varying degrees of light

The reality of traveling to the Philippines flew into our minds and shook our bones after we flew, waited, descended, landed, taxi'd, lined up, collected our bags, met our hosts and - finally - when we stopped through the last of the doors into the warm evening, and Manila rushed at our faces. The city was bustling, as one would imagine it to be, and the smell firmly set our feet on the ground and our hearts into our intentions. We were there, across the ocean, sweating in our worn jeans while, at home, there would be several more months of icy snow and biting wind. Of course there were months of excitement and anticipation beforehand. Even the hours up in the air, waiting to transfer in Hawaii and, before that, the meetings for preparation of what to expect and, as best as we could, how we should go about our teams and sites. In all honesty, those times were squabbling and hand-wringing. The thrill of travel and the unexpected is what was driving us, along with the hope for an effective and artful job of documenting the soul of the those without a voice in modern civilization. It became real - all of our preparation, prayers, frustrations and joys shared with friends, hopes for what we would learn and what we might forget came to a halting, shuddering motion with that first sight of the bustling city past the airport parking lot and that first warm smell of a people we didn't know.

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Three friends stayed up several nights, and that's one of the greatest things about guys and the trust that is found and built: we can and, often easily, do. One night in particular, up until almost six in the morning, sitting around the table talking about what we should be doing and laying out the course of actions that we knew would be best. We knew these things to the point that we wanted them to happen. We wanted ourselves to be bigger, stronger, more honest versions of ourselves and were only held back by how small we actually were. It's difficult to focus on what one person is confessing when it is so glaringly similar to what you have to say, and so you do. Nights in the living room, long car rides through borders and patrols, the passing questions to remind ourselves not to push it away and, instead, to confront it but it all came to that halting, shuddering revelation of This Is Who We Can Be and now we have to deal with it. And others who haven't listened or spoken with us those nights will say that it's all for the better and why did you wait so long? And they will be right - it is for the better. It's good that actions followed words and the only reason to have waited so long was for fear.

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The snow began falling in a blessed city - one that we had the enormous fortune to witness at night, to look about us in the dark of night, and still be able to see from the buildings and lights and realize that we would be here through it, until the next day. The snow began falling, as they had said it would, and as it had done every year of our lives and we still sat in awe at it. Had we really forgotten that it could happen? Did we convince ourselves that we wouldn't see it again, would have to live it through memories and photographs? We were fortunate enough to breathe it in, to smell the affected air, hear the muted sound of the streets and feel cold enough to be chased inside to view it from behind glass, but to view it for hours and hours and sit exhausted but awake. We knew that you would be leaving soon. The songs that we knew would be different once you did - they were already beginning to, I suppose. And the authorities assured us of it, we had written it in to our day-to-day like we were ready for it, had mentioned it casually because it was so for sure and, again, as if we were ready for it. And maybe you were (I hope you are now) but I wasn't, and I won't be for some time even if I know that it is real now. The halting, shuddering knowledge is acceptance - hesitant and rebellious as it can be, and all the necessary steps after this - plane tickets, class finalizing, packing, the passage of time - will be more smacks upside the head. But it's not as if I could use more of those, right?