Secret Garden

 

Malagos

I traveled all the way to the forest just to try my camera before it finally conks out and say goodbye to me. But I brought the wrong lens so when nature revealed its astounding beauty to me, I was stupefied. 

I was only able to capture it in parts and not the breadth and depth of its grandeur. Also, I was too busy worrying about the exposure that I simply, simply failed--

So, here I was, trying very hard to be a photographer, when nature was just saying, "Hi, how are you, why are you so worked up, my dear?"

 

 

Bust of Brutus

Shshsh! I know it's not perfect but - maybe almost! Besides, the young artist who is my Art Teacher already moved me to the next (and the more difficult) level; enlarging by mere approximation. Which means, you only have to look at the subject and draw it without any aid of a ruler or any tool for measurement. You are completely on your own!

But let me talk about Brutus. "Is that the guy who killed Caesar?!" Ja asked as soon as I got home and opened the new plate. "Yes," I said, "The person of interest." 

The way the young artist who is my teacher had said to me who the guy was made me think that maybe, just maybe, he wasn't Brutus; he wasn't Brutus at all. When I looked at the guy in the picture, I began to wish he were a Roman General instead of a Senator. He seems to match the image of a military man. There was something about his patrician forehead or is that a patrician nose. Or the way he pursed his lips that hinted of a smile or cunning; his shrewd, calculating gaze, his thick neck, which suggested of a  physique that could be achieved only through long years of training and discipline. 

I stared at him for hours. Ja could not understand why I sat there for hours, staring. "What are you doing? Why can't you start your drawing yet? Why are you staring there for so long?" I began to understand why artists stare. Van Gogh spent days staring at the potato fields when he did the potato eaters.  Or was it the potato peelers? (Yes, I came from the kitchen. I use peelers a lot!) Basta! Potatoes! Look it up in that book of his letters.  

But I stared and stared almost to the core of the soul of Brutus (if this were really Brutus. I searched the images on the web and I only found a younger face, so, I'm still in doubt). I like the guy to be a Roman General but I also tried to think of him as a convicted criminal, a leader of an underground syndicate, a beggar, a pedophile. Just to see if the characters and the picture could match. 

My drawing failed to capture the ruthlessness of the man. Nor his brute strength. In my drawing, he is not a Roman General at all. He does not even look like a Roman. I'm not making any judgment. I'm just blabbering.

A view from the Tower

There's not much to see from here. This is a lonely place to be but I like the isolation and the total privacy.  You can type anything on your laptop without anyone peeping over your shoulders. You can write letters, diaries, journals without anyone asking, "What are you writing? A journal again? Why do you write a diary? What for?" As if diaries were filthy little secrets; and sounds like diaper. The voices in your head. You can turn off the TV set here, shut all the voices and sounds.  You can finally face yourself, ask what's bothering you. Explain why you did the things you did and those you did not do. 

No one would bother you here, except yourself. You'd be completely on your own. That's a scary thought, though; to be completely on your own.

 

Illumination

 

Clouds

 

Rediscovering pleasure

At the Galvez Atelier, we copy figures from the classics; and we do that using only a 2B pencil, a gum eraser, a pencil eraser, a stick that might be similar to what Michelangelo must have used during the Renaissance (we’d like to believe, though, it might not necessarily be true because this stick is made of bamboo, which might not be found in Florence); and a ruler. I haven't picked up a pencil in maybe, the last 40 years, and it felt so good to rediscover the purely sensual pleasure of the lines. Sometimes, the plates get too difficult or complicated and I feel I'm not up to it. But still, I return and return and return. Not until I saw the photos, I would never have known where I was when I started and where I am now, several plates later. 

Take a Time Out

 

Thank you, Lola Openg

I was trying to figure out where to get my baptismal certificate at the time when no one among the living could remember, or even had any knowledge, where I was baptised.  I cracked my mind trying to analyse the possibilities--by tracking down in my mind the movements of people I used to know. My Pa already passed away five years before, though, how I wish I could still ask him.  As soon as I asked Ma, she said, "Of course, you were baptised in Argao, where else would it be?"
Was it probable that I was baptised in the town where I grew up? Where to begin my search? Then, I remember this particular photo showing Lola Openg carrying an infant with those scandalously thick black hair.  I was quite sure that that infant was me because I had a memory of it being pointed to me by grownups. I used to be so embarrassed by the shocking black hair; though, right now that my hair is thinning, I've been wondering about that hair; how I failed to appreciate it while it was still around. I was always trying to hide it, tying it or having it straightened.  Lola Openg looked younger in the picture now, though, when I looked at it before, when I was much, much younger, Lola Openg was always old; way, way too old. 
I've always looked up to her as an extraordinary woman, not like any other woman I knew. She had strength and toughness of character. Her place in Balusong used to serve as a drop-off point of settlers arriving in Mindanao for the first time or those who had already settled here but were leaving back to their old Visayan hometowns. They always make it a point to sleep in Lola's house before they take their flights the following day; or before they go on a long bus trip to Nasipit or Cagayan de Oro where they would take the boat to Cebu. If Lola Openg had carried me that day I was baptised, then isn't that very likely that I was baptised in the city where she used to live? I still could not believe it. In my mind, I tried to scour the locations of churches closest to Lola's house and those closest to her heart. Everything pointed me to a particular cathedral. True enough, less than 15 minutes after I inquired, the venerable priest assistant handed me my records. Thank you so much, Lola Openg! 

I want you to stare

 

On the Road to Sister's heart

I travelled all the way from comfort zone to the strange land of Circe. No one could turn me into a pig, though. It was still January and the sun refused to appear in the horizon, so everything that I planned got canceled and set to an indefinite date in the future.

Trying very hard to heal

 I believe that a dip in seawater will heal me. You are not allowed to disagree.

Just a word of welcome

K asked, "So, what did you have for the New Year?" 

I knotted my brows because suddenly I can't  remember.  Take note that he said, "what did you have," not "what did you do" for the NY; which made me ask, "Is he being more materialistic?"

To focus on "having" and not on the "doing?" or perhaps, on the "feeling?" Is that what he got from communing more with his father's part of the family? Or, maybe, even with my other part of the family? Sometimes, I get the feeling that he is discarding me. 

"I can't remember because you were not there," I said as a way of explaining. He nodded. He belted another song. Belted. Finally, I found the word. He had learned how to belt a song without my knowing it. The first time that I heard him scaling the notes so well, I said, "Wow. Now I finally knew why it took you so long to finish Architecture." I paused, looking at his face for effect, before saying, "I think you went to another class, the videoke class." He laughed. "You're doing so well now that we can finally say we are a real Filipino family: we sing the videoke.  Ja and Sean - and perhaps JL, too - laughed. Ja took the microphone, which we brought all the way from home. The videoke staff had to agree when I said we had to bring our own microphone as part of our anti-COVID-19 measure. I simply needed to make sure because no one was certain yet whether or not we were already out of the pandemic. Ja filed at least five songs. He was having a concert. I was worried the rest of the company--all young people--might get bored.  Sean said it was okay.  Happy New Year!

 

I can't write

Ja went with me to the Island Garden City (where was the garden? where was the city?) because I was feeling really bad that day because of the news that I got from home that was no longer home for me.  We ended up taking a boat--because Ja had a mind of his own and his idea was totally different from my own. So, instead of getting relaxed just like the way you see it in the movies, I was so tense and grumpy because we had to go through the midday traffic, we had to line up at the tiny seven eleven to bring something to eat, we had to line up to get the tickets and when we did, we had to sandwich ourselves in between passengers in the fully-loaded boat. Then, I had to count how many life jackets there were above our heads because I always remember the stories that I edited about boats crossing over stormy waters.  There was nothing stormy about the sea, though. The storm was right inside me.

 

Cup Sawi

 

Energy landscape

Solar PV panels mounted on the rooftops of Ateneo de Davao University are changing the Davao city landscape and hopefully, the energy future of Mindanao.

 

Mirrors

Almost a decade after they installed the first solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on the rooftops of the university buildings, engineers at the Ateneo de Davao University explore tapping another power from the sun: heat captured in this parabolic dish of the concentrated solar thermal power facility in Bangkal campus. Unlike PV cell that converts light into electricity, CSP uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight into its receiver to produce heat--which is then used to spin a turbine or power an engine to generate electricity. 

Harvesting the Sun

I was about to say, "Hey, do you have the feet of a butiki? Whatever happens to you will be my responsibility," but I knew he wouldn't listen, I knew how hard headed they all are, and I was thinking, not only of him but them, in general. I would only sound like a helpless schoolmarm, a subject of future conversations. And so, I restrained myself; I just stared and stayed there, taking photos.

Sikwate and Puto Maya

Two nights without getting a wink of sleep and I lapsed into a trance.  I loved it. I was stripped of all animal emotions (except fear and panic, which was what brought me to that state in the first place), but all in all, I was capable only of that and the higher emotions of love and longing for God to come and rescue me from my deadlines.  On the second day, when I finally saw the glimpse of a read back before the break of dawn, in between the unholy hours before the cock's crowing, I dragged Ja to the Bankerohan public market, where we had a hearty breakfast of sikwate and puto maya. 

What my desk looked like in November