bigger than life

It's your birthday and we feel your absence more today here at wonder | wonder | world. It's a day to celebrate you youer than you. 

From our pre-Mahala, pre-Oro, pre-Mother Lily days of being your student, mentee, adoptiva to quiet lunches out, one on one chats, sleep overs - years piled on years yet never enough and all too precious. 

Maurice "Peque" Gallaga, bugal sang banwa

We spent Mahala's first trimester kapit-tuko to Madie and her last Wanggo trimester - while you left us to wage your battles in Manila. Born six months later into a world that shook, rattled and rolled us out of our quiet little lives into the limelight. 

Bright lights, big city blues - green means go, red means stop - but not for us. We made hay and broke those damn rules. Laughing maniacally and sticking it to all those shmoes. 

Years unfolded, folks came and went - friends made and friends lost. Hearts on fire, hearts shattered - boom kaboom! 

Peque birthday tribute

What was all the drama about or for? Scattered pieces gathered slowly and carefully. We stopped the frenzied dance to quietly waltz through life once more. 

We are forever grateful beyond and above for countless highlights of our lives - together and apart yet always shared. We love you mumo! 

endless dream

Neil Gaiman’s beloved The Sandman comic books finally gets adapted into a Netflix TV series and we are all smitten. 

Sandman on Netflix

wonder | wander | world first read his work with DC Comics publication of Black Orchid and The Sandman. By the time he came to the Philippines we were avid fans, reading everything he wrote. 

behind the scenes

Spanning 10 books published between 1989 and 1996, Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman comic book series features an enormous ensemble cast, including angels, demons, wizards, superheroes, fairies and playwrights. 

All of them come into the orbit of the titular character, also known as Morpheus or Dream. 

Neil Gaiman’s Dream Country: A Dream of a Thousand Cats, No. 18 (August 1990)

Three decades after they were first released, our dream has come true with this TV series that lives up to Neil Gaiman's original work. 

Plus a bonus episode at the end hinting of more to come. What a delight!

moon magic

The Earth satellite, the moon, has long been the subject of all kinds of fascinating legends and myths associated with the celestial body and its cycles. 

Moonlight in Naples / Ivan Aivazovsky / 1842

For thousands of years, people have used its light to guide them in the dark - personifying the moon as a deity. It has influenced the behavior of all living things on earth including the weather, tides, people, animals, and plants. 

Lydia Gaston | actor, singer, arts educator

Bugal sang Banwa is a local term we use back home that translates to pride of our town. 

Whether that is her island home of Bacolod City, Negros Island or Brooklyn, New York; the Broadway stage or on the big screen - Lydia Gaston Greenberg has found her place in the sun and is shining bright. 

Lydia Gaston plays Jo Koy's mom Tita Susan

Actor, singer, and arts educator - she has succeeded where few dare to tread. She has carved a name for herself in bright lights and our hearts. 

wonder | wander | world is proud to have interviewed her recently - as we covered her decades of work on stage and on screen for Negros Season of Culture. 

Catch Lydia Gaston as comedian Jo Koy's mom Tita Susan in "Easter Sunday" #brava #kudos #congrats

tiny tales

This week wonder | wander | world picks Laura Gibbs' Tiny Tales. 100-word stories inspired by traditional folktales. So far Gibbs has completed ten books of Tiny Tales, each containing 200 stories - not so little a compilation after all.

Here is a sweet sample: "Sita Rewards Hanuman"

Hanuman watercolor

After Rama's coronation, Sita honored Hanuman with a pearl necklace.

Hanuman started biting the pearls, cracking them open and looking inside.

"What are you looking for?" Sita asked, laughing, and all the people in attendance laughed too.

"I am looking for you," said Hanuman, "and for Rama. Without you inside, these pearls are useless."

"Rama and Sita are on their thrones!" the people shouted. "How could they be in the pearls?"

"In the same way they are in my heart," Hanuman replied, tearing open his chest; everyone could see Rama and Sita there. "Are they not in your hearts also?"

There's also an audio version to listen to - available on SoundCloud. 

tree of life

As we keep our hope afloat in these tumultuous times, wonder | wander | world looks to modern science to bolster our faith in the evolution of humankind as our faith is tested by the seeming devolution of humanity. 

If you look different to your close relatives, you may have felt separate from your family. As a child, during particularly stormy fall outs you might have even hoped it was a sign that you were adopted.

jumping genes, aka transposons, help to explain octopus intelligence

Scientists in Darwin’s time and through most of the 20th century could only work out the branches of the evolutionary tree of life by looking at the structure and appearance of animals and plants. Life forms were grouped according to similarities thought to have evolved together. 

Oscar Howe | art retrospective

The Yanktonai Dakota painter Oscar Howe, who died in 1983, is the subject of a remarkable retrospective at the National Museum of the American Indian. ~ The New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl 

“Dance of the Heyoka” (1954) 

"Dakota Modern,” crisply curated by Kathleen Ash-Milby, consists almost exclusively of works in tempera, watercolor, gouache, or casein on paper. The execution is phlegmatically deliberate. Photographs of Howe, always neatly dressed and placidly industrious, usually seated at a table, consort oddly with the power-packed compositions and aggressive hues of his pictures. 

The upshot is a channeling of sheer, visionary imagination, as if the artist were taking dictation from an unseen demiurge. Do some of the effects seem cartoonish, with figuration that anticipated popular styles of graphic fiction which took hold in the nineteen-seventies? Perhaps. 

Oscar Howe, photographed on March 30, 1958

Still, generic characters in melodramatic poses strategically depersonalize subjects to the benefit of thematic punch and decorative finesse. The results exalt audacity and breathe beauty. Howe seldom repeated himself. Each work can feel one-off, fulfilling a special mission to a fare-thee-well. If any quality is consistent, it’s suddenness.