I shut my eyes, trying to pull out the right words from my vocabulary closet, but each shelf just seemed short of stock. We were given ten minutes to write a headline, and eight minutes through, my broken paragraphs were riddled with strikethroughs and arrows.
My thoughts kept jumping from my unfinished paragraph, to the exercise instructions, to the tips given in the past 5 hours, then back to the messy
Cattleya sheet in front of me. Before I knew it, the ten minutes was up. I fell victim to the all-too-common compulsion to overly self-edit.
I felt pretty bad to not finish, mainly because I wanted to subject myself to the critique of the workshop facilitators. But as several classmates read their headlines to the crowd, the pointers I picked up proved equally applicable to my own mistakes.
Such as creating the distinction between merely describing a series of activities versus really lighting up a vivid image in the reader’s mind. Using short, punchy sentences to make a clear and striking statement (ouch, this one really hit me). And always challenging yourself with the question, “WTF should I read your article?”
These, among many other lessons, were what I took home from the Travel Writing Workshop by
Writer’s Block Philippines. Theirs was one of the top results when I Googled for writing workshops in Manila, and one month later, I am a proud recipient of a certificate. More than that, I left the auditorium carrying a bundle of inspiration to just keep writing and – who knows – maybe make a decent career out of it! (Guys, they say dream big,
diba?!)
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| Dreaming big starts here! |
Being QC-born and bred, my life revolves around this retracted national capital. Then ever since I started working in Quezon City, and later on, my husband as well, I had fewer reasons to brave EDSA and C5. I tended to coast within my comfort zone, which is, ironically, the “killer highway” that is Commonwealth Avenue.
But this particular Saturday, a fellow QC-buddy obliged me on my invitation to cross cities for an afternoon of learning how to write. Being the QC-girls that we were, we wanted to maximize our “road trip” to The Fort and decided to drive out earlier. The workshop wasn't scheduled until 1pm, so our day began at 10am by checking out the street art put up as part of
The Bonifacio Arts Foundation’s (BAFI) ONE Festival.
Now I hardly know anything about street art. But I suppose that’s why initiatives like these are so important. How else are we to know that such a scene even exists if these works are not put in highly-visible places? How can we appreciate all the hard work that is put into creating these murals, if we only see them in pictures? Because it was one thing to see them on my social media feeds, and another to really stand in front of them and take in the details. The sheer size of some of them is enough to blow you away.
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| Artwork by Nate Frizzell (1 of 3). His real-life looking characters are located on the walls of the High Street shops, this one beside the glass window of ROX. |
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| Artwork by AKA Corleone. His bold and bright images surely bring life to this dead 28th Avenue parking lot wall (near Muji). |
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| Artwork by FAILE. Their huge collage of mass culture icons can be found on the wall of One Global Place building, corner of 5th and 26th Avenues. |
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| Artwork by Cyrcle. That's me running to take my picture under this huge, intricate man from outer space, at the wall of Icon Plaza building, corner of 7th and 26th Avenues. |
I laud BAFI for this effort. It may take a while before public art becomes a priority of land property developers, but through baby steps like these, I do hope more Filipinos gain an appreciation for it, so that more street artists are given proper credit for what they do.
So did I mention that it was a day-long field trip? After my friend and I drenched ourselves in sweat on the sidewalks of BGC, we had our lunch and travel writing workshop, which ended at 6pm. The last stop for the day was at Christ’s Commission Fellowship (CCF) Frontera Verde, Pasig City, where we sat in on an Apologetics discussion group.
To those not familiar, Apologetics is a branch of Christianity that deals with defending the faith through a more rational manner, usually through historical evidence and philosophical arguments. The “life verse” – or the go-to verse for inspiration and direction – of CCF’s Apologetics group is 1 Peter 3:15 from the Holy Bible which reads,
"But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence."
That evening, the group was on the topic of church abuse. They discussed possible ways to defend Christianity against the criticism it has on abuses that happen within the community, or how to react to a person who has lost trust in the faith due to church-related abuses.
What I found most reasonable out of all the opinions thrown around is the position that we must always look to the character of Jesus Christ. If a person claims to be of supposedly-solid Christian faith, particularly church leaders, but does not act in accordance with Jesus Christ’s character, then the error is not in Jesus Christ or the Christian faith, but in how that person follows (or rather, fails to follow) the faith.
We cannot expect a man, even if he is a prominent figure in the church, to fully represent or to be an embodiment of the all-perfect Jesus Christ, because he is only man. And man is of sinful nature (Romans 3:23 NIV: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God), with tendencies to falter.
A person who abuses is not doing a sinful act
because s/he is a Christian. He does it because s/he is a sinful person, as all of us are.
In a more practical illustration, we cannot expect one man to represent an entire church. I would look at it, simply, as never generalizing one man to exactly represent the thoughts and beliefs of all the members of whatever organization s/he belongs to.
Needless to say, there are a lot more nuances to this heavy topic. But a few hours of actually discussing it was enough to shed a little light and provoke other suspicions, and that always gives doubts a better chance of being addressed, than not being discussed at all.
At the end of the day, I realized that that was what our field trip was all about. What started out as a simple agreement to rouse our interest in travel writing ended up as a day-long indulgence on things that stirred and challenged our curious brains.
The result is a memorable day of pop culture and literature, of Instagramming and jotting notes (just like we were back in college!), and of expanding our circle of comfort a wee bit bigger.
I think that makes the trip outside of QC worth it.
