We reached the final stretch of our Sabtang trip at a little past 10:00 AM. Our last stop was Barangay Chavayan, the southernmost barangay in the island. Similar to Savidug, Chavayan is a living artifact, another active community that features vernacular houses in the sinadumparan style.

Unfortunately for me, I still wasn’t able to get lose from the grip of my mental breakdown by the time we were in Chavayan. For a while, Ralph Waldo Emerson took a grip on me. The beauty that was supposed to intoxicate me did not affect me, as my demon was with me wherever I went.

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hence, very much like in Chamantad–Tinyan, I stayed in the cogon trike and took only short walks while allowing Ran and Ate Edna to explore the place separately.

I only got to appreciate the beauty of the places we visited in Sabtang Island on hindsight, admiring the photos through Ran’s perspective. Yes, somehow, it has become travels with Ran.

Despite all the wonders around me, I was way too absorbed with my internal struggle, with that precise moment where nothing sensory makes sense. It was that battle of the mind and the tangible, something along the line where Blaise Pascal would gain relevance, but only if I would equate sensory gratification with the passion of the heart.

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.

Blaise Pascal

At some point, I tried to convince myself that I should be at peace with the wonders around me, but my mind drove me to feel otherwise. In Pensées, Pascal was highlighting that reason is not enough to understand the truth and that the heart should complement the grasp, but neither in the dichotomy was at work with me. I was a wretch.

We left Chavayan at 10:30 AM and our cogon trike took us back to Savidug where our communal lunch, together with the other tourists who went with us to Sabtang, was prepared. It was courtesy of Wakaii Catering Services which was served in a dining hut located along the beaches of Savidug.

Given that I was still in the zone, no photos were taken during our island feast. Such a pity. After eating though, I was able to still take some snaps of the beach next to the dining hut.

After our lunch, we headed back to Sabtang Port. On our way back to Batan Island, we had a first-hand experience of the rough seas Batanes is known for, which reminded us of the waves between Palaui Island and Anguib Beach, albeit stronger, considering that we were in a bigger boat in Batanes. The falua surely showed us its power over the waves.

The contrasting imagery of the calm of the sceneries in Sabtang Island and the roughness of the sea perfectly encapsulated my state of mind during my mental breakdown. Everything was calm in a state of perfect balance until all of a sudden everything became a scene of total disarray. I have said that one of the reasons I engaged into renegade travels is for me to be able to tame whatever darkness resides inside my head. I have to admit, just this time though, that travel did not do the trick. Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, in his antagonistic take on travel, became relatable to some extent.

If I imagine, I see. What more do I do when I travel? Only extreme poverty of the imagination justifies having to travel to feel.

[…]

[…] The end of the world, like the beginning, is in fact our concept of the world. It is in us that the scenery is scenic. If I imagine it, I create it; if I create it, it exists; if it exists, then I see it like any other scenery. So why travel? In Madrid, Berlin, Persia, China, and at the North or South Pole, where would I be but in myself, and in my particular type of sensations?

Life is what we make of it. Travel is the traveller. What we see isn’t what we see but what we are.

Fernando Pessoa

Life is what we make of it. Travel is the traveller. What we see isn’t what we see but what we are.

That hit hard, and while true, I still beg to disagree with Pessoa for the most part. I will still travel, even if at times, that would mean just being with my wretched self since as how Emerson would put it, my giant goes with me wherever I go.

I travel not because I suffer from an extreme poverty of the imagination. In fact, I have an imagination so vastly rich that it transcends sensible reality. Traveling is that one thing that keeps me grounded on reality where my mind would otherwise fail.