My travels to places where there are no paths to follow.
sky god dips his brush ever so lightly
into silky clouds, floating softly down
wispy watercolor washes of China gray.
mountain goddess swirls her hair of black
dancing on scrolls and scrolls of rice paper poems
inside my head, such inscrutable calligraphy.
Those who stayed for extended periods in the old Kamuning house invariably noticed the books. Four tall book cabinets higher than a grown man (two in the living room, two upstairs), and additional bookshelves scattered all around the house, contained hundreds of titles, when we young siblings still lived together with our parents under one roof.
This huge assortment of books, pamphlets, monographs, and a Britannica set (1968 edition) even had a name: our parents called it the “Pio Verzola Library” and had the most important volumes stamped and tracked with a card pocket at the back of each book. My mother had some library training, and so we kids were taught that the books at home followed a system similar to what we followed in the school library. Continue reading “A precious gift from the Alhambras”
When my parents renovated the old family house in the early 1960s, they had two rows of huge storage closets painted in bright Mondrian colors, built right into an entire wall from floor to ceiling, right beside the stairs and near a backdoor leading to the garage. Both closet arrays were some 5 feet high, 7 feet wide and 3 feet deep. So you could imagine that a young boy could easily snuggle inside, keep quiet, and not be noticed for the rest of the day. Continue reading “My secret vice that I’ll fight to keep”