Pasong Tamo

What's a place for you?

Randy David once wrote that when you leave a familiar place and get away from it for a long time, an inevitable reunion is usually coupled with wonder, of how the place used to look much bigger and more grand than it seems at the present. So when we leave our hometowns or birthplaces where we lived most of young lives and then get the chance to visit again years later, everything looks so small.

There are places we love going back to, comfort zones, like home or the chapel where we first had our communion. Places of our childhood mostly.

There are places we escape to. Places where we seek refuge and find peace. Not necessary comfort zones, but safety zones. Like an old bedroom filled with Voltes-V and Transformer toys, or the dampa by the creek at our backyard. Some secret places.

There are places we go to to be seen, and places we visit to be invisible. There are places that remind us of past romantic notions, and places that tell of violence. Places where love seem to exist, and places where it doesn't at all.

There are places we only visit once, there are others we cannot escape from.

Today my sense of place is rattled. I took Pasong Tamo on my way to my car dealer, nothing extraordinary as I have taken this route many times before, until I realized this road is where most of it happened. This is where I used to pick JL up on our way to Greenbelt or Bed or even to get fastfood. This is where we had our discussions (or lack of). This is where it happened, that fateful dawn one Sunday when I realized nothing will be the same again between us.

I tried to shrug it off, but something about this road forced me to think about JL once more. To be precise about it, he'd be gone 13 weeks tomorrow. Today of all days I'd take this road, and suddenly everything's back. Sorrow. Sadness. A myriad of emotions washed over me, but mainly, I felt alone.

Pasong Tamo isn't my comfort place, nor is it my safety zone. It's not a route I took just once. I've traveled through it many times, and it does not seem smaller than before. It is a road I could not escape from, and while I am not trapped in it at all, Pasong Tamo will always be part of the landscape. My landscape. My story.

Sitting here now, writing this journal and listening to my JL moping album over iTunes, I come to realize three months is a long time to carry my JL baggage. Rainy season's here soon. Time to travel light.