twosday

then i could settle down

she warbled the first few bars and the words rang in my ears, but not the melody. yes, i want the range life, if i could settle down. but the next song, also rang in my ears, reverberations across these past few years. i am the queen of..? what?

queen for an evening, until i need to declare some marxist feminist stance, address my particular audience of Americanists or radical Philippine feminists, please everyone again. for now, PhC.

fall flotations

during this past week, in the wake of the written exams, i’ve been on a consumingconsuming binge, grateful not to have to give any intellectual effort back in return: duck, pie, marzipan in my mouth, new dress on my back, atlas sound in my ears, romantic comedy on the eyes.

the premise of kate and leopold is pretty ridiculous: the duke of albany follows the not-mad-scientist into the future and falls in love with the scientist’s career ladder-climbing ex-girlfriend. the movie is predictable [kate follows him to the past; their reunion: “i love you!”, kiss, dance, end scene] but polished. it’s also infinitely readable — the policeman (the state) stepping in at the end, in a gesture to save kate from what seems to be her suicide but is actually her leap into the past [the state, whose presence is a reminder of the movie’s illogic, tears a rent into the movie’s world]. but what i really want to share is this moment, at the 4:45 mark, when leopold is taking in the wonders of his nyc some 130 years later:

hahaha: “are you suggesting madam there exists a law compelling gentlemen to lay hold of canine bowel movements?”

just ridiculous. and isn’t that the point?

–

atlas sound’s logos will keep me afloat, floating through the autumn quarter and maybe through winter. there’s an arc to this album, from the first track’s warm, sample-hugged arpeggio, through its pop-melodic middle tracks, to the bleep-bloops of its closing. the sonic arc holds together a collection of wanderings into spaces of loneliness (or fear of it?) that bradford cox is so good at rendering. the album is washed out and dreamy on the whole, insistent and sad when i need it to be, and otherwise just there, all melancholic background when my mind is somewhere else.

some of that jangly pop from the middle of the album:

–

this blog, said the gramophone, is one of those music blogs that lean indie pop. instead of passing judgement though, the tracks are accompanied by little narratives that have nothing to do explicitly with the songs but are rather in some “inspired by” relationship to them, like they’re meant to paint a visual, situational landscape alongside the aural experience. the songs aren’t always that interesting, but i like the reading/listening combo — soundtracks as you read, music that has just a slight, even tenuous connection to the text. if i wrote more and more seriously, i’d like to embark on a project of soundtracked short stories.

give it to me gently (knowledge, i mean)

like in star trek, the recent one, when Future Spock transfers decades’ worth of memory and emotion into Not Yet Capt. Kirk’s head by mere touch, and kirk staggers away afterward disoriented and pained. or how in state of war maya lies hand-to-hand and body-to-body on top of her future daughter-in-law, to impart entire personal histories as a way of welcome into the family.

this is what i wish grad school was like: total knowledge import in a single sitting, and any accompanying pain dealt in one huge but quick blow.

instead my narrative is a string of discrete experiences of pain and joy, composed of moments in seminar when i say to myself, i knew that, i should i have said something; during particularly stimulating conference panels or talks when i’m awe-struck at a speaker and a potential future self, thinking, one day i’ll know enough to reach conclusions like these; and most frequently, when i listen to classmates and friends offer accounts that weave together our short lifetimes’ worth of knowledge into neat, intelligent packages, that make me wonder, how and when did you accrue all this knowledge and synthesize it? where was i? what have i been doing all this time?

and of course, those hours and hours of actual intellectual work – me in front of a book, at a talk, in an advisor’s office, sitting passive in seminar.

it used to be the knowledge itself that was torturous. (flashback to my first experience reading foucault: confusion and tears, ‘this man is no roland barthes’) now it’s the experience of acquiring it and seeing it at work that gives me palpitations.

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]

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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.

lend me your ear, move that mouth

early this summer i met an uncle of mine for the first time. he stopped in LA on the way back to chicago from the philippines. this very learned, rather mayabang uncle said at one point, ‘my kids regret not learning tagalog when they were little. and they should. language is culture.’

—

it’s frustrating to come across folks who can’t pronounce ‘ethnic’ names (like my own), because from one angle it appears that the mispronunciations are almost purposeful or done out of spite. surely, people must hear that their iterations of my name place the accent in the wrong place, or that the ‘A’ is short and not long, or — at the very least — that the last two syllables aren’t to be run into each other in an ugly car weck.

before this scorn reaches its peak, though, it’s reined in by an understanding that perhaps people don’t hear it, or maybe their mouths just don’t move that way. it’s the same understanding i have for people who can’t reproduce musical pitches, even along with the pitch as it plays. it’s the same slack i cut myself for not being able to move my body parts the way i’d like when i ‘dance.’

[still, for the sake of life-long learning, one would hope that with enough practice and attentiveness, pitches can be reached, body-parts can gain flexibility and rhythm, mouths and tongues can do the necessary gymnastics.]

—

in tagalog class and when i practice with my parents (who provide rather explicit, ungentle criticism),  i’m surprised by my inability to move my mouth and reproduce sounds that i very clearly hear. i can reproduce musical pitches, so why shouldn’t i be able to make those glottal stops? the rhythm of speech isn’t there either; instead the sound is an ugly stop-and-go, in part from a frantic search for words but also from an uncertainty of where to put those filler particles that would make the words move more like a steady stream than a bout of sideways rain. that the language isn’t completely foreign to me, and that i can acknowledge where my speech doesn’t sound right, makes this state a little more pathetic. the block, i suppose, is also psychological.

—

i know, i know. kailangan ko magsanay. i need to practice.

summer’s ends, loose and otherwise

in the laziness and semi-malaise of the precious last week before the start of the quarter, i offer some bullets, to be exchanged for whole posts if time and my mind grapes permit.

• the most prominent emergence out of this summer’s work: rationality — its valuation, stylization, separation from style and experience, how it even relates to experience, its intertwining with but disavowal of emotion.
• debt — social, political, personal — and how it’s not so great, especially when enfolded with other emotions.
• style or discourse. a theoretical fork i’ll resolve this quarter — habermas (and his discontented children) or foucault (and his smug self-righteous children).
• the alignment of: rational/modern/depersonal versus emotional/personal/non-modern.
• and still, a frustrating failure to know the philippines.

the onward trudge.

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.

thursdays with jose

loreto paras-sulit, my new literary hero.

[i’ve been pursuing a regimen of philippine english-language literature [~1900-1950] with the help of one my exam committee members; together we are a super tutorial/book club.]

after three weeks of garcia villa’s bombast; arguilla’s, daguio’s and laya’s praise of the chaste and noble philippine dalaga or maiden who exists to facilitate a productive life for the filipino man; and rotor’s poor experiments in style that dress up the philippine coast in the guise of the eastern seaboard, i didn’t know what to expect from their female counterparts. something flowery perhaps, or with dorothy parker-like dialogue as leopoldo yabes led me to believe — that is, a chatty style along the lines of those wry characters from the OC or gilmore girls. please, no.

where arguilla’s provincials are noble in their simplicity and innocence, paras’ are hungry and consider selling their heritage in exchange for a bit of food. laya’s dalagas are too unknowing to scheme, and in their ignorance make faithful and fitting wives; paras’ wives and fiancees scheme painfully to themselves for the mental ease of their partners. the male writers set their stories very firmly in the provinces in a timeless fashion: the action happens over there, some time ago that is not now. paras starts in media res, in the middle of a heated conversation about physical hunger, in the middle of a battle in the mountains. her women have to be persuaded to love, and struggle to hold to it for various blocks: intractable and proud partners, constraints of and ambivalence about the body. there’s no nobility in poverty and war — there are sneers and unfair economies of knowledge. and her writing is beautiful! uncategorizable to yabes. [k and i wonder, intellectually but also as recreational readers, ‘why bother assigning these writers in some kind of aesthetic warfare, to teams led by western writers sherwood anderson, hemingway, poe, saroyan, parker?’]

in my [one!] secondary source on filipino women writers in english, paras looks in her portrait to be around 19 years old — too young to write something like “the bolo” or “the song of the arrow.” unlike the other matriarchs of english-language philippine lit, she doesn’t wear that fancy dress [what is that called? ye phil-studs scholars, help me out] with the showy sleeves and neck. she could be one of the vacant and modest dalagas in a villa or arguilla story. i thought i’d find simple sketches or bad poetry to her name. instead i pleasantly came across a vigor not to be found in the men’s work, to confirm that life for the poor is not simple or simply beautiful.