The swallows
How should I know if I am in the company of wolves in sheep’s clothing? Or perhaps sheep who believe they are wolves?
“Our commercial development, following the course of our territorial expansion, logically and inevitably, has expanded the vigor of our growth function internally, between the two oceans rather than externally upon either; but this inter-oceanic process having completed the subjugation of the obstacles to it, the energies of national growth became freed to operate upon new fields of activity… The extremities of the hardships to be endured, or the terrors or dangers to be confronted, do not enter into the national question of expansion at all [but rather] the outflow of national energy obeyed the laws implanted in the national organization as blindly and instinctively as do the swallows the laws of their migration.” (The Freedom, on The Philippines and Trade, in justifying US imperial expansion in the Philippines, 1898)
In my mind’s eye is the sunset reflected on the sea in Baclayon earlier this day. I have kept record of past sunsets, many of them. But not this season. The sea in the sunset rain must be quite a sight.