Yellow Hue, Mellow Tune and Smell of Wood

Ading Ang Dodong Bading (Proceed at your own risk.): In Silence (Original Play)

Is there a certain scene that dominates you, that makes you feel nostalgic everytime you see it? Is there a certain atmosphere that you yearn to be in, or that hits at you when you least expect it, but still find it beautiful?

I always remember being in darkened room with a single big window covered with a pretty modest curtain. Sunlight enters the room in little strips of lines, giving the room hues of yellow. Silhouettes made by leaves can be seen on the window, some attached to a branch of a nearby tree, some falls down gently, following the movement of the breeze. That breeze enters the room, and I am like the leaves, following the movement by sensations as the breeze moves the hairs of my skin. The sounds are the sounds of true silence: faint and familiar voices drowned by a mellow tune from the radio with its signature static sound. And my nose, it caught the aroma of moist wood and old fabric, the smell that does not attract or creates a statememnt, but gets you lost in thought, or specifically, in the absence of thought.

Ah yes, nostalgia...

What do we yearn in life? What is this deja vu constantly telling us, that we miss something, or that we need something that's not there? What is it?

We yearn for internal peace - we yearn for death. We look forward and anticipate death because we know it is approaching. Death is calm and gives us joy that cannot anymore be erased or destroyed, because there is no more physical being that can disturb it - only memories, things that are eternal. We yearn for the final achievement that is the end of our life, our medium in achieving, and death as our achievement.

Nostalgia reminds me that I must die, but am still far from getting it. Life draws us near its end, you see, but before we get there, we must bring something along that does not die physically. Those things are memories: mental pictures of the smiles of your father and mother as you graduate from school; the mental record of conversations between you and your siblings and friends when you took life on your own already; the mental diary about that sweet kiss made by your husband on your wedding day, and that same kiss 40 years later, mental copies of the stories you wrote, or of drawings and models you made as a passion . . . . . . .

Yellow hues, mellow tunes and smells of wood will surely be not the only memory that I will keep. When I close my eyes, I will remember other colors, other music, other scents... as well. I already have a couple, but I will make more...

But the yellow, the mellow, and the wood, will be there, as I was in the beginning and will be there as I end...