The day the pond turns green

When I was a kid, I was always fond of plants. Vegetables were my favorite - I planted beans, ampalayas, squash, watermelon, singkamas, talong, sigarilyas... Okay, the last three were a joke, I'm not going to sing Bahay-kubo here.

But anyway, I have a green thumb, so seeds I had sowed (what a term) almost always made it to germination and early planthood (sorry, I hated my Botany classes so pardon the term). However, I never got to reap my harvest because my grandmother, who hated vegetables growing in the backyard garden, would always weed them out like they were worthless weeds. She never appreciated my gardening, so I changed my hobby to collecting spiders, guppies, tadpoles, and crablets. It was fun, until grandma - again - found it cataclysmic to keep bottles with creepy crawling and floating creatures in the living room cabinet.

It almost ended my romance with nature. There was no way I'm going to bring or raise any creature - plants and animals included - in the house, except for cats who are bloody boring for me. Then I started reading books that taught me to imagine.

Daydreaming has always been one of my favorite hobbies. Sometimes I go flying over the Himalayas and stand atop the world's ceiling unfazed. On some days I'm in outer space light years away from earth preparing to set foot on a newly discovered planet suspected of harboring extra-terrestrial intelligence. At times I'm a member of a royal family - a prince - riding on my horse and clad in shining armor. No wonder I love fiction books and movies, and surrealism. Strange sometimes, but these things made my world more colorful.

But I'm no fool. I'm just a dreamer whom some people call hopelessly romantic, thinkers call an idealist, pessimists call a fantasizer. I'm a star-gazer. How I admire the great astronomers who deciphered the intricate puzzles of the universe.

I have grown aloof after all these years of flying. Maybe it's time to go back to gardening and grow vegetables in my backyard. Or start once again collecting creatures of all sorts and put them in small fancy bottles.

But now life is more complicated than pursuing a childhood hobby. I think the way to go is to become a bit less insensitive to the world, to people, to my own self, lest the day arrives when the pond turns green and every beautiful thing in it choked and deprived of oxygen and sunlight.

-------------

Oh you probably won't remember me, it's probably ancient history,
I'm one of the chosen few who went ahead and fell for you.
I'm out of vogue, I'm out of touch, I fell too fast, I feel too much.
I thought that you might have some advice to give ...
On how to be ...
Insensitive.