honey, please take out the trash

(or my attempt at being trivial. because i'm thinking maybe truth, peace and love may really emanate from the trivial and we're just too hoighty-toighty to admit it)

i need new shoes. been walking around manila for days on end these past few weeks for a project and my (free) flood-resistant croc impostors are killing my feet. i miss my old ratty sneakers. they were so worn out and comfy i could even sleep in them should i pass out on the couch. problem was that one rainy day, water leaked into the right shoe through a hole beneath the sole which i had previously not known of. after that, i still used my beloved shoes despite the damage. however, because of this country's very unpredictable weather, i ended up walking through trinoma one day loudly squishing yucky water onto shop floors. not good. for posterity's sake, i wanted to keep the pair but decided to give it away after ondoy. i hope somebody finds comfort in it on a sunny day despite that little catch. goodbye comfy sneakers, you served me well. i sure hope i find a good replacement for you one of these days.

(photo by Sussanah Conway from Bath, UK)

Once More the Minister 2

It seems the real triumph of our age has been our ongoing movement
Away from harm – its many sources more than its pain; from dark alleys –
Its stealth more than its assassins; from descent – the anticipation of demise
More than the demise. Nature has been quick to compensate, now
Sends the wind to deliver its judgement. We now die without
Moving from our beds. The only remaining torture: our hearts
And our quiet ways of remembering. These we will always endure.
Notice, in an evening ripened by cold weather, when the clouds
Have moved elsewhere, and the sky, baring all of its ammunition,
Dazzling and infinite, has shot us down with unbearable longing,
Those of us with distance between our many loves
Cannot do anything as delicate as bend.

-E.J. Galang

this is a short photo story i did during the 5th PCP professional photojournalism workshop in august 2009. the posting is way long overdue.

i got word from kanawan that ate nerissa passed away two weeks ago. kuya ed is now left to raise five little children on his own. i'm taking the news very badly because i wonder if publishing this story earlier would have changed some things.

this is a grim reminder not to be self-indulgent as a storyteller. as a witness, i realize i have the moral obligation to tell some stories to as many people possible, the soonest time possible.

consistently inconsistent

nature vs. nurture, fatalism vs. determinism, temperament vs. behavior. which of these reign supreme in the daily grind of being?

i always believed that every child born into this world had a pre-set mixture of temperaments. people grew up in the same environment as part of the same family and turn out to be different from each other. in fact, you even notice this with babies, way before they are educated and influenced by other people. some babies are very cheerful and some are very quiet or serious or mischievous or shy.

as a person grows older, he gains the capacity to think for himself and choose whom he will be. in choosing, he either accepts what he is used to being or change the things he wants to be different about himself. i wonder: how much of me stays true to my natural temperament and how much of me is my own self-engineering? which is predominant now, the me i was born into or the me i want to become? should there even be a struggle for self-improvement (based on personal standards) or is it unnecessary and arduous and lonely and futile?

i try keep an open mind and sometimes, just for kicks, i look into divination and astrology just to see how they coincide with my personality as i perceive it. it is interesting to note that among the many quizes and numerology calculations i've been taking, the results consistently show major inconsistencies.

i link my numerology life path reading and my maya-aztec reading as they sum up all the others i've encountered. as you see, these are quite contradictory descriptions.

if i summarize these cosmic mumbo-jumbo and my own take on myself, i can see dichotomies that exist in my personality (and yes, i did a table HAHA):

the right side of the table more aptly describes me as a kid. i remember that i was a very very motivated and focused as a student. study time is study time, tv time is tv time and i rarely watched tv on weekdays. up to early high school, if i wanted to perfect an exam, i would. i would get 100/100 on quarterly tests, sometimes 99/100 when i am a bit careless with my spelling. i was never the problem child, never got called to the principal's office except for when my brother paul did something unthinkable for the nth time. when paul was in grade 2, the principal called me because he pushed a classmate against a wall and the poor kid got knocked up pretty badly into a protruding head of a nail. you could imagine my horror upon seeing blood all on the kid's head and on my brother's shirt as well... but i digress. the point is, i was a very sensible child with up to par abilities and generally good intentions.

i don't exactly know what happened but during high school i began to relax. i must have figured out i was missing out on a lot of things so i tried to rebel from myself a little. i liked it. i no longer felt the need to follow my schedules. i gave in to my whims and compulsions. in college, i became the slacker underachiever B student who spent too much time at the orgroom tambayan. I was one whom friends could call up in the middle of the night to eat dimusm and siopao at red panda, watch the last full show at sta. lucia (no gateway yet) or hang out at shell select with. life was great!

however, all of my previous self was not lost. my friends complained that i knew all things about them but they knew nothing of my "secrets". up to now, they still complain. then, i did not see the need to express myself especially if no one asked. i am not one to impose myself on others. my world was written in a journal with a padlock! now it's slightly different. i feel an incessant need to create, to express not so much the details of my daily existence (oh hell, no. especially not with strangers and mere acquiantances) but the underlying patterns of human behavior and social, moral, emotional, intellectual structural gridlocks that i am able to observe and slightly make sense of, just to get them off my chest. sometimes, a stupid line from a song shoots a ray of sunlight into my addled brain and i'd want to jump, shout out and share the nonsense because at that time i'd just feel like doing so. sometimes i do, sometimes my old self takes over and i don't.

there's not a clean break between my right-table self and my left-table self. and i am getting a bit stressed about the contradictions. which do i choose?

i choose the right side and i feel i've slipped back to where i am no longer supposed to be. i choose the left side and i do so at productivity's cost.

being more of my previous self is okay. it's all right -- predictable, nice, steady. but i can never go back. it won't work. being more of my "life path" self is crazy. when i'm happy, i'm really happy and when i'm in the dumps, it's really really mucky down there. extreme moods take me and when they do, i am at their mercy. there's so much internal work and pep-talking to do in order to function well in society.

should i compromise and strike out a balance? if i do would that mean i'm not really being my true self? or does being my true self simply mean being at ease with the mixture of my nature and my self-engineering and realizing that it's fultile to adamantly cling to just either. how do i reconcile these things??? are they even reconcile-able? should being true to oneself even be the question? how important is the self?

wow. i began to write these things looking forward to some kind of conclusion. but it seems that's hard to come by. i give up... for now. o dear faithful readers (yes, the three of you) any thoughts? text me, email me, pick me up for 3 rounds of beer. it doesn't matter.

mental exercises of the sleepless kind: normalcy

more than a week after the great flood, things are receding into their proper places. after one full tiring week of volunteer relief work, i am again in front of the laptop trying to do some paperwork due this week. in the background i hear my flatmate taking a shower, getting ready for a usual working day. my neighbor is cooking breakfast. normal?

what is normal? normal is a regular job, picket fence, rosy perfect skin, iced tea, pretty dresses and a sunny day. it is three kids, maybe four, a doting husband, a two-storey house in a middle-class subdivision. it's an xuv, a tv room, a musical instrument, a hamper half-full of dirty laundry, a dog, a lawn and a backyard. okay, so that's late 30's normal. in your 20's, normal is a clean space, gainful employment, nights out with friends at posh restaurants, movies, out-of-town triple or quadruple dating, photos at facebook showing how happy you are with your significant other--cheek to cheek, all smiles...normal.

when i was younger, i thought i was normal and i didn't like it. i wished i were more un-normal. i think i wished on the right star. now i wonder if there were a star to unmake previous wishes. i think i finally need nice, predictable, steady and quiet. i promise, i won't get restless...you think?

nah, i take it back. who am i kidding? it won't work. not when right this very moment you know there is a ten-wheeler relief truck bound for tuguegarao. not when you know thousands of families by the pasig river can't rebuild their ravaged houses and are in danger of being relocated to sub-standard resettlement sites against their will. not when there is still no promising candidate for the presidential elections. and then you're back on the streets choosing that over a simple nine-to-five and nice skin.

no amount of pining for normal will un-un-normalize things.

last week in pictures
(dahil tamad na ako magkwento)

the week was going quite well...

unicef process documentation = raket moolah

presented my 3 case studies at the misereor regional workshop. finally!

tondo scan: with paco, covered 20% of it (by foot!) for the ipc manila heritage project in just one day. plus we still had time for...

window shopping for antiques

durian birthday fest (haberday paco!)

garage sale shopping: book (P10), Asin CD (30), italian leather bag (35) = P75. yehey!

cynthia alexander was supposed to be the beginning of my quiet and peaceful weekend. i slept like a log after the gig. but then majen woke me up for this:

i guess it wouldn't be a quiet and peaceful weekend afterall (more ondoy pics here).

--> who's afraid to get a little dirty? i know i'm not. then let's. <--

another one for my rustic imaginings

photo by http://www.saipua.blogspot.com/

it's official. the second biggest letdown of my year just came in via email. give me more of this and i'll start getting used to it. good things and bad things come in threes. i have a strong strong feeling that major letdown #3 is gonna make itself known in december. please, god, enough of 2009 already! if i could just sleep through this last quarter i would.

just a thought

it just occured to me that because of my interest in so many things (which i sometimes abhor as it somehow points towards my lack of focus on anything), i have gotten to know so many young ,talented, competent and passionate people in fields such as the social sciences, literature, film, visual arts, architecture, photography, the law, the hard sciences and journalism who work for far more larger causes than themselves. their enthusiasm take you. beneath the usual inconsequential banter and pretending to be pretentious are intense shining eyes full of promise. and they affect you until your own eyes gloss over. it's intense. it's inebriating.

these are the emerging creme de la creme of this country. these are the people who can make things happen. it is very interesting, therefore, to wonder how they will end up in the future, how they will inevitably cross paths, how they will collaborate or perhaps fight each other to the bitter end because of differing opinions. will all of these bright minds eventually do something significant to change how we collectively perceive and do things or will their resolve be clouded by personal greed and ambition? will some be paralyzed by their mind's demons? or will they learn to channel their restless energies and control these for productivity's sake.

maybe some will just get robbed and mercilessly shot to death.

eros and the everyday

John Koethe
as when emotion too far exceeds its cause

Elizabeth Bishop

A field of unreflecting things
Time is passing by: inert,
Anonymous beyond recall, the deflected
Objects of a self-regarding gaze
Untouched by the anxieties of proximity or love.
I tried to find those passions in the sky,
In moments when the heart surveys itself
As if from above, and wonders at the
Sight of something so particular and small.
A day brings language and a hint of what it means,
Of some presence waiting in the wings
Beyond the stage, beyond the words that
Gathered in the night and stayed
And through whose grace I find, if not quite
What I wanted, then everything else:
The contentment of each morning's
Exercise in freedom, freedom like a wall
Enclosing my heart; the disjunctive thoughts
Gesturing at some half-imagined whole;
A continuity that on the surface feels like love.

What is this thing that feels at once so nebulous
And so complete, living from day to day
Unmindful of itself, oblivious of the future
And the past, hovering like a judgment
Above the future, the present, and the past,
Floating in the distance like the eyes of love?
Call it "experience"-- that term of art
For time in an inhuman world
Indifferent to desire, the history
Of one who one day wandered off from home
Along a road that led from here to here:
These sidewalks and these houses, city streets
Through fields and quiet streams, uncharted
Trails descending to a farmhouse in a glen and
Nothing in my heart or in the sky above my heart.
And then from somewhere in that wilderness inside
I hear the murmur of a low, transforming tone
That fills the field of sight with feeling,
And that makes of blind experience a kind of love.

Let me stay there for a while, while evening
Gathers in the sky and daylight lingers on the hills.
There's something in the air, something I can't quite see,
Hiding behind this stock of images, this language
Culled from all the poems I've ever loved.
I don't believe a word they say, a word I say,
But it isn't really a matter of belief:
As ordinary things make up the world,
So life is purchased with the common coin of feeling,
Feelings deferred, that flower for a day
And then retreat into the language. And later,
When the hours they'd filled are summoned by name,
It's as if they'd never been, as if that tangible
Release could never come to me again.
I came here for the view, and what is there to see?
The place is still a place in progress
And the days have the feeling of friction, of pages
Blank with anticipation, biding their time,
And ever approaching the chapter in the story
Where it ends, and my heart is waiting.

*repost from abo-sa-dila
*photo, my own.

I'm rediscovering Filipino folk songs and OPM ballads. I am surprised to find out that I work faster while listening to kundiman instrumentals. Right now, I'd take anything. I even got my mom to look for my old Joey Albert minus one cassette back home. Hihihi. I'm sure she still has her Basil Valdez tapes. She's a rabid fanatic.

This one's simply beautiful. Anyone who knows where I can get Susan Fernandez-Magno's records send me a message. Can't find them anywhere!

Mental Exercises of the Sleepless Kind: Photography and Change

27 August 2009
FSC Forest Complex
Subic, Zambales
2:15 a.m.

Since the dawn of civilization, storytelling has been used by man as a means to entertain, educate, instill moral values and record history in aid of cultural preservation. Stories were shared through song and dance, rudimentary drawings scratched into cave walls and even temporary media like sand, leaves and the trunks of living trees. Through technology, man learned to develop more permanent and portable forms of communicating stories by drawing or writing in cloth, textiles, glass, metal and paper. Innovations like the printing press and film photograph paved the way for communicating en masse. Information reached more people in shorter time.

In the advent of the digital age, the speed and ease by which knowledge is transmitted has grown tremendously. Now, stories have the ability to trespass all familial, geographic and cultural boundaries. A plague in an obscure and remote town in Central America, for example once reported by international news agencies, can send a group of Japanese scientists in a flurry to seek a cure for the disease. An amateur video coverage of an endangered species in Antartica being slaughtered by poachers uploaded through the internet may cause a worldwide outrage among concerned groups who would call for stricter policies and sanctions regarding the issue. On a more personal level, a feature story of a young man without any limbs but who manages to be mobile and teach high school in an effective manner can inspire thousands of people with even less debilitating disabilities to lead more proactive lives and be of use to their communities. Stories, when presented truthfully and effectively, especially on a large scale, do facilitate inner and outer change.

I am foremost a social development worker and social researcher by profession. My work with various local non-government organizations (NGOs) brings me to the field where large contentious issues play themselves out in a concrete level. So far my work has been fulfilling. This is the drill: International funder promises aid to a developing country through various NGOs. These local groups create social programs and projects proposals for the funder’s approval. The money is released and the NGOs implement the programs. Throughout this stage, NGO workers, me included, are exposed to the socio-economic, cultural and political challenges that the people in the communities face in the micro level. We are able to pit their stories against the wider landscape of governance and socio-economic, cultural and political trends and see possible points of intervention--whether to troubleshoot existing projects or policies or to create needed ones. We write volumes of reports that the funders need to determine whether to fund another series of projects or not. The cycle continues.

Notice that the glut information has a very limited audience. At best, reports are furnished to government agencies in order to help them do their jobs well. However, these information usually replete with gut-wrenching stories and proposed solutions are only read by the usual people—the NGOs and the funders themselves. It’s like preaching to the converted.

There has been little move to disseminate newfound learning in the field to the common people. This is unfortunate. Time and again, social development has emphasized the need for change to begin from the grassroots. But how can this when people themselves do not have a grasp their issues as part of a wider context? How can this be when they do not know that their issues are similar issues that affect other groups of people even from different locales as well? It is common knowledge that people are debilitated when they feel alone but are empowered when they band together because of shared problems, operative word: shared.

That information is taken from the common people but do not go back to them prevents an active and dynamic participation which can only be borne out of awareness. When the stakes are conveyed to them in a comprehensive and coherent manner, people don’t just wait for solutions to community problems. They are forced to come up with these instead. Only from a well-informed community can participatory and therefore more sustainable development be spurred. To illustrate, a mother who realizes that the stagnant water in her backyard is the kind that caused hundreds of deaths in a town far from her residence due to dengue fever, will clean up her yard and not wait any government program to address the potential problem. Perhaps, especially if she holds some power in her neighborhood, she will also engage others to a collective action that will ensure that no household in their area will tolerate the existence of stagnant water there.

In all this discussion, where does photography, particularly documentary photography factor in?

Knowledge and inspiration are ingredients for change. I doubt that the mother in the above example would have read the World Health Organization’s annual report. She may have read the story from a newspaper or heard it on the radio. The challenge to sow knowledge and inspiration, I believe, is to convert an amalgam of useful information into a popular medium that has the capacity for clear, coherent and concise storytelling. Documentary photography, aside from newspaper articles and radio sound bytes, is one powerful tool.

In various experiments conducted by scientists, it had been discovered that people learn more quickly and retain knowledge by the use of images. A simply truthful yet aesthetically arresting photo can provide knowledge and inspiration to more number of people than inches-thick of academic reading or radio talk show. A photo can move you, figuratively and literally. It is for this reason that I have been dabbling in various sorts of photography for a couple of years now. For me like writing, photography is a means to communicate knowledge and inspiration. But unlike writing, a photo is universal in that even an unschooled person can instantly recognize truths within just four angles. With photos, there is no language barrier. And in a world where problems can be shared by various groups of people from different lands at digital pace, it is imperative to communicate through universally recognizable means—the photograph—at least initially, in order to facilitate the rapid and collective seeking out of solutions.

Photography is not just showing everybody how beautiful the world is, although it is also that. Photography, when used to tell stories, can make more known to the wider public the problems, victories, best practices, workable solutions and possible points of cooperation as viewed by different stakeholders in society. It is also a means to impart knowledge and inspire. It is an effective tool for change.

my secret happy place

PCP Photojournalism Workshop

Aug 30, 2009

most ennobling birthday ever

***

Plus! Doug Savage made me my 3rd birthday cartoon in a row. I love it!