Raining June

Its June already. and as you know, in our country June is the beginning of the rainy season, where the bright blue sky and vivid white clouds is now covered with dark gray sky (or at literally clouds, but at time the clouds looks more of a sky). It is such a wonderful thing since during afternoon you can hear the dropping water into your roof while you are in your bed and about to sleep.

Rain has so many memories of mine. It reminds me yearly that school year is about to begin (where I always experienced wet socks inside my shoes during my grade school days). When I was younger me and my siblings used to bath at rain during mid-May. My mother said, which came from grandma, that the first rain in May is where grace is being showered from Paradise. But during that time, I only just enjoy of running in the streets while the rain pours from the sky rather than what mother told me.

Someone also told me that rain is a gift from God, that He throws coins of grace from the heavens. But when it became louder and wilder and stronger, it is no longer coins but babies being cast out from heaven. This are the unbaptized babies who are quite unfortunate enough to refuse to enter to paradise.

I don't sure who told me this story but it is such a sad story. But then, it is not a barrier to unlike rainy days.

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