It is no surprise then that, except for a plate from Thailand decorated with fish, I found the ceramics least interesting. They look familiar, like those fragile, decorative jars found in houses I’ve been to. The most familiar (and therefore, most uninteresting) were the Chinese jars with decorations I’m sure I’ve seen before. Such familiarity, I guess, only shows how common these jars were and still are, and how long the technology has endured since its first discovery. The commonness, moreover, suggests a great dependence on these imported things. Our pre-Spanish ancestors depended on trade for the supply of ceramics.
My lack of interest with the familiar surprisingly extends even to the gold. Except for the unbelievable intricacy of designs, I don’t really care for gold, nor jewelry. Not only because it was familiar but also because it was just metal— bright, shiny, yellow metal. Metal outside the context of the periodic table of elements look boring to me. Bright and yellow are not among of my favourite sights. Shiny is not an appearance I am very fond of, especially when looking at my face. But more importantly, they were heavy. If the ancients really wore that much gold and were able to move around without trouble, they’d have to be physically fit. Thus, how gold gained its value to the ancient minds is a big question in my mind. Of course, there is the credited usefulness, malleability and endurance of gold but how it ended up being worth killing for bewilders me more than how creative and patient they must have been to have created those designs. No matter how precious gold were to the ancients, however, I am guessing they weren’t able to avoid taking the gold for granted at some point, especially if it were really that abundant. The taking for granted, unfortunately for us, may be why we no longer have it.
Jose Lozano’s Letras y Figuras and the old clothes are favorites of mine. Letras y Figuras was calling to me to recreate it by means of real people and photography. And the clothes look different enough from its modern counterparts that it would certainly catch stares if worn in public today. They look even different from the Filipiniñas we were required to wear during Buwan ng Wika parade. The materials for the clothes, though are not unfamiliar. We have those cloths at home no longer used for clothes though, but as decorations for silly, high school projects needing ‘nationalistic touches’. Those clothes were once just clothes. Legends say that even the young Rizal refused to wear them because they were itchy. Centuries, however, have given them enough value to be made artifacts fit for museums. Thus giving the Nokia 3310 I have been and still am using for five years now hope that it will one day redeem its value and more as a family heirloom. Thus, artifacts have taught me two important lessons. One is that my hesitation to dispose of old things would make me a millionaire in a century (or make that half a century). The other is something about cultural identity.
History tells us at least two things: what probably was, and what will probably be. As demonstrated by the adopted who suddenly learns the secret of their adoption, many people think we need both to function well. (I probably am one of them. My philosophical training as a philosophy major, however, seems to have taken over my thought processes that I feel the strong need for philosophical grounding before declaring certainty.) The ‘what will probably be’ comes from an abstraction of general reoccurrences of what probably was. As they say, history repeats itself. Or perhaps it is people who repeat history. The ‘probably’ comes from the uncertainty inevitably brought by its witnesses: the winners who write history but whose memories, according to psychology, are not set in stone, and the old things that outlive these people to confirm what is written but whose account is subject to interpretation. As my archaeology professor puts it, an adequate account of history must be archaeological for traditional history based merely on written documents is insufficient. People forget. At worst, they lie. Old things are lie detectors. If our ancestors do turn into anitos that watch over us, we wouldn’t want the liars laughing.
Last Saturday was my third trip to the Ayala Museum. The first two were made two years ago, in a single semester for an archaeology class and a philosophy class. I didn’t notice then, though, how alive the dioramas looked. The lighting resembled real daylight. The painted background with its distance from the small action figures gave an illusion of vastness. Great detail was observed to created those effects, but the details aren’t noticed much. I didn’t remember before what the dioramas depicted, but the lectures that preceded the museum tour made me more attentive to the depictions. There was the battle of Mactan that a fish may have witnessed. An insignificant dog was present in Rizal’s execution. Bonifacio was wearing his red kundiman. There was a Katipunero (I think) wearing a dress. The poster for Mukhang Pera is the lowering of the U.S. flag as depicted in the previous P100 bill, only sir Ambeth was edited beside President Quezon. Carlos P. Romulo has never looked so obvious in their return to Mactan.
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Walang kapantay ang ligaya kapag binigyan ka ng A ng favorite historian/writer/prof mo at komentuhan ka niya ng "Excellent!"
Hindi ko alam kung ba't may 'B' sa likod ng 'E', pero masyado na'kong masaya para magkapakialam. XD
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