Sunday, August 31, 2014
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Loving the Shadows
Since I am still chasing an impossible deadline, just let me post this first to mark this time of my life, hoping that I can retrieve it later, and then, I can remember what I have gone through, and finally, I can write and talk about it with you, and that would be a chance for both of us to laugh again and be free.
Friday, August 22, 2014
Sunrise at Nova Tierra
Morning starts with Ja telling me if you really want to be a
photographer you have to get up and watch what the sun’s first rays are doing to
the mosque, get up, what are you doing there, lying down, you, spoiled lazy brat, just a few seconds
and this moment is gone; I said, what do you mean, just a few seconds, are you sure you're talking to me? I live here for a long time, don't you realize? I
have taken millions of pictures of that mosque and they all look the same, I’m tired, I’m still sleepy, I have memory loss, and I still have to finish my dream to retrieve my
memory, otherwise, I’ll feel lost and tired the whole day. As soon as I said this, I get
up anyway to take a picture of the Al-Ziddiq Mosque.
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Glimpse of Lake Lanao
After I chased Pam to the third or was it the fourth or the fifth (?) floor of the unfinished building, where, as soon as she saw me, she glared at me saying, what are you doing here--you and your fear of heights? Go down, go down, just leave me alone, I can easily get this thing done. I said it's not about my fear of heights that is the problem here, finish what you're doing as fast as you can and let's get out of here, ASAP! All the while I saw the man or whoever it was at the construction site looking at us, with loathing, looked Pam up and down with such a look of contempt, why does he look angry, full of hate, am I just imagining things? I smiled my best smile to the man, hoping to break the ice, hoping his hatred will somehow thaw, but sometimes my charm just wouldn't work and this was just one of those times.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
To the Man at the Marco
Back in October 2013, after I dismissed the class at a university at 9 pm, I crossed the street to cover a late night presscon in a hotel. On the third (or was it the fourth?) floor, we were all awaiting, ambush style, for the main source to appear when I looked up at a man looking down upon us from his hotel room window. This was my thoughts to the man: Whoever you are, I want your life. If it’s not for sale, just give it to me for free and I’ll make you happy, do you think I talk like a whore? Come on down here, where Mick and I am squatting, looking up from among these cameras and TV crews, all waiting in ambush to interview the mayor; Mick, contemplating of a probable life in Jakarta, while I am thinking of buying a camera, how can I buy one, I need one very badly, what are you thinking standing there, opening your door like that? Are you looking down upon us, wondering, what are those cameras, those tripods doing down there, swarming like bees, what are they, TV crews, reporters? Those people with notebooks, pens, recorders, readied; why are they squatting like that? How about the others, how long have they been standing there, waiting? What’s up? Who are those people inside the function room, where their eyes seemed to be fixed upon, who are they really, these people? So many of them, waiting, when it’s almost 11 pm, only hour before midnight, what are these people waiting? Aren’t they going to get some sleep?
Friday, July 25, 2014
Losing my yellow coin purse
Losing my yellow coin purse is really very difficult because it brings
back the devastating feeling of all my previous losses: those bagful of
clothes long, long ago, I left in a hotel after I heard the devastating
news about you; or that stupid brown wallet I lost inside the busy
Marawi public market in June while taking shots with Mick and
our Maranao friends; or how it felt to lose my beloved eyeglasses one
Tuesday in April while shuttling from a magazine office
to a TV network and finally, to a big newspaper compound at the heart of
Jakarta. Or, how it was to leave the newly-found Rachel Cusk's book on a
seat of a jeepney. They were not really worth millions, especially my
yellow coin purse,
which only had six one peso and two 25-centavo coins in it; but there’s
something about losing that makes you feel empty and dry. There’s
something
about the absence of the thing you lost that makes you look around to
notice the color you once took for granted but now makes you think of
the missing object with ache. Now I look at them and take notice: the
yellow tupperware
glass standing tall amid all the clutter on my table, the yellow
container thrown in a grass-covered lot next to
our house, the yellow cover of Ken Auletta’s book “Googled,” my yellow
underwear. I remember the day that Ja left and we ran out of cooking
oil. Is that the way relationships are measured? Through the sheer
number of yellow cooking oil containers bought from a convenience store,
used up and emptied? [This post has nothing to do with Pnoy's yellow,
which I vehemently detest!]
A Harried Visit to My Mother's Garden
I’m still in the midst of a very difficult
assignment but I can’t help posting this here. It’s always gratifying to find
out it was not my eye that was at fault, afterall; nor was it my poor
overworked point-and-shoot. Something else is the reason why I can't take the kind of shots I wanted to take for a long, long while.
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Birthday Wishes
I never used to celebrate
birthdays—but increasingly, these years, I get a certain wish, a strong, quiet but maddening desire,
to be with myself on this day; to do nothing, to spend time with myself (of course,
with dear ones); but primarily, to see the beloved hermit in the form of an Old
Man with the Lamp on this very day, very far away from society. But normally, this
wish doesn’t usually happen to me. In 2007, I remember spending this day right
in a newsroom in Cebu, trying out a copy-editing job with friends and strangers
who never had an inkling it was my birthday. I read a lone greeting from a friend (it was from Ca) in Davao when I sneaked peek on my FB—or was it my email? They never
knew I was in Cebu, spending the graveyard hours copy-editing. In 2008, I was
inside a dorm in Quezon city’s barangay Loyola Heights,
battling with thick theoretical readings for our Media Ethics class at the
Asian Center for Journalism (ACFJ) at the Ateneo the following day. I was already
very drowsy because it was already deep in the night so I told Prateesh, my
pretty Nepali roommate, I can’t take it anymore, I got to sleep and leave my
readings in the morning; but Prateehba was so insistent that I should not
sleep. “No, no!" she said. "Do your readings now. You won’t be able to wake up in
the morning.” “I can wake up,” I said, confidently. “My
body has an inner clock that’s working perfectly.” Prateesh insisted that I
should not sleep so, I read a few more pages for a while and only went as far
as Herbert Marshall Mc Luhan and never got to John Rawls’ Theory of Justice,
which was my report the following day (how I figured out John Rawls’ theory of
justice the following day without reading him is another story) but on this
night of my birthday, I simply could not take all those readings anymore, I was
already very drowsy as I declared to Prateesh, “I’m not going to brush my teeth
tonight because it’s my birthday.” I can still see the shock and amusement on her face. She laughed so hard that she totally gave up making me read the rest of our readings. It was Bryant who discovered the following
day it was really my birthday (I think I had forgotten it) and he rushed to
join us with the Indonesian gang for some simple fun at the mall. The following years, my wish to be alone on
my birthday remains a wish that has never been completely fulfilled and
satisfied; and this year, this month, I’m afraid I’m going to spend my day
exploring a Unesco mountain. I only wish
I get to see the hermit. It will make up for everything.
Friday, July 11, 2014
Just a Glimpse of Iligan
We climbed up the top floor of the other building (what do you expect if you're with an excited bunch of photojournalists?) Pam, whose friend showed us the way, was always willing to climb anything; she's the type who won't think twice of climbing the highest tree in a jungle just to get the vantage point of a photograph, any photograph; as she did when she climbed the unfinished building inside the MSU campus to take a perspective shot of Lake Lanao. Here, we took what Ja and Sean would refer to as the sniper's view of the Iligan City Hall; even as I was trying to suppress my inherent fear of heights as we inched closer and closer to the edge.
Sunday, July 06, 2014
Anatomy of Pablo
I was trying to organize my files when I came upon the photographs I've taken in one of the series of stories I covered in the aftermath of the typhoon Pablo. The photographs showed me something that I did not see at the time I was covering the stories. Years after the killer typhoon that ravaged Mindanao towards the tail-end of 2012, I feel the need to look back and bravely take account of what I did and what I failed to do in those stories.
Friday, July 04, 2014
Another View from Our Office Window
Thursday, July 03, 2014
Jeepney seen from a Jeepney
I know that if I show this picture to Ja, he would stare at it very briefly and then, swiftly, he would look away. Oftentimes, he'd let out a sigh. A long,long sigh. If I'd ask him, what's wrong? Isn't this picture cute? Ja would not even utter a word. He would just give me one long, sorrowful look, and then, he'd go back to his business. Ja is my photo-critic and I exactly know what he wants in a picture. He wants a picture that tells a story; the kind of pictures with people in them doing some actions; of course, I don't need to say that they should be well composed, the rule of thirds and all, you know, the kind that gets published in newspapers. But I don't know how to make myself want to take those pictures to please Ja. I only want to please myself.
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Learning to breathe
I said I have to run more often and delight at the stares of women at the pharmacy after I enter their air-conditioned premises, rivulets of sweat streaming down my face and neck, wetting my shirt. Do I really love to shock people? I should run round and round the park only to test how stubborn and how hard-headed I could get. If I give up that easy, I'd be a wimp; running would save me from being one. Just think of them men, who takes to speed and running to measure a person's worth. I should run. I should make it a point to run--or walk? If only to study character, in reality and fiction. Should I listen to people as they talk while they walk? Can eavesdropping be a kind of brainstorming? I should talk to myself. I should study my breath as I run, discover my own pace, listen to my body to avoid injuring a foot or a leg. Talk to my body, calmly and quietly, just like the way you talk to your soul. If you have one. Breathe.
Reading Maryanne Moll
In her blog, writer Maryanne Moll talks about the passing of her grandmother she fondly calls Bita, and then, I discover a lot more about Bita in her Palanca-winning story, "At Merienda" that I did not notice before, since I've only been a distance reader; though, for quite a time, I've been faithfully reading her blog, which I discovered years ago when she wrote something that really made me cry. I've been searching for what it was that she wrote--it must have been something about writing and the self, which used to be my biggest angst--but I could no longer find that early post that really introduced me to her. She had a way of deleting her posts sometimes, immediately after posting them (which, I understand, because I also do it a lot of times), but my all-time favorites are her posts on Lost Ground about her attempts to write in the Bikol language (again, folks, Bikol is not a dialect!); My Street, Myself, where she described a particular street in Manila where she lived for a while; and other really sensual kind of writing such as this.
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Where we stayed in Iligan
It did not feel like a mobile newsroom at all; with its spacious living room, complete with a cozy sofa, its kitchen we used as the function room, separated by a glass wall from the living room and the small corridor that led to our rooms. The whole thing almost felt like one huge summer vacation house; and even with the opening of classes in June, it was not really too difficult to believe that and we would have enjoyed the idea, except that our favorite editor was there with us, always reminding us of our schedules and the (impossible) deadlines to meet; and so, my intestines started to knot; and I bumped my head and body on the glass walls many times on my way to my room as I struggled, body and soul, to let the stories out.
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