Blue and black are kind colors

Nameless-Beach-Somewhere-In-San-Antonio-Zambales

The sand in Zambales has always been black. The only time that the beaches had been washed white was in 1991, when Mt. Pinatubo awoke. Further inland however, there is sand instead of soil, and this sand is white as ash. The land is white with the memory of Pinatubo wherever the sea could not reach.

Before the surfing boom, everyone went into the water with their clothes on. Children learned how to walk and how to swim almost at the same time, and in the same vicinity, and that there were two kinds of blue: the blue of the sky, and the blue of the water.

My fondest memory of Zambales is of the sea: as a child, falling asleep dreaming of the movement and murmur of waves, and that if you were to lay still enough, you could feel the sea beween your fingers. People choose their memories of the sea, over the beautiful, giant flower of a cloud, and the mad descent of ash and rain and terror. It's because the sea always changes back, they explain, when everything else does not, and would not, the sea always will.