“Aren’t all the good stories always like this? Passed from one mouth to another with one or two things melting into the tongues of those who preach the sanctified word. Forever lost, altered history. We’re seventy years worth of good stories and for seventy years, many have tried to tell them. But somehow in all the madness of good people and bad people of right and wrong they forgot to tell the story of how much I love you. As if the heavy slope of my shoulders doesn’t write a hundred paragraphs. As if the way I look at you doesn’t write the singular ending. You are my epilogue, my prologue, and every chapter that exists in between. Everybody, sit down. I have a story to tell.”

“This is how you fight back: Take the salt from your tears and amass a raging ocean from it. Spindle your cries into its own axis and unleash a sweeping hurricane. Mourn, and mourn, and mourn, for where we stand, gravity persists. And those with the heaviest hearts plant their feet into the earth the strongest. You are a force of nature, the salt of this earth, and this earth bends for nobody. So when they tell you to move, what do you say?”

“This is how you fight back: Take the salt from your tears and amass a raging ocean from it. Spindle your cries into its own axis and unleash a sweeping hurricane. Mourn, and mourn, and mourn, for where we stand, gravity persists. And those with the heaviest hearts plant their feet into the earth the strongest. You are a force of nature, the salt of this earth, and this earth bends for nobody. So when they tell you to move, what do you say?”

The world is a terrifying place but at least the erupting volcano of Mayon is waking the ancients to remind us of our place

Quick note: original art is by Kerby Rosanes

Another note: This is in reference to the Filipino legend from Albay called “Daragang Magayon” [literally translated into “beautiful maiden”, with “daraga” meaning “maiden” and “magayon” meaning “beautiful”]