Kasal Sheryl at Jay

Many important wedding planning events have gone unblogged. There is time to circle back to tea lights and catering tents, or maybe not, but the most compelling and relevant report is from our trip last month to the Philippines. It was an invaluable opportunity to know my fiancee better, to put image into her narrative; and to understand myself, as one bound to her through the past eight years and for many more to come, in a new way.

After separate 22 plus hour journeys we arrived in Manila in the middle of the night, United Airlines' grim clutches sweetly giving way to Mary's aunt Henriet's house in Quezon City. Ate Henriet's grace and hospitality was constant and thorough. If I can recall a moment of inconvenience it was for lack of sufficient insight into my own needs.

A couple frenzied and morbidly jet-lagged days later, barong tagolog pressed and ready, it was Jay and Sheryl's wedding in Manila. Packed into Kuya Wency's minivan in full rank of seven, we made our way to the church. Fits of rain roaring off the roof, jeepneys dropped their plastic screens, we ground through downtown traffic like an icebreaker crunching to the north pole. The coordinator arrived and hewed a ceremony from the idling throng. The reception was at the close by Shangri-la. Jay and Sheryl, donning red dress for the exhibition, did a rhumba number for their first dance.

A few days after the wedding we flew to Boracay for our proper vacation. Clearly rustic, however mobbed by Burberry swathed tourists, in Boracay you feel the fresh sensation of being off the map. The ride on rickety boats across the turquoise lagoon from the airport to the island, perched on wooden planks, spray booming in your face as outriggers slam surf, confirms with a hint of danger that your are properly off the grid. Never mind that the blackberry works just fine, growling ignorantly.

Our hotel, the Tides Boracay, booked by Jay an Sheryl for all of us, fit the bill. Beautiful rooms, a roof top pool, and a daily breakfast making rising easy, made it an experience to savor. Even the constant drilling and hammering going on (the hotel was very new, i.e., unfinished) couldnt spoil it. A few dozen yards down a sand avenue, we reached the narrow sparkling beach. We got in a couple days of sun and sand before the rains set in. Rainy season in the Philippines is not an approximation or a relative concept. It rained furiously at some point each day, some days all day, stiff winds firing the fine sand between the wind breaks. But many joyous meals and long evenings with lining up empty San Miguels made it moot---it was why we were in that place: being with family, learning and relearning each other, was the joy. Some of us were born in the Philippines, but most all called home somewhere else, and brought from those places distinct minds and spirits to share.

Back in Manila again, we had a few more touristic missions to complete. We visited Villa Escudero, where we spent a couple days eating and swimming in the giant two level pool. We had lunch under the waterfall, and toured the Escudero museum. It didnt rain, but we got the other flavor of July filipino weather, withering heat. The cultural show at Escudero was expertly done, the costumes and preparation showed practice and detail.

After Villa Escudero, we also made a run for Pansanjan falls, but were thwarted when a car vaulted the bridge on the approaching road just before we reached it, seizing traffic for good. We made a U-turn and made for Tagaytay, on the other flank of Laguna. The faint comedy of this turn underscored the sensual terror of driving in the Philippines. Overcoming the ambient forces of traffic is an act basically of will.

A practised Filipino driver is an study in mindfulness and calm. Its a perpetual evacuation from everywhere. Young nurses in crisp whites tear between lanes on the back of motorbike taxis, every intersection is a dogfight for angle and position, Jeepneys pile with commuters, kerchiefs pressed to passengers' faces against the horrid polution, infant bearing pedestrians vault into traffic from every inch of curb, and outsized commuter buses and trucks drape black sheets of smoke over the whole thing. Observing Manila traffic's irrythmia fills a lot of your time there. Because it must, if you want to go anywhere.

We also made a tour of Intramuros and Fort Santiago, monument to national hero Jose Rizal, and simultaneously, head scratchingly, to the former Spanish government and its church. Simultaneous ardent nationalism and bereaved nostalgia for past masters is a knife edge of filipino cultral conciousness.

Having also sprung from a culture also born in the mirroring grace and savagery of Spanish colonialism, civilized and enslaved under the same cross, I could recognize the irreconcilable sentiments of a colonial people trying at once to know another's traditions as its very own as its public face, and to value itself properly as an ancient an indellible presence on this earth. You come to know more about a country where tiny chemists selling nothing but skin whitening creams sprout from rural roadsides and nearly everyone which two pesos to rub together has her malay or chinese nose rebuilt as a conquistador's. Reading Rizal's biography on the plane ride home, I found a story that spoke to me personally, and which I believe should speak to colonial peoples trying to reconcile its sentiments---and who want to like being ancient.