Shiloh Nouvela

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While on my morning run I saw the flowers blooming in Frogner Park and was reminded of this important truth I learned from Daddy:

Q. What’s more romantic than roses on a piano?

A. Tulips on an organ.

From my Daddy I also learned: how to distinguish between an enzyme and a hormone (you can’t hear an enzyme), why you should never, ever name your daughter Hortense (Is that Hortense? She looks relaxed to me.), and the stories of the man from Nantucket and the girl who waded in the water until she got her mmm-mmm wet.

Finally (and this will make sense only to Filipinos), I learned the difference between a conclusion and an opinion.

Go to a door. Conclusion, hindi ka makakapasok; pero kung opinion, makakapasok ka.

I miss my Daddy.

And better dressed, too.

By my Rockstar baby sister, who kicks butt in every way imaginable.

As Far as Cho-Fu-Sa

“If you are coming down the narrows of the river Kiang,
let me know beforehand and I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-Fu-Sa.”
-Li Po, translated by Ezra Pound

What I am, ever, is this: composure of stone.
Spare weather visiting the garden, small as the hours
I keep watch by. Beyond this wall

Must be better weathers. This claw of stars
Must constellate somewhere into a bear,
Else names would lie.

Since winter’s thaws, no script from you
Save this: “I travel the river and follow
The white gulls—”

Husband. See me walking the dusty pass
Where loom our prior lives?
Here the years pass that I enshrine

Within these walls, sparing nothing
From the ardors of my stare. Blue plums,
Paired butterflies repeat you

In a walled world. I tell myself
To clear the moss, mend the gate
So long unswayed and caked with dirt,

But nothing moves. Somewhere
You are actual. Happen to me there.

The move to Bilaan in 1987 marked the end of a nomadic era. Prior to then, by my count, the K clan had moved over a dozen times in my lifetime alone (one of the pitfalls of being in the real estate business): from Dunedin to Arguilla and back again, then to Molave and Lauan and Bunga and whatnot, sometimes spending less than a year in a single house. Then Ats entered college, the rest of us were soon due, and a permanent move to a house near our target universities made eminent sense.

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Our Philippine Correspondent writes:

Does the father sound familiar?

Our Philippine Correspondent just sent us a link to this article.

We take this to mean he thinks we’re a genius.

Like Esther Dyson.

Surgeons are taller, sexier and better looking than all other doctors.

And I bet cardiothoracic surgeons are the tallest and sexiest and cutest of the bunch.