The Re-Education of Ms.FuDaddy: Philippines

Showing posts with label Philippines. Show all posts

Monday, November 21, 2011

Babaylan: Filipinos and the Call of the Indigenous

From the Introduction of Babaylan: Filipinos and the Call of the Indigenous:

"How? How do I retrieve my own memories of indigenous knowledge and indigenous spirituality when colonialism has robbed us of the language with which to speak of the knowledge we still feel in our bodies and in the depths of our Loob? When what we have is the language of the West and the language of a theology that is the language of the West and the language of a theology that is difficult to translate? When we aim to be understood by transnational and diasporic peoples whose engagement with the world is also determined by discourses not of their own making?

...our spirits have need of nurtures, mythic and symbolic, rooted in the soils and souls of primal cultures so that we might have an amulet against pathological forgetting forced on us by modernity...." -Leny Mendoza Strobel

Saturday, September 3, 2011

I Want to Sing Like This

I had the opportunity to see this woman sing at Lake Sebu. She is one of the most well known T'Boli singers around. Her voice is amazing. I wish I could just sit and learn from her and sing, sing, sing like this.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Her Wild American Self

I'm finishing up a set of short stories by M. Evelina Galang called Her Wild American Self. The book came out in 1996. Part of me wonders why I didn't read this earlier. I guess I was a bit young to read it in '96. I do have a vague memory of seeing the cover and not being ready for it. In any case, I'm glad I found it at Arkipelago Books when I did. The stories about Filipino American families and Filipina American women in particular are honest -sometimes painful, sometimes sweet and always familiar.

One of my favorite paragraphs in the book is from the story "Lectures on How You Never Lived Back Home." In the first lines of the story, Galang writes:

You grew up hearing two languages -one you can pull apart, name, slap a series of rules to, twist like clay-dough in a child's hand -the other you cannot explain, you listen and you know. It is a language you understand intuitively -like being able to read the sunrise, the strips of pink and orange, the clumps of uneven clouds, a thin patch of grey and the moon and somehow, without thinking twice, you know what kind of day it will be. You understand like this because you are the first born. First generation. First American. First cousin. First hope.

How does she know me so well? How does she know what it feels like? What I can do? What it sounds like? Did she write this for me?

Yes, yes. I think she did.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Faces -Flashbacks

Everyone has triggers -sights, sounds, smells that bring them back to a different time and place. They may have lived it, they may not have, but those triggers take them somewhere else. Up until recently, faces weren't a usual trigger for me, but today at Mass, I was unassumingly looking around when the face of a Filipino man smacked me between the eyes and reminded me of home. It's been a while since I've had so visceral a reminder.

What's funny is, I've known this man almost my whole life. He is the father of a girl from my grade school. While we weren't close, her family was always around so I was very surprised when his face threw me across the world into a hot, muggy, open air Church where the old women were wearing veils and Church uniforms and the men Church vests or barongs. He threw me so far back I had to catch my breath and squint my eyes so as not to let tears fall.

What is this connection? I still can't figure it out. Is this what happens when somebody moves to another place, even if it's only for four months? It sticks with you? Sticks to your ribs and pulsates in your mind, waiting to flash through you like an electric shock? I can't figure it out, but all I know is that it's there and it's strong.

*On a complete side note -What is up with girls and women in Church wearing no clothes?! If they're not the shortest shorts in the world, they're the tightest pants ever or something inappropriately see through!!! And it's not just young girls, it's older women too. Whhhyyyy?!?!?! smh.

Friday, June 3, 2011

Diwata by Barbara Jane Reyes

Next on my list of poetry to read is Diwata by Barbara Jane Reyes. If this portion of a poem is any indication of what the rest of the book is like, I'm finished!

"She was born with fins and fishtail,

A quick blade slicing water.

She was her father's mermaid child.

A river demon, elders said.

...She lit oak pyers and bade the wind

A whispered requiem."

-Barbara Jane Reyes

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Third Culture Kids

It's a constant thought in our minds -home, home and home. Yes, I wrote 'home' three times, but I don't mean the same place with that one word. So many of my people consider themselves to be multi-cultural, multi-lingual with a 'double-consciousness' or maybe a multi-consciousness. Recently, my girls and I connected over an article in McCombs Today about a man who considers himself to be a "Third Culture Kid" -with a Togolese father, a Black Texan mother and born in Coite de Ivoire. While some of us disagreed over whether the title was too broad or too limiting, one of the major factors in what brought us together as friends is that shared experience of having many different homes and having to learn how to navigate multiple realities, oftentimes, simultaneously.

While it is certainly a gift in so many ways, it can also be extremely challenging. Sometimes your spirit gets mixed up and you wonder to yourself if you're just falling for the supposed greener grass on the other side of the fence (or world) or if you're legitimately homesick. Either way, the feeling is real. Though I've been back home in New York for a number of months now, I'm still surprised to find that I'll feel strong pangs of homesickness for the Philippines. One day, I felt it particularly deeply and had to write more. This is for all my Third Culture Kids!

May 14, 2011

I look out the window as we pass conifers and desiduous trees native to the Northeastern United States finally beginning to bud after a long, cold winter that I had the great luck of missing. As the winter thawed and I found myself back in a world full of frozen, bronzed spirits and surrounded by pure artifice, I thought that the buds of spring would re-energize me and bring me closer to the endless summer that I had left behind.

There are days when it works. When I can breathe in next to a body of water and feel my spirit shudder in anticipation. There are days when it doesn’t. The leaves look tight and rigid to me, as if they are bracing themselves for their impending death in the fall. The branches and trunks, too stiff, too straight, too thin to make my heart beat harder. They stand far from one another –isolated and almost awkwardly misplaced.

Unfairly, I compare those sharp, pale leaves to the expansive, bawdy green of home. The branches that grow endlessly and the trunks that bend under the weight of its fruit. I romantically remember how those trees and leaves disappear into themselves, never letting you see where he ends and she begins, mated restfully until a breeze causes him to turn here and her to shift just there.

I wonder why I torture myself with such comparisons and remind myself that after all, I was born here! Mama wasn’t even pregnant with me when she left home. That I could understand. If I was conceived in the humidity of February and forced to fly to JFK while being jostled in my liquor amnii, I might understand my spirit’s longing to lift itself from my body and visit for a little bit. I almost wish it would, in the darkness of my sleep -just leave and catch its fill of home so this void wouldn’t continue to punch me mercilessly at the most inopportune moments. Fly through the muddy terraces and warm waters for hours only to burst back into my body with my first waking breaths.

Sometimes I urge my spirit to leave while I’m awake. Leave my body in a trance while you collect the remnants of a place I miss so acutely. I won’t mind.

What is calling me home? Who is calling me home? I can’t see their faces. It is my own? Is it simply myself? Will I always feel broken in two when I look out the window? Places that were once so familiar, places that defined me are now secondary identifications of where I came from. Does my ancestry supersede my circumstance? Will I ever just be able to simply exist?

Do I want to?

A bird shrilly calls, crickets chirp and I feel my blood lift in response. At night, I lie awake, straining to hear the bird sing. I know this creature for some reason. It sings alone, reminding me of home, reminding me of myself. Besides the regularly scheduled trains passing, it is the only sound I hear at night. All should be sleeping, but this bird sings as though its breast is sweating under the heat of a noontime sun. It reminds me that somewhere, far from here, it’s daylight. Somewhere far from here, birds and people sing and sweat under the noontime sun. While I sleep, someone calls and my spirit flies to meet itself where dreams and reality merge into one.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Eating Pinoy Food Tutorial

This Mikey Bustos is too funny.

I really love, "Soooaappp allreeeadddyy!" during the fight over the dishes. How many times have you done that?!

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Visualization for Stress Relief

"This technique uses your imagination, a great resource when it comes to reducing stress.

Sit or lie down in a comfortable position.
Imagine a pleasant, peaceful scene, such as a lush forest or a sandy beach. Picture yourself in this setting.
Focus on the scene for a set amount of time, then gradually return to your other activities."

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Diwang Pinay -Spirit of the Filipina

When I heard about the production of Diwang Pinay, I was unsure of whether I wanted to attend. Would I want to see something about Filipinos overseas workers here after coming back? Would it be watered down compared to my last four months or would it be too much? Did I want to deal with either of those outcomes?

Ends up I didn't have to deal with either of those possibilities because it was perfect for my reentry to the us. I'm no critic but I felt and learned so much from the show which was brief but laden with the density of truth, love and struggle.

Each of the seven scenes focused on common themes experienced by real Pinay domestic workers living and working here in ny. The actors taught us about the struggle of raising other people's children, the interchanging monotony and rush of tasks, abuse, being away from one's family for years at a time, economic struggles, and coping mechanisms.

The play was powerfully created and produced using the stories and voices of the actresses themselves many OFW's for at least 5 years. because of the way it was created and produced. These were the stories of real women working in ny and they wrote the play themselves through a process that empowered them to have a voice.

So often I've seen the lines of OFW's in the airport and my heart always wrenches at the sight of modern day manongs and manangs who still have to make it work away from family, in a foreign place with so few resources. Diwang Pinay allowed us to hear intimately those voices on the OFW line and the voices of those who never or rarely even make it to that line.

In the last scene, the writers came to the front to share messages written to their families, mostly to their children. The room was filled with the tears and sobs of both the actresses and the audience who felt the separation, "the distance" as Geologic says "between our souls and our hearts."

I'm so grateful I was moved to go, even though I was uncertain of how it would make me feel. It's the little things that can keep us connected and it's the little things that will keep us apart. Diwang Pinay was definitely a bridge to home for which I am so thankful!

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Sensual Dissonance aka Withdrawal

“As the expressive and sentient landscape slowly faded behind my more exclusively human concerns, threatening to become littler more than an illusion or fantasy, I began to feel –particularly in my chest and abdomen –as though I were being cut off from vital sources of nourishment. I was indeed re-acclimating to my own culture, becoming more attuned to its styles of discourse and interaction, yet my bodily senses seemed to be losing their acuteness, becoming less awake to subtle changes and patterns….

There [Nepal] the air was a thick and richly textured presence, filled with invisible, but nonetheless tactile, olfactory, and audible influences. In the United States, however, the air seemed thin and void of substance or influence…Hence, in America I found myself lingering near wood fires and even garbage dumps –much to the dismay of my friends –for only such an intensity of smells served to remind my body of its immersion in an enveloping medium, and with this experience of being immersed in a world of influences came a host of body memories from my year among the shamans and village people of rural Asia.” –Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous

There’s a painting of a beautiful sunset where a person sits on the boat by the shadows of the trees at my friend’s new apartment. The colors are familiar –orange, gold, purple, blue, and pink. I stare at it, letting every part of me travel to those moments where I was the one sitting in that boat, watching the sun, surrounded by warmth, water, and spirits. I breathe in deeply and catch a whiff of the thick island air, half praying that the spirits I encountered will manifest themselves so that I can just remember.

Just let me remember.

A siren squeals loudly outside and a cold gush of air sweeps over me through the window I’m sitting next to and I’m back in New York.

Every part of my body wants to remember the Philippines. Every minute back here in the States, I’m afraid I’ll forget it all. I’m afraid that the old images of things that I love will overcrowd the things that I love from my most recent home. I’ve kept myself inside for the past 3 days, subconsciously afraid that overexposure will make me leave it all behind completely. My heart warms at the sight of the New York skyline, but I foolishly fight the warmth I feel, thinking it will make me forget the bundok, the bukid, the dagat, the ilog…lahat –everything.

Like Abram, my nose itches to smell the scents of diesel mixed with heat, dust, and burning garbage of the city or the warm, gentle air of the waters or the clean, crisp air of the mountains. Walking down 139^th, I catch a quick scent of something burning. The familiarity excites me for a brief moment until the cold hits my nostrils with a shock.

My skin roars at the cold –cracked and itchy, screaming for moisture and the natural oil produced by the heat of the islands that kept my sin safe and protected. Granted, I’m not dusty like I was in the PI, but that’s what tabos are for. My hands reach for warm waters to dip into while my toes wiggle in winter boots, desirous of the freedom of tsinellas.

My ears strain for the sounds of birds, crickets, frogs thrumming in the day and the night and the constant chatter of Tagalog. I liked listening to people talk, trying to figure out what they’re saying and being happy when I could get the gist of it. I liked hearing the women gossip and the men guffaw. It always made me smile. Instead, I hear sirens, trucks, and loud voices bantering in English. I guess that’s all right too.

Meanwhile, my tongue trips over both English and Tagalog. I find myself eagerly chatting with my parents about what I experienced in the Philippines and what needs to be done at the house, but shying away from too much unnecessary chatter with other folks, afraid that falling back into my old gregariousness will signal a clutter in the mental space that I had just spent four months clearing. The space for Tagalog is even more limited now that I’m back home. I want to drop Tagalog into my sentences with friends, the Starbucks girl, the waiter at Queen Sheeba, but I can’t. I mean, I could, but you know…it wouldn’t make sense.

My eyes get tired from the screen -staring at photos from my journey over and over again. They long for the bright, burning sun and the green of plants and trees that I would wake up to. I look for Filipino faces all around me, but there are few. Instead, I’m met with the sight of snow, bare trees, and gray pavement. The connection to earth blocked by the concrete weights. Driving into Harlem, I’m shocked to process the sight of other brown people, not just Filipinos –Dominican flags, Black faces, Central Americans. "Oh my GOD!! A Black person!!" I scream at Leigh while she shakes her head at my weirdness. (I probably saw like 8 while I was in the PI. And yes, I was counting.) When’s the last time I saw a Latino…not on Facebook?

I look back at the painting longing to let myself be transported again. But it takes so much energy and I’m here now. I can’t always wish for there when I’m meant to be here, now can I?

Anyway, it’s all stored in my cellular memory. Any day now, it will all come back to me.