05.30.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:20 pm by Miracle ♪♫
It was the most pervading sound I’ve heard in such a long period of time, and it transfused through musical veins as a lingering vibrato. It seemed too familiar that I could almost touch it, yet strange how it also implied distance. Though it was always known to ebb from the shores of lethe, had I not heard it today, it would have remained resigned and reposed in the remote
perimeters of my memory. Two unified voices that drifted from intense persuasion to silence, and from silence to a soft cry and from that gentle cry, little tremors, and from those vibrations something more incomprehensible. The conversation between the viola and the piano.
I remember speaking the language once, but not fluently and the viola
misunderstood the piano’s uncertainty for mere whims until the
conversation ended too abruptly. To hear it once again spoken eloquently by musical sovereigns can only bring me to a ripple in time where nothing else could be heard but the viola and the piano… and the undertone of a great violist who once told me, “A violist is nothing without a pianist.” He proved himself wrong, and yet I’m sure of this, there is a merged language between the viola and the piano all their own. Not Asturian, not as woeful as the cello dialect, neither as lofty as the violin idioms, but an empyreal language that today
hauntingly whispered, “When feelings are profound, torments are sweet.”*
Is this language dying?
*A line from La Maja Dolorosa, one of the songs from
Kim Kashkashian and Robert Levine’s Asturiana album.
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05.29.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:20 am by Miracle ♪♫
The great fire-bird’s egg nestled itself regally on a cumulus for a few minutes to be admired by these fascinated trivial eyes, and retreated behind the horizon to be reborn as phoenix rays, setting the heavens on kaleidoscopic fire. Not a
myth nor a fantasy, it is the sun illustriously setting in my sky.
But what joy it shall be when I see this exaltation reflected in your eyes,
because when that happens,
I know you’ll be…
barely a breath away from me.
Oh, won’t you come see
the sun? =)
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05.25.08
Posted in Bookish Wish Lists at 7:49 pm by Miracle ♪♫
The Song of Names
Norman Lebrecht
Two boys are growing up in wartime London. Martin is an only child, imprisoned in swottish loneliness. Then Dovidl enters his home, a refugee violinist from Warsaw. ‘I am genius,’ says Dovidl. ‘You have information. Together we make good team.’ His arrival brings merriment and love, mischief and menace. Blood-brothers, they roam the ruined city, finding tragedy and triumph. It is the time of their lives, their finest hour. Then Dovidl disappears, on the afternoon of his international debut. Martin is broken-hearted, his father near-bankrupted, the police dumbfounded. Where has he gone? How can a genius escape his date with destiny? How could he betray a brother? Martin is condemned to forty years of humdrum half-life until, one wintry night, an unexpected musical clue sets him on the trail to an astonishing act of self-discovery, and renewal.
Antonietta
John Hersey
A saga of a magnificent violin, Antonietta, named after a beautiful woman who was the inspiration of Antonio Stradivari’s later years. As Hersey brings Mozart, Berlioz, and Stravinsky to life, he offers us a marvelous celebration of the changing character and eternal art and
power of music.
Canone Inverso
Paolo Maurensig
Canone Inverso has the structure and resonance of an intricate piece of music, leading up to a devastating finale. A strangely carved, beautiful violin accompanies two generations of artists from Hungary, torn by World War I, to Vienna awaiting the Nazi Anschluss. Mysteriously, the violin reappears in an auction at Christie’s in present-day London. the story centers on two friends: a bastard peasant boy burdened with a great talent and the only heir to an Austrian aristocratic family desperately clinging to the prerogatives of noble birth. Theirs is the age-old tale of the doppelganger re-imagined: companions, perhaps brothers, and, inevitably, lethal enemies. The lives of the main characters intertwine in a mysterious and magical fugue, in which music is at once threat and consolation. Immortality, history, and an all-consuming passion come to play in this artfully layered, erudite narrative. Maurensig’s sensuous prose brings to life an age, an art, and the spirit of music.
The End of Romance
Norma Barzman
“The End of Romance” is a riveting memoir set against the backdrop of the rise of the Red Brigades and the resurgence of fascism in Italy. In 1973, Norma Barzman, a blacklisted screenwriter living in southern France, travels to Cremona with her husband, Henry Myers, the writer of the legendary Marlene Dietrich/James Stewart movie. Henry, a natural bon vivant and the love of Norma’s life, is nursing his diminished talent in deathly isolation in New York. Their adventure opens a Pandora’s box of long-suppressed emotions, and forces each to reassess their feelings towards the other.
The Cellist of Sarajevo
Steven Galloway
Snipers in the hills overlook half the intersections in Sarajevo. In the streets below, two inhabitants, Dragan and Kenan, trapped, like all their neighbours, in the city, strive to go about their daily lives, trying to second guess when and where the next bullet will strike. One man, a cellist, defies this game of ‘Sarajevo Roulette’; in memory of the city’s dead, for 22 consecutive days, he becomes a sitting target as he plays Albinoni’s ‘Adagio’ in the street outside his building. Unbeknown to him, one young woman watches his performances with unflinching attention. Tense and heart-wrenching to its last page, “The Cellist of Sarajevo” shows how life under siege creates agonizing and almost impossible choices. When the mere act of crossing the street can risk lives, the human spirit is revealed in all its fortitude - and frailty.
Overture
Yael Goldstein
A beautifully written, strikingly accomplished debut novel about love, music, and the complex relationship between mothers and daughters —at once a captivating glimpse into lives lived passionately and a subtle exploration of the nature of genius… Natasha Darsky is “the most famous violinist since Paganini.” Bow in hand, she lights an erotic fire under every piece of music she plays, telling each composer’s story in a singularly sensuous way. The daughter of a world-renowned art dealer in New York City, Natasha grows up in a world where artistic achievement is accorded the highest value, and her father’s opinion determines the rise and the fall of many an artist. Her prodigious musical talent, discovered when she is a little girl, blossoms at Harvard, where she begins to pursue composition as well as performing. She is soon involved in a passionate love affair with Jean Paul, a young composer whose innovative music is hailed as revolutionary. Under Jean Paul’s shadow, Natasha abandons her dream of writing music of her own and turns toward performance. Channeling the frustration and muted fury of this choice into her playing, she creates a sexually charged sound that packs concert halls around the world year after year. Her young daughter, Alex, follows in her celebrated footsteps, but it is Alex’s talent as a composer that brings mother and daughter together—and tears them apart in ways Natasha could hardly have anticipated. Overture draws readers into the glamorous and competitive world of classical music, capturing its harsh demands and its magical power to move performers and audiences alike. With a mastery rare in a first-time novelist, Yael Goldstein offers a fascinating meditation on the nature of creative brilliance and on the love that binds a mother and daughter even when their personal desires clash.
The Soloist
Mark Salzman
From the opening anecdote about a sixteenth century
saint who apparently suffered from a “neurological disorder known to cause hallucinations,” The Soloist captures and retains its reader’s attention and imagination until its final words. The story revolves around a faded musical prodigy, Renne, who has lost the ability of his childhood to perform as a world-class cellist. His life falls into a daily grind of tedious lessons with his uninspired and uninspiring students. Two separate occurrences serve to oil the wheels of his sparse existence: a new student emerges who shows the same spark of brilliance Renne himself exhibited as a child, and a summons arrives for him to serve as a juror in a trial involving the brutal murder of a Buddhist monk.
The Savior
Eugene Drucker
A magnetic debut novel from world-renowned violinist Eugene Drucker Set during the final weeks of World War II, The Savior is the story of Gottfried Keller, a young German violinist. Exempted from military service, Keller is burdened with the demoralizing task of playing for
wounded soldiers in hospitals and makeshift infirmaries. As he leaves his apartment one morning to pick up a new assignment at headquarters, Keller finds an SS driver waiting for him and is escorted without explanation to a labor camp outside his town. There he is introduced to
the camp’s Kommandant, who tells Keller that he will spend the next
four days performing for the inmates as part of an experiment in
reviving hope in those who have lost it completely. Overwhelmed by fear
and compelled by the temptation of using his talent to affect others so
powerfully, Keller finds himself playing a series of concerts for the
prisoners — and seeing with his own eyes the horrifying truths within
the barbed-wire fence. As he plays the music of Ysaye, Hindemith and
Bach, most notably the searing Chaconne, Keller’s own questionable past
unfolds, revealing the loss of his closest friend and the Jewish
fiancée from whom he fled in fear of being caught as a Jew-lover. As he
bears witness to the camp’s atrocities, Keller’s horror toward the
perpetrators and their crime begins to fade, revealing his own
culpability. Beautifully conceived and gracefully written, The Savior
is a complex and illuminating character study of a man severed from his
past expectations and an artist struggling with his identity in the
face of human catastrophe.
Black Violin
Maxence Fermine
It is 1797 and Napoleon’s Army has entered Venice. Among them is one Johannes Karelsky, a violinist. For now he is a soldier, but his ambition is to write the most beautiful opera ever written. He finds himself billeted with an old man called Erasmus, a violin-maker. One evening, Erasmus decides to tell Johannes the story of his life. And settling into his favourite armchair, with a glass of grappa in his hands, he begins his tale. The tale of the black violin.
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Posted in 2008 Potpourri at 8:00 am by Miracle ♪♫
“Since when
don’t you have visitors?” an aunt remarked earlier today.
Our house,
no matter how impecunious has surprisingly become a hub to art, music, and
coffee lovers. Café Romano, as it is
lovingly called by our friends, still wins the hearts of so many despite its
“distressed” wood and timeworn appearance. I blame Papa’s artworks for the regular visitors, and sometimes it’s
Misha’s fault for being such an adorable little musician, and oftentimes I
think it’s the free espresso.
When a legion from the Federation of Philippine
Photographers headed by Mrs. Huang swarmed quaint Café Romano last week, I realized that I have finally mastered the art of juggling two favourite
tasks (musician and barista). Man,
they sure know how to make musical requests; Rach’s Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini between rounds of coffee!
But I didn’t mind, they were wonderful people. Their main purpose for the
Dipolog trip was the Pagsalabuk festival
reigning over the whole month of May, and the fiesta which took place
yesterday, but earning its name as an artist’s home, the photographers made our
house part of their photographic itinerary. The
family still thought that was a ridiculous idea, but who could say no to the darling
Mrs. Huang?
This little
abode surely doesn’t look much from the outside, but I don’t really care. I’m very grateful that I don’t live in some
Potemkin village that boasts an impressive façade only to conceal broken lives. I’m even thankful for the occasional holes in
the walls. Who knows, perhaps that’s through
where people see the inside value of this home… and after all, maybe it’s more
than just the free espresso.
“I’ll light the fire
You put the flowers in the vase
That you bought today
Staring at the fire
For hours and hours
While I listen to you
Play your love songs
All night long for me
Only for me…”
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05.20.08
Posted in Jest for Pun at 11:59 pm by Miracle ♪♫
If one had
a musical ear, distinguishing composers and musical eras would be facile, but
when you begin explaining these things to the un-musically inclined, it could
be excruciating. You have to go through
the different qualities of sound, texture, consonance, dissonance, harmonic
action, movement, arrival, and phrase structure. Unless the person is really interested in staying
awake for all that, expounding in detail would be futile. So out of the desire to be able to give
non-musicians a background of composers and musical periods sans the
overwhelming technicalities, I say – judging by each era’s most prominent
figures, by their hair, you shall know them. Observe keenly for a comb through music history.
450 -1450 There isn’t
much medieval evidence but let’s begin with Guillaume de Machaut. The texture is relatively equal, incidental
cadences, few leading tones, light definition of tonal center, little sense of
harmonic progression, some variation in manner of movement, mild accentuation
by length, gentle and clear points of arrival.
1450 – 1600
The
Renaissance brings us to William Byrd. We now have a richer and fuller sound –
or hair, with moderate strength. The
principal texture remains, appearance of strong cadences at 
phrase endings, and
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
demonstrates considerable difference in manner and style and well-defined “caesuras”-
if you know what I mean.
1600 – 1750 The ever grand Baroque. There is an evident increase in amount and intensity, much stronger
and more pervasive cadential action and compact harmonic flow. Johann Sebastian Bach, Arcangelo Corelli, Antonio Vivaldi, Georg Philipp Telemann, George Frideric Handel and many others are obvious examples.
1750 – 1825 In the
Classical period, we may observe a
clearer dynamic range and much contrast between light and full, and a
well-defined structure in all forms and types. Dissonance is used for harmonic
tension and dramatic emphasis. Note Franz Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
1825 – 1900 By
Beethoven, we shall distinguish the transition between the Classical and
Romantic. There is a greater saturation
of dissonance that makes rich sounds - or strands, and represents instability. Noticeable increases in
fullness, richness, denseness, and striking contrasts are present. After Beethoven, and
deeper into the Romantic period, we are still able to find the retention of
classic cadence feeling with tendency toward deceptive and elided resolutions,
rapid elusive shifts of tonal center, harmonic color, and weakened harmonic
drives.
1900 – 2000 Maurice Ravel, Aaron Copland,
Erik Satie, Claude Debussy… extremes of transparency with cross-rhythms and imbalances.
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05.17.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:25 am by Miracle ♪♫
The world does not need words… and though I am not proficient with words, I am fervid to indite them again and again. Still I wish to sing with words, to breathe through words, to dance in words, to laugh with words, traipse through words… and did you know, dear book, that You kindle these and a hundred other words?
I have been given the privilege to glance at your un-fustian but beautiful and valiant preface. Nevertheless I shelve you from time to time for fear that my arms would be an unworthy shelf for too profound a tome such as you. Yet, I pray thee, not to deprive me of the unread incandescent pages of your being, for I have been entranced with the fiery words that I have been granted to behold. Your words are cure to malignant thoughts and a remedy to the vacuum of my mind. I burn for those uncharted pages, but not with the inferior red fire of worldly desire, but with the fiercer blue flame that ardently yearns for divine knowledge.
The world does not need words… and neither do you need mine, but I naturally wrote them down anyway, because occasionally, I have to consider what flares in me… and devalue them to words. Dearest book, let me borrow you, vade mecum - go with me, from time to time.
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05.10.08
Posted in Unauthored by Me at 8:08 pm by Miracle ♪♫
[No. 1 of "Four Quartets"]
By T.S. Eliot
I
Time present
and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time
is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush?
Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests,
accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled
with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves
were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
II
Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.
At the still point of the turning world.
Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement.
And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered.
Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline.
Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance,
and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been:
but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long,
for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering,
release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense,
a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time
can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church
at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.
III
Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps
the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell,
Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.
Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement;
while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.
IV
Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?
Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher’s wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent,
the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.
V
Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin,
while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning
were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.
The detail of the pattern is movement,
As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always—
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.
Permalink
Posted in Unauthored by Me at 8:13 am by Miracle ♪♫
by Dana Gioia
The world does not need words. It articulates itself in
sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path are no less real for lying
uncatalogued and uncounted. The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure
being. The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken. And one word
transforms it into something less or other–illicit, chaste, perfunctory,
conjugal, covert. Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands glancing
the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow arching of neck or knee, the silent
touching of tongues. Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot name
them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica. To see a red stone is less
than seeing it as jasper–metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa carved
as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember. The sunlight needs no praise
piercing the rainclouds, painting the rocks and leaves with light, then
dissolving each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it. The
daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always–greater than ourselves
and all the airy words we summon.
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05.03.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:42 pm by Miracle ♪♫
Title: Maya
Artist: Miracle Romano
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Year: 2008
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Maya
~ Rabindranath Tagore ~
That I should make much of myself
and turn it on all sides,
thus casting colored shadows on thy radiance
—such is thy Maya.
Thou settest a barrier in thine own being
and then callest thy severed self
in myriad notes.
This thy self-separation has taken body in me.
The poignant song is echoed
through all the sky in many-coloured tears
and smiles, alarms and hopes;
waves rise up and sink again,
dreams break and form.
In me is thy own defeat of self.
This screen that thou hast raised
is painted with innumerable figures
with the brush of the night and the day.
Behind it thy seat is woven
in wondrous mysteries of curves,
casting away all barren lines of straightness.
The great pageant of thee and me
has overspread the sky.
With the tune of thee and me
all the air is vibrant,
and all ages pass with the hiding and seeking
of thee and me.
.
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Posted in 2008 Potpourri at 3:21 am by Miracle ♪♫
That’s What Franz Are For =P
“Franz is
not my boyfriend (but sometimes it’s fun to pretend that he is, for the purpose
of warding off some unwanted attention),”
I addressed the skeptical public
recently.
Writing that was a breath of
childishness but it was necessary to replace the obnoxious question marks with
a firm period. When people truly know my
circle of friends, that question would not even arise because they would be
aware that there isn’t just a Franz and Miracle, but rather, a Franz, Reji,
Tonet, and Miracle.
I, myself, find it
hard to imagine one without the other, but since it’s almost Franz’
birthday and this is predictably one of the times I write about him or our
friendship, I’ll engross in a small portion of the quartet that is Franz and
Miracle…and why he’s a special friend.
I have
realized that all people who are close to me are those who are in more ways
different than who I am, especially Franz. This is because we have one
important thing in common, and that is the boldness of remaining who we are rather
than being epigones of each other.
We
don’t compromise our identities and tastes for fear of being unlike the other,
or being dislikeable to the other. This
way, we learn so much from our closeness.
There is
more depth to our companionship than that of the shallow definition of best
friends as merely two people who are able to laugh at the same jokes or share
secrets, and another facet of our friendship that I admire is that if one has a
trivial issue against a particular person, he doesn’t encourage me to shun that
person and vice versa, but if that
person pushes it too far, that’s when we “join forces”.
A lot of
people conclude that we’re bagay (suitable
for each other), because we’re both musicians. Well, thousands of musicians
exist. Some say it’s because we both appreciate
literature and art. There are also
swarms of literature and art lovers. People
can’t just put a finger to it, but I think we simply seem that way to them for
the reason that we have few obvious similarities but are actually very
different deep within and yet we still dare to be together as best friends “under
the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one’s own self,”
and that is a great amount of Respect and philial love reflecting between the
two of us that makes people deem what they do.
Our
friendship may be summed up in one phrase by a favourite wacky author of ours.
“Our
similarities bring us to a common ground; our differences allow us to be fascinated
by each other.”
…and of
course, there are the reasons on why we’re friends that words cannot define but
only convey themselves as a simple pat on the back, a hug, a knowing expression,
a smile, an I-told-you-so look, or even a raised eyebrow, and these things need
no more words.
Permalink
05.01.08
Posted in 2008 Potpourri at 9:30 am by Miracle ♪♫
DidiLac
On May 8, my parents will attain the pearl of
their 30th wedding anniversary – together,
physically and spiritually most importantly.
Basing on Mama’s recounts of their younger years as a couple, people did not seem to see them instinctively as a perfect match. Papa being ten years older and a hippie-influenced artist opposed to the scholarly Mama, they definitely sounded like an unlikely duo – but only for a time. Through the seasons they braved trials, six pregnancies with only three successful but difficult childbirths, demeaning rumors, disapproving relatives, and persecution for their new-found faith at that time, the same faith which sustains them up to this day.
Today, some turn to them for marriage counseling, many of my friends profess that they are the sweetest/perfect couple they have ever seen, and ironically, people come to ask them the secret of their successful marriage. The answer is simple. It’s their oneness in God.
I can only be grateful to the Lord for blessing me with the best parents one could ever have.
Do you think happy ever afters here on earth are defunct? Or do you still believe in them? Well, when you look at these two, it’s difficult not to. They are proof that matches still are made in heaven.
Note for Franz (whose birthday is also on the 8th of May):
No… people don’t live “happily ever after” right after the kiss, “happily ever after” is only the beginning… and when you’re truly blessed, it never ends. Happy anniversary to my parents and happy birthday to their adopted son, Franz, on the 8th!
Photo by Lester Ong (another adopted son)
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