Frankie's Beach

Its Monday. Stressful. And its only the start of the week.

The only good thing seemed to be my knowing three friends who were celebrating their birthdays on August 23 and greeting them.
And...finding out before the clock chimed midnight, that another friend was celebrating his birthday on the morrow.

The rest of the time, aside from a heaping pile of work which has become "expected" on a Monday, I got pinged for information about a good friend and classmate's father's wake in Cebu, I received news about an online buddy's friends and his relative's dying young and unexpectedly (it was, as he called it a "triple whammy")...and last but not the least, I got asked by my teammates living abroad about the Hong Kong tourist hostage crisis in the Philippines which they were seeing on television,  where people's lives were meaninglessly lost.

Today was indeed a day of birthdays and death - two sides of the coin all being brought home to me without frills, in all its unvarnished truth.

In a bid to find some balance...and between all of this "another manic Monday" refrain, I scrolled through pictures of towering mountains, rolling verdant hills, creatures of God, blushing blooms, and last but not the least, beaches I had visited.

With the beach and mountains less than half an hour's drive away from my parents' house, I sometimes think of my hometowns. I say it with an "s" because not only did I grow up in Cebu, but the first 9 years of my life I spent on the island of Mactan where the beach was less than 5-minutes walk from our gate.

I guess there is nothing like death flitting airily about one's shoulders through mediums such as tv, text messages and social sites to make one inevitably reflect on one's mortality and how judiciously the time is spent in the passing years.

One such scene I looked through earlier is the picture I included on this post.

{the enlarged version of this picture can be seen if you click on it}

This picture was taken in Bantayan Island during this year's Holy Week. It is a view that Frankie, our cheerful and accommodating hostess may very well look at when she goes down her home's front steps towards the surrounding sea.

In the midst of this concrete jungle I now call home, I take refuge in my mind - half-remembering halcyon days I spent in the past and idly wondering about the people who live and the people who leave.