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Dear Bob,

In 1999, I bought a 1959 medium format Rolleiflex camera, one of those old boxy cameras you hold waist level and peer through the viewfinder by lifting the lid on top. It was in a very poor condition and the results were very unpredictable. The photographs challenged every rule on what a “good” photograph should be. Light leaked and images were exposed. I had no control at all. The camera was stubborn and defiant. Where I wanted it to focus it blurred and vice versa. Because of this, I fell in love with the camera. Whenever I get hold of the contact prints, they never fail to surprise me. That year I took hundreds of photographs with that camera. I took it with me wherever I went. It traveled from my bedroom to the highlands of Thailand and crossed seas all over Asia all the way to North America. And then it happened. The following year, I fell in love and almost died of heartbreak. And strangely enough, around that time, the camera fell apart too. The last photos I took recorded no image at all. I filed all the photos in a box and stopped taking pictures.

It took two years for my heart to heal which included six months of therapy. And then last July you emailed your poem “Way of Singing” for us to read:

Of course, life doesn’t work that way
At least not all of it,
But some moments do
And if you line them up next to each other
And take a picture of that

…

So that’s what I’ve been doing
Lining these pictures, these melodies up
Just for myself, I have to admit.
Pasting them up on the wall
At the back, the front of my mind
So I might remember,
Even though it was time to settle down
And in most of the cabins there is only candlelight,
Everything.

After reading that poem, I finally mustered the courage to take my old photos out of the box and lined them up. One of the exercises Patricia Hampl suggested in our creative nonfiction class at NYU was to write a story about photographs and I decided to do just that. Suddenly I was confronted with a problem. Where do I start? The photos had no dates and the images weren’t very helpful. It was a mysterious collection of unrelated photos: a passing train, rain dripping on a hand, a crevice, a shadow…

When I met Patricia Hampl in New York I told her about the work I have done to document my family history. I told her about my old wooden trunk full of six generations of collected letters, birth and death certificates, stories and anecdotes, research files and clippings. I also told her that I was very tired. She saw despair and asked me to decide between genealogy and art. Suddenly everything she told us about memory and imagination fell into proper perspective: how memoir is more a story of an evolving consciousness than an experience recollected, how this is done through the imaginative act of identifying emblems in our lives and finding a thematic design. And that because of this, maybe a more appropriate term for our genre is creative non-poetry than creative non-fiction because it really is closer to the former than the latter.

One of our exercises with Patricia Hampl is to write in ten minutes the story of our life from the moment we were born to the present. The most important thing I learned from that exercise is not only to ask why I remembered clearly some incidents and totally forgot others but how those that are only half-remembered or are obscured by time told a more interesting story. I shuffled the photos before me and let the images float. They fell into place and gently told their story.

When I started working on your “twenty things that happened to you yesterday” assignment, I initially wrote and emailed you entire paragraphs for each item that read more like a journal or a blog entry. And then I reviewed your instructions again and learned that you actually wanted us to write short lines of flat sentences. I trimmed my list and emailed the revision to you. What surprised me was how the unfinished state of each line liberated the words or the language from the tedium of chronology and crept its way into the realm of poetry. Much in the same way that my photos were half-focused and my memories were only half-remembered, they all told a better story and maybe through an act of grace, offer an epiphany in the end.

In a widely promoted special, National Geographic broadcasted live the opening of a secret chamber inside the Giza pyramid in Egypt, sealed for 4,500 years. A robotic camera crawled its way through a 170 feet narrow shaft, its progress intercutting with interviews, archaeological reenactments and speculations on what was behind the door. Treasures? Bones? Writings? Finally the robotic camera reached the door and drilled a hole. They waited till the last few minutes of the show before the robotic camera with a bulb attached to it poked through the hole and finally revealed what was inside. I sighed with disappointment. It was empty.

Then suddenly the camera caught the stunning last shot. Behind that tiny empty space was another door.


All the best,

Wilfredo


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AKO AT ANG KAMERA KO

Katorse ako nang bumaliktad ang mundo ko at una akong kumapit sa kamera. Nahiwalay ako sa pamilya ko at hindi ko na alam kung kaibigan ko pa rin ang mga dati kong kaibigan. Isang araw, tinopak ako. Ginastos ko ang pinadalang pera sa akin ni Daddy at bumili ako ng Instamatic na kamera at sangkatutak na 110 film.

Kinunan ko ng retrato lahat-lahat: dingding, kanal, ulan; pati mga classmates ko -- iyong mga gago, iyong mga maarte at iyong mga tahimik. Isang buong taon yon. Naubos pera ko. 1982 noon. Minsan bumibili pa ako ng disposable flash na nakapack sa foil na parang isang banig ng matatabang pills o dentyne. Tatlong araw akong atat na atat naghihintay bago madevelop ang mga pictures sa studio ni Aling Violy.

Wala akong naitabi ni isa sa mga kuha ko. Ni hindi ko na rin matandaan kung paanong nawala iyong kamera.

Akala ko noon kamera ang magliligtas sa akin sa lungkot. Baka sakali, sabi ko noon, magkaroon ako ng maraming kaibigan. Sikat kasi, di ba? Hindi rin pala. Katulad ng lahat, iniwan ko rin ang mundong iyon. Merong kaunting nakaaway at mas kaunting naging totoong kaibigan. Ito iyong mga katotohanan na hindi mo masisipat sa kamera pag bata ka pa.

Malayo-layo na rin ang narating ko sa mga biyahe ko. Nakailang kamera na rin ako mula noon. Isa sa mga paborito ko iyong nabili ko noong wala na ako sa Pilipinas. Naadik ako sa isang lumang 1959 Rolleiflex. Sa 120 film naman naubos ang pera ko.

Kakatuwa kasi iyong bulok na Rollei ko. Di mo alam kung paanong lalabas mga kuha. Ang hirap i-focus. Parang palaging nag-aaway ang anino at liwanag. Walang tabla. Minsan naman ginugulat ako ng mga kulay o sobrang linaw.

1999 noon. Ilang bansa rin ang narating namin. Halos dalawang taon din ang pinagsamahan. Marami siyang tinuro. Tinuruan niya uli akong maging bata; na hindi ko pala puwedeng palaging idikta kung ano ang gusto kong makita sa lente; na may mga panahon palang kailangang hayaan mong gulatin ka na lang ng buhay.

Nagpaalam ako sa Rollei ko pagkatapos ng dalawang taon. Isang araw, sa photo lab, binigay sa akin ang mga contact prints. Puro itim lahat. Iyong iba naman puro puti. Wala na akong makita. Para nga siyang nakiramay sa akin noon. Iyon din kasi iyong panahon na hiniling ko sa Diyos na sana may makilala ako na mamahalin ko at magmamahal sa akin ng buong-buo -- kahit sandali lang. E alam mo naman ang Diyos, sobrang bait. Pati iyong “kahit sandali lang” tinupad. Kainis. Tinabi ko lahat ng mga kuha ko, isang box ng mga 5 x 5 hanggang sa 12 x 12 prints.

I stopped taking pictures. Nagsulat na lang ako ng nagsulat ng mga kuwento ng mga sumunod na taon.

A few years later, may narinig akong personal na payo sa Amerika, mula sa isang author na hinahangaan at nababasa ko lang noong araw. Ang pinakamagandang exercise daw in writing a story, sabi niya sa akin, is to take a picture and write about that photo, to describe it in details, to find what had escaped you when you first looked at it, and examine what it means to you.

Pagkatapos ng ilang taon, napilitan akong bisitahin ulit iyong mga kuha ko sa Rollei. Ngek, sabi ko, paano ito? Hindi ko maintindihan ang mga kuha. Hindi ko matandaan kung saan. Walang mga date. Kalahati lang ang mukha. Ulan ba ito na pumapatak? Riles ba ito ng tren o daliri ko?

Buti na lang may kaibigan akong sumulat ng isang tula at pinadala sa akin. Sabi niya sa tula, idikit ko daw sa dingding ang mga retrato, ihilera ko daw. Hayaan ko daw na magkuwento sa akin. Siguro ang ibig niyang sabihin, hindi kinukumpleto ng Diyos ang buhay dahil gusto niya tayong matutong magkaroon ng koneksyon sa isa’t isa.

Pinakamahirap kalimutan sa Flickr iyong may matisod kang isang photographer, amateur man o professional. At sa dinami-dami ng pictures niya na tadtad ng mga stars at comments, ay may makikita kang katangi-tanging isa, na walang nakapansin -- pero nakakagulat. Dahil habang tinitingnan mo, parang ikaw ang kinakausap. Tapos magko-comment ka kung bakit. Tapos sasagot sa iyo iyong photographer at sasabihin niya, alam mo paborito ko ito, walang nakapansin, ikaw lang. That happens very rarely, and when it does, you get the most wonderful reply to your comments.

One replied to me, somebody I did not even know personaly, who commented back, "You’ve seen what others failed to see and because of that you are my most favorite human being in this earth." Nothing can beat that moment. Not even interestingness.

Although minsan naiiisip ko baka ginagago lang ako. Ewan ko. Pero itong susunod at huling kuwento ko totoo.

Bago ako sumali sa Flickr, nagkaroon ako ng pagkakataon na magbiyahe ng matagal, na pumunta kahit saan ko gustong pumunta. Dinalaw ko uli ang mga kaklase ko noong high school, mula Pilipinas hanggang Amerika. Pagkatapos pagkuwentuhan ang nakalipas at mga nangyari na sa buhay namin mula noon, lahat sila may gagawin sa huli. Pare-pareho iyan. Mula Nueva Ecija hanggang New York, mula Baguio hanggang Illinois, mula Manila hanggang California, lahat sila, walang paltos, iisa ang gagawin bago ako magpaalam.

Kukunin nila ang mga lumang photo album nila. Tapos ipapakita nila sa akin iyong mga lumang pictures namin noong high school. At sa dinami-dami ng mga kuha nila, mayroong isa o dalawang maliligaw. Tapos tatanungin nila ako, naaalala mo Willi? Kuha mo sa akin yan.

Parang di ako makahinga nang makita ko uli ang mga retrato ko. Twenty-five years. Ilang taon ako noon? Fourteen. ilang taon na ako ngayon? Thirty-eight. Dang. Twenty-five years before I got to see those pictures again!

Huminga na lang ako ng malalim tapos sabi ko, oo, naaalala ko yan. Kuha sa unang camera ko. Kodak. Metallic gold. Palapad. Mahaba lang ng kaunti sa kaha ng sigarilyo. Tapos bago ko pindutin ang shutter, kailangang ikasa ko pa na parang baril at hahaba iyong case. Kaya bago ko marinig iyong click, may maririnig muna akong isang tunog. Iyon bang parang kuwan, parang ako ang inaasinta at sinisipat, hanggang hindi ko na makayanan at parang sasabog na ang dibdib ko...