COLUMN | DANCING DAYS
I flipped through the pages of the Baguio Midland Courier not once, not thrice, not even seventy-seven times, and not just any pages, but the classifieds, looking for rooms for rent, apartments for rent, houses for rent.
With Midland, we had a map of Baguio; surely not a conventional map, “a two-dimensional thing following certain codes to signify “formal attestations of authority,” as Denis Wood defines. Something more maarte, something less straightforward, something that comes out weekly, every Sunday, inaantabayanan sa Upper Session, ilang metro bago mag-building ng Oh my Gulay kung galing ka sa GovPack.
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In “Maps and Worlds, “John Pickles spoke of how “mapping technologies and practices have been crucial to the emergence of… Enlightenment sensibilities and contemporary modernities.” I nominate Midland as an alternative map, if not countermap of, Baguio, and I see how the simultaneity and interplay of different voices in this community newspaper can depart from the tendency of Enlightenment-born—mostly colonial—maps to be imposing, to shun and displace already-existing spatialities and sensibilities. In Midland, there is still the semblance of a plurality of voices—when news of it ceasing operations was announced, many people shared a picture of their previous contributions to the newspaper, evincing how it has served as venue for budding writers, for different sectors. Newspaper technicalities also encourage the plurality. The variety of sections—news, opinion, feature, city, science and environment, sports—entails the featuring of a variety of registers, of styles, of approaches.
But yep I forgot; yep, I am digressing, I started by mentioning the classifieds, I better return to the classifieds—and specifically, how Midland’s classified pages have acted as our map of Baguio city for years.
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How have Midland’s classifieds served as a map for us? What places have they pointed out to us? What spatial encounters and adventures have these pages encouraged us to undertake?
It was through Midland’s classifieds that we found for the first time our Parisas home, a home I shared with four friends from the student publication, a home I shared with them just weeks after graduation, 2011. It was the apartment with a backyard with dayap and luya and dragon fruit and saging. It was the same apartment Jes and I will occupy again six years later, after returning to Baguio from Pasay.
It was through Midland’s classifieds that we discovered Chapis alongside Marcos Highway, a short downward path then sparsely populated. Jesa and her siblings rented an apartment there for a semester, occupying the bottommost unit. During that time—around 2013? —the land now occupied by the Moldex condo was still empty. To one’s side of Jesa’s apartment was found what looked like a tiny forest, haunting. In that apartment, Jes and her siblings were haunted by the unseen, even as a tourism-driven condo was about to rise, haunting the small city of Baguio.
It was through Midland’s classifieds that we got to go to Lourdes Grotto, looking for an apartment for Jesa’s siblings. Before Diplomat was reopened, before Diplomat served as one of the venues for Entacool, Baguio’s first creative city festival. Were there ghosts there too , in that hotel? I did not sense any, nor did Jesa. But one time, we helped our Sulong Likha friends set up their ‘Ano Bato?’ artwork there, and we saw on the second floor an anonymously made artwork: red paints on the wall, made to look like caskets on top of another. On these squares were written various names, alluding to Duterte’s tokhang. Adik, multo, pangulo, ‘wag tularan. Ano ba ‘to—multong pangulo, dumudugong bayan.
Through Midland, we got to see Quezon Hill, we got to see Ambiong, we got to see Maryhurst. We pored over the classifieds looking for an apartment where we could stay, and live and read our coffees. We poured our coffees on the classifieds looking for a transient house for the student publication’s consol weekend overnighter activities. Through Midland, we walked Greenwater and Green Valley, Bengao and KM 3 Benguet.
Bye Midland, at least your physical paper version. We hope to maybe still see you online, ‘search’ over your digital classifieds where maybe we can still look for where to make a home and find a place to stay in Baguio. Maybe you will be just like Nordis, where this column now appears—still existing in this digital form, holding on to community journalism because of principles we readers cannot ever completely fathom. We need papers like you, if only to get to know Baguio a bit more, bit by bit, digital issue after digital issue. # nordis.net
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