traveling into the future, as in the philippines [part 1].

Signs on Jeepneys that I must remember:

Love God
Fear God

SEX, DRUGS, ALKOHOL

don't get closed to me, get closed to God.


and in case you ever need to ask "Are we going down now?" in Tagalog:

"bababa ba?"

(oh my god I love it, I want to repeat it all day long.)

traveling into the future, as in the philippines [part 2].

CEBU CITY, CEBU, PHILIPPINES, 12 DECEMBER 2007, 9:15 a.m.

It is the last hour before we depart for Bohol and I am torn between soaking in the bougie paradise of the Shangri-La Mactan resort, knitting, and taking some time to write. Bummed I can’t take photos because it’s so humid—the lens fogs up instantly. My family last came to Cebu 10 years ago and visited this same place—a muddy mess of a backyard where now there is impeccable landscaping, half a dozen swimming pools steps from a private beach, and a handful of hotel employees watching your every move, ready to wait on your hand and foot every 15 meters. Weird.

There are hardly any Filipino guests save my ma’s class reunion. Funny that on an island in the Philippines I see more Koreans and Japanese than Pinoys. Apparently this area is a popular destination wedding and honeymoon combo. Perhaps it’s an anniversary spot too—there are a few toddlers around, blasting water guns at the kiddie pools while their parents look on, bored. I love love love that the Korean honeymooners have matching outfits. Some have obscure phrases emblazed on the backs of t-shirts, things like “LON DON” (last names, maybe?). Others have longer poetic waxings in true his-and-hers fashion: Where is s/he?” reads one couple’s chests. “S/he who laughs and loves and is my heart.” And on the backs, with respective arrows: “Here is my Romeo/Juliet.” Lots of pink hearts and Hawaiian floral bathing trunks. I heart it.

PANGLAO ISLAND, BOHOL, PHILIPPINES, 13 DECEMBER 2007, 7:40 a.m.

The American Christmas tunes throw me off as I sip coffee in a thatched roof gazebo literally over the edge of a small cliff just off a private white-sand beach. Three small pools snake around the ledge just below me. The morning tide has littered little treasures all over the beach, from shells the size of my fist to translucent crabs no bigger than my thumb. Fishing boats have been abandoned on what the night before was still sea and is now sand. Go ahead and hate me.

This is day four of my ma’s 40th Class Reunion Jubilee. She keeps calling herself and her classmates Jubilarians. She calls me her ya-ya (nursemaid). Yesterday we ferried from Cebu, famed for the fateful encounter between then-unknown Chief Silapu-Lapu and a Portuguese fella named Maghelan, who got a little too big for his britches. I guess the encounter was more between Silapu-Lapu’s stick and Ferny’s shin, but details, shmetails. The ferry between Cebu and Tagbilaran in Bohol was the typical mess of stray children and suitcases and prayers announced over the PA system prior to disclosing the location of our lifejackets (should our prayers have not been answered, I guess). I was kind of bummed that there was no deck—instead I was sandwiched between my ma and a greasy window. Luckily, the film Evan Almighty was playing (which we watched on the flight four days before from Minneapolis to Tokyo, maybe you missed the sarcasm in my typing), which kept the snoring passengers entertained, I’m assuming. I kept my eyes trained on the horizon and my headphones set at some old Blue Scholars tunes, conscious of the fact I couldn’t figure out what direction we were going.

After a bit I squatted on my seat, slipped past my (snoring) mother, and bought a bottle of water at the concession counter near the back. The deckhand said something to me in Tagalog, and I was really startled not to hear something in English. He tried again. Where are you from? [The perpetual question. If that’s not the first, it’s usually: Why aren’t you married yet?]. The States, I answer. Twenty-five pesos, he says. I hand him two tens and a five and the poor guy looks so confused. Conferring with his buddies, he decides that my five, which went out of circulation who knows how long ago, is acceptable. Last trip back home, I say. Errrybody laughs. That’s the third time in two days.

Joke-jokelang:
Why is this island called Bohol?
Because Cebu was taken.

on the day my family and i get assaulted by a cup of coffee sailing through a driver's side window at the hands of a pouty and probably O.C.-crazed teen and her mother in a full-length fur coat in a Nordstrom Rack parking lot of Oakbrook Terrace, i break my glasses. i'm bummed. (but nothing a little superglue can't fix.)

the next day, my folks frantically pack for their flight back home after some old-fashioned holiday madness. my mom struggles with finding enough room in her suitcase, so she hands me a little bag to keep that pretty much sums up the past three weeks:


later, during a quick call to check in on how their flight went, my dad starts talking about how nice the weather is in kansas city--how it is so warm, warmer than chicago, that it's so warm that there they are right now standing in Costco with their coats off, just standing there in their underwear.

the end.

joker.

one. who jokes (what do you take me for)
two. deceptive clause (claws?), as in a contract
three. extra playing cards
used in some games
(i aint playin no )

confronting an old self

there are rooms and borders. same goes for defenses.

don't feel entitled to anything you didn’t sweat and struggle for.
the coefficients b1 and b2 depend on the elasticity of substitution
including
yourself. because if you are not constantly attempting
to achieve equilibrium, some kind of internal and external
(intrinsically linked) balance, you are a doomed dinosaur. you are
a beautiful creature, but doomed. you are,
in such adaptive contexts,
assumed a contiguous whole.

sensitized and seeking
ethnocultural variations that match your own, a cultural way of thinking
that remains marginalized relative to other issues of theory and practice

remember what's passed.

looking right at a family portrait from some twenty years hence
reminds me of a time I wish I had, an era I feel I missed

by being born
in Amerika, an idea,
the other side of the fence--once it was an ocean, an adventure
across the llanos on a motorbike or a caballo
next to your uncle who in one hand holds a necklace of oxtail bones
to gift to the dona of the farm you are about to visit

having everything and nothing
to do with the you of this very minute
having been humbled by a ------ love
which means it's hard now
to adjust the collar
and smooth the hem of a misshapen relationship
which inadvertently expose the calves that remind you
of the mountains of your birth village

saying it out loud
helps stop the rhythm,
therefore ending the pattern.
your hem is already straight, or would be
if saying that would stop the perpetuation
of a binary, heteropatriarchal, sociolinguistic way
of looking at the world. perpetuation is only
one letter away from
perpetration.

what kind of reauthorization act is this.

an unplanned life has tremendous beauty; there is always
some surprise not knowing how far away the next is

unplanned even if in one hand you hold a necklace of oxtail bones
and if you can't help
but want to lean into the body
of the landscape
inhaling her scent
gifting her with a smooth hem.