ABOUT THIS SITE

ife is what happens to us while we're busy making plans. In the same way, history is every day that passes by when we're not paying attention. Very often as I walk along the streets in my home city I come across another building being torn down, or a store that I've patronized for years closing shop. In the neighborhood, old friends move to another town, houses get sold, new houses get built and strangers move into them.

    Change is always happening around us. So much of it we cannot stop, nor should we. But change always leaves you with some feeling of regret; of wishing you had spent more time in places with people, maybe taken a photograph of something before it disappeared forever. At times this feeling of regret cuts so deep it almost feels like guilt. Life is full of woulda' coulda' shouldas--and some of mine are these: I'm a photographer and I can write. Why did I never take the time to document change before it happens, as they were happening? Why am I waiting for things to disappear before I start longing for them? Why am I just remembering the happy days of my boyhood growing up in this city and not sharing them as personal stories? Why am I content on fact-checking the narratives of others instead of bravely setting down the terms of history as I see it unfolding? Why am I afraid that my storytelling might conflict with others' when only I can describe the experiences I have gone through as I saw them with my own eyes?

    I started this blog because I want to unload some of that guilt.   I have spent the last 54 years in Baguio City (Philippines). I wasn't born here.  My mother brought my sister and I to this city when I was just 3. But I've never lived in or known another city as home.  Even my sister Lavlina lives in Winnipeg now--but we keep in touch.

    As recently as five, maybe ten years, ago I might have been able to say I knew everybody. But now I'm not so sure. Old teachers, classmates, fellow photographers, anyone else who played the  saxophone  maybe--I still remember their names but don't know where to find them anymore. Some are never to be found again.

This was 1967 when my sister (standing behind

me) and I first arrived in Baguio, brought up there

 by our amazing mother. Her name is Imperia (right). 

We became caretakers of a home we now fondly

 recall as "48 Lourdes" which was owned by the

 Pacheco family. Two of the Pacheco children 

Kuya Angelo (left) and Ate Fe (the tall pretty one,

and she's still that beautiful today, 50 years later) 

accompanied us on the 6-hour trip (at that time 

without the expressways) from Manila. 

    I listen to Paul McCartney's and John Paul's lyrics "...there are places I remember all my life though some have changed...some forever not for better...some have gone and some remain...I know I'll  always stop to think about them...in my life, I've loved them all."

    So I went back to some of those places, asking about friends I couldn't find and found these places slowly  going away, too. The GPS in my camera tells me I'm standing on the right spot...but the personal landmarks are gone. Trees I climbed, little watering holes I swam in, old friendly neighborhood sari-sari stores are now 7-11s.

        Luckily, if rarely, some of these personal landmarks have remained, some have changed but not for better.

      I have to photograph them now. I have to write about them now. I have to tell my stories now even if I'm the last one left to believe them.

                              

NOTE FROM JOEL: Hi, folks! Recently, I started a YouTube channel which is called "Parables and Reason" It  is kind of similar to this blog content-wise. You can check out my channel by clicking the link below:

 Joel R. Dizon - PARABLES AND REASON