<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'><b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: large;">Going Home</b><br>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><i>Home Alone</i> is a
comedy film of a large family heading for a Christmas vacation in Paris when
the parents realized that they were missing one of the brood, an eight-year-old
played delightfully by Macaulay Culkin when he was still cute. This reflection is, however, not about the
movie. It is about my return to China
from an extended visit and farewell to North America.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">Just to be clear, the "going home" metaphor is emotive
more than geographic. Since the image
explosion of the "earthrise" in 1968 in human consciousness, my
"home" had become the planet and my citizenship has become global. But as a colleague in North Carolina
commented, we are at an age when resources have become scarce and a long haul
across the planet takes considerable effort, so she and her husband, colleagues
across the miles, understood my farewell.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">It shall have been 50 yrs. this August when I took a 20-day
sail to San Francisco from Manila, and our farewell is essentially a completion
of that journey. It had been a roller-coaster
ride, from crisscrossing North America save Vermont, Price Edward Island,
Newfoundland, Labrador, New Brunswick, the Northwest and Nunavut territories,
to puffing <i>ganja </i>the prolific grass
of the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, trekking through Guatemala, Brazil, Chile,
Peru, and Venezuela. We drove on the
left side of the road in both Islands of Kiwi land, but left the driving to
friends in Oz.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">The salty-mists of Micronesia with Nauru 'cept islands north
of Saipan became nasal familiar; the <i>aloha</i>
sway of Hawai'i, Samoa, and Tonga got us to the shore short of becoming a whale
rider. Mosquitoes delivered malaria in
Nigeria curtailing plans for the Victoria Falls in the Zambezi and Mt.
Kilimanjaro in the highlands of Kenya.
We had our fill of <i>Om </i>in
Maharashtra but our countenance would not hold train rides to Gujarat and
Calcutta or to Kerala and Bangalore.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">A nodding salute to London's Westminster and fish-and-chips
by Piccadilly Circus, Paris' crepes by Montmartre after losing all my Francs at
the Latin Quarters, sangria by Madrid's plaza mayor and plaza de españa, and sidewalk
tables for pasta at Roma's piazzas including Pietro's across the Basilica,
acknowledged my inheritance of Europe's meta-brain. Mainland and maritime Southeast Asia, however,
was my stomping ground, and now, Far East Asia, particularly in <i>Dong Bei</i> China.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">This recent farewell trip saw us elbowing with colleagues in
the Realistic Living Institute whose covenant attended to our spirit discipline
for thirty years. Two daughters shared
their family hospitality and the precocity of their children (two each); also, the
elder facilitating the revisit with heartbreaks of Ohio. In the Bay Area of SF, Ilocano classmates
from INHS60 shook with Iloko mirth, and a colleague of Visayan hospitality left
us with a treasured afterglow.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">David Thompson who opened resorts in Banff and Jasper capped
the head feathers when we joined DCHS'59ers (Davao City) in a wondrous tramp
through the lower Canadian Rockies. The
family of Thompson's namesake without the "p", a Donald rather than a
David, plus a James of a Becky and a Lainey, hosted my visit to the province of
tar sand of the global fossil fuel market. I watched buckaroos perform ranch skills as
cowhands raced chuck wagons, twirled ropes, and rode bucking broncos, and the
cowgirls impressed in turning the attire of boots and hat into a fashion
statement. On a bus trip to Edmonton,
"To Dee I sing" became my theme song of gratitude for the Thomson's warmth
in Calgary.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">INHS60 friends expressed hope that they had not seen the
last of my shadow, and one who lives in Walnut Creek will keep tickling our
class' bones with her regular posting of jokes and other interesting cyberspace
forwards. Boni's Airlines and his Adele
of South SF promised to bring the cap I left behind to the next class gathering
in Pea Eye 2015. Objective statistical
probability, extremely limited resource, and personal intention closes out my
door to Amerigo Vespucci's continent, and I will now tend to my garden in Manchuria's
Plain till I complete breathing my allotted oxygen in this planet.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">I am not being melodramatic.
I am simply being objective about my continuing journey. The world has become too small for its 7-billion-some
<i>homo sapiens. </i> The selfhood and consciousness of each is
invaluable not only for the enrichment of the specie but also the survival of a
stressed planet. Consciousness trumps
decay any day! I invite readers to write
of their own reflection as well. </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">As I bid adieu to America, I remember a foothill in the
Rockies bellowing smoke. I now see on TV
hundreds of fires raging across the Northwest. Nature's wilderness is aflame. I know of friends in California eking a living
in the three-year old drought of its inland valley noted for fragrant orchards
and verdant farms, now gone dry, while many poor souls in Canada and China bob
their heads above flooding waters. A
major climate change is happening in the planet. A major tectonic shift is shaking the firm foundations
of mine.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">How's your life journey coming along?</div>
<br>
<div style="clear:both"><i>j'aime la vie</i><br>
<a href="mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com">pinoypanda2031@aol.com</a><br>
<div><i>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!</i></div>
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