Self decided that, for this prompt, she would look for actual lamps or ceiling fixtures.
Then she saw this picture: She snapped it in the parking lot of a movie theater in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Christmas Day, 2019: She’d just seen a movie with son and daughter-in-law (she forgets which movie).
She was entranced by the sky. There is a street light. And the lights of a car.
The prompt this week: It’s not just PURPLE, it’s IMPERIAL PURPLE!
This iris was growing around Stow Lake, in Golden Gate Park, last year. Looked all over my archives, but didn’t find anything that came close. This must be why it’s IMPERIAL.
Posting (one day early) for Six Word Saturday:
Remember when the least-posturing leader the Free World has ever known took out the world’s #1 Most Wanted Criminal? OK, self might say: Was that when Biden had covid and took out — ?
No, though that comes close. She’s talking about Obama taking out Osama, an event so top-secret no one even knew about it until it was over (No one except for a civilian live-tweeting from Abbotabad).
Since that momentous event, details cling to self’s memory: the fact that the SEAL team were given Ambien (or Benadryl) before taking off for the mission and some of them were NODDING OFF in the helicopter. The fact that one of the team had a sex-change operation.
Remember the photograph in the Situation Room with everyone staring intently at a screen, and there’s Hillary and there’s even our currrent Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, standing at the very edge of the picture, watching from the door?
The event was so momentous, self even wrote a short story about it, and called her story The Walker, after the code name the Americans gave Osama, because even before they knew for sure it was him, they identified a tall figure taking daily walks around a walled compound in Abbotabad. (PS: That story, in case anyone cares to read, was published Oct. 2021 in Issue # 25 of — self just loves the name of the journal, so apt considering the nature of the story! — The Museum of Americana. AND for all you budding writers out there, the editor is fantastic. Submit here!)
Well, here’s that event again, in the opening paragraph of Chapter 4 of Amy B. Zegart’s (fascinating) Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence.
This was it. Decision time. On April 28, 2011, President Obama gathered his top foreign policy advisors in the White House Situation Room. After months of meetings so secret that not even the secretary of homeland security or the FBI Director knew about them, Obama was about to make one of the most consequential decisions of his presidency: whether to green-light a Navy SEAL team raid to capture or kill a man the CIA believed might be Osama bin Laden.
— Chapter 4: Intelligence Basics, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence
This is a picture of self with two of her oldest friends — Carla Pacis and Judy Benares — and a new friend — Mahla Sen. It was her last full day in Manila after a four-year absence. The four of us had gone on a day trip of Laguna Province, just a few days prior. The theme of the day was historic churches. The four of us squeezed into Judy’s car and visited the church at Majayjay (and the nearby Taytay Falls), founded by Juan de Salcedo in 1573 (he was 23; the grandfather he came to the Philippines with was dead, and Juan de Salcedo kept on with his sworn duty: the Christianization of Spain’s newest colony) and the church at Nagcarlan (almost as old).
It was a very very long day (we were stuck in a four-hour traffic jam on the way back). Anyhoo, we exchanged stories and came to the conclusion that we made a good “team.” We started drawing up plans for future trips — Kalempong, anyone? Or Simla? Next year, we resolved.
The following Wednesday, Mahla invited us all over for a fabulous Indian buffet — the picture was taken after said lunch. Self had to suck in her stomach. She hadn’t slept a wink the night before — she always gets last-day-before-flying-home jitters, surprised she was still upright. Note the AWP tote? It’s already one of her most-traveled totes.
Posting for Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.
This is a very interesting, creative challenge Cee has devised for this week’s CBWC! It was so much fun going into my archives to find “back of things” shots.
Without further ado:
This week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, hosted by Travels and Trifles, is “Environments”:
Self is currently in traveling mode. She just returned to Manila after two weeks in Bacolod. Her current environment is her brother’s townhouse in Makati:
Everywhere, she sees reminders of Dearest Mum, who passed away June 2021. Self attended the funeral by zoom: she couldn’t fly home because Manila was in the grip of a raging covid epidemic.
Self flew back to Manila last night, just in time to catch Wednesday devotions at Baclaran Church.
Her family used to live in Malate, just around the corner from Baclaran Church, and this is where she and her faily used to attend Sunday mass.
Since then, Baclaran Church has grown in stature and has become a pilgrimage site for devotees of Our Mother of Perpetual Help. The last time she was here, she was with Dear Departed Mum. The church was packed with people crawling to the altar on their knees. Since then, they’ve banned this particular form of devotion and the atmosphere is much less chaotic.
Just outside the church is a shrine to St. Thérese of Lisieux, enclosed by an iron fence. Today, the statue of St. Therese was draped in flowers. There was a beautiful bouquet of roses and lavender hanging to the right.
Posting for Cee Neuner’s Flower of the Day.
A picture self took last November, in Andrew’s old room:
Andrew is phlegmatic, as usual. Lucia can’t help but look at the clicking camera.
Essay # 1: A Town Ringed by Missiles
Imagine turning your head and holding your arm out, as if for a blood test. You feel a slight prick, you loosen the tie, and then suddenly this warmth floods up; you feel a rush that begins at the base of your spine and surges up until it explodes in your head, like light. Then, for hours, you float in a bubble of warmth and well-being, dreams as vivid as movies drift before your eyes. This is why people like heroin.
Imagine you no longer feel like an ordinary girl, bland and vulnerable, but like a girl who is daring, an outsider, one of the guys.
This is why I tried it in the first place.
Beth, is this you, Beth?
I knew you when I was a shy Filipina in the Stanford Creative Writing Program, 23 years old and tongue-tied. And possibly the most naive person ever to enter a Creative Writing Program. And you were kind to me. Why didn’t you just stick me in a trash can and say, You’re hopeless! You convent-bred wuss! I mean, I would have understood if you burst out laughing at every single thing I said in workshop. I even attempted to be more “American” by choosing to spend my first month in the program reading — guess what? No, not Raymond Carver. Not Grace Paley. Moby Dick! Lame! Now I hate Herman Melville!
But, let’s turn back to the essay I’ve just started reading:
Janis was still alive, I think, maybe even Morrison and Hendrix. The Civil Rights Bill was six years old.
Stay tuned.
Kanlaon 