at the bottom of the stairs.

babies have no sense of time, just a sense of what they want, and always they want it now.

Gogol is no different. When he was younger, he would always wonder on the days i do not leave the house, and just play with him. He would wail every Monday morning, when i again start my work week.

I didn't have much pictures left from our childhood and with a borrowed camera (my father's) I would always snap photos of gogol at every moment possible, sometimes a million burst in a minute. But as he grew older and wanted more interaction, i realized that things like cameras, they get in the way. They break  moments of what could have been a seamless interaction between a performer and an eager audience. I stopped taking "candid" pictures of him, and started choosing only moments that i thought he would want to to remember when he gets older, and jaded about life.

This, my brother shot one weekend, at the house we are renting, weeks before he left school and left my parents' house, without them knowing it.

They are the only young boys in the family.

Negatives found.

january 7, 2012.

Airport: yesterday was a terrible flight mix up.

Today, just before leaving for Davao, I found the negatives I lost. It's the film roll that bears the last photographs of my grandmother.

A month after i took her portraits, she died, in my hometown, on a Friday morning, just before sunrise.

Back in our Town

Amazing, amazing band, Ivy.

(fan video can be accessed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUxSQdjACvE)

Back in our town

You were the only one who really knew me.

Laughing out loud.

We always knew you could see through me.

Everything is all right. Everything is all right.

Under the sun

Whispering foolish things, you could really hear me

You were the one

The only one, I would let near me

Everything is all right. Everything is all right.

Back in our town

You were the only one who ever loved me

I’ll let you down

I never felt you’d let go of me

We by the sun

Wondering slowly on the street together

Back in our town

Everything seems to last forever

Back in our town

You were the only one who ever loved me

And here I go

When nobody never ever knows


Everything is all right. Everything is all right. Everything is all right.

And here I go. When nobody knows.

And here I go. When nobody never ever knows.

Back in our town

You were the only one who really knew me.

Ivy (from the album: Apartment Life)

Features James Iha (Tinted Windows) on guitars and vocals. 

Quick, painless and easy.

The thing about growing up is that one learns to grow guts to face bigger life issues. The catch is, as one grows up the fears become more and more real. Once, when i was in grade school, i kept a expense log book (actually, it was just a school pad) where i account everything that my mother gave me, from the daily allowance to the writing pads. Although i never learned to love expense accounting and avoided it in my adult life, that school-pad-accounting helped me prioritized on my material needs and learned to save up for my wants (like P5.00 corndog for recess on fridays). I was haunted by a baseless idea that i was making our family poorer by just existing.

The demography and economics i dealt with in university provided bases for my fears.

I am now in the stage where my contemporaries are getting married, busy being stage parents, busy climbing up the ladder of success, and making long term plans. The only long term plan I know how to make is the one that makes use of people's tax money. I am in the stage where majority of my contemporaries have social security, health insurance and housing loans. I am supposed to have those kinds of things, too, but somehow i overlooked them, thinking that all those "preserving the culture" and saving the world researches were more important, even if they were barely enough to pay the rent. And this again, because the only plan I knew to make I cannot even use to fix my life.

It appears now that there is high probability i will die poor and homeless.

Last night, I struggled to sleep and woke up to a nightmare that I thought was real. In the dream, my kid and I were in a sort of festival and he somehow slipped from me, and I couldn't find him anymore. I searched and searched for him, I even sought help from the police but it seemed he just vanished and he's just nothing but a statistics. A boy of 5, missing.

In the jeepney, I thought of my death. My left lymph nodes are little swollen; I'd probably die from an ear cancer. I have not pooped for days. I'd have colon cancer by the time I am 35. My kid would end up collecting trash to buy food. The guilt is even more unbearable. My head hurts thinking about this.

Waway and his Che cap.

Waway drives people around in his red pedicab. He rents it from a pedicab operator for P35.00/day.

He was introduced by a landlord when we moved in to the compound. I was wary of him because he was so skinny, dark and he smelled. He looked like a pot-smoking hobo in pedicab. He still does. 

I took this picture a year ago for a personal project. He was very self-conscious when I asked to take his picture. My husband and I just got back from a morning appointment and we were in a hurry to get back home. It was a very hot, glaring day.

Before getting off the tricycle I asked my husband if it was appropriate for me to be taking Waway’s picture. We were a few meters away from the compound and I could see Waway lazing in his pedicad parked at the gate. He said I should take Waway’s picture. It may be the only picture I’d take of him. When we got off, there were no tenants around.

“’Way, I’d take your picture.”

“Now?” He straightened his body, surprised. 

“Yes, now.”

“Okay.”

He failed at faking confidence. 10 seconds it took to adjust my camera.

The midday sun was too bright and for split second i thought of cancelling it. 

If people without homes in first world countries live in their cars, Waway lives in his pedicab, or at least that’s what most people said about him. They said he was from Aklan. They said he came to Iloilo in the 90's. He doesn't bathe.  He wears the same set of clothes every single day, until they're not fit to be worn anymore. He smokes menthol cigarettes and never drives right after eating, also, when there is a Pacquiao fight. He never seems to get sick. He uses  a tattered cap to protect his head.

We have a handful of caps that the boys at home do not use. And clothes that Waway could use. But I don’t think he wants people to feel sorry for him.

One weekend afternoon, arriving from art class, I told him I already have a print of his photo. He just smiled and said, “Do I look handsome?”

“Of course, you do.”

And he went to pick up a hailing passenger.