1 week ago

I awake to the sound of xylophones. I detest xylophones. The ringing sound it makes when hit by those gavels with orb heads irks me. Plus, the resonating metallic sound stays in the air way longer than you want them to, like visiting distant relatives (aka strangers you have blood relations with). A couple of gradeschool girls living in the apartment below me decided to spend their Saturday practicing the Panagbenga (Baguio Festival celebrating the blooming of flowers) theme. And they decided to do it within an earshot of my window. Fabulous! Nothing like waking up to a perky tune provoking images of chrysanthemums and butterflies! Joy! Glockenspiel! Heilige Scheisse!!!

I never really got why these handheld xylophones are called lyres (ala a Drum and Lyre band in parades) A real lyre is strummed not hit with mallets, it looks likes this:

(Apollo is the god of archers and light. He became the Greek god of the sun when he became more popular than Helios)


4 days ago

I awake to my mom's hollering. My mom doesn't yell... she hollers. She woke me up because the carpenter who would be installing new cabinets in my room arrived (sooner than I anticipated) I had to drag my sorry underslept ass out of bed to explain the work he'd be doing in my room. I can barely read the dimensions on the drawing I made the night before let alone utter an intelligible statement, but I got the idea across (I think)

In Babylonian mythology, Nin-ildu is the carpenter god, and as fate would have it... he carries the pure axe of the sun. He is a servitor to Shamash, the Babylonian sun god.



Yesterday

I awake to car horns. I presume its a tourist. No Baguio resident would honk their horn that loudly at 7 in the morning... for fear of excommunication. The Loakan Road is relatively distant from my window, a smoke chugging Philex Peterbelt wouldn't disturb me from my slumber. But on that particular morning, the incessant honking shook me to waking life. The rowdy passengers made it clear there was no apparent emergency.

This will be quite a long connection to a sun deity. Here it goes. Peregrinus in Latin means foreigner/ tourist. A peregrine falcon is named as such because of it's habit of migration and it is one of the fastest creatures on earth. (Speed and foreignness) The Egyptian sun god Ra is often depicted as having the head of a Falcon.



I wonder what the other sun deities have in store for me.
Sol (Norse sun goddess)
Amaterasu (Japanese sun goddess)
Surya (chief Hindu sun deity)
Huitzilopochtli (Aztec sun god)


Tonight

These attempts at rousing me early only succeeded in making me wake up even later. I just doze off right after I wake up. I am a snoozer.

However, the sun gods seem to be plotting something with the moon gods. Last night we had a scheduled city-wide power outage from 10 pm to 6 am. I didn't wanna lose my eye sight reading Faulkner over candlelight and it was too cold outside to even entertain the idea of a night out in some generator-powered bar. So, the nocturnal deities, coerced me into sleeping early... I was sawing logs before midnight. The whole of Baguio will have the same scheduled power outage again tonight. I guess if they can't wake me up early... they chose plan B, which is to make me sleep early. They can't possibly schedule a black-out every single night... right?

The electricity will be out in 3... 2... 1... *bleep*

The black out didn't happen Satturday night. I guess my offering of first-borns pleased the gods (or BENECO at least) :P

Labels: blah (3x), boo-freakin-hoo, my life as a nocturnal, my-thology, weird coincidences