Certain towns are near but if you do not go back there, they recede into the distance, and become very far.

The fiesta in Canaman has brought me back to the charming town that even academics from as far as the U.S. are well aware of. I met, in fact, an American anthropologist who told me he feels he has been to Canaman already, just by reading the essays about it.

The meaning of the name Naga, our city, has lately changed. For a long time, we have associated the name to the presence of Narra trees, the local name for which is said to be Naga.

Last Tuesday, I had a lunch with three good friends. It was a delayed celebration of my friend's daughter's graduation. The daughter is well on her way to becoming a doctor.

A table was laid out at the porch. The beams surrounding the porch framed the skies and the clouds.

Compared to Ticao, the island of my birth, Buhi, the hometown of my father, was the least visited site of my childhood. The times we visited the town corresponded with deaths of certain family members, on my father side.

I was in Kamakura once more. From Tokyo, you buy a Free Kippu, which literally means "free ticket." The ticket is not free however but discounted. The ticket allows you to take the tram car indefinitely. You can stop at every station and a majestic monastery and temple or shrine will be there.

Kamakura, for those who romanticize the place, is the seat of warriors' culture. This was where the code of the Samurai called the Bushido reached its fruition. On that rainy day, Kamakura was indeed romance and adventure. Not even the squirrels scampering over electric and cable lines could diminish the foreboding that seemed to wash over the landscape of this seaside town.

I am forever playing the music of Rosita de la Vega, the Queen of Novelty Songs in the 40s and the 50s. In that rare collection made accessible by a group of enthusiasts who are able to resurrect all the torch singers and balladeers of the gilded age of Peacetime and Wartime and Post wartime is the song "Mambo Magsaysay." The jingle is considered the most popular political jingle of all time.

I spent the whole Good Friday struggling with the sounds of karaoke out in the field, near our home, in the subdivision in Concepcion Grande. I was expecting the chanting of the Pasyon to commence after the rituals of drinking and eating. But from early evening of that day till dawn and from sunrise of Good Friday until sunset, the tunes coming from that shack were a mix of pop tunes and ballad and rock music.

Personally and in terms of calendar, the month of March has already been weeks and days of saying goodbye. Two uncles and a cousin passed away.

The condolences and the decision between a mass card and a flower, a bountiful can of biscuits and a wreath figure wracked my social life. In between these little crises in grief aesthetics and faith, there was the graduation of a niece, a graduation lunch for a friend's daughter, and the interminable invite to listen to a guest speaker in several commencement exercises.

Mrs. B is Mrs. Edita Tronqued Burgos. Mrs. Burgos is the mother of Jonas Burgos. An activist, Jonas Burgos was abducted on April 2007 and up to now there is no trace of him at all. In Ever Gotesco, where the abduction took place, a guard served as the only witness. The guard saw how five men and a woman dragged him out of the mall as public as our own poverty.