(8) She wanted to train as a soprano, reaching notes at least two octaves higher; had a good ear, though she never learned to read music. Is this another version of how we're always trying to go somewhere we've never been, because returning home is impossible? For her, home was originally a small parcel of dusty farmland in Bacnotan, where water buffaloes flicked their tails in the shade. Even her father left it many times to seek a different fortune in the city: hotel cook, barber, owner of one good suit (white) and a Panama hat. He did go back, but he was not the same. The land felt different; that is to say, indifferent to whatever remorse he might have felt in his heart. As for her, she found her way to another town, where she worked the cash register at a restaurant. A cliff jutted out to the sea there, where the Spanish raised a tower: one of several luces locales, beacon for ships at sea, now nesting place for migrating birds.
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