why we do what we do.

I notice, it's almost become a pattern. Whenever we send the kid to my parent's, Keith and I would nurse our misery with books. Last night was no difference. Manila has again asked our nanny to come to her arms. For the nth time, my love-hate relationship with Manila was reborn. I hate you, Manila.

Rooftops.
(Kodak ProImage 100 and Minolta srt-101, 58mm)

We don't know anything better than to nurse our heartbreaks and the missed feelings with trips to bookstores. I remember leaving a then 33-month old kid to Keith for a conference in a lonely, sugarcane-farming, laid-back, rustic city. I ended up hoarding the architecture books in the only mall (and amazingly with a bookstore) of that place. It didn't surprise me when he asked to come by bookstore while i was preparing to leave the office just as the dusk settled. He wanted to see if the book Transparent Plastics was still available. He was set on buying it, expensive as it is (to our second-hand book standard). As the locks latched, he wondered aloud if the kid and his grandparents have reached home.

we bought the book.

and had dinner at a local pizza shop.

since we were in no hurry to go home, "We should take a few shots of General Luna at night," Keith suggested, excited. Exciting.

empty skywalk.
(Kodak ProImage 100 and Minolta srt-101, 58mm)

and so, the General Luna walkathon stretched to Forbes Bridge. Forbes Bridge stretched to Luna St., near the St. Clement's church because Keith wanted to shoot an architect's house. Then St. Clement's stretched all the way to West Visayas State University, and i so badly wanted to pee, so we decided to drop by McDonald's so I could use the toilet and because i am a good girl, I bought drinks in exchange for toilet use. Slurping the coke float, we agreed towalk the rest of the way home since we are already in Jaro (as McDonald's lies near the district boundary of Lapaz and Jaro).

"In our usual pace, I'm estimating about 30 minutes walk," Keith said. And slurped the rest of the choco sundae and vanilla ice cream floating in P20.00 worth of ice and watery coke.

And he was almost right. in more or less 30 minutes, minus the pauses to take pictures, we reached our house. He finished his roll of 36 frames in less than 24 hours. we made plans to have them processed the next day, but where to? We agreed on the friendly service of Charms (along Iznart Street), and the 36 shots Kodak ProImage 100 free films.

"But we will have everything printed."
"Everything, including underexposed ones?" I asked.
"Including underexposed ones."
"Even if they're all black?"
"Even if they're all black," he nodded.

Skywalk near DOT, Iloilo City
(Kodak ProImage, minolt srt-101, 58mm)

The walk was energizing.


------

My father shakes his head and laughs at us. The way he shook his head and mocked me when I told him i wanted a degree in Arts. Film is a waste of money, and you will never get rich that way. All photographers now have converted to digital, and then wedding photography. that's the way to do it, he says.

I will never do wedding photography because weddings are against my religion.

Cinema Exmundo.
(Kodak ProImage 100, minolta srt 101, 58mm)

------

"She drifts from one job to another. That's what she always does," an overheard description of me. But I am a Sagittarius and you're a bored coward. Big difference.

Lozano Hall, University of the Philippines Visayas
(Kodak ProImage 100, minolta srt-101, 58mm)

------

MY armpits sweat inside the humid air of Charms. The developing lady told me i will get 1 free roll of Kodak ProImage for every roll of film i send for processing. Kodak ProImage has been phased out. The free rolls they are giving me will expire in 2012. 2013 will be the year to shoot expired films, then.

Demolition near Jaro Plaza
(Kodak ProImage 100 and Minolta srt-101, 58mm)

We're thinking of building a dark room when we get a permanent place.

It's gonna be good. It will make us feel better. We're going to have a good time.

and then.

and then?

and then, that's it. You don't have to explain good time.






Fin.

me and my ninjas.

Apparently, this blog has turned into an update-on-me blog as i have lost my creative juices, and that really good film scanner remains to be inaccessible--meaning, just to darn expensive and unavailable in my part of the world.

what i am doing as of now is eating peanut butter on a soda cracker for dinner, with three architects inside a room on a climax of a bombastic renovation. these three architects are friends. they have not yet reached the bankability of starchitects, and i doubt they will ever do. one of them has a hole in his pants right where the edge of his front pocket ends and we told him it looks like his balls are dangling out, especially with the a mobile phone in it. One them is my husband who has rhinitis and can't stay too long inside a dusty construction site. he doesn't want to be a starchitect. although i think he dreams of getting a pritzker. he's hanging around because i asked him to and because the architect i contracted for this renovation is his friend.

(do not ask me why i didn't ask him to do it. i'm very particular about "ethics".)

there's a beautiful early night city scene outside and it's just too bad i didn't bring my camera today. in fact, none of us brought a camera today. and i am supposed to love picture-taking at night.

the room is gonna smell of turpentine, or paint thinner, or something really awfully synthetically chemical. tomorrow. so i won't be coming here tomorrow. and torn-pants-dangling-stuff architect said there's gonna be a lot of dust everywhere. tomorrow. "So it's better if you don't come here."

we just had beer with somebody i mistook for a butch that my husband said was actually male who dresses like a butch. "Is he married?" I asked. "No," husband replied. "He must be really gay," I said again. And husband laughed. I can be that accurate in describing scenes.

...

have to pack up. we're going home.

yawning ninja.

Architecture and Buwan ng Wika...and whatnots.

John Lautner, i know. Keith has mentioned his name before but Enric Miralles, no. Enric Miralles is supposed to be a spanish architect who's said to have designed one of the superb-looking cemeteries ever, and since this i DIDN'T know (him or any of his works), Keith was compelled to give me a 10-minute lecture the Igualada Cemetery (where he was also buried after he died of brain cancer at age 45) as example.


Lautner and Miralles came about because of this ilonggo house, which Keith said appears to have Lautner and Miralles elements on it, not to mention Le Corbusier's. (The house is really amazing, i hope you are able to access the link.)

Incidentally the mini-lecture led us to this picture of the Igualada cemetery detail. I hope you view the bigger version of the picture so you will get what i mean.

view it bigger here.

"Sobrang ganda! idol! 2004."

Had he wrote it in english, we wouldn't have known that a filipino has seen and has been to -- and actually loves -- this amazing architecture. and august happens to be Buwan ng Wika. So, happy buwan ng wika to all Filipinos out there!

-------

keith proceeded to tell me about gabion walls (can be seen in Igualada cemetery), which prompted us to discuss our concept for my granmother's tomb. he finally got what i mean when i said that i want grandma's tomb to look like it's encased/enveloped in stars at night. or like it's radiating light or floating among the stars.
something like that.

i wish i knew how to draft. or sketch things.


-------

My kid is almost 5 and he refuses to write his name still, more-so go to a "real" school. he's been enrolled to a play school for the last 3 years. I recently bought him a Grade 1 (for 1st grade) pad paper hoping to inspire him to put aside his dream of becoming a fine arts student majoring in Trucks and Heavy Equipment sketching, and start writing alphabets. It didn't go as well but so far, he has shown interest in writing the first letter of his name. 

Tonight, in the middle of Keith's mini-lecture, he prodded us to help him draw a MIXER (yes, the heavy truck, heavy equipment massive concrete mixer truck) until it was too much to handle. Keith convinces him to believe that anything he draws, no matter how they remotely resemble what he [the kid] has in mind, is ART and ART is always beautiful, even when ugly. Our household's definition of art is not based on Imelda Marcos' definition, anyway. For a while he believed us and worked on his own. And since we said that anything he CREATES  is art, he asked if he could borrow his tatay's dry seal. permission was granted. then he asked if it's art if he dry sealed his pad. permission was granted and we convinced him it is art. and he believed us. (and maybe smiled sheepily while dry sealing.)

"Nanay, is it art if i drew on our floor?"

To which his Tatay replied, "Of course it is art! but we will have trouble cleaning that." and hence, no permission was granted. 

kids. Really.

-----

List of films that i've tried so far:

1. ykl fujicolor 100 -- cheapest so far
2. kodak gold 100 (colored)
3. kodak colorplus 200 (colored) -- will see what difference it has with 100.
4. kodak cn400 (black and white) -- didn't get to see the results since the processing said all the frames were "EXPOSED". one of these days i will post a picture of the actual almost unprocessed-looking film roll that they returned to me.

2 of my films rolls came back with most of the first half of the roll underexposed. i'm still trying to see if it's a camera problem, a film or a technique problem. And also because, processing people and printing centers ALWAYS assume that an underexposed frame = bad photograph. one processing center decided to throw the negatives of the underexposed frames to the can. luckily i was able to ask them in time for the developing lady to retrieve them before they got covered in more trash. Again, i amazed the developing lady by my interest in things that are not valuable and she gave me a fresh roll of kodak pro image 100 film. it's now in my fridge along with the 3 other kodak gold 100s that i keep as reserve. i am gradually adding to my number of film stocks because Keith has recently acquired his own film camera in the object of minolta x700.

i'm almost done with the kodak colorplus 200 roll. will post pictures soon.



---


end.

and again.

Yeah.

as you all know i've left the island. i'm all done with the rasta life and had gone back to being an urbanite.

i'm also now engage in a different project, which i apparently enjoy notice my lack of posts lately), though i  kinda miss the action that i get in things transport planning.

this week keith and i will start on our yoga sessions. i've decided to quit TRYING to return to running and do something else. i've had the 8 years to enjoy running, anyway and it is probably time to venture into something new, something that my body and my age would easily relate to. yeah, like yoga.

No, actually, i would love to return to running but i've been having health issues that i'm not sure would really agree with the demands of running. for one, i've had fainting spells after my "recent" runs (2 runs--months ago-- to be exact). the latest of the 2 was a lot worse than the first and i knew it was time to listen to what my body has been trying to tell me. getting a running partner is one option but the "runners" at home have different work schedule, and keith, who was once my running partner (yeah, like 6 years ago), cannot run anymore. he has a leg condition, a broken-and-re-attached-by-a-rod femur condition (if you care), that prohibits him from doing strenuous exercises like running. actually, it's not an issue of a broken bone but after coming out from that accident, his left leg became about half inch shorter than the right. you can just imagine what running would do to the joints of his uneven legs when he gets older.

so yoga, it is.

again, on sunday, keith and i will start our yoga session in the house cum office of this vegetarian organization that is located almost 2 blocks from our place. keith personally asked for this yoga session; i didn't talk him into it. and i am glad he "volunteered" to do it this time.

and the developing shop TOTALLY destroyed my 1 roll of 36 frames exposed black and white film (kodak bw cn400). one of these days i am going to make a list of all legit film developing shops in the city and rank them from best to worst. the worst so far is the KODAK SHOP right in the corner of iznart-yulo street. film processing takes more or less 8 hours and yeah, they totally destroyed my kodak black and white film. said it was EXPOSED. of course it was exposed! that's how you take pictures--you get your film exposed. when i asked why the film was returned WITHOUT the frame numbers the developer guy said: "it was our first time to develop a black and white film."

Dang.

and you HAVE to work in a film developing shop.

(that answers the lack of photo posts lately--if ever you wondered.)

Mother Studies (# 0.1): Freedom

and what it truly means.

I contemplated on not going to college because I wanted to be free. At 16, I wanted to get a job so I can leave the house and live away from the noise, the rules, the endless criticisms and guilt of being a dependent in my parent’s household. My teenage confusion and my parents’ conventional, small town ideas did not really mix well.

But I didn’t and had thoughts of suicide. For peace of mind.

Then I had a kid and got married, got myself a job that pays the rent and I started, though gradually, embracing the thought of actually leading my own life. I’ve always thought that money—a stable flow of money—is all that it takes to get a life.

I’ve got a place that I do not have the right to anything. I cannot even decide who should live in it. Or what my mother should or should not put in it. my mother turns it into a warehouse and I am not supposed to complain about how her garbage takes up so much living space and how it encourages the rats and cockroach to breed twice as much as they ordinarily would, because that would make me a very difficult, unsupportive daughter. And having to live with my mother’s garbage is not even enough to repay all the money she spent on me. In a Filipino family, only a daughter’s life can pay for all the hardships her parents went through raising her. I never knew how true it was until this time. There are days when I feel it’s too late. I’m done. I’ll forever be my mother’s slave.

Buying a house of my own is one possible option I was given, but it came with a condition that the house must be big enough to accommodate my mother, my father, my unmarried siblings and my mother’s garbage. And my own family. Or I can just tell my kid and my husband to get a tent and camp at the garage. It would be a decade more before I could afford something spacious enough to fit all those. Because if I get anything less I become an ungrateful daughter who prefer to abandon her parents and siblings in need. Honestly, a nagging, screaming mother is the last thing anybody in the world wants.

And because as family, my mother said, we have to stick together until death.

What if my husband’s parents demand the same? What do i do? Cut myself in half? Lengthwise or transverse-wise? I wonder.

I’ve got a son I can’t even help plan a future on. HELP PLAN, take note, NOT DECIDE. I think it is the saddest and most tragic thing an old parent could do to a daughter with a family of her own—decide on his/her grandkid’s future on his/her own. Or concluding on her/his own that she/he has a better way of raising her/his grandkid. It is even more tragic if the grandparent was treated the same way by her/his own mother or in-laws years before.

I guess history really does love to repeat itself. It’s like it has a default factory defect. Whatever factory produces this history repeater should start closing down, otherwise it will just repeat one mistake after another. Imagine having a history gattling gun. Could you?

I planned on ending this family tradition in my time and give my kid the freedom that he deserves because I DO NOT OWN HIM. and so should ALL parents to their kid.

But how could I give? I do not even have it.