(Basco, Batanes)
Today, the last of 2024, is also Day 15 of the Christmas break Sarai and I are spending in the islands. These make today an end, a beginning, and somewhere in the middle of something.
Time is curious, and so is its interplay with space. In this little island of my birth, in the home where my parents live and photographs take up space in a dedicated shelf, time has always stood still. No matter how old I get, I always feel like a child at the same time, standing amidst the furniture I grew up with, curling up in the familiar comfort of my parents’ bed, finding old items right where they were last I was home—six years ago this time, the longest I had been away since I left for university at 16.
But time won’t be ignored. It screams for attention in the cracks on the walls, in the leak in the kitchen, in my parents’ slowed and careful movements, in streets I no longer recognize, in simna* inserted before a relative’s name mentioned in conversation.
Space also feels strange in these homecomings. The town feels smaller, but the spaces and corners I have loved since childhood—the row of vaditi trees lining one side of the plaza, the grassy mounds right along the coast in Itbud, the tidal pools of Vatang—loom larger in my imagination. In reality, though, these spaces are changing, eaten away at by fierce winds and waves or else crowded out by structures built in the name of living space.
Back to present moment, the maddening roar of motorcycles (with the tambutso taken out for maximum noise) outside keep interrupting my attempts at concluding this end-of-year pack of thoughts. Do I really need a closing statement? Whether or not I do, even a crude last sentence is a too lofty aim at 11:37pm. I will take the moment for what it is, accept the mess of thoughts and words in my head, and just let pass into 2025 what will.
Happy New Year!
* The Ivatans use the word "simna" before a name to indicate that someone has died
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