twosday

not my language

in tagalog there are no tenses, passive/active voices, or stable subjects. instead there are aspects, actors, beneficiaries, social-reciprocals. this language gets more foreign to me as i learn it.

somewhere during the process of plotting thoughts to words, you need to decide the part of the sentence on which your verb should focus, and attach the appropriate prefix and/or suffix. the actor? the object? the location? the beneficiary, instrument used, or the doer who is forced to do something? the person doing the forcing? victims of calamity, the experiencer of an emotion? that is, tagalog verbs are trained on directionality. where is this act coming from, why, and who is being affected? just a few letters before and after can mean the difference between cooking and being cooked.

the effect is that for a brief moment, or for me a few pained seconds, you consider the relation of actors to objects to place. there’s an affix, magpa-, to express an act being done for someone by someone else; makipag- indicates that you’re joining an ongoing activity with a specific set of actors; ma- signals the experience of a calamity or emotion; maki- denotes the sharing of resources; paki- a sign of respect.

i’d like to think this means a heightened awareness of power relations and social dynamics, embedded at the level of language and in dynamic relation to one’s experience of and in society. and even more, i’d like to think that tagalog forces the speaker to think about what makes it possible to be served, or what actions must always be done together, reciprocally.

island world, pineapple planet

my second national academic conference, behind me. the verdict: work + hawai’i = futile.

–

only one panel engaged me multiply – for the AAS star-studdedness of its audience; the rigor of the work presented and the political intensity and passion that runs through it; the physical idiosyncrasies of the panelists.

–

this muscle-y, gruff filipino-american man could be straight out of WestCo (close: Riverside). his studded ears stick out slightly from his shaved head. when he speaks it is with intense, wide-open eyes, his tone not angry but forceful. he wields muscle-y academic and abstract terms, throwing them combatively but with precision, like a long-range missile meant to inflict maximum damage in a specified area. the words come heavy, ‘fundamentally, ‘epistemes,’ ‘eurocentric rationality’; always, though, swiftly, like rapid artillery.

S whispers in my ear, ‘he’s dreamy.’

i can’t follow his argument because of the distraction of his physicality, and because when said aloud, the string of academese flies over my head; i’m a words in front of my face kind of person. i think i get the gist of what he means to do, relayed in my own clunky way: to see the instability of fil-am subject formation in the very acts of producing this subject (specifically, areas i don’t know enough about: state violence, genocide) and the inadequacies of the way the fil-am subject is conceptualized by everyone – Fil-Am studies, AsianAm studies, Philippine studies.

[my problem and love with academese: these terms are precise because they access ideas and concepts that are unnamed by popular or everyday discourse, but they’re also opaque because they reference concepts that are/seem to be illegible to everyday discourse]

–

in the woman seated at the panelists’ table, i can hardly believe this was my mousey bespectacled TA who 5 years ago gave me grad school advice and recommended some fil-am novels i never wrote down. she’s here now, speaking with fierceness and precision about gang members, a population whose value her work tries to recuperate. now she goes without glasses, is the sharpest dresser among the three panelists. the tattoo lacing her upper arm occasionally peeks from the sleeve of her blue shirt dress. she is the older cousin i wanted to be, or to hang out with, when i was 10 years old.

–

the first speaker is a prof i lobbied to fund a campus visit for, and her talk tells me i wasn’t wrong. her paper tries to make sense of an outmoded racial theory that doesn’t allow us to understand a simultaneity of grievances and discourses from two differently racialized communities – southeast asians living in a housing project in SF, the building of which displaced a chunk of the area’s AfAm residents, which in turn spurred a slew of AfAm on SEAsian crimes.

her default face is something like tearful; it seems like she’s going to shed some halfway through her talk. she gives a meandering, excessive presentation, in that she exceeds her time limit; her last words are injected from her seat, as she interrupts the second speaker before she even starts. but her crinkly eyes translate to passion, I think, and a certain pained perplexity at the two wronged populations at the center of her talk. her appearance is like her presentation — within the range of smart, but a little disheveled. her hair is pulled up, but the wavy thick bangs keep sweeping over her face, so she’s constantly shoving them out of the way. i remember liking her blazer.

[oh god. if our personal/physical appearance is analogous to the work we produce, this will be me: sometimes put together, but mostly lazy or careless; pedestrian; barely dressed up for special occasions, and even then, grudgingly so; defiant for no reason; a change of clothes 4+ times a day]

–

the panel redeemed the conference, made me want to get my exams and diss behind me and join the big kids. At another extreme, it made me want to abandon 1920s literary concerns and tackle more immediate problems – different, potentially violent value systems; crimes against the unprotected; excessive penality.

by the cut of your jeans

[imagine this was posted in january, because that’s when it was written]

–

because i think one’s consumption habits (of culture, food, everyday necessities) are shaped and solidified in one’s 20s, and because these habits are our social faces, i’m trying to be more attentive to what i and others consume and where it places us. these two acts — what we buy and what we wear/use — are tethered to and are public iterations of our politics, class, geographic locations, and social affiliations. [for the record, i’d say i’m pretty firmly LA suburbanite; someone who wants to be politically left of center, but probably with more centrist tendencies than i think.]

when academics ‘read’ whatever it is they read — literature, history, cultures, the law, policy, music — isn’t this what they’re doing, at least in part? they map out synchronic and diachronic affiliations [’this is ____’s social class, they descend from ___, this is how they lean politically’], asserting their implications, making narratives about them, etc.

—

LA A and i set out late for our thrift store shopping excursion, deciding only an hour or two ahead of time to go ahead with it [a big deal, since she lives an hour away]. we started local, and wended our way west toward LA proper, eventually ending up on melrose.

my inner surly shopper emerged by store #3, the salvation army. unlike the clean, well lit goodwill five minutes from my parents’ house, the SA store crawled with folks (it was 1/2 off day), was not as well organized (goodwill arranges clothes by type, spreads garments by color gradient!), and gave off slight whiffs of urine.

i can’t place the shoppers at SA that evening. there was a couple in their late 30s walking away from the fancy dress section; a woman who seemed to be searching for work clothes; a few old men perusing the bookcases. they could be folks in relative financial straits or cheap browsers like us.

in the narrow clothing racks, we chatted and flipped through hangers, made way for oncoming shoppers with polite smiles. in the middle of our ambling and rambling, i spied a speedy woman, making beehives through the racks even as she flipped through and grabbed clothing. she was very unlike the rest of the shoppers, she being dressed like an olsen twin with a waifish frame — boots, tight jeans maybe, a cowlneck top, sunglasses perched on her head like a headband. she’s one of those women you read about in fashion magazines who put their outfits together on a $15 budget at a place like SA, and you ask how. this is how: with shrewd eyes, quick hands, and a stylish man at her call.

—

while on vacation in sf, i swung by MLA, just because. this is the big nerdfest for literature and language scholars, and also where soon-to-be phds interview for jobs. i was hoping for glimpses of academic superstars, young faculty looking for an audience, and nervous ABDs pre- and post- job interview. i wanted to see my possible fate.

i didn’t see any academic superstars except in print, but i did get a lesson in academic/political affiliation and fashion/aesthetics. at the panel presented by the americanist section the audience was littered with what i imagine was the typical northeast small college english department in the 1950s: men in ill-fitting shirts and sweaters, sensible loafers on their feet. balding. women in sensible pantsuits. at the literature by people of color panel: dramatic coats, pops of color, pencil skirts, high-heeled oxfords.

one lesson: if i’m going to make it in this field, the wardrobe’s going to need an overhaul.

—

i try not to — but do — judge people by the cut of their jeans, the length of their bangs, the distribution of their dollars.

i know enough to understand when aesthetic and consumer acts are choices versus when they’re what you do because of your location. we’re always in the latter, groomed in the path of whoever raised us [my parents: climbing [LA] suburban middle class], always participants whether we choose to or not, always enmeshed in the politics of our class locations and social circles. but at some point [especially, i posit, now in my 20s] we can consciously control affiliations and spending habits.

studies in devotion, home edition

st. therese is bright: sunlight, when seattle gets it, streams through the windowed wall on the short side of the building, better to reach families at the fountain during baptisms, of which there were three on the day i attended. three times, children were dunked head-first into the holy water fountain, emitting the most horrendous screams that make you wonder at the nature of that holy water.

the baptisms help explain the camaraderie at this church that day. so much hand-shaking, back-slapping, baby head-petting during all parts of the mass. the peace-doling portion lasted five minutes longer than usual, with people traversing across the church to give and receive peace, creating a din i’m unaccustomed to hearing in a catholic church. even without the baptisms, it’s clear that this parish is a social hub. me, i sat between two friends [of each other’s, not of mine], and spent a good part of the mass moving forward and back in my seat to accommodate exchanges of glances and words. it was warm and isolating at the same time.

—

this winter break, i came home to two of three parishes my family frequents.

we returned to st. phillips [cf this other post], not the usual parish but host to some of the most important events for the extended family, this time for my uncle/ninong’s funeral. our 7-family clan occupied less than 1/5 of the church, but it never felt so intimate, even at K’s wedding. i was seemingly exiled to the wing of the church that held the piano so that i could accompany the initially ornery singer for ‘ave maria’ and ‘amazing grace.’ [she let up once she saw me bawling in between songs.] but i knew everyone in the pews, i knew who was missing that morning because of work/distance and what details to remember so i could pass them on [cousin M cried. cousin R’s eulogy was unknowingly witty.], and i caught a reference to my family in the eulogy. afterwards, we hugged, gave peace and condolences, and caravaned in heavy rain to a military cemetery an hour away.

a week later i was up early again for simbang gabi at our usual parish, where my personal catholic milestones were marked. more dolor: the filipino priest gave a shoutout to his mother who had died the week before, embedded in a reminder of how pasko should be celebrated — “we sit together at christmas enjoying those with us, not knowing who may not be with us the next time.” some wet eyes, even if it was too early in the morning for tears. during the last ten minutes of the mass, pops and i rushed to the social hall to set the buffet and to prep the honey baked ham, realizing that it required some warming up before being served. oops. i love lucy-like hijinks ensued. the ham was eviscerated anyway, half-cold, 15 minutes later. folks were hungry.

i hear of simbang gabi’s around LA with dozens-strong choirs, a parole parade, tagalog mass, networked with other parishes. assumption’s stands on its own, and is cobbled together — with great love and as much care as they can give — maybe a month beforehand. the planning committee is populated with retirees, who also comprise the choir, who also cater the social, who also put the program together and photocopy, collate, and staple it the day before. i imagine this mass is anemic compared to the LA cathedral’s. i imagine an army of folks, mostly young people, in charge of the cathedral’s production. there’s charm, though, in the spirit of this simbang gabi put on by my parents and their catholic posse.

—

how i want to remember this winter break:

studies in devotion, time warp style

a way to synthesize clouds of thought that apparently have been incubating for four years, and to partially explain what seems [and only seems] to be my newfound piety. i offer an old journal entry, from aug 2004.

–

at times, when i’m sitting in church during another mindless homily or sermon, i’ll think to myself, ‘what is the point of all this? do people really believe this crap?’

the bigotry and hypocrisy of the church, with all its backwardness, was i thought the unchanging rock that would remind me of home, even when i was home. because i’ve been coming home for four or five years and each time my house feels less familiar. my house and the company in it.

so church. it’s supposed to be the final anchor. a church — any church, or maybe i should say the catholic faith — brings back that loving feeling.

on monday we went to st. phillip’s. or rather i was dragged there.

now i’ve come to expect certain things from my time in church, conditioned probably by hundreds of visits over the years. it’s necessary to maintain a certain level of silence, a distance even. no touching — though my family is steadily breaking that rule. reverence is demanded, even if it’s feigned. these rules, created in my head, seemed to go double for the men (mostly) at the altar. above all, ceremony is supreme. a lot of seeing and doing. the only hearing was of the word or song of god.

sitting in st. phillip’s on monday, i added to my mental notes about church: its immunity to advancement of any kind — morally, intellectually, but especially, i thought at the time, technologically. it felt good to be in a building that didn’t look like a tract home with standard ceiling heights and wall coloring. and this building wasn’t fake, this building and the religion it housed.

it felt really good not having a computer in front of me, or a tv, or a cup of overpriced coffee. church is a vacuum, where life and things can be suspended, but god [or something Big] exists in faith and form.

and then i noticed the tinny and piercing volume of the priest’s voice. they had installed a set of speakers halfway through the church to go with the set perched near the altar. the mic transmitted not only the word of father joe via low-quality sound, but also every clank and swoosh the mic could pick up.

the formerly distant clergy, whom i could only see and barely hear as a child, became uncomfortably familiar down to the bothersome details. the sound of cloth against metal when the priest wiped the rim of the chalice. the rustling of paper as he flipped to a reading in his bible. and even more disturbing, i suddenly knew him intimately as i sat 25 pews away. i heard his heavy breathing during a quiet moment. the whispered words that were between him and god as he blessed the bread and wine were broadcast throughout the cavernous church.

my faint prayer during mass for a swift passing of the hour in church is now a prayer that the priest not say — or i not hear — anything inappropriate. or anything that might shed light on the ceremonies of mass. because i don’t want to know. i want what i know about church to stay the same. or if i must learn something new, i want it to add to my view of the church as massive, unforgiving, ceremonial and stern.

studies in devotion, part i

an obvious observation, perhaps: you can tell a lot about a neighborhood by the state of its 10a mass.

i.

when i saw the ushers pull shut the church doors, i started jogging toward them, not wanting to be the asshole who comes in after the procession. there was no need for it, since a good half of the total mass-goers arrived during the readings, crowding the last six pews or so. the priest went on with it, against the din of the late shufflers-in. i imagine the folks at st. peter’s are used to the tardiness of the overwhelmingly filipino parish of beacon hill.

the building is more chapel-sized than the faux-cathedrals and modern monstrosities that pass for catholic churches in wealthier suburbs. the exposed beams are of a dark, probably rotting wood, while the brightness that the stained glass windows might admit is muted by what seem to be plexiglass casings or coverings, as if to protect from whatever large weighty objects might be thrown their way.

a few rows ahead of me sat a middle-aged woman who kept badgering the old ladies a pew ahead of her. at first they humored her, but as the mass proceeded they ignored her, even shushing her a couple times. eventually she wandered to the back of the church, and for a minute, when she approached, i was afraid she’d talk to me and that i’d have to shush her too.

mass is secondary to these spectacles and distractions. the church seems alive and awake.

ii.

again, i rushed into a set of church doors not wanting to be late. but you pay if you get to st. james cathedral at 10a on the dot. you have to grab the first empty seat you see, which can be difficult because every seat is probably taken by 950a, and the pews are scattered in four areas that face the center, where all the holy action takes place.

everything about st. james startled me, starting with the punctuality of its well dressed members. the pews were filled with a mix of respectable upper-middle class folk, the elderly, students, and what i thought was the occasional hobo hiding in the back pews. as if under the roof of what you might characterize as The City’s Catholic Flagship Church it must be emphasized and demonstrated that everyone is served, everyone is welcome. even the army of clergymen and women is rather diverse.

for all of its plurality, the cathedral is magnificent in the way that cathedrals are supposed to be: dramatic ceilings and skylights, a musty antique feeling, cold marble floors and walls, a heavenly choir. this last thing is the best part, almost outweighing the building’s unforgiving acoustics when it comes to crying babies and the vitriol that the priest spouts.

[i’m reminded here why i can’t be catholic, at least not now.]

iii.

queen anne’s parish is predictably st. anne’s church. they’ve just finished renovating or maybe just building anew altogether one of those modern monstrosities that are so in vogue. the ceilings soar and slant. like a cathedral, the floors are cold [via concrete, not marble] and the seats are arranged in a sort of cross centered on the altar. the stations of the cross, i’ve noticed in many of these new churches, are enormous. all that’s missing is a gigantic crucifix to go with it [for which they’re still soliciting].

the sermon to this very homogeneous parish included the following admonishment: “don’t say, ‘i have a boat and we need to go boating, so i can’t go to church on sundays.’”

i saw no one in the pews like me, except for maybe the visiting african priest and a middle-aged filipino couple. we [the couple and i — i created a bond in my head with them over the course of the mass] crossed our arms half the time.

when the priest said, and i paraphrase, ‘when you’re part of the church, part of any collective, there are expectations,’ he seemed to be looking at me.

visions of december

it’s raining in seattle, at a chilly [for summer] 69 degrees. the dampness and gloom remind me of december, as does this essay i’m working on that was due that month last year. i hope i can put both behind me soon.

in the meantime, some procrastinatory notes.

today i ended a stint at childrens hospital [no article needed. that’s how good it is.], in a department that offers support, spiritual and social, for families whose children have serious and/or terminal illness but have decided to continue treatment. the unit was tight-knit, so as a temp i was very often on the outs, which was ok; they let me read on the job. on the whole, it wasn’t very exciting, and was often sort of sad reading about the patients. the consultants in my department, unlike the doctors, needed to know such things as ‘tommy likes toys and spending time with his brother steve.’ the reports that contained such details were sandwiched in the medical records in between the long lists of medications and doctors visits.

the woman i covered for was the most interesting person i met, and sadly i only saw her my first day. she moved to seattle from new orleans after katrina, selecting UW out of a long list of schools that tulane had given her the week after the hurricane. the time she took off this month was devoted to her husband, who just got called for deployment [his second tour!!] to iraq.

despite this, she was perhaps the most cheerful person in the hospital. the emails she left always contained at least two exclamation points. when she laughed, it pierced the air at a high but not shrill pitch, and lasted a good three or four long undulations. it made you want to hear again whatever it was that could elicit such a response.

today, more laughter. my office, i think, is next to rehab. at first i thought i heard the soft wails of a few three-year-olds crying, but as it got louder and patters of running started to accompany it, i realized it was gusts of laughter — the kind you’d hear from kids when they’re being tickled and can’t control themselves. it’s probably the best thing you can hear at a hospital.

—

for this essay i’m working on i’m pretty much devouring stanley karnow’s in our image, a pop history text on the US colonial period in the philippines. it’s not the most meticulously researched, at least not by scholarly standards, and it’s shamelessly pro-US. the man has an odd attachment to osmena [he practically sanctifies him], and knocks quezon at every opportunity. but it’s hard not to get drawn in by such gems as ‘ambling along to an insouciant drumbeat.’ that is, until you realize that he’s talking about your people.

tulips, two cameras

i was able to catch one of the last days of the tulip festival an hour north of seattle, and finally broke out the cameras. i suck at macro photography. perhaps i had better luck with the slr, though i won’t know for awhile. where does one get film developed anymore?

the fields were predictably more dramatic than the gardens, which were overrun by children groping at the flowers — a $3-a-head, well landscaped playground. the fields weren’t perfect. boasting only row after row of four types of tulips, they weren’t any less planned for consumption than the disney-fied gardens, but there was a sense of a sweep of flowers. there’s some joy to be had in quantity and density, i suppose.

—

i’m not one for gardening, though i enjoy a pretty, sweet-smelling flower as much as the next person. more so, i enjoy many sweet smelling flowers in one place, with the simulation of their naturalness (of course they grow in rows! of course each petal is perfect!).

this is to say that i’ve no sufficient horticulture fetish, so that it was uncomfortable to be walking around these massive flower beds as mostly latino hands started to pluck flowers as if these workers were part of the exhibit, and I could find some humor in their cavalier style of quick picking and slinging over their shoulders. one couple watched them work sort of reverently, whispering to each other, ‘they’re picking the best ones so that they can sell them.’ the worker walked swiftly down the row toward the couple, swiping individual tulips here and there. when he arrived at the end of the row, in the road where the couple stood, i heard them ask for confirmation of their speculation, but couldn’t hear his answer. i only saw him unceremoniously dump his large bunch of tulips near their feet, which seemed to leave the older couple looking a bit dumb. he turned around and walked down another row to start another round of tulip plucking.

dull aches, contractions

20+ awkward conversations at the start of the week drained me of any desire to talk or listen to most people. thus started a week of contractions and impulses to forcibly shut people’s unnecessarily overextended mouths.

—

the most awkward conversation i witnessed was not my own.

a couple chose for their first date a nouveau, contemporary teahouse, a place with 100 varieties of tea and hip-hop and electronica playing in the background. she arrived 15 minutes late, which he pointed out with a semi-serious tone that really said, ‘don’t be late again.’

they talked about the difficulties of the artist lifestyle. ‘they should really make you double major in something like business if you choose art,’ he suggested, again semi-seriously, but still with a hint of pride at being able to survive the artist lifestyle while keeping his ‘integrity’ intact. in his voice there was disdain for workers with practical function, who are presumably unthinking and fond of shopping at the gap. she played the asian card to accent her choice to become an artist: ‘i appeased my parents by making them think i would study engineering or the sciences’ or some variation of this tired cultural predilection.

she flattered him with her impressed gasp at the thought of him walking a mile plus from his home to the teahouse. ‘i just enjoy walking.’ that line might have worked on me if it didn’t come from such a smug douchebag.

—

i left, disgusted at the conversation, eyes fatigued from attempting to read barthes in a half-lit room.

or you could leave

i’m not sure what i witnessed while i read at chocolati tonight.

a man and a woman sit at the bar against the window. they could be friends, though they’re in a very intimate conversation, looking only at each other, so close their knees touch.

he cries, puts his hand to his forehead pitifully, and she strokes his back sympathetically. just friends maybe. no, she kisses him on the face several times.

they have no pet names for each other. the questions she asks him are what you might cover on a first date — “how did your family celebrate christmas? i want to know [such urgency!] about your traditions, who was there, what did you do on christmas day…” she could be half of a blind date or a market researcher, maybe not his girlfriend. he replies in unfamiliar terms — “my family wasn’t very religious…”

and suddenly there’s an outburst. he lunges at her, grabs her face and kisses her viciously, but not before she lets out a surprised peep. i hide behind the essay i’m reading.

in another moment i look up and see her face buried in his lap. the image hints at something nasty, but i look closely [i’m compelled!] and her head is just there; he pets her head while he talks.

it could be romantic if it weren’t so weird — abrupt, public, between seeming strangers, and at chocolati.

maybe they were playing a game? i’m relieved when they leave.