How Public Like a Blog

I love blogging. It is my new found way of communicating especially now that I am away from my family and my familiar friends.

Even now with my new found friends in Iloilo, I make blogging count as an indispensable means of connecting with people, and staying connected with them in the truest sense of the word.

I maintain accounts in multiply, friendster, flickr and flixter. There I post pictures of the past—family photos, workplace, graduation, wedding, etc.

Now with my newly acquired, hard-earned digital camera, I post photos more often than I did in the past. Aside from having them published in the local dailies, I post online film and theater reviews, solicited and unsolicited commentaries on pressing issues, or just about any article I wrote.

Blogging has been a way of life for me since 2005, ever since I came to know friendster and began to love its wonders of communicating fast. It is soothing to know every single day—whenever I get to check my account, my contacts, or just about anyone online, have read my posts. What more can I ask for than reading the replies of my cousins, my high school students and even long lost friends, who found me on the net. They would reply about an old photo which I scanned and made available online, or an article which I have revised.

It is more wonderful to know that at least one person gets to visit my multiply site. I make it a point to attach photos with the text so that any reader would have one more reason to look it up. I also post pictures with social relevance. I take pictures of poverty in the marketplace, old age, and stuff like them. “Stark Realities” I call them. But these photojournalistic projects hardly elicit Internet surfers' attention—perhaps because they appeal to their conscience. These pictures incite pity in them or make them uncomfortable. Maybe, images of the poor and the underprivileged make them do something about which they cannot do anything significant.

Among the things I post online every now and then, the most number of visits would be in the family photos. For a set of photos in multiply.com, which I titled, “Portraits” or “Reunions” or “Bonds” or “Nonoy Mi” (Bikol phrase meaning Our Dear Son, Brother, Cousin), I have gotten almost 40 replies from my siblings, cousins and anyone else who viewed it.

As human nature would allow it, my friends online—brothers, sisters, cousins, etc.—usually reply to the posts about them—certainly not about my own privations and personal writeups.

Once I wrote an epic-length poem about my own hometown barangay Bagacay—one of my cousins was so moved that he wanted me to post more articles of that kind. My cousin Glen knew very well the Bagacay I was talking about--the sights and the sounds my words created evoked in him his own Bagacay experience.

Also, on my grandfather Clemente’s death anniversary, I wrote something about him—though I hardly knew much about him, except for the stories in the family which I recollected. My sister, brother, and cousins were so touched that they gave rave reviews and comments below it to the extent that they would want to read more about my other lolo—my maternal grandfather Emiliano “Meling” Saavedra.

I am amazed at the thought that—in the past, we would play taraguan [hide and seek] in Lolo Meling’s backyard from afternoon till dusk—never aware that one day we would really "find" each other somewhere else. Despite the fact that we “have gone everywhere” or “chose to hide” from each other, Internet and blogging--like the one I’m doing now--has been the best way for me to find my cousins and stay close to them.

Internet for me has been a way to preserve whatever family values I have retained—the phrase “family solidarity” for which my mother Emma is known to all of us, her children. As my sister Nene has cited in one of her online replies, she is so grateful to the Internet for keeping us together despite the distance between us. Especially she finds it so useful now that she has chosen to settle down and has started her own family now based in Bagumbong, a sleepy district bordering Caloocan City.

I cannot help but cry at every moving reply posted by my siblings or cousins online—about how they remember events in the past or how memories swell into them at the sight of the particular pictures I post. For every posting that my friends read and replied to, I feel a strong sense of fulfillment. I believe I get my good message across.

Homecoming, things in the past, and the like are my favorite subject. I write about and take pictures of the past. Not just because it is how I as a family member could recollect for myself the innocence I must have lost through the years—but also because through it, I and my siblings and cousins come together. Online like this, we share something which is hard to forget—in so doing we come to share ourselves. I am happy that when we do, that is simply unforgettable, especially now that we have gone everywhere.

If in the past, clan reunions would only happen during December or when mother’s youngest brother Uncle Tony arrives from Saudi Arabia, Oman, etc., now, a familiar company is very accessible in one click of the mouse.

Companionship is never a luxury anymore—I can easily reach family at my fingertips. With Internet—I, Nene, my brothers and my cousins—can be together, especially now that I am very far away from them. With blogging—with Internet and with all the wonders of digital technology, I connect with my family and friends in no time.

Online they get to know how I am faring. How I am doing. Online they get to know that most of the time I am not doing well. Online they get to know that, just like the Internet signal, most of the time, I flicker.