THE DEER AS SYMBOL OF THE DUPAX THAT WAS

Why do I weep when my heart should feel no pain

Why do I sigh that my friends come not again

Grieving for forms now departed long ago

I hear their gentle voices calling Old Black Joe!

...

THOSE LINES, from Stephen Foster's classic parlor song "Old Black Joe", should give the clue to one of the reasons behind my sharing nostalgic stories of Dupax.

Yes, it is a longing for those days when, another song (this time "Try to Remember" by the Brothers Four) says, "grass was green and grain was yellow" and (still from one more song, "Greenfields") "there were green fields kissed by the sun" and "valleys where rivers used to run".

Oh well, I could go on and on with songs where "the mood is one of gentle melancholy, of sorrow without bitterness"... but let me now tell why I chose the picture of the two deer as signature photo for Dupax Stories.

To me, the deer thus depicted signify a number of things:

First, they tell history, particularly that Dupax (including both Sur and Norte) used to be rich in deer and other wildlife, including wild plants and thick forests where such animals lived.

Second, the deer's white color (though it may not have been intended to be that way when I shot the photo in June 2015) implies both ghosts and the prevalent color of tombs in the cemetery -- which means that there are no more deer where they used to be found, and what remains are just memories.

And third, the deer are male and female -- which should mean hope, hope that somehow somewhere someday in Dupax there would be such a couple of deer again that would give birth to young ones, until such lost glory of Dupax being a deer-abundant and forest-rich country would come back and make all of us happy again!