IN THE DIGITAL WORLD WHERE LIFE STORIES reach far and wide in the blink of an eye, 40 Filipinos—strangers to one another—have kept alive the romance of pen and ink, making intimate connections in two Moleskine notebooks.
The notebooks have been journeying across the planet for more than a year now, finding their way into the hands of designated writers who themselves are accustomed to the wonders of the Internet.
Dubbed “Lagalag: the Traveling Journal of Filipinos,” the project is a quaint offshoot of an online photo-hosting website, Flickr, of which the writers—mostly budding photographers—are members.
Initially, the members’ knowledge of one another rarely went beyond their online IDs and the photographs and comments they posted in their respective accounts.
But in February 2007, US immigrant Wilfredo Pascual felt a need to link the kindred spirits through a notebook that would be passed from one to the other—whether in person or by courier—after each had put their stories in writing and posted significant photos and memorabilia.
Wrote Pascual in his blog: “Because life is a game of domino in times of war: We are saved by that which links us to each other. I remember writing that down. It was a very powerful feeling. I thought about the pictures that link us with each other. My mind was burning with ideas and only one image withstood the fire. A notebook.”
Pascual said a photograph of soldiers playing domino posted by another Flickr member, Ilocano US airman Marco Abundo, was a “major catalyst” in the birth of “Lagalag.”
It apparently became his answer to a nagging personal question about home.
Address? Blank
Pascual, born and raised in Nueva Ecija and a two-time winner of the Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature, attended New York University’s creative writing program and was a Breadloaf scholar for creative nonfiction in the United States.
After living in Thailand for a decade, he moved to San Francisco in 2006 and recently joined the international nonprofit agency, “Room to Read,” as a global program officer.
Having had no permanent address in the past two years, he began to feel uncertain about his future, Pascual told the Inquirer in an e-mail.
Application forms became “excruciating” for him to fill out.
“Address? Blank. What do you mean ‘permanent address?’ Half of my life I had spent in the Philippines and the other half abroad. It was winter and once again it was time to ask all these big, painful questions about home,” Pascual said.
So he tapped 40 Filipino Flickr members—20 of them living abroad—to write in four pages their stories of “finding their place in the sun, how they see themselves, their country and the world at large.”
Pit stops
In selecting the notebooks’ destinations, Pascual made sure that the writers were willing to pass them on to the next “pit stop” after a week.
Thus, the two Moleskine diaries have reached a Japan-based Filipino-American soldier, a health specialist who has traveled not only the seedy streets of India but also the paved highways of the United Kingdom, a medic in Iraq, a student “soul searching” in Thailand and a number of teachers intent on giving China and Islamabad’s children a brighter future.
The diaries have also trekked the slopes of Mt. Fuji in Japan with a climber, comforted a caregiver in London, and provided temporary solace to a nostalgic filmmaker in New York, among others.
In the Philippines, a guerrilla briefly put down her gun to write about her life in the jungle, a hairdresser in Makati took time to explain the relevance of parlor shops to an ordinary Filipino and a regular commuter engaged in a litany on the plight of the country.
“Mailing the notebooks, that period when it was neither here nor there, was scary. I was always afraid of it getting lost, knowing how much the pages meant to those whose hands it already passed,” said Pascual.
Final destination
On Thursday night, the diaries reached the 40th and final destination—TV host Daphne Oseńa-Paez, a Filipino raised in Canada who chose to go back to her roots.
Shubert Ciencia, a nongovernment organization worker from Nueva Ecija, and Oliver Pensica Jr., a teacher in China vacationing in Manila, were relieved when they handed the notebooks to Paez in a Quezon City restaurant.
“I have their innermost thoughts in my hands. This is amazing.” Paez told the Inquirer as she leafed through the pages.
While awaiting the diaries, Paez had thought of writing about the 2007 Glorietta explosion that killed 11 people and injured more than 100 others. (She left the shopping mall 10 minutes before the explosion.)
But she eventually changed her mind, saying that she would most probably write about her decision to return to the Philippines.
“I realized that it is irrelevant to talk about current events [in the diary],” she said.
Nostalgia
The notebooks are bursting with keepsakes—bus stubs, airline boarding passes, subway cards, expired visas and passports, coins, old love letters and snapshots—as well as doodles and stories.
But more than just an anthology of personal accounts and mementos, the diaries have become a repository of a shared sentiment for a country either lived in or left behind.
Ciencia, who took care of one of the diaries for seven months until they reached the last stop, said most of the entries spoke about the nostalgia of those who have become part of the “Filipino diaspora.”
Here are some excerpts:
“Though in my heart, I know and feel that I am a Filipino, I also know and feel that I am American … Para akong batang nakatagpo ng dalawang Ina—si Inang Pilipinas and Inang Amerika. Pareho ko silang mahal. (I’m like a child who found two mothers—Mother Philippines and Mother America. I love them both.) Though my skin is brown, I identify with all the others.”—Marc Abundo, 1st class airman of the US Air Force based in Yokota Air Base, Japan
“I’ve seen the best and worst of the Philippines. I’ve seen the best and worst of other countries. As a doctor I have been tempted many times to leave. Many of my friends have left. They say they have lost faith in this country. But every time I return, I see, amidst the poverty, corruption and filth—reasons to have faith. So I stay, do my best and continue to have faith.”—Angelo Oblepias, health development specialist
“In the Philippines, I see a mother whose children prefer to be out of their own house. A rich country with untapped resources. A people with too much freedom leaving no room for patriotism, which makes me feel like calling on Chairman Mao’s Red Guards for help … During these seven years, there are moments when I feel like eating isaw (grilled chicken innards) and ginataang native manok (native chicken in coconut cream), yet my craving [is] left unsatisfied because there are no such things here.” -jYm, teacher in China
One-armed embrace
“I moved to Manila with a clear purpose—to discover my own nostalgia. I did well as a graphic designer. But not as an artist. I wandered around galleries only to be turned down. Manila embraced me but only with one arm. Then came Cambodia … I discovered that sometimes, we don’t just choose to be where we are. Sometimes it will choose us.”—Loven, graphic designer in Cambodia
“My sketches … faces are usually incomplete, for obvious reasons. In the end, you remember what you can of their personality—their courage, the depth of their humanity, even their humor and idiosyncrasies.”—Remedios_Renata, a member of the New People’s Army
“Sharon Borja of Oakland, USA” wrote in Filipino: “The contradictions remain. I still can’t accept the colonialism and capitalism of the oppressive culture handed down by Americans.”
And “a commuter in Manila” also wrote in the mother tongue: “It’s so ugly in the Philippines. Difficult, chaotic, complicated. Full of politics that has nothing in mind but self-interest ... But I’ve learned to laugh at Philippine politics. Here is where I learned to love, to be rebuffed and then love again ... I will die with my eyes wide open and a smile on my lips, surrounded by loved ones.”
According to Pascual, he is prepared to share the diaries with others through publication and a traveling exhibit once these are returned to him.
