Preface

Bruised Knees and Buried Treasures

"The only way a writer can satisfy his own curiosity is to write it"--Eudora Welty

Out of curiosity a child wanders away from a mother's watchful eyes to see what's around the corner. The child slips and bruises his knees. Or finds a buried treasure.

Whether it's writing about it or living it, in childhood or in maturity, we are always satisfying our curiosities.

Knowing that the only thing I wanted to do was write, I took myself instead to the world of medical doctors, a place where writers are seen as extra-terrestrials. Knowing how attached I was to my Southern Cebu hometown, I left it for the Appalachian hills of West Virginia, U. S. A. Convinced of how much I had become a stranger to the ways of the Philippines, I ventured to make the return flight.

Living is an unending series of voyages, to and from places familiar and strange. These essays are my scribbled notes from those trips. Each one carries the hope that others who have made the journey, bruising their knees or finding buried treasures in the process, have kept their curiosities alive.

Whether we are coming, going or staying put, natural curiosity must continue to burn. The sense of alienation felt by this reluctant doctor and by an emigrant in a foreign land is identical. At the end of the day, only our natural curiosities can help transcend that alien feeling and turn us into Natives fopr all times, for all climes.