Beautiful Places

I was looking through some photographs of Batanes and was again awed and stupefied by its beauty. Places like these, Batanes, Sagada, the sea at dawn, the wide skies at dusk they send mortals like us into a calm sense that all the world is beautiful. We are so puny, so crass in the face of such natural wonders. You realize it’s a matter of perspective, coming into such places, of us being so small, and so are our pains, our troubles, every draining burdens that we have. We are filled with this quiet joy, content to watch this wondrous land, this carpeted world undulate, happy just to have the chance to be alive, to discover these places, how we become special just by being there.

I wish I could be in the midst of something like that now, to walk through a trail of greenness, solemn, silent. To have that chance to gaze across the sea, and be reassured by it being a mirror of so many things—that of the sun’s departure from the heavens, of ups and downs, of the little surprises it spews at us landlubbers.

There are people who fall in love with cities, and I agree they lend themselves to a certain slick charm. But they cannot evoke the feeling of happiness natural landscapes, formed by nature, can evoke. Much as we are amazed by the skills of the people who made a city, it is a trip to something achingly desolate, so ancient, so natural, formed beyond our capabilities, such as a beach, or a mountain, or a valley so green and seemingly endless that I look forward to.

But I am miles away from the nearest sea, and caught in this modern city with dead leaves. Instead I make do with winter, the chill of going home at night, and instead of of a beautiful sea or a valley, I stumble into concrete bridges, man made rivers and geisha-like faces. It is not Batanes, it is not the best place to be enthralled, but there are friends here who’ll say yes when I ask them to come with me for coffee, there’s that bookstore where I could browse for hours to pass my time, there’s the small pocket park in front of my flat, and sometimes even late in the night I’d hear chuckles and laughter from kids playing in the playground. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that can replace the enchantment of a postcard-pretty moment in Batanes, or Sagada, or Pagudpud. But that’s how it is. We live normal lives in non-descript ordinary places—buildings, work, friends, all the trappings of a modern world, and that by itself has some value. But if it’s possible who wouldn’t want to go back to Batanes or Sagada, or find new terrains that are equally euporia-inducing, and soak up the magic, if only to get our cores straightened out again, and return to all that normality inspired to try better—at life, at being who we are.