Thursday, October 1, 2026

My First Paintings: TEMPEST and OLD STONE HOUSE (Article in Progress)

My First Paintings 
TEMPEST and OLD STONE HOUSE
Dr Abe V Rotor

1 - Tempest


"When you come out of the storm, you won't be the 
same person who walked in." — Haruki Murakami

 
 

2 - Old Stone House

"Old houses are full with memories and that's why they resist to collapse!"
- Mehmet Murat İldan (Turkish novelist and playwright)





  • Tuesday, September 29, 2026

    .Do you have a third eye?

    Do you have a third eye? 
    Dr Abe V Rotor
    Living with Nature - School on Blog

    Lesson: Do you have a third eye? If so, can you tell the future?
    Read and analyze the poem.

    Morning Flight, Wall Mural AVR 2000 St Paul University QC

    Fantasy or reality - how can we tell
    One from the other without a third eye?
    Ah, but epics live on through the ages,
    As classics live through their spell,
    And Gulliver as told by the sages.

    The third eye tells of a coming storm,
    No less than the vagaries of the mind;
    But what the future holds remains locked
    In God's will until the time has come,
    Beyond fantasy or reality or luck. ~

    .I Like the Drynaria Fern for 13 Reasons

     I Like Drynaria for 13 Reasons

    Original Title: Symbiosis of Drynaria Fern and Acacia Tree - 
    More than Commensalism

    Dr Abe V Rotor

    Martinez or mynah birds ( Acridotheres cristatellus) thought
    to be at the verge of extinction find abode on a century-old
    acacia tree (Samanea saman), covered with an epiphytic
    fern (Drynaria quercifolia)

    Drynaria fern covers the limbs of an acacia tree in Tagudin, 
    Ilocos Sur
     I like Drynaria for 13 Reasons

    I like Drynaria for her feathery foliage in the distance like the proud peacock and the turkey trotting to win favors of their flock;

    I like Drynaria for her sturdiness in the wind, cooling the summer air and keeping the coolness of the Amihan in December;

    I like Drynaria for her resiliency, bending with the limbs and branches, turning upside down and up again the next season;

    I like Drynaria for sleeping through the dry months while her host takes the show, verdant green, robust and free;

    I like Drynaria for resurrecting from a state of torpor, as if she defies death and perpetuates life while others simply die;

    I like Drynaria for her economy in sustenance, living on captured dirt and rain, yet discreet of such austere living;

    I like Drynaria for touching the clouds with her host taming it to fall as rain and shared by all creatures around;

    I like Drynaria for her ability to multiply fast through invisible spores, in one sweep of the wind are sown in far places;

    I like Drynaria for its benevolence to many creatures, tenant and transient, keeping their brood in her bosom;

    I like Drynaria giving the Martinez birds a home, where they sing in joy and praise and thanksgiving for a beautiful world;

    I like Drynaria for keeping company to passersby, to tired souls in the shadow with her host tree, in dark and unlikely hours;

    I like Drynaria for giving off oxygen, and taking in carbon dioxide that poisons the earth and living things, among them no less than I;

    I like Drynaria, for caring its host and vice versa through symbiosis - a perfect bond that humans have yet to learn someday. ~

    Drynaria fern growing on mahogany tree (Swietenia macrophylla),
    UST Botanical Garden, Manila. ~

    .Oh, time! You are a friend.

    Oh, time! You are a friend.
    Dr Abe V Rotor 

    Brief rest before taking a test.

    Dream, yesterday was a dream!
    A unicorn I rode to rainbow's end
    to where a pot of gold might lie.
    Oh, time! I thought you're a friend.

    And to the other end I walked the trail,
    To find my rainbow gone at the bend;
    And I, on a crossroad I stood alone.
    Oh, time, I thought you are a friend.

    What road shall I take - the less trodden?
    I gazed at the horizon to its end,
    Rough was the way and never ending.
    Oh, time! I thought you are a friend.

    And here I am, half gone, long is the way;
    Lo! I see again my rainbow at the end;
    Tread on I must, there's no unicorn now;
    Oh, time! you are indeed a friend. ~

    . Verses, Verses: Good wine grows mellow with age; a good man grows into a sage.

     Verses, Verses

    Good wine grows mellow with age;
    a good man grows into a sage.

    Dr Abe V Rotor

    1. How seldom, if at all, do we weigh our neighbors the way we weigh ourselves with the same favors?

    Morning rainbow, Bamban, Tarlac 

    2. Friendship that we share to others multiplies our compassion and love where happiness lies.

    3. Evil is evil indeed - so with its mirror,
    while goodness builds on goodness in store. 

    4. That others may learn and soon trust you,
    show them you're trustworthy, kind and true.

    5. Kindness and gladness, these however small
    are never, never put to waste at all.

    6. Beauty seen once breaks a heart, Wait for the image to depart.
    7. Being right and reasonable;
    Black or white, and measurable.

    8. She's coy who speaks soft and light;
    Smoke first before fire ignites.

    9. Every promise you can't keep
    Drags you into a deeper pit.

    Purple sampaguita {Jasminium sambac}

    10. To endure pain of hatred,
    A leader’s wisdom is dared.

    11. Make believe prosperity;
    Sound of vessel when empty.

    12. Take from the ant or stork,
    Patience is silence at work.
    13. He finds reason for living
    Who sees a new beginning.

    14. Beauty builds upon beauty,
    Ad infinitum to eternity.

    15. Good wine grows mellow with age; a good man grows into a sage. ~

    Lesson on former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid with Ms Melly C Tenorio 738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday

    Saturday, September 26, 2026

    .EcoArt Series RED DAWN

    EcoArt Series
    Red Dawn
    Paintings and Verses by Dr Abe V Rotor

    A red dawn (or red sky in the morning) traditionally means that a storm or bad weather is approaching.
    White doves bring peace from the sky
    to the battleground down below,
    amidst sounds of gun and children's cry.
    Sh...Welcome the new dawn's glow.

    "Night never had the last word. The dawn is always invincible," 
    - Hugh B. Brown.

     
    Forest fire, the day after, glows in ember,  
     requiem of nature for man to remember, 
    being her guardian to arise from slumber,
     to keep the earth holy within his power.

     
    Mars, the red planet may not be alone for long;
    our Earth, towards its early sunset may belong.

      
    Dainty flowers in monstrous look denies
    beauty, their fragrance dearth;
    gone are the friendly bees and butterflies,
    that bring down heaven to earth. 

      "One may not reach the dawn save by the path of night." 
    - Khalil Gibran.

    Fish herald the day by the school
    before fishers arrive at the shoal.

    Rhodophytes glow in the deep sea
    where the sun can reach;
    Porphyra makes a pasture for fish,
    nurtures them to our table. ~

    "Every dawn is divine. Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life," - John Ruskin ~

    .Release your thoughts and feelings through writing

    Release your thoughts and feelings
    through writing
    Writing hones the senses into deeper thinking and analysis, catalyzes understanding and comprehension, and keeps memory longer.

    “A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.”
    —Susan Sontag (Prominent 20th century American writer and critic) 

    Dr Abe V Rotor

    Marlo and Leo, author's children, writing on sand - a blackboard
    of sort, and more. Puerto Sunken Pier, San Ildefonso, Ilocos Sur
    Without map and you are in the field, the best thing you can do is get a stick and draw on the ground. That’s how village folks plan out irrigation schedules, show the location of a remote sitio (purok), design a makeshift hut – or simply to while away time in thoughts and ideas.

    Christ did write on the ground, and on one occasion made two curves facing each other to look like fish - one end its tail, the other its head. 
    Jesus fish, or Ichthys

    It is the simplest yet most symbolic drawing I’ve ever seen. Before he uttered these famous words, “He who has no sin, casts the first stone,” He wrote something on the ground which we can only assume to be a mark of supreme meditation.

    Writing hones the senses into deeper thinking and analysis, catalyzes understanding and comprehension, and keeps memory longer. Scientists say that we learn but a measly one-fourth of the lesson by just listening to it alone, but with the use of pen and paper, learning can be enhanced twice, if not thrice.

    “Put it in writing,” goes a saying. Yes, even only on the ground as our old folks have always done.

    By the way, who has not experienced “writing love letters on the sand?” Listen to balladeer, Pat Boone, sing the song of the same title, and you know what I mean.

    Or write your problems where the sea rises and ebbs, and watch how the waves erase them away. This is therapeutic, try it. ~

    “If a story is in you, it has to come out.”—William Faulkner (American 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate, author of The Sound and The Fury, and As I Lay Dying)
    Part 2 
    To my favorite writers
    By Dr Abe V Rotor
    1. To Jose Rizal:

    Your enemies tried to silence you,
    and curtailed your freedom;
    the lamp flickers its last rays at dawn
    to seal your martyrdom.

    2. To Aesop:
    Ah! Animals talk louder than men
    though in screech, crow and bleat;
    yet by moral and sanity, speak
    not the language on the street.

    “Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.”
    —Ray Bradbury (19th century American author and screenwriter)

    3. To Ernest Hemingway (photo)
    You seemed as brave as the old man
    in your great masterpiece;
    the soldier, the hunter, the dreamer -
    yet wanting a life of peace.

    4. To Charles Darwin:
    You did not give up to your critics,
    who only prayed and preached;
    Around the world you witnessed,
    Change by random and fit.

    5. To Lola Basyang (Severino Reyes)
    You touched a million-and-one lives,
    around campfires in their prime;
    like Grimm and Anderson and Homer,
    storytellers of all time.

    “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”—William Wordsworth (18th century English Romantic poet)

    6. To Boris Pasternak
    Zhivago, to the end walked away alone,
    from  love neither in winter nor fallow;
    what romance away from the war zone,  
    wrapped in doubt to sorrow's end.

    7. To Mark Twain   
    I am a boy forever, Tom or Huck,
    down the Mississippi loafing;
    and let the world go on sans care
    what grownups are missing.  

    8. To Robert Louis Stevenson 
    "Kidnapped" made a boy into a man
    too soon to face a cruel world;
    learning quickly the art of war 
    deceit and conceit,  gun and sword.

    9. To Oscar Wilde (photo)
    You're a creator of characters and events,
    in novels, stories, and plays 
    children and adults alike on the armchair
    live in those times and places. 

    10. To Arthur Conan Doyle
    "Sherlock Holmes" lives to this day,
    idol of any detective;
    "The Lost World" remains of the past,
    is back in our midst to live.     

    “I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.”—James Michener (Author of Tales of the South Pacific, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1948.) ~