Xmas in Narvacan, Ilocos Sur

Back from Narvacan!  It was great and overwhelming at times.

Boring and irritating at others.  

I'm a city girl at heart,

but I'm happy I went and looking forward to visiting in the future.

I should process and deconstruct this experience... but not now.

For Xmas I got a keychain and over 30 random bug bites.

Check out the pics.

Pictures from Xmas in the province!

I totally procrastinated an hours worth of work by downloading these pictures, so you better enjoy them.  

And I better get off Facebook and start working.

Back to the grind!

learning to ripen

“Everything is gestation and bringing forth.
That alone is living the artist’s life – in understanding as in work.

There is no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like [a] tree…. It comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide.

I learn it daily, learn it with pain to which I am grateful…”
– Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

i want it now:
to Know.
just,
to Know.

to know what and why
who what where when how
am I doing…

how are you doing?
kumusta ka?

and the truth is I am fine – better than fine -
surviving thriving
making friends and drinking red horse
out til late or
having people over for
more
beer and a smoke
a few
laughs or a bootleg movie.

and the truth is I am well – what else could I be? when
there are weekends with family to
catch up on the years that drowned between
Manila Bay and L.A.
eating napping talking
and
eating again
countering questions on sex
returning auntie’s kisses
receiving another plate of pancit
and listening until the stark light
of bare bulbs flicker on
across the city.

but
you know,
my truth is also
hungry yearning needy impatient
inside tearing ripping clawing
a young bright wanting
frantic desperate heaving
striving trying looking searching for
who what where when
how am I really doing
here.

and the truth is that it was gorgeous today an orange evening clear for miles
and i wondered to myself in that same breath of awe

How am I doing Here?

kumusta ako?
and the truth is 'di ko alam, po.
well, if you really want to know –

the truth is i want. every moment wanting
gasping awake sweating needing
answers to unsolvable questions
addresses to homes unknown or off limits

the truth is i hurt – more than hurt
i am ripped apart by my context and history and location
my fundamental selves at odds
bleeding
should i even be here?

the truth is i am dealing
coping negotiating my own issues
insecurities, identity
coming here to “find myself”
a me i have never seen
though
i am flesh and i exist
fractured and disparate yet sure and undeniable.

knowing that,
the truth is i cry.
weeping gratefully as the bare bulbs burn

Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother

AIM IM with BBanzon.
9:15 AM

Me: dad its krystal i have internet now
Dad: horay for you how you doing girl?
Me: gooooood im going to work this afternoon, and my cousins kim and maaan are here. they stayed with me this weekend
Dad: great keep you in company be sure to take care your self carefully be vigilant hope all things going swell
Me: i will be vigilant and careful - going to eat now, i love you!!!
Dad: we miss you so much and j.r. oke I love
Me: bye bye talk to u later!!
Dad: goodnight bona petit

Two reasons why I love my Dad:

1) “Be vigilant.”
I love it. Talking to my dad is like talking to a mid-century English man… Who has a deep Filipino accent.

2) His attempt at colloquialisms like, “swell” and “bon appetit.”
In one sentence the man sounds like Sherlock Holmes and in the next he sounds like Julia Child.

I can’t even imagine the amalgamated morass of pop culture and American multiculturalism that he has absorbed over his 30+ years in the American “melting pot.”

This morning on the phone, my Dad said to me, “As long as you are enjoying life and having fun we’re happy.” Then I hear my Mom exclaim, “Fun!?” before snatching the phone back and saying, “Your Dad is still asleep. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

We share a laugh about my artistic sloth. Nothing like moving out, living my own life, and doing what I want to strengthen the relationship I have my parents. I’m a lucky gal.

Confessions of A BEAUTY QUEE(r)N

Filipinos are a very direct people.

Add the Family dimension to that and you’ve never experienced honesty so candid.

Apparently, I’m fat.
And uglier and than they expected.

And honestly, I’ve never heard insults so laced with love. It’s not a mean-spirited kind of forthrightness. It’s a kind of frankness that comes from a place of caring and joviality, a casual, unasked for opinion that is to be swallowed with appreciation and volleyed back with humor, not defensiveness.

Don’t get me wrong. It still takes some getting used to.

I was greeted by a beloved pinsan who exclaimed, “Oh, you’re still very, very ‘healthy’!”
*Healthy = Fat.*
My Tita causally mentioned, “Look at that big stomach! Don’t you want to be sexy for your boyfriend?”
*No doubt that’s why I don’t have one.*
My gorgeous cousin told me that she was so surprised when she saw me! Apparently, the picture our Lola sent was incredibly misleading because in the photo I was pretty and had pigtails.
*1) Was pretty?!
2) I don’t remember the last time my hair was long enough to be in pigtails.*
Another Aunt handed me some yummy-scented papaya soap and offered vehemently to buy me more when I run out.
*Papaya WHITENING soap.*
My nine-year-old cousin said that I am “chub-chub, talaga!”
*Self-explanatory.*

The cherry on the top of it all (which I apparently shouldn’t eat) was when I was admiring a relatives jewelry, specifically her beautiful hand-painted bangles, and I mentioned the irritating fact that they were made for small wrists. Her BOYFRIEND jumped in and said (without malice or mean-spiritedness),

“That will give you some incentive to get fit! So you can wear them too!”

Really now, If I’m not going to lose weight for a man, what makes you think I’m going to diet for fucking baby-wrist-bangles?

Oh, and several children have commented that I look like a boy.

Which, to be fair, is what I’m going for sometimes. But, looking like a boi in queer-mo NoHo or lezbionic Brooklyn is perceived differently than looking like a dude in the Mall of Asia. There is no blatant female queerness on the street, in the media, or in advertising. Androgyny is not all the rage in the Philippines as in America. No representation = no reference for the general population = strange = pangit.

Oddly enough, to some extent, in the Philippines gay men are more accepted in the public sphere. Gay men have a special place in Filipino culture; drag queens, high-pitched hairdressers and flaming fashionistas are taken to be a part of life. However, queer women are rendered invisible.

Perhaps femininity is valued in a different way in the Philippines. It seems like femininity isn't viewed as a threat, unlike the States. It seems to be a trait that is honored, cultivated, and venerated. The Lola is the matriarch and everyone loves and respects their Nanay without compunction. Maybe it comes from Catholicism and the idolization of the Virgin Mary, a form of marianismo within the culture that worships femininity and sees it as something to be desired. Maybe that is why gay men are tolerated and represented more than gay women?... Hmm, research time....

The ego is a fragile entity, and especially for women it must be nurtured and stroked more often than not to undo all the fucked up shit that gets thrown at it by Hollywood, patriarchy and racism: Be Thin, Be Feminine, Be White = Be Beautiful!

I thank Smith College and feminists in my life for creating the open, accepting, progressive, queer environment that I was so blessed to be a part of. If it were not for the first two years of fantastic friends and feminist maintenance that fixed my abused and broken self-esteem and body image, and the last two years of confidence building and training in how to feel hot and fabulous as a genderqueer POC with a sexy beer belly – I don’t think I would be holding up as well as I’m doing now.

I was about to say I miss seeing people like myself.
Ironically, this is the first time in my life I've seen so many people who look like me.
No better place to see Filipinos than the Philippines.
Now, where are the queers, I wonder?

Such is the struggle.

Death or Disease.

Apparently, that’s what I have to look forward to during my time in the Philippines. Not the invaluable experience of being immersed in another culture, or getting to finally know and appreciate fully my background and heritage, or the intellectual stretching I will undoubtedly go through in my studies, or even the simple fact that I’ll be participating in theatre…

I’ll be much too busy fearing for my life – from terrorists, thieves, drug smugglers, malaria, corrupt immigration officials, typhoons, death by no air-conditioning, greedy cabbies, child pickpockets, constipation, mosquitoes, smog, salmonella-by-street-vendor, anti-government rebels, dengue fever, pusacal rabies, and crazy Manila drivers.

This is what I’ve been hearing since I got the Fulbright. From the movie industry to CNN Breaking News, from the L.A. Times, to acquaintances, friends, and even/especially my own family.

And I’m fucking terrified because an irrational part of me believes them! After being bombarded from every angle with fear and violence and mistrust and media whirlwinds and family experiences and ingrained racism and colonial mentalities and American xenophobia –-

I am only one psyche against systematically perpetuated fear.

Not only am I educated, but I’ve been there before. Not only have I been there before, but I have family living in Manila now. And yes, they may be living a life different than mine, with thoughts and threats and paranoias and comforts different that what I am used to (especially after spending four years in happy Northampton), but probably not a life too removed from the day to day in South L.A., or the Bronx, or Miami – or any large city with its riches and its slums and its wi-fi cafes and its strip joints. My father never talks of ever getting robbed or held up when he lived in Manila. But I know it happened when we lived in South L.A. Then again, my father didn’t sweet talk customs officials to save his ass getting out of L.A. like he did scrambling to get out of the Philippines in the early seventies. But he did move his wife and young daughter out of L.A. and to the ‘burbs for a better, safer life.

And yes, I also know that the historical context of the U.S. is different. We don’t fear a government uprising, and the threat of anti-establishment guerillas is not nearly as real. But the day to day is not the same as what we see on our bloodiest-news-gets-the-best-ratings or our blockbuster-anti-terrorist-racist-movie-trailers.

I watch The Bourne Ultimatum and sit through several trailers with CGI bombings and plot lines about international terrorism. Then I come home to CNN headline news covering a massive typhoon sweeping houses away in South Asia. I check my email and in my inbox I read an email from a beloved cousin happily declaring that she doesn’t have class the rest of the week due to the typhoon. While I know that some people worry about losing their houses to this storm, and not celebrating the loss of class time, her email grounds me in her reality – a reality of going to class everyday, of sitting in bars with friends, of public transportation and shopping and homework. Not one of fear. Especially the kind of fear that we in America like to perpetuate about the Other countries.

Then I come home and talk to friends who, in the nicest possible way and don’t mean any harm, but haven’t been to other countries ask me if there is running water and electricity and malls in Manila. Three words: MALL OF ASIA. It’s not even called the mall of the Philippines people – it’s the Mall of ASIA.

Then, the advice from my family is the most complicated and fraught part of it all. Here I am, Miss Privileged Fil-Am going to this place for my cultural and intellectual expansion wanting to “learn more about my heritage” (what a snot). I’m returning to the country that to my parents represents what they left behind: poverty and struggle. I feel like the rich white girls who work on farms because “Farms are SO COOL!” Where to most of the world, farms aren’t “cool” – they are places of hardship and labor and subsistence.

An aunt gave me a pair of granny panties with pockets so that I don’t have to keep my cash in my jeans or purse, because apparently people slash your thighs with knives to get to your wallet.

Hold your bag in front of you.
Don’t get into a taxi alone.
Watch your wallet and cellular.
Do give out U.S, dollars for tips, they’ll like that.
Don’t give out U.S. dollars for tips, they’ll take advantage of you.

I am writing this because I am afraid.

But, I am also hungry to know different than what I know now.

Filipina-Americana-1st Gen.
MixedCultureWomon
queer-P.O.C.
workinclassbrowngirl
with a Smith degree
artist.activist.scholar
straddling the picket fence of
privilege
one unshaved leg
on each side gyrating - trying
to find the right
S-s-s-spot G !!! /slash/ Place to Be
It is the negotiation of location
when you are Ohh-So-Close!
so close to being yuppie up-by-my-bootstraps puppy
so close to low-credit-score-call-now-1-800-debt-free
so close to wanderlust-backpacker-the-world-is-my-oyster
so close to slaved-for-saved-for-remittances-money-wire-transfers
a white picket fence wedgie’s
the true reality of a
degree wieldin’
hummus-loving, recycling, organic-vegetar-I-eatin’
creditcreditcredit charging
lola and lolo respecting
independent self-reliant woman/familial separatist
good-girl-no-boyfriend!
no-boy-period! this-lady’s-lady-chasin’
family hurting
family loving
P.O.C.

Like Father, Like Daughter… One Can Only Hope.

My parents attended a wedding of some distant relatives a few weeks ago up in Santa Barbara. The wedding was held on the beautiful California coast, at a classy, upscale hotel. From what was described to me, it was one of those picturesque perfect nuptials - a well-funded dream wedding, glossy magazine pristine.

My father was outraged.

The next morning, I’m sitting at the dining room table munching on rice and meat, watching I Love Lucy. My father is rambling on loudly about the expenses incurred in the planning and execution of this picture-perfect wedding. My father rambles on about a lot of things on a day-to-day basis, so this isn’t unusual or cutting into my concentration on Lucy Ricardo’s first attempt at babysitting.

“ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS, my girl! Ay, can you imagine?! One hundred thousand dollars for a wedding!” He laughs in disbelief, pacing next to the table.

I am reluctant to engage with him. This conversation could go in a bunch of different directions – and with my smart-ass mouth, those are potentially bad directions:

Scenario 1:
Me: “Don’t worry, Dad, I’m not ever getting married.”
Dad: “Ever? Why?”
Me: “Because I’m a big DYKE!”

Scenario 2:
Me: “Marriage is a stupid, patriarchal institution. I don’t believe in marriage.”
Dad: “You don’t believe in marriage? Then your child is going to be a bastard!”

So, I humor him, and in between bites of fried rice I say, “Yeah, weddings are expensive nowadays.”

“One hundred thousand dollars, girl! That’s five million Philippine pesos!”

I grunt an impressed grunt and continue to chew while Ricky Ricardo reprimands Lucy for buying a new hat. Irritated that women are always made out to be shopping-hungry spendthrifts.

“Can you imagine all that money!”

If Lucy Ricardo were financially independent she wouldn’t be in this ridiculous situation.

“Five million pesos, girlie!”

Oooh, Lucy gonna fuck Ethel!

“If that were me, I would have sent that money to Darfur to help those people there!”

I wasn’t sure if I heard correctly. All thoughts of Lucy-fucking-black-and-white-50’s-kama-sutra gone, I say, “What, Daddy?”

“With that money we could have built a clinic in the Philippines where people can go for free! So much money, girl, for that wedding in the five-star hotel!

I wouldn’t have done that. No sir, if that were me, girlie.”