STEP ASIDE food crisis. I want to write about beautiful things today. And what can be more beautiful than when rains came last Sunday and made the plants and all living things perk up?

Monday morning I listened to the birds’ songs. They were more beautiful and more lively. And we think of flowers as a poet once wrote, “April showers bring May’s flowers.”

Flowers and birds, in a mahjong game. Can other characters be more interesting? Listen to this dialog over a mahjong table, “Mar­è, you have to get another card. That’s your flower and you must display it.” Then later, “Parè, don’t keep your bird. I will chow it.”

I trust you understand mahjong language.

In summer time, mahjong is the most common indoor game. That is better than going from house to house gossiping.

Or if you have nothing to do, with the rains now, go plant something. Let us beat the food shortage.

* * *

Back to April. A poet once wrote, “April, April,/ Laugh thy girlish laughter,/ Then the moment after,/ Weep thy girlish tears.”

April is innocence. That’s why April 1 is called April Fools Day.

In mythology, goddess Proserpina was sporting in the Elysean fields and just filled her lap with daffodils when Pluto snatched her and brought her to the Underworld.

Her mother Ceres heard the screams and went to search for the echo. But her search became futile and was called the fool’s errand.

That Sunday with the April rain I remembered my boyhood days when my mother would say, “Get into the rain because the first rain of April is holy water.” I wanted to take my 6-year-old grandson, Brian, into the rain but I remembered my daughter always warning me, “Take care of your health. You’re young no more.”

I remember the poem of Thomas Eliot. “April is the cruelest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land, missing/ Memory and desire stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain”.

* * *

In Shakespeare’s “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.” Servant Panthino shouts, “Oh how this spring of love resembleth the uncertain glory of an April day.”

For April is our own summer month and with the young off from school they find it a beautiful time for courting. April brings back sweet memories of our younger days.

I like poet Edward Eastlin Cummings who detested the use of capital letters in his typewriter, there were no computers or laptops then.

He always wrote his name as e e cummings. Wrote e e:

“Through whose profound and fragile lips/ The sweet small clumsy feet of April came/ Into the rugged meadow of my soul.”

When cummings found the terror of the capital letters, he wrote: “mr u will not be missed/ who as an anthologist/ sold the many on the few/ not excluding mr u.”

* * *

Pardon this romantic soul. I just love April, especially with another rain yesterday afternoon.

So, let me sing for you that song about April during our time. I think it’s April Love. I forget the whole lyrics but a part says “April love, is for the very young,/ Every star a wishing star that shines for you… Sometime in April day will suddenly bring showers./ Rains to grow the flowers/ Of our sweet bouquet…”

Memory has failed. But the song is still in the heart every time April comes.

There’s another April song that says something like, “The April showers may come your way,/ They bring the flowers that bloom in May,/ So, if it’s raining, have no regrets,/ Because you know it’s raining violets.”

* * *

So much with April. The other day, Nene Leonardia called me up and agreed that talking to a plant is effective.

He said when he had a jackfruit near his house and he talked always to the plant, it bore plenty of fruits. When he stopped talking to it, it did not perform well.

I have the experience with my lomboy plant in my backyard. But, aside from talking to it, I also fertilized it. And it also responds if you give it natural smoke from the trashes you burn around.

* * *

My other friend Neil Honeyman also agreed with me that Bacolod is the best place to live. I wrote, he got out of Davao and looked for an alternative place and found Bacolod the best. This was in 1994.

He also agreed with Davao and Iloilo in the top five.

Were it not for the horrendous high electricity cost, he believes Iloilo deserves to be graded higher than No. 5. He also has a house in Iloilo.

The cities were graded on three criteria, standard of living, quality of life, and cost of living.

Let us all contribute to make Bacolod continue to be the best place to live in.

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