Driftwood

Now a mere branch of what was once a tree,
I may have intended it.

Let me find my way to sea

be embraced by the current
be waived from my past

And if I find company in seabirds
my separation may find reason

Let me feel the sun
before I’m buried in the sand.

---

Paghubad:

Gapo

Sanga nalang sa kaniadtong kahoy
Daw gituyo ko ni

Pasagdi kong muadto sa dagat

gakson sa sulog
lumsan sa akong kaniadto

Ug kon sa mga langgam ko makighigala
hinaot akong pagbulag naay pulos

Pamation ko ang adlaw
sa dili pa ko ilubog sa balas.

A 2020 essay writing entry that no one asked for.

December 31, 2020
8.32pm

Gratefulness – it is something I remind myself year after year since 2017. 

Today is the last day of 2020. In New Zealand, we are about to greet 2021 in less than five hours. I am still not sure how I fully feel about the past year. Should I still say grateful? And for next year, do I want to make gratefulness my goal again?

This time of the year really puts me into a reflective mood. For the last three years, I figured the best way to end my year is to spend some time alone with my laptop and write. Reading my little letter to myself last year, I can clearly still remember my time in the Philippines. I was sat in my room while Dad and Gedai were busy with setting up the karaoke. If I were honest, I remember being grumpy for not having enough time to write and reflect. It was my first time going home in the last two years I was away, but I was self-absorbed enough to be in a grumpy mood.

I am trying to understand why this moment of rumination is important to me. Humor me, reader, as I cannot afford a therapist. 

While I love writing sentimental things, in my outward interactions with people I may seem otherwise. Sure, I am cheery and would always greet you with a smile (or an occasional hug), but I do not cry easily, and I have strange reactions to somber experiences. I have come to learn that sentimentality is not my strongest trait – but it does jump out of me when I write my end-of-year entries. And boy, this year, I have been such a sentimental rat. 

When I left for New Zealand mid-January 2020, I could not stop crying. I said goodbye to my loved ones again, but the pain is much, much worse. Holding tears back in the plane was such a nightmare as I watched Manila’s skyline disappear into its polluted skies. I guess I knew I might not see them again sooner than I could foresee. For 2020, I knew that I had to do what I needed to do to give me more flexibility in travelling to and from Motherland and my second home. 

I was also driven to miniscule tears several times the past year – the overbearing feeling of being small and alone, the anxiety of losing my job, the future, the disbelief from working with such kind people, the possibility of losing a friend, the future, watching SNSD’s “Into the New World”, being called “Corona”, the future. The future. I got sentimental this year is what I am getting at. Quite frankly, I hated the feeling.

However, I believe these were consequences of allowing myself to feel more instead of holding back. I allowed myself to feel fear, to feel sadness, to feel anger, to feel tired, and most importantly, grateful. It seems that most things became more bearable when I let my emotions’ undertow hold me captive for some time. When I finally can’t hold my breath, I swim up and work through my struggle because I understand I am not a creature made for water. Of course I would always see swimming up and out of my emotions as taxing. Of course I would hate every stroke and push to breath again, but what else can I do? The first relieving breath after almost drowning is its own different kind of high, something that makes me want to hold on to life. Something that keeps me wanting to swim up.

This is me allowing myself to feel pride for my little lapses of self-control this year. To answer about what I feel about this year, I would say I feel, felt, a lot. 

Not sure what else if left to feel for 2021. I’m coming in blind, as my 2020 vision has already exhausted itself. (Yes, I made a 20/20-vision joke). And with that is my reminder of gratitude – I am at that point that I believe I have practiced it well enough that it is now a muscle memory. My gratitude, for all the things that happened to me and for all the things that I am, can bring me to tears now, and I am proud of myself.

Maybe I will find my reminder for 2021 somewhere in the next few weeks, or months. Maybe I won’t even figure it out fully. I am content on taking each thing as they arrive. This year’s been overwhelmingly turbulent, so I think I’ll try not to weigh myself down into the undercurrents. I would argue it is only because I am in a privileged position to do so. 

I wish for everyone to have a better 2021, especially those who are not privileged enough to take it slow. We are still in the middle of cleaning up after the detritus that is 2020, so things may not be looking up for everyone. However, we are all hoping for the better and I hope to see you all on calmer waters.

(immig)RANTS: Racism

I can never exclude the discussion of racism in my experience as an immigrant.

June 1, 2020: Queen’s Birthday. Aotearoa. Pride Month Starts. Workers are now allowed to go back to work amidst the never-ceasing increase of cases in the Philippines. I sit at home and read on the protests decrying police brutality and systemic racism that killed innocent people for the sole reason of their skin color.

Centuries of colonialism and white supremacy have lead to this day. Our colored brothers and sisters rise up and call bullshit on the disgusting righteousness of the whites, the children of their oppressors. They have been for a very long time. I have and will always support these calls for justice. My heart breaks hearing all these unnecessary deaths – it puts me in an uncomfortable space where I reflect about the othering I experience as someone of cross-sectioning identities.

I think about how I was deeply reading these on the Queen’s Birthday in New Zealand. I don’t care for this holiday being in this country for only 3 years. While it was not her crown that colonized my Motherland for more than 300 years, I put her at par with the colonial powers that removed me from my ancestors. My people are so disconnected that the culture we have now are merely remnants of imperialists who merely saw us as livestock and land. And we call that culture ours. I think about being a Filipino.

But this is why I am not surprised that colorism is still tolerated in the Philippines. Since the Spanish occupation, we were taught to hate our own people, to hate our brown skin, and worship the mestizos, to act like the very people who oppress us. I think about Filipinos who call for justice for George Floyd’s death. So quick to say #BlackLivesMatter and call out police brutality in the same breath that supports the extrajudicial killings of our poor and indigenous. Performative. Clout chasing. We had TV shows that put a fair skinned actress in black face and called her “Nita Negrita.” We have natives who are black, but we call them Negroes with no shame! And when our lumads rise up and demand their lands back from a capital-driven government, the police do not hesitate to show their power. They run them over with police vehicles and imprison them for a peaceful protest. Maybe this is why I have an unspeakable anger for the systems that turn us against each other. I think about being an activist.

New Zealand boasts of its multiculturalism and diversity. Lovely, but a part of me sees it performative too. Not when I still see their very own tangata whenua as victims of systemic racism and still experience that pain brought about their disconnection to their ancestors. Their symbols and taonga as tokens, souvenirs for foreigners. If Māori still experience this, how could I expect this country to fully accept me? I think about being an immigrant.

“Hey, Corona Virus!”

It was directed to me at my friends. My friend was fresh off a doctor’s consultation for a flu (not Corona at all), and we were at a grocery store to grab supplies for her. It was a young kid. The parent beside him looked proud. I consider this as one of the most glaring experience of racism I have ever had in New Zealand. It was painful, and I thought I could have handled it better. Or I could have protested – but I remember feeling very much alone and powerless.

Protests have always been close to my heart in that they are avenues for change and visibility. I have been with friends to rallies and mobilizations, or protest events like the pride parades. Pride parades started as riots led by Black LGBTQ+ members in the Stonewall Riots – they are the reason I can proudly celebrate my identity and my friends during Pride Parades. And maybe this is why I flew to New Zealand, a country where same sex marriage is legal. I think about being a bisexual woman.

In this world today, I walk as a cross-section of identities – I am Filipino, I am a woman, an LGBTQ+ member, an immigrant, a person of color. It’s not just me either. Wherever you are in the world, you are representing multiple identities that all experience oppression one way or the other. All are fighting their own fight. This is why when I hear the headlines of innocent people unjustly killed, a part of me is rioting with them. It is impossible for me to just go on pretending it doesn’t affect me.

I cannot feel fully empowered when so many others are still killed for just being.

I have been called out for being political. If you tell me that you do not want to get political, I am sorry for thinking you an idiot. To exist in the world today is to be political. All your privileges are political. Your opinions are shaped from the centuries of cultural, political powers that ruled over you and everyone before you. Too many times I wish I was out there fighting for the rights of my countrymen, or to create something to give light to utter inhumanity of the ruling powers.

I think about being an artist.
What can I create? How can I help?

Right now, I do not have the means to be out there. But I would like to use this platform to ask everyone to burst your bubbles. Look at your privilege, check them, and understand what is stopping you from fully realizing that we cannot say we are fully free from oppression when people are still killed.

You are comfortable because you are white. You are comfortable because you have money. You are comfortable because so much of your culture and politics supports your existence. We are not. We cannot. And we are fighting for them still. You should join us.

Are you uncomfortable? If not, then think about being kneed in the neck.

Tu-0, Tu-0: An Ode to 2019

How was 2019 for everyone?

It was a year of healing and growing for me. My highlights were definitely my experience in working in a youth justice residence, my new full time job as an activities coordinator in a lovely arts organisation, and me patching things up with my jedi knight in, uh, glowing ??? armor?? Anyway. Here is my essay writing contest entry for 2019.

I am ending my 2019 and starting 2020 in the Philippines – together with my family, my boyfriend, and all that jazz. To be home for the holidays is an immigrant’s dream. When I told my Filipino acquaintances in Rotorua that I am going home for the holidays, I was given the envious ‘Hala, buti pa siya.’ Don’t get me wrong, I am happy that I am in that stage in my journey where I am allowed to take a break. I am even more grateful that I was allowed to take that length of a leave and see my family after two years. But my holidays this year made me realise that I have created some traditions that I have followed for the last two years, some beliefs, mga tuo-tuo. And me being unable to follow them this year made me oh so frustrated.

The last two holidays alone were probably the most salient ones to me – I spent them (technically) alone in New Zealand. Before NZ, the holidays have all been the same so I guess they didn’t matter much to me. In fact, I probably dreaded them! Call me a grinch, but holidays meant that we will be seeing people. I am not overly introverted, but I do enjoy my alone time. And that was how I spent my holidays in 2017 and 2018 – they were my alone times I dedicated to reflecting on my past year and my future goals.

I loved those moments! They made me appreciate the year that passed and got me focused on what I want to achieve in the next year. It was therefore imperative for me to be with myself, especially after my shifts (because I usually worked during Christmas and New Years in the last two years). I believed that I am better prepared for the coming year if I keep that ‘tradition’ going. I believed my year will start off great if I keep up this routine. To be honest, the last two years were not the easiest, but I felt like I had the strength to overcome the challenges because I started the year right and reflective.

However, because I haven’t been home for two years, I had a few hang outs and reunions. From the moment I landed, I have schedules and party dates to keep – mostly from my relatives. (Just a random thought, are Filipinos just bad at small talk or have I just gotten properly fat – that was all my relatives could talk about. And my dollars, of course). While I am thrilled to be seeing my family, and my friends especially, I am starting to feel a fatigue. I feel like I have deeply broken my routine and now feel a frustration because I am unable to follow it.

As I am typing this, my dad and my boyfriend are trying to suss out the karaoke remote control so we can have a bit of music while we prepare for the New Years. I am also trying to sniff in my running snot from an imminent fatigue-induced cold I am experiencing. New Zealand just greeted 2020. Writing this down, I find it quite wholesome and cute. But at the back of my head, I am pining for the New Zealand New Year celebration. The one where I am working on the first of January so I can’t be staying up too late? The one where I get to see the fireworks at 12am then just go home and sleep? The one where I had a few moments to ruminate and reflect before the new year barges into my timeline? Yeah, I miss that.

Ungrateful. That is what I am. I could be happy being here in my motherland enjoying karaoke and a cold bottle of beer with my family and boyfriend, but I chose to think of New Zealand and how much I miss my holidays there. And all because I could not stick to my self-serving traditions that I have only just developed. Akong mg tuo-tuo ang nakapasapot nako karong bag-ong tuig. I realise not just this New Year though, I believed in things I shouldn’t have that ultimately took a toll on my overall wellness in 2019 (like how I think I am super undeserving of my amazing full time job, but that’s a discussion for another time).

So, for 2020, I would like to lessen my dependence on my tuo-tuo. Not just in the routines that I strongly hold and follow (reflecting and creating on the holidays), but also in beliefs I hold about myself that greatly affect my drive (I am talentless, fat, and overall unworthy). I could use to learn how to better handle myself for when these routines and beliefs are being upset, eh? And I know I have set this as a goal for 2019 as well, but I would like to continue being grateful, to appreciate everything that I have and had. To appreciate myself more. And appreciate the fact that I am seeing 2020, though with less than 20/20 vision. (Overdone joke, anyone?). I honestly didn’t think I get to live this long.

For starters, I am gonna get off my tablet and appreciate the time I have with my ageing dad and my ever supportive boyfriend.

But thank you to everyone reading my blog! I hope you all enjoy the slow decline of my writing skills and coherence in my blog posts. To everyone who has been part of my 2019, thank you very much. I couldn’t have made it without you all. And to everyone I have blocked out in social media (and in my life) for 2019, stay there, thanks!

But above all, I am massively thankful to the whanau I found in Rotorua who have welcomed me in their lovely whenua. I can’t wait to see you all. And to the family and friends I have returned to for the holidays – I am happy to see you all well and healthy. I will see you all again soon. Navigating in two worlds and spaces sure is tough!

Happy New Year, everyone! Always take care.

Reflections while Making a Self-Portrait: A Quick Blog Post

 

I attempted to do a self-portrait, ’cause apparently I am at my peak of vanity. The best way I thought to do this is to take a selfie of the pose I wanna draw. So there’s this interesting, kinda sensual selfie I made which immediately “inspired” me to make a proper self-portrait.

(immig)RANTS: Glamour

Coming to New Zealand, I somehow glamorized the life of an overseas worker (or student, in my case). I thought about how I’d be wearing all those winter clothes I could never wear in the heat of my country, about how I’d have a cool part-time job at a cafe where I would meet cool people I could use as material for my stories, about how I’d be having fun at class and meet like-minded classmates, or really wear those fancy looking coats that would only be useful for chilly weathers. Basically wear winter clothes. I’m repeating myself.

Post Break Up Post

It will be almost two months since I broke up with my ex-boyfriend, and there are thoughts dwelling in my head that I’m not sure I have the energy to write in a proper, literary manner. So this is me attempting to empty those out to clear some space inside here.

(immig)RANTS: Fall

It seems like my first experience of fall brought about so many reflections. Fall settled maybe a month ago in Rotorua, and the chill it introduced has not sunk into my understanding — not while the sun still shines painfully.

Dear Tara,

The year 2017 was very tough for you. You had to live through one of the coldest nights of your life during the middle of winter. More than that, you had live through the death of Chester, a person you look up to, whose music became your friend. You had to live through seeing your cries reflected by walls and into your ears, and hearing your reflections discourage you as you try to talk yourself to finishing your days. “One step at a time, one step at a time,” you whisper to yourself as you cross roads to work, to school, to grocery stores, or even to the restrooms, to your futures.

sunday service

hmatag Dominggo, muhalok akong tuhod
sa tiles, manlimpyo sa giludhang porselana.