1
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[silence, or the sound of drowning]

2
00:00:11,833 --> 00:00:14,708
[Caption reads: "Young Tagalog - Woman - Manila"]

3
00:00:19,125 --> 00:00:22,000
I went through 3,700+ digitized photographs taken more than a century ago.

4
00:00:22,416 --> 00:00:26,166
On my computer, on my tablet, I looked at, scrolled up, down, pressed, swiped left, right. Not yet pored through.

5
00:00:27,000 --> 00:00:31,833
I made a list of possible subjects... "to study." Something impossible. Or at least not possible to bear alone.

6
00:00:36,833 --> 00:00:39,916
Here, a partial and incomplete list of metonyms, notes and impressions:

7
00:00:40,333 --> 00:00:44,291
(not in the order in which they were cataloged by the museum or not in the order that I saw them)

8
00:00:48,333 --> 00:00:51,041
White cloth —

9
00:00:51,875 --> 00:00:56,541
Decontextualizing "jungle." Or is it to make whiteness the context?

10
00:00:58,458 --> 00:01:03,708
There were pictures where people and objects looked as if they were floating.

11
00:01:04,333 --> 00:01:08,416
The grass on the ground, peeking out of all of that white

12
00:01:09,208 --> 00:01:12,083
This reminds me of the branch someone obviously used to cover their private parts...

13
00:01:12,708 --> 00:01:15,125
In this picture, it was on the ground.

14
00:01:16,333 --> 00:01:17,541
Theirs?

15
00:01:18,250 --> 00:01:19,291
Ours?

16
00:01:23,708 --> 00:01:29,708
The proverbial: rice terraces, planting rice, unpaved roads, women bathing in a body of water

17
00:01:30,541 --> 00:01:33,958
White man, small brown man, small brown woman

18
00:01:35,208 --> 00:01:39,250
The class picture, the conversions, the lines, the soldiers, the western clothes

19
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There were these weird, floating contraptions... Some were looms, actually. For weaving.

20
00:01:47,750 --> 00:01:50,166
Boats, baskets, skulls, jars

21
00:01:51,083 --> 00:01:54,333
Deformed mountain feet, deformed mouth

22
00:01:56,166 --> 00:01:58,958
A woman with albinism, a mestiza, a white woman (the wife of an official)

23
00:02:00,625 --> 00:02:02,541
Mother and child. Children.

24
00:02:05,750 --> 00:02:12,166
About the skull– I saw this picture while I was in bed. It showed the face of... It was an Aeta.

25
00:02:13,083 --> 00:02:19,000
Their head was rotten. Rotted? Cheeks were sunk, but their hair was still intact.

26
00:02:20,333 --> 00:02:24,541
Part of the caption read "... in the condition in which it was taken from a grave."

27
00:02:25,791 --> 00:02:27,666
I was trying to fall asleep.

28
00:02:28,333 --> 00:02:31,458
I saw it again the moment I closed my eyes.

29
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I went to the bathroom to wash my face, and / but there was a cockroach in the sink.

30
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I tried to get it out. But then its limbs detached...

31
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Apparently, I just learned, they can regrow their limbs?

32
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Then the cockroach slipped into the drain.

33
00:02:51,458 --> 00:02:54,750
Sometimes I wonder if it's still stuck there.

34
00:02:55,166 --> 00:02:56,791
I find adverbs of frequency interesting these days.

35
00:03:00,083 --> 00:03:04,291
I was at a popular beach destination recently. To vacation. To vacate. I vacated.

36
00:03:04,708 --> 00:03:07,916
I had no idea it's that commercialized there now. Like, what?

37
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Everything's convenient and expensive.

38
00:03:10,958 --> 00:03:13,041
(Inside voice) But the food was amazing. The mango shake...

39
00:03:13,041 --> 00:03:14,208
Wait, I forgot to tell you —

40
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About this mango I ate one morning at the start of the year?

41
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It was the size of my hand. A third of my face!

42
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After I washed it, I pinched it near its beak. Ripped its skin, peeled it counter-clockwise.

43
00:03:23,958 --> 00:03:26,833
I took a bite of the soft meat and it engulfed me back.

44
00:03:27,250 --> 00:03:30,833
Not me— I mean, my nose, my cheeks, my mouth.

45
00:03:31,500 --> 00:03:35,083
But not my eyes and my ears, certainly not my shoulders, my knees and my toes. Haha.

46
00:03:35,958 --> 00:03:37,541
Wait. Can I say that?

47
00:03:38,375 --> 00:03:40,208
[ . . . ]

48
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Yellow, sticky juice dripped from my mouth, trickled down my hands and elbows.

49
00:03:47,333 --> 00:03:48,666
The kitchen table was wet.

50
00:03:49,958 --> 00:03:55,000
There were pictures of mouths, too. Of a man, deformed. Of rivers. Something about a ritual.

51
00:03:56,541 --> 00:03:58,250
I thought, "This is a mango."

52
00:03:58,458 --> 00:04:01,958
A mango among mangoes. The mangoest of them all. The epitome of a fruit.

53
00:04:02,541 --> 00:04:04,833
"This is a mango."

54
00:04:06,916 --> 00:04:08,416
It was so sweet and delicious.

55
00:04:10,250 --> 00:04:12,125
But on my last bite, it tasted sour.

56
00:04:12,916 --> 00:04:14,250
But going back to the island...

57
00:04:18,083 --> 00:04:20,458
The bodies of men and women and children.

58
00:04:21,541 --> 00:04:25,541
A headless body tied to poles. Multiple pictures of it being carried, and

59
00:04:26,083 --> 00:04:30,208
thrown into a ditch. The gashes on its body. The fact of his headlessness.

60
00:04:31,625 --> 00:04:34,250
Another dead man. Wounded by a tulisan.

61
00:04:34,666 --> 00:04:36,875
Another dead man. A dead tulisan.

62
00:04:38,208 --> 00:04:41,375
Numbers written on paper stuck to people's chest and arms.

63
00:04:41,791 --> 00:04:46,916
Unrelated, possibly, also: prisoners of a provincial jail.

64
00:04:47,916 --> 00:04:51,083
A car. A flute and other musical instruments

65
00:04:51,916 --> 00:04:56,375
The pictures of a group of people in front of a phonograph were not in this collection, unfortunately.

66
00:04:57,083 --> 00:04:58,125
This one.

67
00:04:59,125 --> 00:05:00,750
But there were pictures of those who impersonated

68
00:05:01,166 --> 00:05:05,166
"God the Father, God the Son, the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, etc."

69
00:05:05,375 --> 00:05:06,791
Etc., etc.

70
00:05:07,833 --> 00:05:11,541
Field crops, mountains, vintas, sultans, soldiers

71
00:05:12,041 --> 00:05:16,500
Smiths, seamstresses, millers, pointed teeth, distortions, deformities

72
00:05:17,666 --> 00:05:19,875
(not alphabetical, clearly, not exhaustive)

73
00:05:21,916 --> 00:05:23,291
Funerals.

74
00:05:24,416 --> 00:05:26,583
"a grave tunneled into the hillside"

75
00:05:30,125 --> 00:05:33,166
Some people were naked because they were naked.

76
00:05:33,625 --> 00:05:37,375
Some were forced to wear their nakedness. You can see it in their faces.

77
00:05:37,916 --> 00:05:41,583
In the way they bent their arms or slightly turned their hips.

78
00:05:42,041 --> 00:05:45,208
Women and girls unclothed. Covering their breasts. Standing.

79
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Just standing there.

80
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The slit of their girlhood.

81
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The men and boys, too... were undressed.

82
00:05:58,750 --> 00:06:01,291
Everybody.

83
00:06:02,041 --> 00:06:04,250
Even the land.

84
00:06:07,291 --> 00:06:13,125
The photographs I liked the most were the ones with blurry faces. They were not still enough.

85
00:06:14,958 --> 00:06:21,708
And this one of the pearl diver in a diving suit.

86
00:06:26,583 --> 00:06:30,291
In the island, I entered this cave...

87
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It led to water. Of course. And I jumped.

88
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Sometimes I think about our right to be forgotten.