The Blurb!

Many times, I’ve kidded Gerry to move our Komikero meetings to Manila instead of San Pablo, Laguna since most of the members live here now. The birth place of the Komikero Group is some three hours away from the metro and can be a bit hard to reach at the best of times.

Yet, Gerry (lovable stubborn old fogey that he is) is adamant that San Pablo remain the sole venue for Komikero Meetings.

“If we do it somewhere else, it just might lose something” said Gerry.

“I just can’t put my finger on it.”

After giving it some thought I think I figured out that thing which the Komikeros will lose, namely San Pablo and, oh…the lake.

As in, seriously.

I’ve had this theory for sometime now (despite hassling Gerry about meeting in Manila) that part of what makes Komikero meetings unique is the rituals involved in it.

Rituals like taking new members for a walk around the lake, sitting on the grass beside the lake to draw, the snack attacks in between sketch sessions, and other little things like that. Move the meeting to Manila and we’re not going to be able to do any of those things anymore and it will really be just a meeting for drawing.

This is the main realization that I’ve had: Komikeros don’t really meet to draw (which is what you’d expect an art group to do really).

We do draw, of course but just a tiny bit.

Whenever the gang is together, we invariably take pictures and videos, gab and gossip a lot, and (more often than not) eat….voraciously.

The real reason for our meetings is to affirm our bonds with each other.

The beautiful thing about all this is that bond is not something just set in the ether. The bond was cast and set in a place called San Pablo, beside a lake, near a little store that sells roasted coagulated chicken’s blood.

Friends, when they meet again after a long period of time of not seeing each other, experience a bit of awkwardness. It’s only natural if you think about it. A lot of things have probably happened; people grow apart and distant, a lot of things change, the lines of communication gets severed, etc. Thus some catching up is required.

I noticed however that this is never the case for us Komikeros even if we haven’t met for several months.

Well, granted, we still need to catch up with what each other is doing but there is that feeling that hardly any time has passed between the meetings. I believe one of the reasons why we feel this way is that San Pablo offers a kind of timelessness quality to our gatherings.

In a very big way the Komikeros’ soul (as a group) is tied to San Pablo.

This is part of the reason why I still make the monthly trip and part of the reason why I go when I feel beaten down or discouraged.

Our meetings have the magical quality of returning its members to its roots, the bedrock of who they are. Of, in a way, bringing the world back into focus or finding a new perspective. Or, at the very least, finding some inner reserve to be able to do what is right and do what needs to be done.

Most importantly however, it brings us back to a simpler time when we’d just spend the afternoon with a piece of paper and a bit of pencil whiling the day away with good friends in our own little corner of the world. I usually come up with crappy drawings during our meetings (if at all) but I look up and I realize that everything is as it should be and everything will be alright.

Life doesn’t get any better than this.

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