In 1999, I embarked on a writing project for a travel magazine. It was about old Philippine churches, their architecture and history. I was really excited about it because I love old architecture (whatever that means…hehe) and I’ve long been intrigued about my homeland’s massive churches, some of which are centuries old.
So I gathered friends, Jingle and Jo-Anne, to join me in my writing adventure. The plan was to visit and photograph some of the churches in rural towns (I know Manila has a lot of nice churches but my idea was to go to the churches in the countryside). Well, I didn’t have the budget to go to different parts of the country for the project so we went to places that can be reached by jeepneys or buses.
Soon we found ourselves traveling to various towns of Rizal and Laguna and ogling at age-old edifices that every Filipino, raised in a Catholic household, consider one of the symbols of his and his ancestors’ faith.
I wrote two lengthy and rather scholarly articles about this adventure and Jingle used up a couple of films for the photographs. Unfortunately, the travel magazine folded so the articles and photographs didn’t see print and I wasn’t paid anything for the whole effort. (Sidenote: This whole experience gave me the first important lesson of my freelance writing life – never start a project without having a contract and without any down payment to cover incidentals.)
I knew I have the negatives somewhere in my junk but I couldn’t find them at the moment. Alas, I don’t have the original article anymore. The electronic original had been lost when my very first hard drive crashed. The hard copies I gave to the travel magazine were lost, too. (Sidenote #2: This whole experience gave me the second important lesson of my freelance writing life – never trust a computer’s hard drive and print as many hard copies of my work as I can.)
Anyway, Holy Week came and went in this part of the world and the whole thing is like ordinary days that one simply had to go through. I confess that I’m not a religious person and that back in the homeland, I spend Holy Week not in reflection and fasting but in traveling to distant places and climbing mountains. (Hey, there were hardships in those undertakings, too. Hehe)
But here I admit that I felt disjointed and isolated, sensing the loss of the atmosphere of religiosity that I’m used to. I’m not seeking religious meaning for the event in a country widely diversified by different beliefs, mind you. It’s just that I missed the ambience of tranquility, when everything and everybody stops or slows down to reflect, to meditate, to celebrate even if the Son of God had “diedâ€.
So last Black Saturday, I resolved to slow down and do a bit of spring cleaning. I rummaged through my junk from the homeland and guess what I found – my essay on the old churches of Rizal and their four photographs that I took with my Instamatic camera (this was my back-up plan in case Jingle’s SLR camera didn’t work).
I read the essay and it is in bad shape (can’t believe I wrote that one), but the four photographs are quite interesting. They exuded nostalgia, you know the very same kind I had when I saw Ms. Sassy Lawyer’s pictures of a parade of saints in Marikina.
Once I finish fixing the essay, I’ll post it here along with the photographs. Looks like a semblance of that writing project will get printed after all. Electronically, speaking. Hehe.
Stay tuned.
