Vignettes

Stirling

If there is anything left of my memory of Scotland. It's the dreadful cold that
seeped through us as we watched the old man, in full regalia—kilt, boots, fake sword, a bald head weaving some tale about the mighty William Wallace, the war and this highland castle. To be honest I never got half of what he was saying. Perhaps it was important, in the context of the mighty castle so vast, so old. So old that I found myself drifting as I fought against the cold, my face pressed against some pillowy comfort,how it would be to live like them in the Highlands, with someone brave-hearted.

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That Mountain in Pyeongchon

I will not forget that rocky mountain for as long as I live. Sometimes when I go visit the place where I once lived I’d see it in the horizon, brooding mountain, full of tricks and rocky steps. That mountain killed one of us the first and only time we climbed it. It killed the only one of us who gave up and went down without conquering its peak. How can you not learn a lesson from the irony of it all? That spring while we, the brave young guns, were up there in that traitorious peak eating cold lunch, exhilirated by the view, our comrade the unconqueror who went down on his own was at his room clutching his chest,falling, falling into depths deeper than all mountains.

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The Little Church that Wouldn’t

I go to a little church that wouldn’t. This little church with little people. Small in number, about twenty, and little in the way the world judges us. Because most are workers in factories and plants, and some of them didn't even go to college. But it’s a little church that would not give up. Even after half of the members have gone back to Pinas. Even after people have left to form their own church. It stands there with my pastor who tells it as it is. He just wouldn’t give up. It’s for the little people, he says. There’s a secret there. When I’m in that little church I notice how I seem smaller, how they loom with their happy laughter. They sing better, have more faith, more things to be thankful for. These little people that could.