By J. Rakista
It felt like a certain part of me was still asleep when these Restless Soles were standing in the middle of the famed dark gray beach of Villa, Iloilo City at 4:45 in the chilly morning of February 22, 2015, the last day of the 43rd Annual Iloilo Paraw Regatta Festival. What fully shook off the remains of sleep was a certain horizontal glow with a bit of neon green around it hovering over the island of Guimaras. It didn't last long that by the moment I finished rubbing off from my eyes last night’s debris from my short trip to the dreamland, it was already gone.
I looked around and realized that my travel buddies had already dissolved into the crowd who, like us, also hoped that God would grant us a sunrise that could blend beautifully with the man-made colors of the outrigger boats’ sails.
I took my little camera out from my backpack, readied my tripod and began to take pictures; it was, after all, the reason why we woke up in the wee hours and cut short our soles’ rest.
With the crowd, I hurried to roam around looking for an angle that has never been done before, trying to discover a new composition in an event that has already been photographed in a number of ways for 43 festivals now, and praying for that one elusive shot of a lifetime while all the time keeping an eye at the ever-changing colors of dawn.
It took me more than three hundred crappy over-the-top shots and two almost aimless trips through and around that part of the beach being used for boat parking to realize that one had to sometimes put down his camera to be able to see it all.
Perhaps, this is what the organizers of the annual Paraw Regatta haven't considered even after 43 years. In one fleeting moment after another fleeting moment, one would be able to witness a spectacle like no other: man-made colors being united with God's breaking dawn -- two creations becoming one. And in different hues and saturations at that. And repeatedly, still.
Slowly, the crowd got denser and it became easy to get lost in it. Lost in that crowd, we became one with it too. For it awoke the inner child in each of us – our appreciation for the simple joys brought about by utterly simple things around us; our sense of wonder in discovering something new and colorful and beautiful; and our resolve, when it’s over and done, to be there again next time and experience it once more.
Oblivious of the other parts of the festival, these Restless Soles, along the beach, would walk, run, and perhaps dance a little. Then we'd pause a while and trace the horizon and watch the boatmen prepare their sails. And then we'd pause a little more and examine the dark sand that stuck unevenly at our feet. And then again we'd pause some more and realize that, after those countless walking, running and perhaps dancing, after those countless almost aimless strolls with those countless nameless and almost faceless expectators, and after those countless color changes in the sky and the sea, the sun would just effortlessly show its might and fade almost everything in its path as it always did a countless times before.
Without being there, one would never know how the fading of the horizon’s multi-color light show gave way to the slow and dramatic unveiling of those native outrigger boats that proudly fly their colorful sails for everyone to see. The Paraw we call them.
For more information about the annual Iloilo Paraw Regatta Festival, visit its official site: http://iloiloparawregatta.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=3&Itemid=3
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