It has been raining again in Manila. Rainy days
like this drive people towards introspection. It's natural. It's to be expected.
I have experienced rain in the Philippines, rain in Cambridge, rain in London. It's all the same really, save for some of the aesthetics. A building in Makati is a building in the same, generic, way a building is a building in Bangkok.
Focus here is focus anywhere. It is the ambient noise that varies from place to place. No two places are the same because of this.
We are in the midst of typhoon season in the Philippines. When I look out the window of my flat, and look at all the raindrops that have built little water tents on glass, I am, for some odd reason, brought back to footage from Anthony Bourdain's final trip to Hong Kong, months before his untimely demise. He sits onboard Hong Kong's iconic Star Ferry, musing over what it means to see the world, but feel like you really haven't seen a damn thing. Travelling can be the greatest, and the loneliest thing, all rolled into one.
I have been fortunate enough to have seen quite
a bit of this world through my travels. There are times when I feel less thrilled
to be someplace because of the nagging reality that in the end, something will
be lost in the retelling. Hard as I may try to tell my parents, or my friends,
or my significant other, about the sight of amazing fjords, or the smell of the
air when standing close to heritage steam trains, nothing will ever compare to
the real thing. Reality is the champion of the focus game. It never loses. The
sensations associated with reality are unparalleled.
Rain here, is rain anywhere. It's the noise
that makes things distinct. There is real, and there is man-made. Focus, in and
of it self, can be relative.Maybe if I focus on the performance of memory, the
relevance of both the content, and the performance, to who I'm talking to, I
may be able to steal some focus from what is real, and make my version of
experience, a little more compelling.
MC
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