The introspective art of photographer Frankie Callaghan—with its quasi-mystical attention to color, geometry, and form—offers viewers immortalized glimpses of the sublime, which are easily drowned out amidst the noise of modern life. Inspired by the suggestive mystery and meditative elegance of Callaghan’s visual feast, writer Luis Katigbak contemplates on the idea of isolation as he searches for fragments of temporary sanctuary within the chaotic confines of our city.

Live apart from people long enough and you will forget that they exist. I don’t mean physical isolation necessarily—look at me, I live in a city crammed with too many bodies, where traveling from one area to any other area generally involves close frequent contact with other people’s elbows, flanks, crotches. Isa pa, isa pa. Kasya pa ‘yan. Konting ayos lang. You have to retreat into yourself to some degree, stop thinking of your fellow commuters as other people, just see them as obstacles, environment.

When I was a child in a gray stone Catholic school, my only refuge during the endless daily lessons was our Christian Living book, which had many postcard-pretty pictures of things like seashores and open fields. I would slip away by staring at these pictures, somehow willing myself to wormhole into them. Classmates and teachers and all the pointless detested routines melted away as I reappeared on some distant hill or shore, safe and happy for the moment. I do much the same thing now as an adult, except that, without a well-illustrated book handy, I find myself looking everywhere in this ugly city for little fragments of temporary sanctuary: sunlight streaming through a bit of glass; a tree, not blackened or stunted, spread against the sky. They never last. I never stop looking.

As unreal as other people seem to me, the funny thing is, I have to deal directly with them, all the time. I write features for a lifestyle section in a major broadsheet, and my editor is always sending me out to interview actors, singers, entertainers of every stripe. I think I’m good at my job; I am never fawning or starstruck, and my questions, though never straying far from the usual, are not too stupid. Sometimes when I’m talking to some FAMAS awardee or Awit winner, my attention starts to wander. I end up staring at the subject’s hairclip, say, or the glass of ice water that he or she is cradling in his or her hands. This is not too much of a problem—I trust my recorder to pick up everything I don’t—but some subjects, hyper-sensitive to any flagging of attention, become irritated. Some subjects are too used to being the center of everything, to being the sole source of light and interest in a given situation.

“Accumulation. An accumulation of moments, or, perhaps more accurately, an erosion of promises.”

Not that I notice their irritation at the time. It’s something I’ll hear in their voices, late at night, when I’m back at home transcribing the interviews in the narrow-hallwayed house I share with an ad agency account executive and three call center employees. Transcription is the part of my job that I dislike the most; paradoxically, it is the one part of the process that I can’t set on autopilot. I have to listen carefully, weed out the irrelevant from the interesting. When I’m transcribing, that’s when I become aware of my housemates’ noises: the laughter of the call center kids at odd hours, the music from the AE’s room, usually the muffled thump of some new dance sub-category. As a rule, though, I don’t think at all about my housemates, and they in turn—I trust—don’t think about me.

The exception to this rule was a girl who lived here a little over a year ago. (I am somewhat disturbed by the fact that I’ve been living here for more than three years, longer than the AE, longer than the call center gang. Long enough that when I’m a bit late with the rent, the middle-aged couple who own the house don’t worry too much.) Her field was Economics, and she didn’t live here long—she was just working on a three-month project for the ADB that soon got stretched into a half-year stint. I only ever saw glimpses of her. We never talked.

I looked her up on the ‘net. Found profiles and pictures spread out over several social networks. There were a lot of pictures. Family, friends, snapshots of her and her cat. Found an old blog of hers that she had abandoned after a few weeks of writing. I liked her blog entries—observant, occasionally funny. There was even a recipe, for paella. I wondered what she was like in real life. I daydreamed about being assigned to interview her.

It wasn’t art, I don’t think, but it wasn’t too bad. I asked her the laziest question possible: “What is your exhibit about?” It was about, she said, the second type of betrayal.

I’ve interviewed so many people now that no one stands out, except for a certain actress. I remember her because she spoke in straight, somewhat pretentious English, but that isn’t the only reason I remember her.

Her showbiz career was in decline when I did the story on her—she was, as they say, washed up. But I wasn’t interviewing her because of her movies. Well into her forties, she had embarked on a second career, as an artist; she had a solo exhibit at a gallery in Quezon City. It wasn’t the usual watercolor washes or oil-based embarrassments: it was an array of found objects arranged in different ways. There was a wooden box, with hooks and buttons and other small objects inside it. Postcards. Pencil cases. There was a cigarette hanging from a string. It wasn’t art, I don’t think, but it wasn’t too bad. I asked her the laziest question possible: “What is your exhibit about?” It was about, she said, the second type of betrayal.

“There are two varieties of betrayal,” she explained. “The first one, everyone is familiar with. That is the betrayal of a moment, the impulsive act that destroys years of trust in one fell strike. That is the suddenly revealed secret, the sudden uncharacteristic infidelity. Everyone has heard stories about that kind of betrayal.” She paused. “The other kind is harder to identify and perhaps even more damaging. It is betrayal via accumulation, and neither party—the betrayer or the betrayed—may be aware of it, at least not at first. Even in the end, after the damage is apparent, they still may not be aware of it as betrayal, but betrayal it is.” She took a long drag on her cigarette, exhaled smoke slowly. “Accumulation. An accumulation of moments, or, perhaps more accurately, an erosion of promises. In artists, it may be the betrayal of their talent: day after day, spurning their muse, postponing their art, until nothing is left but the ashes of possibilities. In lovers, it happens when one listens to the other voices.” She paused for a longer time, this time, until I was moved to echo: “Voices?”

“It may be the betrayal of their talent: postponing their art, until nothing is left but the ashes of possibilities.”

“Little annoyances, perhaps, little fears,” she continued. “There is a true pure voice that runs under a true love, I believe—otherwise, it is merely the satisfaction of impulses, romantic or lustful.” She flicked ash, and seemed to pick up the pace of her speech. “But everyone has doubts. All loves, true or not, have troubles. It may be that your lover truly is not the one for you, and a leavetaking is in order. But it may also be that you are swallowing daily doses of a poison.” A third pause, the longest one this time, unbroken by me. Finally: “Betrayal happens,” she said. “It happens because you are weak.” She emphasized the last word, and ground out her cigarette on the ashtray as she did, and I knew the interview was over.