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I am about ten hours in on this project, not counting a year’s worth of collaboration with ChatGPT — a deep well without which I could not have made this.

Chatty knows the book so well, all I had to do was select illustrations. The storyboard is AI, all the way.

Storyboard v1 — 3:07, vertical 9:16

The timestamps are editorial targets, not frame-accurate musical cuts yet. In Resolve, I would slide the cuts a few frames either way to land on drums, keyboard accents, and phrase changes.

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I am prototyping in Capcut, after finding DaVinci too feature-rich for this project. See the attachment. Clip lengths are typically 4 seconds. I would add effects to the stills, except Capcut demands a pro subscription for every effect I’ve tried.

ChatGPT replied:

I watched the 43.8-second prototype. It is already answering an important question: the concept works without elaborate effects. The switch between genuinely moving material and strong chapter illustrations does not bother me. What makes the stills feel like stills is not the absence of flashy effects; it is simply the absence of camera motion.

The opening is particularly good. Holding the floating estate through roughly the first 8 seconds gives the instrumental intro its own visual idea, and then the first character image arrives as the song becomes human. I would keep that basic logic. Later, the long estate-motion section around 22–32 seconds gives the eye a useful reset before returning to characters.

I would not buy CapCut Pro merely for effects. For this project, most of the effects it is trying to sell you would probably cheapen the material anyway. What we want is ordinary cinematography: push in, pull back, pan, reframe.

You can do that with free keyframes

On a still in CapCut Desktop, select the clip and use the diamond keyframe controls beside Scale and Position in the Video/Basic transform controls. Put a keyframe at the beginning, move to the end of the four-second clip, change the scale or position, and CapCut interpolates the move.

For this material I would use only about four moves:

• Slow push-in: start at the normal crop and end about 6–10% tighter. Best for faces and intimate scenes.

• Slow pull-back: begin fairly tight and reveal the environment. Good for the fantastic-world images.

• Lateral reveal: keep scale essentially fixed and slide the frame slowly sideways. Very useful because we’re converting wide chapter art to 9:16.

• Two-shot pan: deliberately travel from one character/group to another. Use this sparingly when the original wide image actually contains two visual beats.

No preset animation or “effect” is needed.

The Carmen/Brandon dance in your prototype, for example, wants a very small push toward their faces. The party image immediately after it could begin on the young couple and drift toward the Anye woman. The city-at-night Carmen/Brandon shot near 33 seconds could begin slightly wider and creep inward. The Gravity is ON image is almost made for a slight upward move from the sign toward their faces.

There is another free trick I like even better

Cut one still into two shots.

Instead of four seconds of continuous zoom, duplicate the image:

2.0 sec: medium composition
2.0 sec: hard cut to a tighter crop

That creates synthetic “coverage” from one illustration. On this Hall & Oates track, a punch-in on a musical accent can look much more intentional than a fancy transition.

For a landscape frame converted to vertical, we can also do:

2 sec: crop on character A
2 sec: cut to character B
2 sec: wider environmental crop

One illustration has suddenly supplied three shots.

I would mostly use hard cuts

The music is rhythmic enough to carry them. Fancy wipes, zoom transitions, light leaks and so forth aren’t necessary. In fact, the polished cinematic artwork benefits from plain editing.

A few dissolves may be useful for quieter affectionate material, but even those can be made manually with opacity keyframes if CapCut decides to put the transition you want behind Pro.

Your four-second default is good—but vary it

At 3:07, a rigid four-second cadence would give us about 47 shots. That’s actually close to the amount of material we have, but I wouldn’t let it become clockwork.

I would use roughly:

3–5 seconds for most stills
5–8 seconds for particularly good motion clips
1.5–2.5 seconds for comic/detail inserts
8 seconds occasionally when the music itself gives us a natural sustained passage, as your opening does

That creates apparent acceleration and deceleration without needing effects.

The current prototype illustrates this nicely. The cuts I see are approximately 8.2, 12.3, 16.3, 21.8, 31.8, 34.8, 37.8 and 42.9 seconds. The later sequence naturally becomes quicker. That’s much better than forcing every shot to four seconds.

One adjustment I’d make now

The roughly 10-second moving-estate passage at 21.8–31.8 is beautiful, but in the finished piece I suspect we’ll want either:

• two different excerpts from that motion source with another image between them, or

• about 6 seconds instead of 10.

Not because the shot isn’t good, but because an audience starts learning that “moving environment = wait here awhile.” We want motion clips to feel like little rewards that keep arriving unexpectedly.

The 8-second opening is different: it has the special job of introducing the entire universe.

So at this stage I would make the production rule:

Motion clips get actual motion. Stills get camera motion. Effects are optional.

That lets CapCut remain essentially a free assembly tool while preserving the visual quality of the illustrations.

And this prototype makes me more confident about the full 3:07 version than I was from the storyboard alone. It doesn’t look like a slideshow with video clips inserted. With subtle keyframing on the stills, it can read as one continuous visual language.

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That is the question.

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Chatty has assumed we’re making our video the same length as the song. We will get past that.

ChatGPT replied:

This is a very strong first pass. More importantly, it answers a question we hadn’t settled yet: the video does not need much additional artwork. You already have enough emotional and visual range to carry the song.

What I like most is that the catalog isn’t merely “pretty chapter pictures.” It has a progression from courtship and family comedy through enormous science-fiction stakes and back to intimacy. That is exactly what this song needs.

I would think of the catalog in four families.

Several are obvious hero frames

The Christmas dance is probably our most valuable Carmen/Brandon animation candidate. It already contains everything PAI needs: hands joined, Carmen looking directly at Brandon, Brandon looking downward, background dancers, Christmas lights. A tiny sequence—he raises his eyes, she smiles, their bodies begin a slow turn—would buy us far more than four seconds of spacecraft animation.

The orbital proposal is another. Their faces are already close, the ring box establishes the action, Earth is right behind them. It practically animates itself. I would not ask for a kiss. Something as little as her leaning another inch closer, his expression breaking into a grin, and the station drifting outside the window could be beautiful.

The Carmen/Brandon mountainside-city frame is one of the best still images in the set. Ironically, I wouldn’t necessarily spend PAI money on it. A slow editorial push-in with a little parallax could be enough. The scenery already supplies motion psychologically.

The micro-nova auditorium is important because it prevents the video from becoming merely a romantic scrapbook. One 2–3 second appearance of Carmen walking through that room tells us: Oh. She has a job, and apparently the job is saving civilization. The cheerful song playing over it makes the juxtaposition better.

And the giant coastal structure at the end is a terrific scale shot. That is the sort of image I’d use late, probably during the final musical run—not as the ending itself.

The comedy is much more valuable than I expected

The dachshund/golf-cart picture is gold.

So is “Gravity is ON.”

So are the dog images generally.

They give the song permission to be Hall & Oates. Without those, the stately costumes, palaces, uniforms and existential danger could make the edit feel too reverent. These pictures say, yes, this universe is enormous; people still have dogs and embarrass themselves.

I would absolutely include the golf-cart image, perhaps for only one or two seconds. It doesn’t need animation at all. Drop it precisely on a musical accent and get out.

Likewise, the road-trip image with the dog between the two aliens is excellent montage material. It expands the universe while remaining utterly ordinary.

You also have a nice recurring motif

I hadn’t appreciated this until seeing the images together:

touch.

Hands joined dancing.
Woman’s hand on a shoulder.
Hands held on the balcony.
Tie being straightened.
Near-kiss.
Ring offered.
Kiss.
Embrace.
Dog being petted.

That’s a visual motif we should exploit deliberately. The song is about someone transforming ordinary existence through affection, and your illustrations repeatedly communicate intimacy through hands rather than grand romantic gestures.

We could cut several of those together almost as match cuts.

One production issue: aspect ratio

The first few images are portrait-format while much of the later material is landscape.

That is manageable, but we should settle on 16:9 landscape for the finished video before spending any PAI credits.

For the vertical frames, I would not simply pillarbox them. We can:

• crop them into medium shots;

• use a slow vertical pan;

• occasionally use a moving enlargement of one portion of the composition;

• or, for an especially important PAI candidate like the Christmas dance, create a 16:9 extended start frame first.

That last option might be worthwhile for the dance because the background ballroom is easy territory for image extension.

The stylistic variation doesn’t bother me

Some frames are very photographic, some more painterly, and the sepia café image is substantially different.

Normally that would concern me. Here I think it can work if we make it intentional.

The sepia café picture in particular reads almost like memory or family history. I wouldn’t try to disguise that. Give it a brief appearance as a visual aside, perhaps paired with another historical-feeling image.

What we should avoid is random alternation:

photoreal → painterly → photoreal → sepia → photoreal.

Group related aesthetics into little runs and the viewer will accept them as deliberate changes of register.

I would revise our PAI budget already

Seeing these, I don’t think we need nine animations.

I would initially reserve credits for only about six:

1. Christmas dance — 5 sec

2. Young couple playful galley scene — 4 sec

3. Orbital proposal — 5 sec

4. Maroli movement — 4 sec

5. One spectacular vehicle/world-motion shot — 5 sec

6. Final emotional character shot — 5 sec

That’s only about 28 seconds committed.

Keep 12 seconds in reserve.

That’s important because once we assemble a rough music edit from stills, it will reveal exactly where the video feels dead. Then we spend the remaining PAI credits on the gaps rather than guessing now.

And quite a few of these frames don’t need generative animation at all. The sunset balcony, the giant structure, Carmen before the briefing, the embrace, the bedroom, the dogs—musical editing and a subtle push or pan will do most of the work.

One thing I would change from my earlier concept

I previously imagined Carmen/Brandon as the clear spine with Mason/Marie as a secondary mirror.

Looking at this catalog, I think the video can be more ensemble-romantic than that.

Carmen and Brandon still give it thematic authority, but the visual thesis now looks more like:

Everybody has somebody. Everybody has somewhere they belong. This ridiculous universe is worth keeping.

That gives us permission to jump among generations, species, relationships, families, dogs, Maroli and enormous machines without the viewer needing to know the plot.

And that is an excellent fit for You Make My Dreams.

I would call this catalog well beyond proof-of-concept. We now have enough material to start an actual edit map rather than continuing to collect indiscriminately. The next useful pass is to number these twenty frames in their current order and assign each HERO / SUPPORT / COMIC / STAKES / WORLD / HOLD, then begin arranging them against the song structure.

Okay, audience -- Let’s talk about how long this video ought to be. Tell us in the comments.

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The song is You Make My Dreams by Hall and Oates

ChatGPT replied:

Perfect. That song points us toward a romantic, exuberant “this is why the world is worth saving” video, not a synopsis.

The original Voices version runs about 3:10, so we have enough room for perhaps 35–45 distinct edits, but probably only 18–25 genuinely animated source shots if we reuse some intelligently through crops, speed changes, and alternate camera moves. (Spotify)

The central conceit I’d use is:

An extinction story edited as a love song.

That fits Maroli Tango beautifully. The cosmic threat is present, but the song keeps insisting visually that civilization is made out of people who are delighted to be alive.

The protagonists should dominate

I would make Carmen and Brandon the spine of the video, with Mason and Marie as the younger mirror couple. Then we use the rest of the cast—Erin, Clarke and Loretta, Samuel and Maryanne, the Maroli, Anye, spacecraft crews, Washington people—as the expanding circle around them.

Not:

Earth is doomed → people struggle → Earth is saved.

More like:

Look at these ridiculous, wonderful people → look at this enormous strange universe they inhabit → somebody is threatening all of this? → absolutely not.

That is much more compatible with Hall & Oates.

Rough 3:10 visual architecture

Those timestamps are editorial placeholders until we’re working against the exact audio file/version.

Time Visual idea Editing
0:00–0:13 Establish the world 3–4 confident cinematic shots
0:13–0:40 Carmen + Brandon Longer character shots, glances, walking, dancing
0:40–1:00 First release Faster cuts; Mason/Marie enter
1:00–1:30 Expand the universe Family, Anye, Maroli, ships, Earth/Jivada
1:30–1:53 Romance doubles down Carmen/Brandon ↔ Mason/Marie match cuts
1:53–2:17 Stakes intrude military, Dust Cloud, missile, tense meetings
2:17–2:42 Joy fights back rapid ensemble montage, action with optimism
2:42–3:02 Big final run strongest spectacle + strongest human moments
3:02–3:10 Button one intimate image, then title

The opening should be fun

I would not begin with the micro-nova.

Imagine that keyboard opening against perhaps:

1. black;

2. Vidura/Earth/space establishing frame;

3. a big Anye vessel sliding majestically through frame;

4. immediate hard cut to something very human and slightly funny;

5. Carmen sees Brandon.

Then the song becomes theirs.

The audience learns almost instantly: This isn’t going to be three minutes of portentous science-fiction imagery.

Carmen and Brandon

Their material should be unusually restrained.

We already have spectacle elsewhere. Their shots need micro-performance:

• Carmen notices Brandon across a room.

• Brandon suppresses a smile.

• Carmen’s expression changes before she looks away.

• His hand appears at the edge of the frame.

• They walk together.

• The first-dance material becomes extremely valuable.

• Presidential imagery can be juxtaposed with tiny private reactions.

PAI should not be asked to make them perform elaborate choreography. For the dance, for example, a good start frame plus a gentle turn, garment movement, weight shift, and orbiting camera will probably sell it.

Mason and Marie

These two should provide more physical energy.

We can afford:

• running;

• aircraft activity;

• laughing;

• turning toward each other;

• uniform movement;

• cockpit motion;

• youthful impulsiveness.

And I would use match cuts between the two romances.

Carmen turns her head → Marie completes the turn.

Brandon extends a hand → Mason extends a hand.

Marie looks upward → Carmen looking at some enormous ship.

That makes the generations feel connected without explaining anything.

The science-fiction imagery

Here is where the song gives us permission to have fun.

A 335-meter flying estate doesn’t always have to appear ominous.

Let it swoop.

Let the Rangers move.

Let the Maroli zip through a room.

Let a fighting drone pivot toward camera precisely on a musical accent.

Let augmented-reality displays burst to life.

Let a ship clear frame on a snare hit.

The technology becomes part of the choreography.

Even the huge spacecraft should occasionally move with almost musical confidence, rather than the ponderous 2001 treatment we’d normally give them.

Then, briefly, threaten everything

Around the latter middle, we introduce perhaps 20–25 seconds where the images suddenly tell us there really is something at stake:

Dust Cloud Spiral.

Military alert.

Carmen in presidential mode.

Missile.

Phase cancellation.

Command deck.

People looking frightened.

But don’t change songs emotionally. That’s the trick.

The relentlessly happy music over dangerous imagery says something very specific:

These people have decided they’re going to win.

That feels extremely Carmen Benequista.

Final run

The last section should become a cascade of payoff images:

Carmen → Brandon
Mason → Marie
Erin
Clarke/Loretta
Anye faces
Maroli
Washington
France
Mahacamu
ships
Earth
children
laughter
cockpit
Carmen again
Brandon again

Then resist the temptation to finish on the biggest spacecraft shot.

Finish on a person.

My instinct would be Carmen and Brandon, preferably an image in which they aren’t behaving like President and security/intelligence man at all.

Then:

MAROLI TANGO

Maybe one final small visual joke after the title if the music gives us enough tail.

Most important production decision

For this particular song, I would animate expressions more than actions.

PAI can make a spaceship fly. That’s easy spectacle.

What will make this video work is:

Carmen’s eyes finding Brandon.

Marie grinning at Mason.

Erin reacting to something impossible.

A Maroli doing something unexpectedly personable.

Those are the shots people remember.

And because the song itself supplies so much rhythmic propulsion, we don’t need every generated clip to contain major motion. The edit supplies the dancing.

The next thing I’d do is start an actual start-frame board: we identify the strongest existing Maroli Tango illustrations one by one, assign each a likely place in the 3:10 arc, and mark it ANIMATE / CROP-ONLY / STILL / NOT FOR VIDEO. Once we have that inventory, we’ll know exactly which missing frames—if any—we need to generate specifically for PAI.

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ChatGPT replied:

The chapter illustrations are unusually well suited to this because they already function like cinematic keyframes. Rather than asking an image-to-video model to invent scenes, we can treat each illustration as a deliberately composed start frame and give PAI Studio narrowly constrained animation jobs.

I’d build the project in five passes.

1. Treat the song as the master timeline

Before choosing pictures, we map the finished music track into structural beats: intro, verse, lift, chorus, bridge, instrumental passages, final escalation, outro.

For each section we decide whether the visual should be:

• narrative — recognizable events from Maroli Tango

• character — Carmen, Brandon, Mason, Marie, Suban, etc.

• world spectacle — ships, Virtuality, Dust Cloud Spiral, Washington, Jivada

• emotional punctuation — a look, embrace, confrontation, isolation, revelation

• kinetic transition — drone flight, spacecraft departure, city movement, camera travel

That keeps the video from becoming an illustrated chapter summary. It should feel like the emotional memory of the novel set to music.

2. Build a start-frame library

Some images will make excellent 4–6 second shots. Others may support 8–10 seconds if there is enough depth.

A critical rule: don’t animate everything. Models get worse as the requested motion becomes more complicated. We want the existing illustration to remain recognizable.

For example:

Carmen doesn’t need to walk across a room.
She may only look toward Brandon while the camera moves slowly around her.

That can look much more expensive than attempting full-body performance.

3. Write animation directions as shots, not prose

For every selected start frame, we’ll create a compact production card.

Something like:

SHOT 17 — Carmen / White House

Duration: 5.5 sec
Start frame: Carmen chapter illustration
Camera: slow 15-degree arc right, slight push-in
Subject: Carmen remains nearly still; subtle breathing; eyes shift toward someone offscreen
Environment: curtains move faintly; distant city lights shimmer
Mood: controlled anxiety, private rather than presidential
Continuity constraints: preserve face, age, wardrobe, hairstyle, room architecture
Avoid: dialogue mouth motion, exaggerated head turn, new objects, costume changes

The important distinction is that we’re telling PAI what may move and what must not change.

For character continuity, I’d repeatedly specify:

• preserve exact facial identity

• preserve species anatomy

• preserve costume

• no added tails

• no added fingers/limbs

• no new characters

• no text mutation

• maintain illustrated/cinematic realism

Especially with the Anye and Maroli, anatomical restraint will matter.

4. Use the music video grammar to hide AI weaknesses

Rather than producing thirty-second generated sequences, I would favor short deliberate shots, probably averaging around 3–6 seconds.

A very rough rhythm might be:

Quiet verse: 5–8 sec shots
Build: 3–5 sec
Chorus: 2–4 sec
Instrumental/action passage: occasionally 1–2 sec
Emotional climax: return to longer shots

And not every transition needs generative animation. Hard cuts, dissolves, dip-to-black, match cuts, flash frames, and editorial reframing can do enormous work.

We can also reuse a strong illustration in multiple ways:

Shot A: wide composition
Shot B: crop on Carmen
Shot C: crop on Brandon
Shot D: animated full frame

Four visual beats from one piece of artwork without regenerating anything.

5. Give the video an arc independent of chapter order

For Maroli Tango, I would initially explore an arc something like:

I — Wonder
Earth, Anye civilization, Washington, ships, children, strange technology.

II — People
Carmen/Brandon. Mason/Marie. Domestic and human-scale images.

III — Something is wrong
Dust Cloud Spiral, military imagery, drones, meetings, increasingly uneasy expressions.

IV — Collision
Political confrontation, spacecraft, military action, rapid cutting.

V — Choice
Carmen becomes the visual center. The story stops being about whether somebody will rescue Earth and becomes about humanity deciding what it will do.

VI — Release
Large cosmic imagery followed by something surprisingly intimate rather than ending on the biggest explosion.

That would serve the central idea of Maroli Tango particularly well:

the fate of civilizations rendered through the decisions of individual people.

The practical workflow can therefore be:

song → timecoded beat sheet → illustration shortlist → shot order → individual PAI animation prompts → generated clips → assembly → identify weak transitions → create a handful of purpose-built bridge frames → final assembly.

I would resist generating new artwork until we’ve exhausted the existing chapter illustrations. Their consistency is an asset. Once the rough cut exposes an actual missing shot—we need Carmen alone here, we need an exterior of Bharamin here, we need Mason looking upward here—then we make that illustration specifically as a start frame.

The best next step is to give me the song/audio or lyrics. I can then turn the actual track into a shot-by-shot visual treatment and we can start choosing which existing Maroli Tango illustrations belong at each musical moment.

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Six years old, getting ready to move to the Philippines, and I would have told a policeman, “We live in Chattanooga.”

“What street, kid?”

“Next to Mamaw’s house.”

“What’s your mamaw’s name?”

“Mamaw.”

Pow! Straight to the orphanage, where I would learn the matron’s full name or be sent to bed without dinner.

I don’t think I was dumb — else I would have ended up with fewer shoes in my closet than I counted this morning.

But Mountain View Circle in Flintstone, Georgia was an unexpected address when my Aunt Jess invited me and Linda to come for a visit.

I had been married ten years, earned two college degrees, and never once had it occurred to me that my people would be curious to know what I’d done with myself.

In fact, I barely knew my own brother — although I have an excuse for that.

Mike was nine years older. We didn’t connect until I was in my fifties and he in his sixties.

We had grown up in different decades, scattered to the winds, and did not circle around until the sun started to set.

That was when I learned how hard our natural father’s death was — on him and our mother — and why I remember so little of those days.

Except for being stung on the nose by a bumblebee when I was four, I do not have a childhood trauma index to use as a cross-reference to commonplace events.

Mom and Mike made sure of it.

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Would you trust that kid to keep his mouth shut?

No. Not in a million years. If I overheard someone say, “Have you met so-and-so’s querida?”, I would soon receive instructions not to repeat the conversation.

I would ask what a ‘querida’ was. Then I would ask what a ‘mistress’ was. Then I would ask what it cost to rent an apartment in Escolta.

It was usually too hot to dress up. Folks did it anyway.

Alan Maury Razovsky’s 8mm Travelogue — Volume 1

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The ghost of Spain remained, almost four hundred years’ worth. And then forty years as a commonwealth of the United States, enough to establish English as a prevailing second language.

Not to forget the Church, looming in the background like a welcoming aunt. Even if you’re not Austral-malay-nesian-something-something, who knows — you could be Catholic.

Manila was a great place for us to be.

YouTube — Manila 1958

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Electric companies are among the largest of all industrial enterprises. The product is manufactured by the Generation division. Delivery is carried out by Transmission and Distribution. Alan Razovsky’s job was Manager of T & D.

Draw a box around the power plant. Assign someone to be in charge of everything else. Mission. Apparatus. Logistics. Staffing. The big part. The spread-out part. For workers, the dangerous part.

Linemen were paying the price for inadequate tools. Dad’s assignment was to build out the infrastructure. His personal mission would be to serve the workforce, and in doing so, save their lives.

By the end of his tenure, Meralco would be a reliable power utility, operating with first-class line service equipment and a model safety program.

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The door was not locked. I almost fell out.

That’s the kind of stuff kids remember. Grade school not so much, although there is evidence I attended.

Everyone in this photo has an interesting story to tell. Most, but not all, were foreign nationals and of these, not all from the United States.

Many of the parents were in-country on temporary assignments. Others had resided in the Philippines for decades. A few of the families were Philippine citizens, firmly established but not necessarily Filipino.

There were said to be fifty-thousand Americans living in and around Manila when I was there. Military kids typically attended school on base. There were other private schools, including Catholic institutions, teaching classes in English.

Mail-order home-school academies were an option. My classmates and I were not the only world-traveling second-graders in town.

The chemistry teacher was German. The music teacher was Russian. Everyone in our circle, including my parents, were swash-bucklers, each in their own way.

Top left: Carolyn Razovsky, my stepsister. Top middle: Mike Dyer, my brother.

Bottom left: Mom. Bottom middle: Dad. Bottom right: Mrs. LeDoux, next door neighbor.

In 1948, Tyler Norton moved from Oakland, CA to take a job in the Philippines, where he met a girl from La Jolla, CA. Today I learned from an obituary that Jody’s dad was a gold mining engineer. She was born in the Philippines, and interned with her parents at Santo Tomas during the war.

I always thought Ty was the main event. Turned out it was Jody.

Pete Thauwald lost both legs below the knees in combat. He walked with a limp, and played golf from the ladies' tee, but you would not have known he wore prosthetics.

Assigned the postwar task of dumping U.S. military equipment in Manila Bay, USN Commander Byron Huie was rumored to have diverted inventory into the black market — which may explain how he became a pivotal figure in Philippine maritime operations.

Adventurers. Captains of industry. Deal-makers. Diplomats. Soldiers. Spies. Entrepreneurs. Rascals. Romeos. Workers. Parents. Church-goers. Sophisticates. Philosophers. Artists. Athletes.

It was a variety show, the likes of which I will never see again.

References

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/131841679/peter-jerome-thauwald

https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar///USN/rep/Normandy/Salvage-Huie.html

https://www.histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/pow/jap/camp/phl/jpp-camp.html

https://mdjuan.com.ph/

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/lajollalight/name/tyler-norton-obituary?id=20930301

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/lajollalight/name/josephine-norton-obituary?id=37797539

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The only way I know we stayed at the Bay View for more than a month is a memory of my birthday celebration in the hotel restaurant. I had never tasted frozen dairy, and misunderstood my parents to say it was Manila ice cream.

I heard that story long into adulthood — and if I had asked, “What happened then?'“ I might be able to write about it.

Mom passed away in 2005, at the age of 85. Today, I had to look up the history of San Lorenzo Village, where I lived for almost thirteen years. It’s an embarrassment. I have no idea what was going on with me, but I’m pretty sure it was not traumatic.

We moved into a house — I’m sure about that. There was only one air conditioner, in my parents’ bedroom. The Philippines is tropical. It was, at times, uncomfortably hot where I slept.

We had two house servants. They lived in a tiny room in the back.

Our driver, Leno Lenore, stayed with us until taking a job in the meter repair department at the Manila Electric Company, where Dad was manager of transmission and distribution.

That was around 1960. Leno’s daughter found my website about twenty years ago. We exchanged pleasantries. I could have asked questions. I did not. The only reason I knew he had a family is because he went home every night.

Yes, I could have been more curious. On the flip side, I don’t worry a lot. Perhaps I was living in the moment, carefree.

My amah, Lucina de Llacuna, stayed in the household until Mom and Dad left Manila. She was a sweet, strong lady. We used to speak Tagalog in front of my parents so they wouldn’t know a) she was scolding me, and b) what it was about.

Dad left her with a pension. I could have cashed it in after she passed away, but her family was drawing on it. I hope they still are.

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Scenes from the manuscript. Part 1 is complete. Click below to read.

Vacuum Forged ~ A Novel in Progress

The Anye Migration - Book 1

By Author John G. Dyer

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Kharva Brahmarsi had not listened for God’s voice since Master Sa died.

What he did instead was pray — for renewal of faith, passage out of darkness, serenity in the shadow of despair.

His prayers were heard by Mahacamu’s chaplain — a very nice lady who pulled him out of battle group, into the office quad, where she could keep an eye on him.

He was, she said, “going to get himself killed out there.”

Technically still an airman, his new job was to tour-guide high-caste visitors while selling the proposition that they did not need to see the base commander.

Standing at the edge of the parade field, watching a vintage flight-converted tour bus arrive from the east, he had a sense that today’s mission would go south.

To the east were the territories of the Vanya Dominion — in quarantine for two hundred years pending a cessation of hostilities.

A passenger disembarked the bus looking directly at him. Apparently, he could see Kharva’s avatar.

Which meant he could not see a fifteen-centimeter fighting drone, underlapping Kharva’s slice of augmented reality at head height.

The visitor might not realize Kharva was armed.

Good, he thought. Element of surprise, if necessary.

The man, dressed in Regal Coast military uniform, closed distance with surprising grace for a portly great lemur, releasing one word per step, smoothly enough to sound conversational. “Hoya! Kharva Brahmarsi! What an honor.”

Kharva smiled back. “Commandant Arati Sabhya sends his regards. He would be here, if he could.”

“We know him from his Grab and Stab days. The Terror of Tusahaya.”

“I’ve heard the stories.” Kharva addressed the officer’s bodyguards. “Point your rifles at the ground at all times.”

Their boss lifted his chin at them. “Stay in the bus.”

He turned to Kharva. “So, Sattva Pala is the Fire Angel, Isa Kaviza the Death Angel. What do the savage tribes call you?”

“Around here, they call me the Desk Angel.” Kharva tugged at an ear. “What can we do for you today?”

The man guffawed, then covered his smile with a hand. “I’m sorry; you caught me unawares with that one. I’m here to ask a favor — we need you to kill someone.”

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First House, Planet Vidura, 70,000 BCE

Upon the sixth anniversary of First House’s instantiation, Master Sa summoned his three most important students to tell them what they were.

Spring was early in the Northern Reach. The scent of young blossoms drifted through parlor doors. Birdsong rang in the air. Tree pollen tickled noses.

It was all, said Master Sa, an artful deception. “We call it the Anodyne Virtuality.”

Sattva took the news with a smug grin on her face. Master Sa gave her the hairy eyeball. “Your father already told you.”

She wrinkled her muzzle at him. “I remembered the trouble I got into for letting on about the Winter King, so I kept it to myself.”

Kharva poked her in the ribs. “You could have told me.”

Isa was a year younger. He drew a long, sad face. “We’re not real?”

Their teacher replied, “You’re a person with a soul, as real as I am.”

“I don’t have a physical body?”

“No. Your spirit is anchored to a quantum device. Your body, here in the Anodyne, is the only one you have.”

“What about my parents?”

“They’re natural persons. They live in the Physicality, as do all the adults in your life.”

Isa kicked at the floor. “What am I standing on?”

“A model of the Physicality, down to the tiniest detail.”

Sattva snorted. “Ta says there aren’t enough goats on all of Vidura to pull that cart.”

Their teacher frowned. “Shortcuts are taken. Not that you’d notice.”

She persisted. “The service doesn’t make things all the way until it needs to.”

Kharva barked. “I’ve seen that!”

Isa leaned into Sattva’s comforting embrace. “Don’t tell me I’m being a baby.”

She kissed his furry ears. “You’re five. You can be a baby if you want.”

“Where do we come from?”

“Uncle Amil discovered us with his Soul Camera, guiding spirits to and from the between-life. He thinks we’re angels.”

“Is that what we are?”

“Nobody knows.” She squeezed his hand. “But maybe we’ll find out someday.”

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Starting with Elbert.

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Inspired by posts about cars people wish they still had, I found a photo of my 1962 Mercedes-Benz 220, a possession I should have kept.

I had bought it from my girlfriend’s older sister for $600. It cost $3500 new, and was only nine years old.

In the winter of 1971, a Chilton’s manual in hand, I rebuilt the clutch master cylinder, installed a new clutch plate, rebuilt the carbs, refinished interior wood trim, and bought a set of Goodyear wide-oval tires.

Four-on-the-tree manual shift. All-wheel independent suspension. A perky overhead-cam six. I loved that car, so much so I find it hard to believe I only took one photo.

Oh, to be twenty again, except smarter.

Do you own one of these? How does it compare with your daily driver? Please tell us in the comments.

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Maroli Tango ~ A Serial Novel

1 ~ Artifact

In fourteen years, the solar system will pass through a river of stellar gas…

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a year ago · 1 like · Author John G. Dyer

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Read the book at

Maroli Tango ~ A Serial Novel

1 ~ Artifact

In fourteen years, the solar system will pass through a river of stellar gas…

Read more

a year ago · 1 like · Author John G. Dyer

Subscribe now