I - Genesis

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.”

The first observation in the entire Bible was that the earth was a void. If there indeed existed a void, what needed to happen to bring us here today, year 2026 of the Gregorian calendar? If God indeed created us in His image as the rest of the passage goes on to say, then we should also be able to just will things into existence. Lately, I have started to believe in that capability but it’s not so obvious how that process plays out in our lives.

Explaining how the world came about is not what a newspaper is for—at least according to how we’ve been conditioned. However, I will attempt to put forth an explanation of why we are here and why it matters over the run of this series. Let me start with a seemingly benign statement: Observation precedes all knowable actions. 

I read the Bible cover to cover at least five times in different versions but I find no need to broadcast it every time I introduce myself to someone new because that is equivalent to wearing a pin of one’s achievements on a gaming platform. Did you see what I did there? I reframed one core idea, the reading of the Bible, and transformed the container that housed it. If I tell that fact to a friend, he would automatically assume I’m religious. If I told it to a religious girl I’m courting, she would assume I’m pious. The truth is I am likely neither.

Around 2013, I first met a particular married woman with kids and she seemed to be starting her career in publishing but I’ve never really asked about the details. I remember thinking, “Wow, what a beautiful woman.” At that point, I already photographed many beautiful women across a few countries so it was just an observation. We would continue to work together over the course of a year or so until I decided to step back from editorial photography slowly. Fast forward twelve years, I see her again in passing, we just share a smile from mid-range. I notice that she hasn’t changed much and it feels like yesterday.

Months after that, I heard stories of how she’s such a good boss, a loving mother and presumably, a loving wife. For me, the only way to know for certain of all those claims would be to interview the people around her for confirmation but we all know that’s ridiculous. And, come on, no one is perfect, especially in this world of never ending problems. However, she presents as such, and is said to be as such so it should be functionally true, barring a few exceptions.

I remember at another event, a full year after last seeing her, where we had a short moment and I pulled her in for a side hug and told her, “I miss you.” I said it out of nostalgia of the past and also of the idealized version of her constructed in my head. Mind you, she is a full decade older than me so let’s just say, there are boundaries stacked on top of boundaries which I fully respect.

So why am I sharing this? It would seem like I’m trying to create a blind item but let’s go back to 1400s Florence to one of the architects of the Renaissance, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Il Magnifico. In the past, it wasn’t so obvious to me what he did and how he did what he did. He seemed to just be a patron who happened to be a ruler but I was gravely mistaken. I have been educating myself about knowledge lately, and found myself gravitating to thinkers like Nassim Nicholas Taleb, David Deutsch and Chiara Marletto. By appending my phenomenological lens with new ways of thinking, I realized that Lorenzo was able to separate Truth from Utility and do so without cognitive dissonance.

Clarice Orsini was Lorenzo’s legal wife who he married in 1469 because of her noble Roman lineage. She was the mother of Pope Leo X. Coming from a Filipino-Chinese background, I can surmise that the couple married for dynastic ambitions even without a heavy excavation of their history since one had the pedigree, and the other had immense wealth.

Many historians and intellectuals have a hard time understanding the existence of Lucrezia Donati and what she was to Lorenzo. In 1469, on the eve of his strategic marriage to Clarice, Lorenzo rode into the jousting arena at Piazza Santa Croce wearing a garland woven by his married muse, Lucrezia, dedicating his lance and his victory to her before the whole of Florence without a shred of scandal. Lorenzo even immortalized her across his own sonnets and commissioned Verrocchio’s workshop to render her likeness—including the famed marble bust, Dama col mazzolino, that still sits in Florence today.

I could have started this series in many ways but the choice to start by describing the two containers Lorenzo successfully maintained, that of Truth and of Utility, seems to be both by necessity and serendipity. It was in 2016 when I first saw Florence, and I thought to myself, “This is the kind of beauty that I want for my own country.”

I was at a mall recently and I had just finished coffee over a thought organization session. Guess who I walk into? My eyes first caught her blue gently-flared pants, then a white tank top, then I looked at her au naturel face and she was on the phone. It took a few seconds for me to realize it was her, the woman I first met many years ago. She was serious, probably in her head but when she recognized me, she suddenly beamed a wide smile and waved. I also did the same as we walked past each other. 

She is a symbol of Truth, that one can become a loving wife and mother, an accomplished figure in her industry and a beauty icon. Nowadays, we are being fed the idea that one can only ever be exceptional at one thing but that message is pessimistic even if it is wrapped in positivity. She is proof that multi-dimensionality is not prohibited by nature, as long as we apply the right knowledge. I have learned many things in life and it was made possible by our technological era. All we really need is to ruthlessly strip away the need to be right.

Success at any one thing is a compounding function and nothing prohibits us from running concurrent functions in life. We live in a society that is rapidly advancing and where many tedious activities are being sufficiently replaced with easier methods. Life is not a lottery—we have the ability to shape the void into what we find to be beautiful. What I would agree with the Creation story is that we indeed have the ability to generate beauty, which is a form of knowledge.

What is Utility then? Does it necessarily mean a wife is a mere container of Utility? By no means is that true. Even though it seems I am advocating for a binary mode of thinking, I used the container that is the essay to show how our daily lives can be made richer just by observing. One’s wife can be both muse and partner at the same time, or one more than the other depending on the season of life you’re both in. Let me leave you with this: I’ve had many muses in life.