Colors 1 -- Shades of Gray and Sepia of New York

    I was egged on by my good friend to post a blog again, this time about my travels in the US.  He was expecting not another goody-goody entry like giving up my airplane seat to someone and receiving a compli drink for that (hey, haven't I got a right to post anything?).  I got his point, it's very "untravel-like," to say the least.  Ironically, I have not had posted a travel piece at length here, pakagat-kagat lang, or in bits and pieces.   Before the prodding, I was on the verge of planning to write about the places I've been in recently -- the bountiful Davao, the private Talikud Island and Boracay (more on those soon). 

     I have not given anyone a reason why I havent wrote anything about my travels.  That's because I didn't think I have it in me to show it off other than what people see obviously in my pictures.  Another heavy reason is the places I found were ineffable and deeply personal, hence, the need to value the sense of anonymity.  Try as I my attempt to write here, I feel I am only touching the surface. 

     When we arrived in Manila from the US, it was Halloween.  Something had been bothering me thereafter.  I was being led to look back about the myriad colors I saw during my wandering times.  I felt haunted by that constant daydreaming, those lingering memories that stayed with me.  By what I meant by haunted, it's not the way I looked in this picture when I first set foot at Times Square in Manhattan last May, aptly called "City Lights." 

      
   This moment seemed magical; however, it only lasted as the glittering lights went off (which in Manhattan, never goes off until early morning).  The beautifully-framed boards were there to look at, but could I feel them?  To me, they just blinded and swallowed everything up. 

      If the commercial lights at Times Square didn't tickle my fancy, I have learned to appreciate the subdued colors of gray in paved roads and streets while bright yellow cabs passed me by; and the long-standing structures that borne the prevalent architectural times. 

     I have been a fan of sepia.  When I was three or four, I remember I saw a bird's eye view picture of a massive cathedral.  In it, I could only see dot-sized people swarming around the cathedral.  I was amazed to see the cathedral in sepia, washed aglow by the sun's rays.  I didn't know I could see a world of sepia and a semblance of that picture in flesh at St. Patrick's Cathedral at Madison Avenue. Though it is made of white marble, the church turns to sepia when the bright sun hits it. 

    Among the fewer buildings that I saw (given the limited time) in NY and had me astounded, color and otherwise, was when I saw the western entrance of the "Cathedral of Saint John the Divine" along Amsterdam Avenue.  THAT thing (and I mean THAT, being the third largest Christian church in the world) is massive.   My family and I were on the way to eat after the commencement ceremony and before the doctoral hooding of my sister, snaking our way to the avenues and streets.  When we turned around another side of the street, we saw this Gothic cathedral, comfortably sitting on its own grayish elegance and magnificence. I had to stop for a sec and took a snap.  I hardly breathed and gaped.  (My friendster's barring me to post another pic, so, no pic...).  I was completely awed I didn't even notice there's a scaffolding (an ongoing reconstruction was in place) at the right side of the facade.  I'm hardly a church-goer, but If I'm going to visit NYC again, I'll pay a visit to the cathedral, feel its cathartic presence, and make a wish. 

Next up:  The green and the whites