After training, while fixing herself and combing her hair outside the shower room, Michido asked me if I wanted to see a sample of what she calls "solar art".
"Solar what?" Actually, I heard her correctly.
"Art," she repeated emphatically while rummaging through her bag. She handed me what appears like a small bamboo flower vase with a black inscription on it.
"See? The script was carved out by focusing the sun's rays onto the bamboo surface with the use of a hand lens." She sounded like we were in a high school science fair.
"That's neat," I feigned interest. Had I said something like, "yeah, big deal," I know my three or four readers would all be shaking their heads in disapproval. Of course I'm nice and polite. I couldn't possibly burst somebody's enthusiasm for the difficult art of solar carving. After all, the process is painstakingly long. If you keep on doing it there's a good chance that you'd go blind.
Curiously, the quiet guy standing near us, I found out later, is the "solar" artist who is also her boyfriend. I should have known. Michido is a leftist-environmentalist type who dabbles in "organic" music, ya know, of the Grace Nono-Joey Ayala variety. Long hair, tie-dye (do you spell it this way?) shirt and a necklace with the face of Che Guevara on it, I guessed immediately the guy's political and ideological persuasion: the anti-capitalist, anti-bourgeois type you'd normally encounter in the State University (hey, that's my alma mater too) and in street rallies denouncing the government's collaboration with the Americans in subjugating national interests (how do I know this? I read their pamphlets).
"Solar what?" Actually, I heard her correctly.
"Art," she repeated emphatically while rummaging through her bag. She handed me what appears like a small bamboo flower vase with a black inscription on it.
"See? The script was carved out by focusing the sun's rays onto the bamboo surface with the use of a hand lens." She sounded like we were in a high school science fair.
"That's neat," I feigned interest. Had I said something like, "yeah, big deal," I know my three or four readers would all be shaking their heads in disapproval. Of course I'm nice and polite. I couldn't possibly burst somebody's enthusiasm for the difficult art of solar carving. After all, the process is painstakingly long. If you keep on doing it there's a good chance that you'd go blind.
Curiously, the quiet guy standing near us, I found out later, is the "solar" artist who is also her boyfriend. I should have known. Michido is a leftist-environmentalist type who dabbles in "organic" music, ya know, of the Grace Nono-Joey Ayala variety. Long hair, tie-dye (do you spell it this way?) shirt and a necklace with the face of Che Guevara on it, I guessed immediately the guy's political and ideological persuasion: the anti-capitalist, anti-bourgeois type you'd normally encounter in the State University (hey, that's my alma mater too) and in street rallies denouncing the government's collaboration with the Americans in subjugating national interests (how do I know this? I read their pamphlets).
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