When I was little, before I departed the sunny, Pacific chaos of our world for the chilly, Atlantic silence of the new world, we often had tinola for Sunday lunch at Lolo and Lola’s house, where I would spend weekends. In the early mornings, Lolo and I would stroll the barrio streets to buy fresh pandesal from the local bakery, me skipping along in mumbled song with the roosters, him punching the air with calisthenic fists, just as he had done with the American GIs during the war. In Pennsylvania, where he had followed us a year after we left, he would walk me to and from school, the two of us passing a bag of sticky, sour sampalok between us, spitting out the smooth, shiny seeds into our palms. He always wore his pristinely white Reeboks and sometimes his ten-gallon cowboy hat. I still remember my shame on the days he would arrive in that hat.
I am tired of design magazines and paint companies trying to sell me on dull “neutral” colors. They claim ”Beige Is Back,” that there is a historical elegance and calming effect to monochromatic off-whites. I don’t buy it. A minimalistic approach to color in modern buildings and interiors doesn’t relax me—it puts me to sleep. When I awake, I am angry. The historical notion that bleached Greco-Roman temples represent beauty is a myth. The ancients never rendered their structures, interiors, and ornament without color. Their architecture was vividly polychromatic.
The magic takes hold as soon as I step into All Hallows by the Tower churchyard. It’s gone midnight and at first I look right towards one of the City of London’s oldest churches. Then I turn left, with a coldness trickling down my spine as I stare deep into my own past.
The Moth of the title has only metaphorical association with nocturnal lepidoptera; it’s actually a small aeroplane, manufactured by de Havilland between the wars. The Mountain is a real mountain, the big one, Chomolungma, also known as Mount Everest. And in those days still unconquered. What – or rather who – links the two? The answer is Maurice Wilson.