Framed Souls

Framed Souls

As I start writing these words, I cannot help but play inside my head Croce’s “Photographs & Memories”. There, I just had to get that one out.

There is something about photographs that take a hold of me.

Though I do not have them with me in this City that I have learned to love, I can still vividly remember the photographs of my childhood. Birthday photographs, candid shots, posing to a generous photographer (mamang use to tell me that as child, I would flash my smile whenever someone would point their cameras at me, hence I became a favorite among photographers when I was a child), I remember them all. Remembering these old photographs lead me to think about a certain child who looks like me, who acts like me (if I am to believe the words of someone who once loved me), a child who does not bear my name but whose blood is half mine.

I have heard that in some cultures, the taking of photographs was considered taboo, due to their belief that capturing one’s image on paper was defying the hands of time, much more so that it frames one’s soul inside the four borders. Four borders very much like the compass points of our lives.

If there is any truth about these beliefs, then it must be the reason that I have somehow lost my smile.

Thinking about it, my pictures can be categorized into two: the smile and the smile-less snapshots. And as friends who know me, these two categories are apt descriptions for the person that I really am, the person that I have been, and the person that I will be.

There is something about photographs that hold me. And they hold me to certain memories not only my own. Somewhere in my belongings are snapshots I shared with other people, during days and nights when the world was spinning and I was spinning and dancing to its music.

Memories…that’s what its all about, the photographs remind me of how life goes, of the things that begin also begin their end, of those that are found are only waiting to be lost.

And no one can ever be sure if the end will again bring a new beginning, or if forgetfulness would be the sunrise for remembrance and reminiscence. But that is life, as how my 3 decades have taught me.

And there is something about photographs, not mine alone or with someone else, but of another’s that take hold of me.

I guess I am just indulging myself that a glance at a photograph of someone else becomes the reason for something sleeping inside of me to finally wake up, as if it was in a slumber of dreams. Or nightmares. Or denials.

There is something about photographs that tell me of who and how the person is, no matter how far, no matter how silent. They tell me things, they whisper into an ear that is not found in my head but somewhere, everywhere else of who and what I am. And they also whisper to me the things that they do not know.

Framed Souls. Two words that I somehow uttered before writing these entry and came to savor every letter as it walks along the path of my tongue. Framed souls…and I wonder, if it is a prisoner of some sorts, or do photographs have become refugees from some dark and melancholic past.