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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

The Turning of Seasons

Springs are always haphazard in these parts. It is bright and sunny one day and then the next twenty centimetres of sleet falls. The next day the sun is out again and you can almost imagine it is summer. Nothing happens for days and then all at once everywhere you look it is green and trees are filled with leaves. 

That’s life, in a way. Long stretches of stillness, followed by a frenzy of activity that sputters out seemingly as soon as it begins.  

He had mixed feelings about spring in truth. Haphazard even. It was the end of winter of course, which was always welcome. But some years winter seemed to drag on through spring and they had more snow in April than in January. The trees had tried to bloom and then had to retreat with the temperatures dropping below freezing. Now they were trying again, green slowly unfurling.  

Misery too. The air was full of pollen; he could almost taste it. Nothing and then all at once, everywhere. There was no escaping it. Keep the windows closed and don’t go out and it made no difference. It found its way in. His eyes itched, his throat scratched and soon enough he was sniffling and sneezing. Then he was applying all the remedies: neti pots and antihistamines, eye drops and constant showers, staying indoors and changing his clothes as soon he came back from being out. For you couldn’t just live your life in your house all the time. 

He tried to those few weeks when everyone else was glorying in spring (The sunshine! The green!). All to hold the pollen at bay as best he could. There was no stopping it. Like the changing of the seasons it would come, celebrated by most. He treated it like most people treated winter: an unwelcome guest, barely tolerated, counting the days till it was gone. 

Miscellanea

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

New China

The sun set quickly in that part of the world, a half hour of gloaming before the darkness took hold. They gathered in the city’s old main square while the full brightness of day still held, though the sun had already vanished behind the crowded buildings. Trees lined the outer edge while a statue of some notable raised up on a white pedestal occupied the centre. At either end food vendors clustered, stalls offering quail eggs, fish balls, and skewers of bbq meat, including tongue and heart and intestine dredged in a mixture of vinegar and soy sauce.  

They picked their way among the stalls sampling the wares, joined by a crowd of others. Mostly students finished classes for the day and enjoying a snack and a few last moments with friends before heading home for the evening. A few men pushing small carts offering dirty ice cream wandered the square, a popular choice given the oppressive heat of the day. Even the sun’s disappearance offered little relief. They each had a cone of the watery stuff – more sorbet than ice cream – which they had to eat frantically before it disintegrated onto the pavement at their feet. 

Just off the square was the New China Restaurant, the oldest in the city. Large fans whirled from the ceiling while portable ones stood along each aisle vainly trying to bring some cool air to the cramped tables. But there was no relief to be found anywhere. The place was empty but for them, despite the fact it was dinner time. They ordered lumpia – the best lumpia in the city it was said – and beers. It really was the best they had had, crispy, flavorful, a marvel. 

They were the only customers, the owners sitting at another table gossiping in low voices. When they finished they returned to the square, sill bustling with activity amid the shadows, going to the far side where the tricycles idled waiting for customers and headed for home.  

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Local Monkeys

They passed from a flat plain filled with rice fields into forested hills, the road winding precipitously. The towns and villages, which had clustered along the highway all the way from Manila vanished as they began to climb. The van roared as the switchbacks became steeper and steeper, drowning out the easy listening on the radio. As they climbed the world dropped away until they were clinging to a precipice. On one side the hill, still rising above them, and on the other an impenetrable chasm, green with the tops of trees.  

At the pinnacle, the road levelled out and the sky came into view, bright and blue with a few porcelain white clouds scattered across it. They could see the whole of the hill and the hills that surrounded it, all thick with forest. There were monkeys there he was told. What kind, he asked. Local ones. 

They descended on the same winding roads. Here and there they caught glimpses of small houses through the trees, surrounded by them, seemingly soon to be swallowed by them. There were people on the side of the road selling this and that and places for vehicles to pull off and hikers to venture out in search of the unseen primates.  

The blue cloud disappeared as they came to the bottom of the hill and left the forest behind. Rain began to fall. A few splatters on the windshield and then a torrent, water coming in rivers down the road. Suddenly there were towns again and the road was crowded with dripping motorcycles and jeepneys and tricycles. They would pass from one to another with only a few breaks where rice fields sprawled and carabao stood indifferent to the deluge. The rain ended just as they came in sight of the sea, a thin line of blue along the horizon beneath the grey of the clouds. 

Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

What Moves In the Cold

The coldest of winter days. The sun shining bright with only a few shrivelled clouds in the sky. Even with the sun so vibrant above the cold is obvious. There is a stillness to the air that is visible, as if the world, or this frigid part of it, has stepped out of time for the moment. Nothing stirs. The chickadees and magpies and other birds that do not migrate have vanished. The skies empty, their calls silent. The coyotes and foxes are huddled in their dens. There is only a whisper of a wind, as if it has forgotten its way. Hour by hour, day by day, time does not pass and the cold remains. A picture hanging in a frame. 

The sound is different in the midst of such stillness. When nothing else is moving, the sound of distant footsteps on hard snow is startlingly near. You look for the person but they are somewhere beyond the next hill. There are strange noises in such cold. Some are things you simply never noticed before in amidst the general cacophony of life. The hum of the transformer on the power pole, the occasional rush of a car passing on the highway several kilometres away. Those sounds were always there but now you can actually hear them, loud and present set against the stark quiet. 

But there are other sounds too, inexplicable and unidentifiable, that only exist in this kind of cold. Something between a whistle and groan that comes as the sun sets and only when standing near the house or the garage. At first you think it is the building itself, protesting against the weather, but it sounds too alive for that. Is there some miserable creature huddled against the building for warmth?  

An investigation reveals nothing except the prints of an absent bird hopping about on the snow. There is a feeling like something is there, something watching you. The air briefly stirs, stinging your cheek, and you decide to go in. As your feet crunch under the hard and brittle snow you hear the sound come again. A mournful howl from no animal you have ever heard from before. You quicken up the steps to the door and inside to the warmth.  

Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

The Sotted Lord

Christmas celebrations in the Lost Quarter are much as they are elsewhere in these Dominions and across the world. The customs of the various sects that have established themselves in these parts follow those that were in place in their countries of origin, with a few minor deviations that time and distance have allowed to accumulate. It has also resulted in a peculiarity where the Quarter is the only region where certain customs are currently still followed, their practice having been abandoned or forgotten elsewhere.  

The most famous such case is the Sotted Lord, who has gone by many other names in other locales. Typically such celebrations took place during Christmastide among monks, but in the Quarter it is earlier, most commonly around the winter solstice, and involves much of the local populace. Members of the community who wish to lead the celebrations put forward their names, which are voted on secretly, with the winner declared the Sotted Lord who will lead the revels into the longest night of the year. 

When Those Who Came were first settling the Quarter, the selection of the Sotted Lord would take place the same day as the revels, with homesteaders travelling to the nearest community to cast their lots, the counting of which was done immediately following. Now the voting is conducted by mail, with all those who wish to be considered having to announce their intention by the first day of December, and all those who wish to vote having to submit their ballots by the fifteenth. The counting is done by the postmaster in some communities, while others assign the task to a mayor or other important personage. The newly selected Sotted Lord is announced in the local paper along with the time of their reign.  

That time is typically sunset on the day of the solstice, the shortest day of the year. Those who wish to (and these days it must be said most do not) gather in town at the appointed place, usually a community hall, curling barn or hockey rink. The Sotted Lord is masked and calls the revels, leading those gathered throughout the town. Everyone is dressed in vibrant colours with bells attached to their toques and gloves. Masks, once common, have become less so as the celebrations have become less wild. Candles are lit and carried throughout the streets, with drink shared openly. The Sotted Lord calls upon the mayor and the priests and other town fathers to submit to the reign of the revels. And for the longest night of the year the natural law is reversed. Those who are last come first and those who are masters become servants and beggars act as kings.  

The revellers go from door to door demanding gifts and singing carols, drinking warm cider and mulled wine, until their candles have burned down or the sun has risen. There is much mockery and japes and games of duck-duck-goose in the snow. In most cases, especially in our quiet modern times, this is the extent of the revels. But, in some cases, the debauchery has become excessive (Some would say, disapprovingly, it is by its very nature excessive). Certain politicians who were unpopular have been targeted for particular abuse and have had their homes overrun. There is at least one known instance of a fire consuming several buildings on main street as a result of the revels. 

At the coming of dawn, those revellers who are left abandon the Sotted Lord, leaving them to wander through the wastes of winter, waiting for the return of spring. 

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Afternoon in the Park

She stood in the middle of the sidewalk, gaze cast across the adjacent park. A few people were gathered there, idling in the sunlight, but she didn’t seem to be looking at any of them. The day was beautiful, a few cirrus clouds floating on an achingly blue sky, the autumnal warmth of the sun inviting. Despite the warmth she was wearing a long tan trenchcoat, unbelted, a backpack slung over her shoulders and a purse at her side. She was looking up and off, perhaps at something in one of the trees that ringed the park. Only magpies and pigeons remained there, the other birds having started their migrations. Her phone was raised up as if to take a picture. So intent was her focus that she didn’t step out of the middle of the sidewalk to give room to passersby who glared at her in annoyance. 

Abruptly she sank into a crouch, arms resting on knees, phone still held out before her. She spoke in a strained voice, eyes intent on the screen. After a moment, long enough for a reply, she threw the phone on sidewalk. A sob escaped her and she frantically pressed one hand to her lips as though to contain it. With the other she clutched at the phone, staring down at it, her shoulders rising and falling with each breath. 

Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Harvest Moon

Harvest moon at the Harvest Dance, shining bright in a clear sky as darkness comes across the land. A cool evening after a warm day, the surest sign of autumn. Everyone gathers at the community hall, parking in the empty field behind it. There’s not much else left of main street anymore. The church was shuttered and torn down, leaving only the foundation. The same with the general store and gas station down by the highway and the elevators that stood by the railway tracks at the other end of street. The post office too has been closed, the building donated to the local museum in town. Now people get their mail from boxes set in front of the hall. 

Town is what this once was, but it has been a long time since anyone thought of it that way. Only the community hall, the hotel bar and a few houses remain. The community is all those who live in the surrounding area and they are the ones coming in to the dance. Volunteers bringing turkeys and mashed potatoes and squash and carrots and jello salads and pie. Everyone pays their ten dollars and they line up for dinner and eat at the long tables set out across the whole hall. The talk is of the weather and the harvest, recently completed for all those in attendance. They compare yields and discuss prices, shaking their heads at those who are still out combining. Equipment troubles and nothing but bad luck. 

Some go home after the potluck, while those that remain put away half the tables and chairs, folding them up underneath the stage The band starts up and the bar at the back gets busy. Two dollars a drink. There are a few dancers but most mill about around the dance floor, sipping drinks or continuing their conversation. In the kitchen the volunteers disburse the leftovers and clean the pots and roasting pans and run the dishwasher.  

As the evening goes on, the crowd gets younger. Kids from high school disappear outside to their trucks where they’ve got a bottle hidden. They saunter back inside, faces flush, convinced of their cleverness, while the adults eye them skeptically. More people arrive from outlying communities. The Altario boys, back from university, appear, taking advantage of the lower age limit to cross the border and drink. This draws the ire of some of the local youths who squint across the hall at these interlopers. 

The evening goes on for awhile with country standards, hard stares and too much whiskey, until one of the locals gets it into his head to take a run at a smirking Altario boy. He sprints across the dance floor, landing an off-balance punch. A halfhearted melee follows, the combatants basically hoping someone will intercede to break things up. Some of the older farmers do, reaching in and pulling people apart, grumbling about the goddamn kids. The local and his friends are deemed responsible and tossed out into the night. 

It’s too early to go home so they wander across the road to the hotel bar, a dismal old place that smells of mildew and stale beer. They order beers and are halfway through them when someone else from the dance arrives, looks them over and says to the bartender: You know those kids aren’t eighteen. Off into the night they go again, crossing the road to the truck with the bottle. After a couple unsteadying drinks they decide to return to the dance. Not quite an hour has passed and bygones may now be bygones. 

They slip in one at a time without incident, all except the one who started the fight. He is turned around at the door and sent back into the night. He returns to the truck with the bottle, though it’s locked so he can’t get at it, figuring everyone else will be back in a minute, especially once they realize he hasn’t made it in. No one returns though and it starts getting cold and his ride home is inside, having apparently decided he’s better off forgetting about him. A few older folks leave the dance and shake their heads at him without comment as they get in their trucks.  

He contemplates trying the bar again, but he’s sobered up enough by now to know that’s a poor idea. Instead, he starts walking, heading north on main street to the highway, which he scampers across into a stubble field. As soon as he is off main street and its two feeble street lights, the darkness is almost total. Only the moon, bright above is there to guide him. He walks along the edge of the field to where the road going north is and starts following it, staying in the safety of the stubble. It’s only five kilometres to home, so it shouldn’t take him much more than an hour. 

Even with the full moon, the going is tough, the ground uneven, and though he is much more sober than he was he still has trouble keeping his feet. His eyes adjust as he goes, the darkness changing around him. The sky, once just a moon and a vast blackness speckled by a few bright stars is now full of light, thousands of stars visible. He stands teetering atop a rise, looking up in awe at the vastness of it all, beyond his comprehension, and is filled with indescribable emotion that is bigger than himself somehow. More than he can contain.  It is a long while before he notices the yard light from home is visible ahead in the darkness and starts toward it.  

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond. 

Blessings

They arrived at the agreed upon place, straggling in twos and threes to the hotel lobby where masked attendants welcomed them with bows and ma’ams and sirs, ushering them through the entrance to the restaurant. With each new arrival everyone had to stand and greet the newcomers. There was laughter and embraces, explanations offered for those absent. The elders held out their hands and the younger pressed it to their foreheads, bowing down slightly, lending a formality to the occasion.  

After some stilted conversation, where everyone worked to reacquaint themselves after so many years apart, they decamped to the buffet. Some conducted reconnaissance of the full spread before making their selections, but most headed to the soups for a bowl of sour broth with pork or congee to begin. The serving tables were filled with local delicacies as well as more standard fare: Kare Kare, siomai and siopao, Laing, Lechon belly and more. For dessert there was cake and ice cream, flan and a Halo Halo station. 

Now that they were eating the talk was much easier. No one felt obligated to speak to the whole group, instead chatting with those closest. There was the usual discussion of politics, of what had happened in the city since the visitors had last been there, and all the good and bad of the world. Work was discussed and relations not present. The visitors talked of their lives overseas, of the weather and how cold it was, how the government worked and how (very) distant places were. 

As the evening wore on servers began to move about the restaurant loudly singing happy birthday at every table that had availed itself of the birthday discount for any guest whose birthday fell in the current month. Applause followed each rendition, ending when the next round struck up in what, for a few terrifying minutes, seemed, an infinite loop.  

They were in a land of discounts. There were senior discounts, birthday discounts, discounts for those staying at the hotel, discounts for charging the bill to the room, discounts for groups larger than 10, and more. The visitors had wondered as they made their reservation the day before if they would somehow end up being owed money by the restaurant.  

They were left alone when they were done eating, as every table was, to converse for as long as they wished. When they had exhausted all conversation they took their leave as a group, gathering again in the lobby. It was prom season and gleaming teenagers, practically vibrating with excitement, trailed by their proud parents kept streaming through. They looked on benevolently, reminiscing about the schools they had attended.  

The visitors had returned to one earlier in the day, exploring the grounds after claiming to the security guard manning the gates of the campus that they needed a copy of their transcripts. The campus was vast, a series of long, interlocking buildings with courtyards at the centre. High school, elementary and university students intermingled in a constant buzz of activity. They sat in the shade of one courtyard watching as people moved about, the air still, hot and heavy.  

Everyone said goodbye two or three more times in the lobby, lingering and not quite willing to let the evening end. Just as it seemed all conversation had been exhausted someone had another question or anecdote. There was heartfelt goodbye after heartfelt goodbye. More embraces and shaking of hands. At length all those who had come took their leave, the attendants bowing and ma’am siring them out. They disappeared into the darkness of the night, leaving the visitors to return to their hotel room. 

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond. 

The Heart of the City

The church was under a white tent, protecting those gathered from the midday sun. Chairs, mostly empty, surrounded the pulpit. Surrounding it was a carefully manicured forest of green, with ponds and streams intertwined throughout. The already humid air was made positively damp by the greenery and water. People walked through but didn’t linger, heading to one of the buildings that encircled the gardens. Inside was air conditioned and gleaming. Well-dressed people wandered through the corridors of this oasis, idling in shops. There were security guards everywhere, watchful and unobtrusive. By the pathway leading to the tent, at every entrance to the buildings and within as well. They gave a cursory check of bags and asked people to take off their hats. A familiar protocol.  

The city surrounding this idyll was a warren of streets choked with exhaust and traffic. The pavement absorbed the noon sun, reflecting it back, affording no relief. A profusion of buildings crowded, apparently haphazardly around it. Modern business towers with gleaming windows, campuses for private schools built at the turn of the previous century, shops with apartments above them, the buildings crowded so close together it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. Half-built complexes littered the landscape. Cranes stood beside them, seemingly forgotten. The streets were crowded with people, though not as much as the roads were snarled with cars. They lingered in the few places that offered any shade, where jeepneys and trikes picked people up, or hurried from building to building where air conditioning might be found.  

These two realms intersected underneath the mall in the parking garage with many levels and drop off points. The chaos of the streets outside was limited here, only because there so little room to maneuver. Every entrance and exit was manned by security, these individuals looking far more fearsome than those inside. They knew they were the barrier that mattered. There were many failings in the city, that no one would deny. Problems so vast it was hard to comprehend fully let alone hope to address them. Inside, all that could be forgotten, left invisible. There were no windows looking down on the streets. People drifted about, laughing, idling in restaurants and on benches. Enjoying a pause from what awaited them outside. 

Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Drylands

The river, which in spring had briefly threatened to overspill its banks, was reduced to a near trickle, the stones that lined its bottom visible from the shore. They could walk across it without the water getting much higher than their ankles, though no one did. There was a time when such an event would have made travel easier – no need to find a place to ford – though no one would have been happy at the fact. A low river meant the same thing then as now: drought. 

The signs were visible everywhere. Leaves were already turning on the trees though it was still the middle of August. The crops were turning too, stunted and only half-filled out. The June rains had been miserly and the heat through July punishing. Creek beds and sloughs that might have kept water until midsummer had been dry since June. The mountains to the west had been bare since the end of May. Unheard of, though there was always someone to point out when it had last happened as though that were evidence of anything.  

The groundwater, always low through the summer months, was dangerously so now. The well they had dug when they first arrived was running dry. The water table had fallen several feet the year before and a warm and dry winter had not raised it. This year the levels were dropping fast, lower than they had ever seen. They had to be careful about how much water they used and had started contemplating drilling a new and deeper well. It was that or risk having to truck water in. 

With the creeks and sloughs and even the dugouts low and dry, there was a risk the cattle in the pastures wouldn’t have water, though they would run out of feed before that happened. The grass was burning up in the heat, turning brown, looking tired. Many years they might keep the cattle out on the pastures into September or even October, before turning them out onto fall grazing, the stubble left over from the harvested crops. Not this year. There wasn’t enough feed to get them through a normal winter, let alone having to start feeding early. Everyone was selling or planning to in the coming weeks. Shrinking their herds. The land couldn’t support them this year and maybe not next too. 

As August stretched on dry and hot, they had more difficulties with the well and realized they had no choice but to drill a new one. Test holes were sunk in the pasture near their house trying to avoid the gravel that pockmarked most of the surrounding land. A likely spot was found and the earth was cored out. Water flowed in and they lapped it out to see how much flow there was. Piping was put into the hole, surrounded by gravel and sand permeable enough to let the ground water through. The pipe itself had holes to allow the water to flow. A pump was attached and trenching dug and more piping laid in the ground to connect the well to the house.  

The day after the well was drilled it rained, a terrible thunderstorm with lightning cascading through the night. The rain lasted through the night, washing the land clean. Or it would have, if the storm had not brought smoke from the western fires with it.