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

kanto fried chicken: a love poem in five movements

kanto fried chicken: a love poem in five movements

I.

sittin’ quietly
in a KFC
in a developing country
developing thoughts on the
Mickey D’s
among the trees
across
the street.

crowded jeepneys
drivin’ by looking fly
chrome virgens on the dash
painted jesus ridin’ past
blond hair n’ blue eyes
starin’ at
the unmoving traffic
He’s
stuck
in
prayin’ to his Dad
to forgive his sin
of wishin’ he was in
a private SUV
with the aircon on
blastin’ english songs
‘stead of this public mass
transport
breathing in soot
watchin’ rainbow jeeps
with his mama on the hood.


II.

the smog settles.
revealing schoolgirls on cell phones
texting secrets
to illicit suitors
on scooters
ferrying tourists to
and fro
the megamalls and barrios
where the deal’s a steal
when you play
be it ang mga batang kalye
sneaking away with
your wallet and cell
or a haggled discount price
over your proud prize
an authentic tropical
conch shell
or
your indigenously
meticulously
woven banig to hang on your
loft’s wall
while someone must be missing
a mat to fall
asleep on
It’s wrong

Isn’t it – I think?
while gnawing on
a chicken wing.


III.

lounging comfy
with Colonel Sanders
watching pusacals meander
domesticated predators
eyein’ the tasty thighs,
freedom fries
and ice cold Sierra Mist
this
domesticated preda/tourist
missed
during weeks of cultural immersion
a version
of trying to understand and belong
i think
can that be so wrong?
as i Purell my greasy hands.


IV.

the strays scatter away.
i eye the last fry and
someone takes my tray to
bus it for me
it’s weird to see
the service industry so
clearly.

i pause before i go.


V.

sitting anxiously
at a global chicken chain
urging my brain to
retrain
past the shame and blame
and heat and rain—

lookin’ past the glass exit
and the doorman with a gun
there are cocks
under cardboard boxes
hiding from the sun
their cry for the day to begin
lost earlier in
the wind
i caught ringing in my ears
along with my fears
this morning.

i count my fare slow.

handling each peso and centavo
while watching lolas
futilely sweeping the
uneven concrete
past carts selling buko and calling cards
the memory of the morning
bittersweet
i rubbed my eyes awake to
new skies and then
only to find myself in
the familiar again
and again
and again
unable to exit this air-conditioned
fluorescent haven/hell
conditioned to crave the
smell
of country comfort
cheap fast bright clean cool

the traffic light turns red.
jesus stops and above his
airbrushed head reads:
Quiapo

i get up and go.

What's in a Name?

I don’t know my own name. I can’t pronounce the damn thing correctly. Twenty-two years old and my name sounds strange off my tongue.

Krystal Banzon.

CHRIS-tul BAND-zahn in the states.

Krrris-TAHL BAAN-SOHN in the Philippines.

So I end up mumbling it incoherently when people ask, which requires them to ask me again because they can’t hear or understand me. So I repeat it louder, my lips clumsily tripping over syllables that have belonged to me my whole life, my eyes shifting, embarrassed that I don’t know my own name. Humiliated that I can’t correctly pronounce the ethnic tones that formulate my Visayan last name, the letters that connect me to my father’s heritage.

“KRRRISTAHL BAANSOHN!! Oh, very formal!” people exclaim.

“Krystal” here apparently doesn’t have the same suburban cheerleader connotations it has in the States.

I’ve realized that a similar narrative exists with people who grew up in more than one culture, that some of my own friends have had to resign themselves to be renamed a similar, but simpler nickname for the comfort and ease of the dominant culture, or have had to fight to get their name pronounced correctly, rolled-R’s,long-A’s and all. And then there are the ones like myself, who mumble their birth name all throughout their lives, for some reason never asking their parents for the correct pronunciation, and muttering it inconsistently for years before finally settling on an mess of vowels that is easy to say, but difficult to claim.

Banzon. BAANzon. BanZON. BanSON. BENson. BenZON. BANDzon.

a predicament
of hybridity
of imperialist hegemony
a speech impediment

culturally,

sneakily,

imposed

like bank repos
taken and resold.

it’s the therapy of society
to help you fix
that confusing ethnic

lilt

to train
your brain
to enunciate

PRO-NONE-SEE-ate

For the convenience of the bank men
The understanding of white friends
To avoid bureaucratic dead ends
And prevent corporate interview
career-killing trends

Make it effortless.

No distress

No questions

No shame(?)

in that mutter
stutter
slur
that is Your Name

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.