Thursday, May 18, 2006

where have all the flowers gone?

i expected spring to last much longer than this. we've been here for only a little less than two months now and already, we've had a taste of three seasons. when we arrived end of march, the air still had a touch of winter chill and there were days of cruel freezing rain. then spring happened, so slowly that we barely noticed the changes. the first day of class, the row of small trees below looked pathetic with spindly branches that were more like bare twigs. we could see the bird nests perched high up in certain trees but they were all empty.

we knew it was spring when we started hearing birdsong mingling with the sounds of early morning traffic. the birds came back from their warm vacations down south, some of them to their deaths. i remember seeing one drop at our feet during one breaktime sometime in april. we hang out right outside the international studies hall where we take our classes, drinking vending machine coffee and basking in weak watery sunlight. and so one morning a bird just plopped dead right in front of us. some people said something about bird flu. i just thought maybe the bird saw some clouds against a stretch of blue, and mistook the glass windows on the third floor for the sky.

i was very tempted to call this photo "on seeing the 97% perfect girl one beautiful april morning," after haruki murakami. but now i think "still life with fat face" is more appropriate. i know it's weird to throw fat jokes at myself pero inuunahan ko lang kayo. at least when i say it, i mean it only 46% of the time.
some coy posturing before going to class. seriously, i really miss seeing those all flowers bursting from the strange swollen bumps on the otherwise skeletal trees. the rains swept the blossoms from the branches in less than a week. i wish i could say that the white petals fluttered to the ground like a thousand dying butterflies but it wasn't anything like that. they just fell with each slight gust of wind, turned brown and gross, and gunked up the gutters.

this is a poor attempt to capture that weird white light that can be seen only when early morning sunlight shines through the smooth petal of a flower. if you turn the brightness of your monitor waaay up and stare at it for as long as you can without blinking, nothing special will happen. you'll just hurt your eyes. hee hee.
here's a photo of plummier times, when everything for us was new and exciting. but after a little more than a month, some mild form of cabin fever set in, and we realized that some measure of alone time was needed to keep us from pelting each other with stuffed bunnies and nacho chips. photo taken by asmarani sometime in april.

a quasi-close up of some flowers on a tree i saw on our visit to nami island last april 14th. i tried zooming in more but this is the closest i could get. the tree was pretty high, as can be seen in the photos below.

some random guy taking photos of flowers. i thought it would be cool to do the same so i did. still on nami island, 14th april.

same scene as above, but without the stranger taking photos. here, it's just some woman about to walk across the foreground in a brave attempt to ruin my picture. i think her attempt worked very well. i don't mean to grouse, just that i turned on my TV for the first time today (yes, it took me that long to find the power cord) and saw part of an episode of House. i think some of the sarcasm rubbed off on me. either that or i'm just naturally this charming.

now, i'm not sure why i took this. it's just some branch on some tree on some island. but of course, it can be so much more than that. i just can't really articulate it so i'll just say "it looks nice, noh?"

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

those flowers are esquisite! I love your pictures!

i'm surprised how many people have actually read murakami out there. i once saw someone republish On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl on her blog over on Multiply. Wala lang, it's just nice to know other people appreciate him too.