Endings and beginnings...

Many years ago, when people only had geocities and angelfire instead of blogs, I put together an online journal and called it “Sojourn”. I had to learn HTML basics to be able to give it a semblance of a web site, not like the push-button publishing that blogs offer today. Sojourn was my soul mate on the net. I poured out my thoughts on it through both prose and poetry. It became the journal of my life, a record of my travels, of my adventures, of the people I met, of the food I cooked and ate, of my hopes, dreams and political angst.

Then along the way something happened to my life, and my cyber world stopped on its track. I stayed away from the net and let my Sojourn disappear into oblivion. It was as if there never was. Like Atlantis forever lost in the ocean depths, my cyber-extension disappeared into the bits and bytes of the virtual universe.

Age, the advanced stage or somewhere near it to be specific, has a way of reminding us that we too will someday disappear into the sunset. Our bodies, frail and fleeting as they are, will eventually find its way back into the bosom of our Mother Earth. But long after we are gone, people will remember the words we spoke or wrote, the things we did that mattered to them, and the things we failed to do that could have mattered to them. It will always be about us and them, and how we affected each other's lives.

Thus it came to be that one night during the recent Holy Week, my fingers led me to that new Shangri-la of the Internet Universe – Blogspot.com. After a few minutes of feeling myself around like a little lost boy in a huge toy supermarket, I officially became one of the zillions of bloggers on the net. I chose to be the little voice of my quaint little town of Pateros, because it is the only home sweet home I know in my entire armchair life. It is the town that cradled my forebears and nourished my parents. Warts and all, it will always be my quaint little town. Always.

* Images are from the photo collection of Elmer Nocheseda. Original poetry by Dennis E. Concepcion.