June

The rain has begun. The wind has started to swirl on the street, raindrops knock on our roof. I spent some time looking at our gate as the water ran down the railings.

Our house is about two decades old. Not so old compared to some houses that are as old as my grandparents. Historical houses fascinate me: their oldness, strangeness, and the important events that happened there. Their stories always lead me to be curious. I've been searching for beautiful old houses many times.









Recently, I saw from a newspaper a century-old concrete house in the middle of a vast sugar plantation, in a place called Talisay, in Negros. It is now in ruins (hence its name as "The Ruins"). Only the skeleton is left after it was torched by guerrillas during the Second World War. It was owned by a "sugar baron" named Mariano Ledesma Lacson. He was the younger brother of a revolutionary general named Aniceto Lacson, who fought in 1898 against Spain. Some say that Mariano had a beautiful wife named Maria Braga, a Portuguese and a daughter of a ship captain. It is quite a huge mansion, measuring 903 sqm. and is made in the Italianate style.

Anyhow, here comes June! It is time to go back to school. This will be the last time I will enroll there, and surely, this will be a busy week. Luckily, I had time back in May to roam around the school together with the bunny. I took pictures of things that had been forgotten, and that had caught my attention.

Broken drawers and paper files eaten by termites.

Old asphalt road spattered with moss.


The wood in agony.



Marble chessboard on a bench.


(The bunny says that the tree awaits strangers to sit down and play a game of chess with it. The pieces are but stones, though what is at hand is more than a matter of these stones. See how there seems to be no one playing with the tree, for the tree has lost to no one, and those who lose to it are lost in the tree forever.)

I take pictures to find some good references for my illustrations, and to have consistent colour patterns.

The bunny will not go to our school this year. She'll be going to Spain for a scholarship for ten months. Things will probably change during the next months.

Pictures of The Ruins courtesy of goiloilo.com