at the SPCQ Museum. She showed me these poems. “I have not written poems for a long, long time,” she said and that started a couple of hours of pleasant discussion about poetry today and its significance. She exuded a lovely smile as she recited her poems. “Beautiful,” I said, amazed at what a septuagenarian lady can make of poetry which usually blooms in youth. That was the last time I saw Sister Macarius.

The amihan wind had just arrived. I saw a tarat bird perched on the nearby caimito tree singing. Up in the sky a kite was flying. I remembered Sister Macarius.

“Fly on my little kite
Do not let fear daunt you,
For the hand that holds the strings
Knows best and watches over you.”

x x x

Lake in a Lake

Dr Abe V Rotor

Laguna de Bay, Los Baños, Laguna

Once I asked:

why did you secede 

from the womb 

and hands 

that raised you?

As I pondered 

on Daedalus of Crete 

and the Prodigal Son;

your clear waters 

reflected a face 

no other than my own.

I threw a pebble 

and ripples broke away 

from the question.

Light in the Woods, 1995 Megabooks

Fossil Hunting - Study and Hobby

Next time you visit a quarry, or landscape supplier, or if you are walking along a river bed, or rocky cliff, be keen at the possible presence of fossils, like petrified wood.
Dr Abe V Rotor

Legends are rich in stories of the supernatural when gods do the impossible to the awe and fear of mortals, such as turning man into rock. Or wood into rock. For who would deny the markings of every tissue of the demised tree - its xylem vessels, phloem which carry manufactured food from the leaves, the pith or dead center of the wood? In fact one can count the age of the tree when it died by counting the annular rings. And how long had the tree died. The circumstances of its death, and the events like drought, flood, fire that it had undergone.

Top: Teachers view the Fossil Collection of the Museum of Natural History, UPLB, Laguna; author (left) studies fossil of a Nautillus. Right: fossils of Amonites, and ancient fish fossils.  

Next time you visit a quarry, or landscape supplier, or simply walking along a river bed, or rocky cliff, be keen at the possible presence of petrified wood. If there are more clues to the fossil you can even tell what tree it was. Is it already extinct? Is it the ancestor of modern species? What if the tree has not changed, evidenced by its similarity with its living progeny?

Indeed fossils are nature's geologic timepieces; they take us thousands, if not millions of years back. Didn't Charles Darwin gauge the stages of evolution of plants and animals through paleontology - the science of the study of fossils?

At first I didn't see it, until the tides left it in shallow water. It is a fossil of a very big staghorn coral, its base cut like the anther of a deer after the mating season. So clean did it appear I can count the number of years the coral lived. But that is deceiving because corals grow very slow. It takes fifty long years to grow to the size of a man's head. Each ring therefore, is compounded with other rings, making it difficult to tell the exact age of the fossil. A clear break may be an indication of an extreme condition of the environment that left such mark.

Around the fossil are many fossils of small organisms, other corals and shells. Fossils are known by their total age by combining the age of the fossil itself and the age of the surrounding rock.

How do fossils retain their form and structure even to the detail? Well, calcium carbonate seeps into the cells, and tissues, and in this particular case, into the fine structures like pores of the coral skeleton where the compound solidifies hard - harder than the mold itself. It's a skeleton in a skeleton, so to speak. Through hundreds or thousand of years the mold disintegrates leaving behind the hardened calcium compound. The process is also the same in wood turning into rock - petrified rock.

Here is a fossil of a bivalve - a big Tridachna, as large as the shell of its progeny shown in the lower photo. This shell is a receptacle of holy water at the entrance of Mt. Carmel Church QC. Shells survive adverse conditions of the environment, and as such also retain their original shape and form. Sand and silt become sedimentary rock entombing the shell until it is discovered through erosion and other means.

  

Fossils are made in a different way such as a hairy caterpillar stuck in oozing latex of rubber tree. The latex solidifies and hardens into rock, the same way an insect is engulfed in oozing resinous substance of pine tree. The resin hardens into a clear transparent material with the doomed insect or any other creature clearly visible. Resin turns into amber. 

Remember Jurassic Park movie? A mosquito after feeding on blood of a dinosaur was trapped in amber. The DNA of the extinct monster was reconstructed from the mosquito's food blood. Of course this is fiction. But Flash Gordon and Jules Verne proved beyond being just fiction writers.

  

 Fossil of a bivalve

  
 Petrified wood is actually rock which bears the exact likeness of the original wood. The species can be traced to present specimens.   

Everyday we encounter fossils and pseudo 
fossils we simply call skeletons, or artifacts if they did not directly come from living things. Fossils are always in the making. There is no ceasing since the appearance of life on earth, and ever expanding with increasing biodiversity of the living world. 

Making of a fossil.  Hairy caterpillar trapped in latex becomes a fossil thousands, millions of years from now. 

They are the remains of living things that survive time and circumstances, and of luck or fate as people put it. The older and better preserved fossils are, the more significant is the discovery - and the more we realize the secrets they reveal. Scientists reconstruct fossils close to their original form and virtual reality, complete with the organism's movements, sounds, habitat, special effects included. Thanks to advanced technology and fine arts.

Toys are then patterned after these reconstructed fossils. I know of children who grew up with collections of dinosaurs, birds, mammals, fish- all reconstructions from fossils. Many of these children grew into scientists and naturalists. I know of other children who were more interested with toy cartoon characters. They took a different career path, less meaningful and fulfilling than that of the latter children.

Geologic time is not constant though it may be contiguum. There are intervening factors we may not and never know. And if this were the case, we say, we have yet to discover the "missing link." Such was the predicament of Darwin in his theory of evolution, the bewilderment of Wallace before him, and the deceiving simplicity of Lamarck theory to decipher correctly the path of evolution. Fossils reveal the web of life as a labyrinth. We can only appreciate the early works of other paleontologists that Cuvier and Huxley who could only make inferences about life in the past and the present. In spite of all these, the world looks at all these men as pioneers and greatest fossil hunters.

Do you like to be a fossil hunter, too? ~

Photography: Capture those fleeting moments of joy

Dr Abe V Rotor

Joy, like genius, comes in sparks,

 as fresh as a passing wind,

or bubbles from a lake in spurts,

released from life's dark bin.

Moment with friends

Moment on a spiritual occasion

Moment with a child in a garden

Moment with music and a rare audience

Moment with bunny 

 Moment on stage

  Moment to celebrate birthday

Moment with a trained pet

Good morning to a camia flower

Fountain from the Traveler's palm 

 Playing with the saints and angels 

 A bath tub is never too small

A clan on vacation

 Twin waterfalls in Patapat, Cagayan

" Insectivorous" biology teachers

 Who says sungka is only for children?

Victory and pogi signs.  Summer workshop for kids.  

 Madame Butterfly 

Up and down the mountain trail on Mt Makiling, Laguna   

Posing with nangka, the biggest fruit in the world.

Banana stalk for packaging and transporting fresh fruits and vegetables, and live fish.

Dr Abe V Rotor

Flowers of himbaba-o or alokong (Ilk), a wild vegetable can remain fresh even after three days inside banana stalk. A single stalk is stripped from the trunk and folded according to desired size.

This is to re-introduce an old folks' way of packaging using folded banana stalk as shown in these photos. It is highly efficient, versatile, economical and environment-friendly.

This method of packaging is ideal for live fish like dalag and hito. These fish can remain alive for several days in transport and rough handling. Their resistance is traced to their habit of aestivating in summer while encrust in mud. Packaging in banana stalk is simulating aestivation.

Banana stalk is used in packaging are highly perishable and breakable items, which include many succulent vegetables, ripe fruits, cut flowers, and eggs.

Note the cross-section of banana stalk. It is actually made of a series of chambers that works on the principle of a radiator. That's how efficient its cooling effect is. These chambers trap oxygen and moisture which also explains why sliced banana stalk is a good substitute of ice pack to reduce fever.

The columnar arrangement of the chambers supported by thick outer and inner walls absorb impact of rough handling, and makes the whole structure virtually crush-proof. It is from this that the corrugated cardboard was invented.

Why don't you try packaging with banana stalk farm goods you wish to send to the city? It is a way of "bridging our folks in the province with those in the in the city."

x x x 

Farming the Endangered Tridachna (Taklobo)

The taklobo is a natural indicator of our planet's health. It is now a threatened at the threshold of the endangered list. Out there in its natural habitat one could hardly find a taklobo. Soon only its fossil can be found as a relic in the museum or in the church as receptacle of Holy Water.
Dr Abe V Rotor

The taklobo is now a threatened species. 
Graduate students from the University of
Santo Tomas visit a taklobo farm in Masinloc,
Zambales, 2010.

Taklobo shell as holy water receptacle.
Mount Carmel Church, QC

One way to spend a summer is to visit marine projects such as a Tridachna or taklobo farm. Farming the sea includes seaweeds such as

Caulerpa or lato, green seaweed, ar-arusip in Iloko
Porphyra or gamet, red seaweed, also known as nori in Japan
Codium or pokpoklo, green seaweed
Gracillaria or guraman (Ilk), brown seaweed
Eucheuma or guso, brown seaweed

Fish cage culture of grouper and mullet has become popular in many parts of the world. And now, genetically modified salmon which lost its homing and free range characteristics by crossing genetic materials of unrelated species.

The earliest attempt to farm the sea is by building fishponds, converting estuaries and swamps into fishponds. But in large and open shallow areas, fish pens and cages, became more feasible. Prawn, milkfish, catfish, tilapia are among the common species raised.

Shellfish like oysters and green mussels are grown in the estuaries, and the traditional way of using bamboo and rope on which the juvenile shellfish cling to has not changed. Perhaps the most sophisticated marine farming is pearl culture, where pearl formation is induced.

Today, farming has spilled over seas, estuaries, rivers and lakes, after conventional frontiers have been conquered, threatening ecological balance, and pitting farming and environmental conservation as strange bedfellows. Runaway population, growing affluence, advances in science and technology are all aimed at the so-called Good Life. We are wrong.

The taklobo is a natural indicator of our planet's health. It is now a threatened species . Out there in its natural habitat one could hardly find a taklobo. Soon only its fossil can be found either in the museum or in the church as receptacle of Holy Water.~

Ipon or Dulong - a rare delicacy, but is it worth catching it?

Old folks know exactly when ipon arrives, by the phase of the moon and coolness of the Siberian High. The news spreads like wildfire, and soon people crowd the fishing grounds and market. For ipon is a delicacy of the Ilocanos.

Dr Abe V Rotor

Ipon (Glossogobius giuris). It collectively includes the fry of anchovies, gobies, including commercial species. Top photo: newly caught ipon (it is eaten raw fresh with onion and ginger). Lower photos: ipon cooked dry or with broth (sabaw) spiced with tomato, ginger, onion, and green or bell pepper). Ipon tamales (wrapped with banana leaves) is a popular recipe. So with ipon bagoong. Try ipon torta for breakfast. Juvenille and adult ipon are best cooked in sinigang with liberal amount of tomato and onion, and green pepper - and served piping hot, picnic style. (Note: The fish caught with ipon are susay (Ilk), shallow water dwellers at the estuary.)

Ipon reaches maturity to become one of the many species of freshwater and marine fish, such as these two specimens. When we were kids, we used to catch them with tiny fishhook and throw net (tabukol). Or we used seine net (lambat) across the river, and dragged it upstream, trapping the fish in the process. Local folks have a way of classifying them like ipusan (long tailed), butubot (big bellied), birut (juvenile ipon), and bunog (closely similar to but quite bigger than the specimen in the lower photo). The fry of many more species may be part of the collective migration upstream called ipon-run. By the time the run is completed - or disrupted - the survivors are on their own, or they form smaller schools, this time of their own kind. I believe that among the survivors are those that become sidingan (spotted), malaga (samaral), banak or purong (mullet), kapiged (relative of the malaga), and others like ar-aro (martiniko), bagsang, gurami, and carp that either go farther upstream or move down to the sea, while others remain at the estuary where freshwater and seawater meet in varying and changing levels according to the tides and river flow.

When I was a kid I used to call ipon fairy fish, because of its similarity with fairy shrimp or alamang. This enigmatic fish when caught measures only half centimeter long, arriving in schools at the mouths of rivers like the mighty Banaoang River in Santa (Ilocos Sur), and Bauang River in La Union. 

Here the natives know exactly when it arrives, by the phase of the moon and coolness of the Siberian High. The news spreads like wildfire, and soon people crowd the fishing grounds and market. For ipon is a delicacy of the Ilocanos.

Dulong or ipon appears as a composite school, mainly fries of anchovies and gobies, Family Engraulidae and Family Gobiidae. There are also different species which later become distinct after some time. But the enigma of the ipon remains.

For example, what trigger spawning and migration? How effective is collective survival? When does weaning take place? Where? Or do members remain in school until they are adults, and continue on to produced the next generation? Do they occur proportionately with the amount of food in the area?

If this is so, then we may offer some explanation to the annual population explosion of anchovies (dilis or munamon Ilk) along the coast of Peru which is the world's number one supplier of anchovies and fish meal. This area is characterized by upwelling, that is, upward current that brings back to the surface nutrients that was washed to sea. These are mainly guano droppings of migratory birds that feed on the anchovies. Here in the photic zone - the depth sunlight can penetrate the water - plankton abound that trigger the biological engine of food web. It is so powerful that half of the world's fish caught comes from this region. Indeed the Peruvian coast constitutes the highest marine biological density and diversity in the world.

Here the population density is such that when fish kill occurs as a result of warming of the sea surface caused by El Niño phenomenon, the water turns black which navigators in early days called tinta agua. The hull of passing ships become black as if painted with coal tar.

Unlike Peru we do not have rich upwelling for anchovies aggregation. In fact we can hardly trace the dulong-anchovy cycle. If we do, these are in pocket areas where we fish anchovies for local consumption, which is mainly for food.

On the first day the newly hatch fish enter the estuary, they are transparent and very tiny. You can hardly count how many individuals make 100 grams. It is at this stage that ipon is best eaten fresh with ginger, tomato and onion (kilawin). Ipon caught on the second day onward is usually made into bagoong, or cooked into torta, tamales (wrapped in banana leaves), or sinigang (broth). Old folks believe that ipon make them healthy and live long. They also believe in its aphrodisiac power, and why not? Spawning stimulates sex and growth hormones.

On the second and third day, as the fish continues to travel upstream and gain in size, they acquire spots, their body turning gray, and eyes and other body parts becoming prominent. By now their number has dwindled as fishing continues, and predators - other fishes, and birds - have their fill, and soon the whole school is thinned out and finally dispersed, with a measly number surviving to maturity. Here there are no longer traces of the ipon or any other species mixed in the school.

But this explanation coming from direct observation and testimonies of old folks is inadequate to tell us what really happens from spawning, migration to dispersal, movement from sea to river and back. We don't know the extent of distribution in the countless river systems in the world, the diversity of species of what generally is called ipon or dulong.

In 1992, a bill was filled in Congress to prohibit the catching of dulong, ipon, or any similar kind. I had the chance to read and comment on it. The rational is that ipon is actually a complex spawn aggregate, which contains the young of commercial species. It is the potential loss of these species the proposed law intends to prevent. It's like the law prohibiting the harvesting, sale and transport of bamboo shoot (labong). One shoot which is valued at 10 pesos grows into a pole in year's time with a value of 100 pesos.

But ipon fishing is a age long tradition, and tradition is very difficult to break. Even then, it is important to unlock the mystery of this fairy fish so that we can assign it into the ecosystem where it rightfully belongs, before satisfying man's fancy and unending appetite.~

Acknowledgement: Photos www.briancoad.com;  Wikimedia