For years I have wanted to write what I remember about this challenging, rich, ever-changing panorama that I call life. Only a handful of novels and nonfiction books on life in the Philippines is available even today. The near vacuum begs for more content!
At our last visit to my parents' old hometown in Iloilo in 2007, my younger sister's daughter scanned photographs from the old family albums and gave us a CD copy of the images. I made my own copies using my Canon camera which are what you'll see when you visit the Family Photos page on the Duende Arts website (still hidden behind the current website).
As we grow older, more of our life appears in the past than in the unforeseeable future but I've had this idea for writing about life in the Philippines as I was growing up for at least two decades now. I remember the heartache I felt when I put together my first photo album in the early 80s. Here were pictures of places and people that no longer figured in my life. I was struck by the ephemeral nature of life. Without looking back, we get the feeling we are going to new places and creating new patterns. Going back we see the handful of themes that repeat like a looping filmstrip. The scenery changes, the characters change, but the energies stay remarkably unchanged. The life we live feels to me so much more fantastic than any fiction work can be!
The first pages of that album comprised photos that I took o f those last days in the Philippines in 1975. I bought a camera to document the upcoming adventure in the New World. I came to America to reinvent myself. I was not concerned about holding on to images of the past. I blamed these for my discontent with life. I was going to push beyond the known into the truly new.
In America, I took candid shots because everyone took pictures. I had no grand plan to use images to redefine personal growth. I discovered the world of photography when I bought my first SLR camera, a Minolta. The Minolta showed me that photographs did not just document memories but hint at something I'd like to think goes beyond the ephemera of our unstudied lives.
As young adults we approach life purposefully. We are schooled to believe we map where we are going. Six decades into a life I find purpose comically wanting. When we dig beneath the skin, we are not very different from each other. Perceptions, like clothing, lifestyle, and occupation, mask the underlying sameness with which we all must struggle to make sense of ourselves, and the lives we can live. In the sameness I believe lurks something awesome and grand that we might touch with well-considered words and images. With purpose we can only see so much. What is the world like beyond the designs of purpose and memory? Here is the stuff of creation, of marvelous tales and breath-pausing images.
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