Into the Pinhole

 

Every time I go to a place for vacation I always have my camera. I make sure that everything is fine before I go. I make sure that the battery is well. I make sure that the camera itself is well. Aside from the camera, I have the plane ticket and the money. As long as I have these three, I know I am well.

I am always into history when it comes to travel. Before I embark on my chosen destination, I always make sure that I know the historical facts and places of that place. Since I really don’t travel with much budget, I travel light and I walk grand. I choose walking to minimize my expenses. I also prefer restaurants and carinderias, this is because I do not like to move with fancy inside a first class ones and also the expenses.

Aside from historical places or should I say museums, my side-trip destinations are shrines. I also need to refresh myself with a visit to a spiritual place. But, this does not limit to a Christian place, since I am a Christian. This visit could also go to a Taoist, Buddhist or a Hindu temple. I have always been fascinated by these three religions by their fancy rites along with their architecture. Also, I find their philosophies intriguing. Theirs is very simple yet profound. 

I am an environmentalist by heart! I find it a need for us to conserve this mother of ours. So, I also visit places which advocate environmental awareness. I am interested in the endemic species of floras and faunas that thrive in our country. If not endemic, I prefer those native species. 

It seems a lot for a traveller, but it’s not that much if you really know how to talk human language. I find jeep and cabs easier than taxis. All I need to know is how to ask. Besides, when in a jeep you also have the chance to meet other people who can point you to other side-trips. For a man who is interested in history, you will also for sure be interested in culture and you would not find it entirely in books while reading inside a taxi. Why not expose yourself to it face to face?

So, to sum up I am interested in Culture – the collective totality of that which is in a certain place. But, lately I realized this lack in me. Those feelings of after all the years of travelling I still lack something. One feeling is that I need to go back to a certain place which I have already been to and relive certain moments.

At these moments, I scheme my archives. I look into the things which I collected from my travels – the maps that I marked, the postcards which I pasted on an album, the keychain which bears the name and even the tee shirts which bears “I’ve been there.” When I have the chance, I also open my Facebook account to look into the photos captured by my cam.

At one time, I was inside the “Dambana ni Rizal.” A museum inside Fort Santiago in Intramuros dedicated to the Philippine National Hero, Dr. Jose Rizal. The said place was the latter’s actual prison chamber where he was detained, trialled, and sentenced of death. I was peeking into the hole of my camera, just for the effects as if I am a professional photographer. I was taking a picture of the oil lamp Rizal gave to his sister where his last work, Mi Ultimo Adios, was hidden from the Spaniards. I felt a feeling of space. I felt as if was still very far from Rizal. Of course I am not talking about the years for it really is but I am talking about the ties between us. His presence being in the museum and the things he left and me inside it.

It seems hard to picture it that way. Put it this way, this feeling I also felt during the Papal Encounter with the Youth. We took a very long distance. We waited a very long time. We sacrificed a lot just to see the Pope. Yes, I saw the Pope for three seconds. The longest three seconds of my life. I saw the Pope, but not yet Cardinal Tagle.

The point is that, the Pope was riding in his pope-mobile and the cardinal was just in his back sitting and I did not take the chance to look at him. The reason behind you may ask. I was busier taking a video in my camera. Have I not peeked into Pope Francis, all my sacrifice been wasted. I will lose the experience.

As John Eldredge put it:

Something awful has happened; something terrible. Something worse, even the fall of man. For in that greatest of all tragedies, we merely lost paradise – and with it, everything that made life worth living. What has happened since is unthinkable: we’ve gotten used to it. We’re broken in to the idea that this is just the way things are. The people who walk in great darkness have adjusted their eyes...We dismiss the whispers of joy with a cynical “Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.” (The Journey of Desire) 

Sometimes, we try to make a definite and determinate capture of the experience that we fail to experience the vastness of experience in the indefinite face to face encounter. We merely woke up, study, work then die.