creatives and contradictions

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Musings on a Bataan Funeral: Why do we safeguard the dead?

It isn’t as if they would rise up and physically run towards the light. I asked this to my relatives and they told me it’s the final show of respect. Then, personally, the problem comes with the word “show”. Perhaps they never meant that the lost nights of sleep is a simple showmanship of the departed’s importance. It could probably just be my malicious and cynical mind asking why would you stay up tired, watching over someone that will not leave its place. Yes, it. For what remains is a body, an object that once moved and has already had a last breath.

The person you once knew, laughed, and cried with, shared food with, has long gone and what remains is the vessel that let the experience be possible. And when you look over the glass; carefully choosing where the glare is the faintest, you realize you don’t know the face of the person lying inside the box. After wakeful nights, maybe you would also ask yourself about the person that has eternally left you, or reminisce, try to remember if you actually had that “special moment” or if he thought you something about life. After all, he was a father, a brother, a grandfather, a friend or a neighbor in his lifetime.

With rest comes the momentary but always expected questions on one’s own mortality and the stories we leave to our loved ones when we too depart from this earth. Maybe we don’t really ask ourselves about it, but we dream about it. Or at the back of our minds we question our decisions and ask the “what if” questions. We remember those we’ve already and decidedly left in this life and the marks we made in their hearts. And we could see them in funerals such as this, share another feeling, another embrace, however awkward will still get us thinking. Thinking still of how we, ourselves, made them feel? Hurt? Yes. Happy? A thousand times until you left me. Mad? No, I abhor you. Loved? Sometimes, but I will always will.

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submitted by mjaneml-reblogs

Dumaguete Series | Last Portrait I would imagine this is the last view of my grandmother I would like to remember. Wiping clean her glasses for the third time, maybe she imagines it’s her eyes and the tears of sadness that she hides from her rare visitors.

Dumaguete Series | Last Portrait

I would imagine this is the last view of my grandmother I would like to remember. Wiping clean her glasses for the third time, maybe she imagines it’s her eyes and the tears of sadness that she hides from her rare visitors.


submitted by mjaneml-reblogs

Dumaguete Series | Piano Room This room is of another world from where it is found. While its surrounding is blaring in rhythm of industrious practice this room stays put and is still. I imagined myself just lying on the floor and just listening to the vibrating sound of my environ. That would be nice, lying on the floor is always nice.

Dumaguete Series | Piano Room

This room is of another world from where it is found. While its surrounding is blaring in rhythm of industrious practice this room stays put and is still. I imagined myself just lying on the floor and just listening to the vibrating sound of my environ. That would be nice, lying on the floor is always nice.


submitted by mjaneml-reblogs

Dumaguete Series | Practice Makes Perfect I was walking along the abandoned buildings, it was a Saturday. Sounds were discreet until one building came alive, bursting with repetitive rhythm.

Dumaguete Series | Practice Makes Perfect

I was walking along the abandoned buildings, it was a Saturday. Sounds were discreet until one building came alive, bursting with repetitive rhythm.

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Dumaguete Series | Horace Siliman He founded the first American Private School in the Philippines, starting out as a Presbyterian all-boys school. —- This is the last leg of the Dumaguete Series, at last this project will meet its end. I know it’s been a long line of pictures from Dumaguete and I’m glad it’s over. New pictures to come! I must say that the Siliman University visit was the best part of the travel. 

Dumaguete Series | Horace Siliman

He founded the first American Private School in the Philippines, starting out as a Presbyterian all-boys school.

—-

This is the last leg of the Dumaguete Series, at last this project will meet its end. I know it’s been a long line of pictures from Dumaguete and I’m glad it’s over. New pictures to come!

I must say that the Siliman University visit was the best part of the travel. 

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submitted by mjaneml-reblogs

Dumaguete Series | Another Expectation From Merriam-Webster: expected  adjective  being in accordance with the prescribed, normal, or logical course of events 

Dumaguete Series | Another Expectation

From Merriam-Webster:

expected

 adjective

 being in accordance with the prescribed, normal, or logical course of events 


submitted by mjaneml-reblogs

Dumaguete Series | BORED Bored or sleepy to death. Why do parents bring children as young as the little boy in the picture in places like this?

Dumaguete Series | BORED

Bored or sleepy to death. Why do parents bring children as young as the little boy in the picture in places like this?

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Dumaguete Series | Little Tokens Expected little tokens from children and adolscents alike.

Dumaguete Series | Little Tokens

Expected little tokens from children and adolscents alike.


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Dumaguete Series | Different and Far More Important Perspective I am afraid that the RH Bill is slowly being buried under the issues with same importance but not the same prominence. Or ostensible current relevance. The issue of corruption and whistle-blowers are as old as the churches that houses the figures that actually calls the shots. Because the people involved in the issue of corruption are actually speaking and letting themselves be heard we hear them. But what about this boy in this picture, trying to listen and follow what this man in a white dress says? What will he say if he’s informed of the situation we’ll put him in in the future?

Dumaguete Series | Different and Far More Important Perspective

I am afraid that the RH Bill is slowly being buried under the issues with same importance but not the same prominence. Or ostensible current relevance. The issue of corruption and whistle-blowers are as old as the churches that houses the figures that actually calls the shots.

Because the people involved in the issue of corruption are actually speaking and letting themselves be heard we hear them. But what about this boy in this picture, trying to listen and follow what this man in a white dress says?

What will he say if he’s informed of the situation we’ll put him in in the future?


submitted by mjaneml-reblogs

Dumaguete Series | The Flock They were so many and I felt guilty to go there and decided to play the spectator. I wonder if they also once asked themselves of the genuineness of their religion or confuse themselves with the arrival of this acquired belief of ours. In the end, of course, it is - no, it must - be about their PERSONAL belief rather than the institution it represents. George Carlin, an American institution in Comedy, once said that it is far more important to teach our children to question. More important than reading, adding and subtracting is asking and being critical.

Dumaguete Series | The Flock

They were so many and I felt guilty to go there and decided to play the spectator. I wonder if they also once asked themselves of the genuineness of their religion or confuse themselves with the arrival of this acquired belief of ours. In the end, of course, it is - no, it must - be about their PERSONAL belief rather than the institution it represents.

George Carlin, an American institution in Comedy, once said that it is far more important to teach our children to question. More important than reading, adding and subtracting is asking and being critical.


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