DivingBoard

On white privilege.

2012-02-02T09:15:00.000-08:00

I saw this post in one of my fave blogs Racialicious and found it to be spot on. It pertains the image below of (racist) Arizona governor Jan Brewer in an apparently heated discussion with the Prez. More commentary to follow when I come back from teaching, but I will say this: I was taught to keep my hands to myself in kindergarten as a five year old. Someone needs to go back to pre-school. Hopefully NOT in Arizona.

Via Racialicious.

Hi, hello. It's nice to see you.

2012-02-01T13:24:00.000-08:00

Whirlwind=last few months. I won't bore you with the details but the following are the highlights:

-Holidays, blah, blah blah.

-32nd birthday. Fun times.

-MLA interview. Less fun times, but worth the prep, I think. Still jobless.

-Brother had a baby. Her name is Samantha and she is as high maintenance as her aunt.

Well I think that's all she wrote. Oh, wait...yeah. I'm also engaged! That's pretty awesome, and so is my new betrothed (I'm pretending I'm from Downton Abbey). Wedding is set for March 2013. Stay tuned for wedding-related rants in the future. Sorry, hazards of planning a wedding on a budget. Yes we will be making our own centerpieces. Aren't you just dying to see pictures? But this will not become an exclusively wedding blog, because I am not a one-track soon to be bride. I promise. But for now, let me indulge and leave you with this sweet song that makes me feel all gushy inside. Wedding song possibility?

Hey Girl, Take a Break from Job Market Apps and Blog Me

2011-10-26T12:58:00.000-07:00

By now, you probably have already heard about the the "Hey, Girl..." Ryan Gosling meme brought to us by the Tumblr Fuck Yeah! Ryan Gosling. Well Feminist Ryan Gosling is a take on that and while I only find Ryan moderately cute, he gets better as a feminist. But of course, what man isn't better as a feminist? Below are a couple of my faves.

via Feminist Ryan Gosling

Fall madness!

2011-10-13T16:28:00.000-07:00

It has been insane, to say the least. I am elbow-deep with job market stuff, on top of teaching and trying to finish my third diss chapter. It has not been easy and well, blogging has been relegated to the bottom of the infinite TO DO list. I will say though that being on the job market, while quite stressful, has made some things more clear to me. One is that yes, I really do want to teach and will jump through some precarious looking hoops in order to keep doing what I love. Two, the endeavor to write and rewrite cover letters and dissertation abstracts in order to make more clear to an audience---that is not me nor my committee chair---is an exercise that is quite painful most times but in the end, totally worth it. Now I feel quite confident about the labor that I'm doing and, more importantly for the job market, I feel more confident in expressing the labor represented in my project. So often as academics, because we don't build anything concrete with our bare hands or we can't point to a tangible thing that we've done at the end of the day that says "Look! That's what I did all day!" or "Look, that's 7 years of my life right there!" that our labor is often disparaged. I do it to myself and certainly those in our lives, whether they be our parents, friends or partners, at some point do it to us too. How do express to someone that you sat on your ass all day staring at the computer screen while trying to unpack or express a particularly difficult concept and that the result of that intellectual labor is represented by this page, or this one paragraph or these scattered notes? It's like those cheesy souvenir t-shirts that say "I went to (insert tourist destination here) and all i got was this lousy shirt!" I went to grad school and all I got is this lousy dissertation. You just gotta laugh sometimes.

All this is to say that soon enough I will be posting more interesting things, so stay tuned and keep checking back. For now (at least until mid-November) I will post some shorter entries, blog site recommendations, job market rants, etc. as I wade through these murky job market waters. I wish you all a productive fall!

Right on, right on

2011-08-02T17:04:00.000-07:00

I'm not one to post celebrity videos, but this I love so, so much. As a teacher who has been influenced by amazing teachers and have friends who are amazing teachers, I was so excited to see some conservative jerk-off---mouthing unstudied conservative talking points about real public servants---get served. Big time. Watch and enjoy!

In an L.A. state of mind

2011-07-12T18:08:00.000-07:00

This summer I have the gift of time, precious time that I rarely have all to myself when I teach. The goal is to finish a chapter and prepare for the job market. This is time I spend with myself, albeit often in crowded cafes, alone in my own head thinking and mapping and remapping links between information stored and gained, deciphering the puzzles presented by texts and wondering if ever there is a bottom to what seems like this well of infinite crossings and meanderings created by words. A hundred times a day I want to hit that bottom, so that finally, I can rest, and yet about the same number of times, I decide that doing so would mark the beginning of the end. Then it wouldn't be any kind of rest or reprieve, just an end. Mundane and common place. And who wants that? So I let my mind wonder and wander down networks of roads and tunnels.

I often ask myself: have I gone crazy? Maybe just a little, but not all the way. Otherwise I would not be able to question my sanity. I would, you know, just be crazy. I often feel off kilter, sitting there an island onto myself, in that Highland Park cafe, itself an island, amidst the sea of brown people. I wax nostalgic about the good ol' days before cafe culture invaded this neighborhood, when I first came to live in this city, and yet there I am, consuming Saint Latte, the patron saint of gentrification. I get angry, but with whom, I have yet to work out.

L.A. is confusing and infuriating in this way, more so than any other metropolitan city, I think. Here difference is magnified by its expansive landscape which spreads out like a cancer or, if you like something prettier, less offensive, like the ripple on a puddle made by a raindrop cascading down from the petals of a dewy sunflower. But then again, it rarely rains in L.A. so such moments of natural sublimity are few and far between. Better to write haikus about the white smoke slowly trailing from car exhausts or the permanent brown haze in the horizon.

I have lived in L.A. about as long as I've lived in San Francisco and Manila. My life divided in thirds marked by moving across and then along the Pacific. Back and forth. Always present is this ocean, though depending where one stands, the Pacific changes colors and temperatures from blue to green to gray to black and from warm to fucking freezing. If I forget where I am, all I need is to look towards the sea, dip a toe in the water and immediately I remember. Sometimes you need that, you know? A marker, place holder, palatandaan, a landmark telling us that or we are there rather than here or vice versa because otherwise, we'd be lost, floating signifiers, meaningless signs, unanchored ships drifting to elsewhere spaces. We lose ourselves this way. This is why I keep a GPS in my car; I have been known to lose myself in this city.

Perhaps I have been feeling dangerously untethered these days and being back here, in my first L.A. neighborhood has magnified that feeling, ironic as I try to make a home here, coming, as they say, in full-circle. But as my comings and goings have taught me, change remains the only certainty and even the familiar places we visit time and again quietly change as they take on the patina of our joys and troubles, of our tears and shame, of our laughter and regret. Until one day, we look up and see that the pictures of people and places emblazoned in the vaults of our minds look quite different in the light of day. And in the summertime, the light of day in this city can be quite harsh.

As I lose myself in my daydreams and in the mazes of words that the writing (and reading) process creates, I will try to make some small efforts to keep things the same so that I may preserve some semblance of sanity. This summer I will keep my toes painted and keep my hair long. No impulse hair cuts even when the heat and humidity make a disheveled mop out of my head. I will continue to wear bangs covering my forehead, skimming my eyelids, though sometimes they make it hard for me to blink away the the afternoon sunlight. I will wear my hair in a bun until it dries and when undone, long black waves will cascade down my back, mimicking the undulations of my heartbeat made irregular by the strong coffee I sip even in warm mornings. The Pacific too ebbs and flows, like the waves in my hair, as it crashes onto the tawny shoreline of this side of the world. Here, the skyline is also brown, shrouding downtown buildings with the thick and languid residue of modernity. This summer I will drive away and towards those buildings, and while to me they will always look a little creepy behind all that smog---like unmoving sentinels of cement and iron presiding over the city---in my comings and goings, they too will somehow become familiar enough as landmarks: the eastern equivalent to the ocean in the west.

As I try to keep some things for myself a sanctity through its sameness, it is my hope that I can perhaps, once again, though not in the same way, call this city unfamiliar home.

New photo blog!

2011-06-27T15:24:00.000-07:00

Check it out friends and readers: http://binhi.tumblr.com/

Where my girls at?

2011-05-13T16:46:00.000-07:00

Aaahhhh...It's been a hot minute since my last post and I'm glad to be back for some "me" blog time. Springtime in L.A. is in full swing and I feel blessed to be under this bright blue sky, donning sundresses and flip flops, getting tanner with every refreshing cocktail sip under the sun. These are indeed glorious days, and I am excited to spend them with my girls, my ride or die sisters, as we venture into and conquer the often cruel streets of L.A.la land and beyond. I've been thinking a lot about sisterhood lately---its possibilities and limitations, the successes and failures---in my dissertation and in teaching my class. The representations of women I've encountered in pop culture, film, television and, sometimes, in literature are problematic at best, and more often, quite disturbing. Of course, as other pop culture and gender (and race too, but that's another post) politics junkies attest, this is something that we already know about our cultural productions. Yes, it's a sexist world out there! Our images---used and abused to sell everything from clothing to beer and to promote songs and films---are reduced to these grossly flat representations. We have become the objects of the male gaze and fantasies, our bodies subject to violence, our personalities reduced to stereotypes and tropes. We are virgins and whores, nags and control freaks, bitches and hos, muses to men and their manic pixie dream girls. We are emotional hot messes and hate ourselves and our "friends" even more, we suck the life out of our happy-go-lucky husbands and boyfriends or we love 'em and leave 'em for other guys with more money. We have daddy issues. We are foils for male characters and get second billing in movies and for your amusement, we'll make out with our straight girlfriends in bars, because inevitably this is what drunk girls do. These images flood our t.v. and computer screens, they follow us to the movies and to check-out counters (no, I don't want to know how to make him scream with pleasure, Cosmopolitan) and they write songs about this kind of femininity and we sing them out loud while we're stuck in traffic because they are just so fucking catchy (yes, Rhianna, I'm chin checking you). Resistance is futile and it seems there is no escape.

But, this post is not really about the crapeteria that is pop culture. I'm not about to continue railing against the Real Housewives of Whereverthefuck, because well, like I said, I'm a junkie. I know the part I play within this consumer machine and have made my peace and find ways, in my own terms, to rage against it. What I really want to talk about are my girls, my sisters, my intellectual soul mates and drinking partners in crime. When I take the time to think about the beautiful, amazing women in my life, I feel truly lucky to be among women who defy the asinine symbols of femininity to which we have grown oh so accustomed, that many of us actually believe that this is who we are or have to become.

My girls are bad ass academics who question, critique and challenge the status quo through their work and in their daily lives. They are advocates of books, of critical thought and of traversing the roads less traveled in life. They are teachers of students, young and old, and certainly they teach me something new everyday. These women are mothers and caretakers and while they may love their children to death, they challenge and redefine the parameters of motherhood rather than let motherhood define them. My girls kiss other girls because they like it and not to fulfill some straight male fantasy. They can drink your ass under the table while wearing a cute dress and a gorgeous smile and will hold your hair and rub your back in the alley if you've had a little too much to drink. They fight for social justice, write poetry and sing really good (bad) karaoke. My girls and I can roll deep, 5 in a hotel room to be exact, and not once engage in a jealous cat fight. When you get a compliment from any of them, you know that it's sincere, but when a situation calls for a dose of reality, count on that too. These women can just as easily laugh out loud or spiral into neurosis, and that's okay because people are suppose to be complex and not these two-dimensional tropes in the service of moving along male-centered narratives. My girls are daughters and sisters, lovers and friends and bad ass broads who drink, sing, love, cry, work, get angry, play and write through life, all the while carving out new frontiers and ways of being. They inspire me everyday and I am a better woman for having them in my life.

So, here's to my girls! I dedicate this spring to you and hell, the summer too! You are as glorious as this amazing blue sky and I cannot wait for all our future adventures under the sun.

So much things to say right now...On Edsa 1986 and beyond.

2011-02-25T11:58:00.000-08:00

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the People Power Revolution in Edsa in 1986. I was 6 years old then, and while I didn't know all the details, I remember having the acute awareness that something big was happening. As my parents stayed home from work often glued to the television, save for the military helicopters flying overhead every few minutes, the world around me---usually bustling with the roars of tricycles, jeeps and people passing by---was still. Of course, in Edsa, just a few miles from our house, the people were in the middle of a revolt against Marcos and his regime, a man who, just like other dictators, began with such promise after winning a democratic election. After more than 20 years in office, rampant corruption, 10 years of martial law, the disappearance and death of his detractors, including then senator Ninoy Aquino, and the embezzlement of millions of the people's money, the nation had had enough and in a shining moment moved in unison and enacted a peaceful revolution. "Laban!" was the battle cry, and as Filipinos are no strangers to struggle, "Fight!" they did.

Today, Filipinos commemorate that moment in our history where the masses reclaimed the stage and chose to exercise hope in the face of tanks and armed men. While I may only remember that day as a feeling, the stillness before the upheaval, what I do remember is the violence that came after the peace, and the restoration of the status quo after what was supposed to be a sea change. Cory Aquino, for all her symbolic power being the wife of Ninoy, was brought back down to humanity and at the end of the day, she was not equipped to handle a nation who was always already ripped at the seams. I remember the bloody coup d'etats for each year she was in office, which too marked the next six years of my childhood before coming to the United States. After one shining moment when, just as Fanon described, the people occupied the zone of occult instability and reached into the light, we were once again propelled into the shadows. It seems that it takes more than the promise of hope to run a nation.

Today, I too remember the People Power Revolution in 1986, especially as people take the streets in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, Algeria and elsewhere. I remember it not merely to recognize its eventual failure, but as a moment when hope for the better, hope for the future and hope for oneself rang louder than any demonstration of violence and repression. It is a hope that I think can still exact lasting change, because to endure the alternative is far worse. I vehemently believe in this kind of revolution because amidst the barrage of violence we endure in our daily lives, this is the kind of hope that moves mountains. So I remain hopeful, in solidarity with those who fought then and those who are fighting now, that things can change.

Escalating violence in Libya

2011-02-19T14:53:00.000-08:00

As protesters in Benghazi throw rocks, authorities shoot bullets.

On Revolution

2011-02-01T17:10:00.000-08:00

Cairo.

(Image via AP)

To me, there is no more salient vision for revolution than the kind Frantz Fanon describes in Wretched of the Earth:

...thus it is not enough to try to get back to the people in that past out of which they have already emerged; rather we must join them in that fluctuating movement which they are just giving shape to, and which, as soon as it has started, will be the signal for everything to be called into question. Let there be no mistake about it; it is to this zone of occult instability where the people dwell that we must come; and it is there that our souls are crystalized and our perceptions and our lives are transfused with light.

Fanon's faith in the people always softens my hardened and untrusting heart. Whenever I read his words, I feel an ache that I believe can only be appeased by marching alongside brothers and sisters, as part of a teeming mass, in spite of great hopelessness and fear. That revolution in our popular imagination means the occupation of public spaces by bodies who no longer desire to suffer in private, remains a powerful image for me. To have grown up in a time and place where such upheavals, both peaceful and bloody, occur as often as the wind shifts direction, I am all too aware how a seemingly small incident in the life of one, can transform into an explosive moment in the lives of many. This to me, has always been the face of revolution.

But Fanon's ardent belief in the people not only makes way for the possibility that individuals can constitute one pulsating force moving towards freer spaces, but it also opens up the possibility for upheavals in day-to-day life. That to revolutionize means to challenge, to teach, to think and to swim upstream even when your legs are tired, your arms feel weak and each breath is labored because the alternative would be to sink into the cold oblivion---and this is not an option.

Revolution is the explosion of space onto time, the forward movement of historical time and capitalist modernity no longer able to contain the reality of those on the ground. Revolutions are always surrounded by violence---the arms we take up to threaten the other, the stones we throw at each other and into our world, the blood we spill when we fight or even when we don't, the spirits we break when we stand by idly as our brother or sister suffer, the damage done when we deprive the other compassion, attention, help and recognition---and we all, no matter how near or far, are implicated. While to revolt means to rid of the violence, often with violence itself, it also carves out a space of hope onto the field of inequity where the peaks of excess look down onto the valleys of empty. If we have nothing else, it is this hope that can help to sustain us, and if not bring us to the place where, as Fanon describes, we can be transfused with light, then at the very least this hope can help keep us fighting.

Something to write about

2010-12-01T18:48:00.000-08:00

Lately I have noticed massive amounts of hair just falling away from my head. I attribute this to a shift in hormonal balance that I've been experiencing since my late 20s. At least that's what I tell myself despite having no real scientific basis for such an assumption. Honestly, I just think it's stress. Yes it's stressful out there, America, and if my hair don't fall out on its own, I will probably pull it all out myself.

Despite the stresses, the uncertainties, the (still) unfinished 2nd diss chapter, the not-so-secure job prospects, the hair loss and even the dark under-eye, insomnia-induced circles, there are still things that can make me smile ear to ear like a damned fool. This song, for example, by DJ Ztrip featuring Murs, just made me smile right now when it came up on my Pandora Quickmix. Lately, the musical love of my life seems to be churning out only the best craptastic hits---yes I am talking to you Black Eyed Peas! WTF?---but this silly ass song reminds me that there is still joy to be had in hip hop. Also reminds me to put some cereal on the grocery list too. Can't beat that.

Speaking of grocery list, cooking and baking makes me happy too. That I am able to cook for a fun is a privilege in it of itself, let along being able to do it for pleasure and for the people I love. Nothing like hot a hot meal you've made yourself on a cold day after a ton of grading and office hours. Like a damn blanket for the belly.

My students this quarter were pretty awesome too. They probably curse me out under their breath when I give them tough love and Cs, but teaching freshmen who are still excited and eager to learn is great. We've had some great laughs over the quarter and having this kind of rapport with them makes up for the fatigue from grading some of their pretty badly written essays. Not all of the fatigue, just a bit ,and sometimes that's enough to get through it all.

Top Chef Masters starts tonight. This is enough to make me jump up and down while chanting "Co-lic-chio! Co-lic-chio! Co-lic-chio!" Next to Anthony Bourdain, he is my favorite TV chef and he makes me smile and giggle like a gay with a bear predilection.

Watching my lil brother's progress in culinary school is quite exciting too. And to think I used to change the diaper of this soon-to-be chef! Now if we can only get him into Top Chef...!

And of course, AJ. Allow me, for a moment, this bit of sap and sentimentality: he is the person I've tried to imagine for myself, but could not completely picture nor comprehend on my own . This is because each day, he exceeds, in every which way, the limitations of my imagination. The best days are those which begin and end with him and I laughing in bed. Plus he has some pretty awesome/awful dance moves which make my sides split. For all this, I am thankful and want of nothing more.

That's enough for now. Back to paper grading, hair pulling and stressing. But knowing I have much to smile about does takes the banality out of the 'just getting by," and turns it into a life worth writing about.

Breaking Up is Hard To Do or Why I am Quitting Facebook

2010-10-19T21:59:00.000-07:00

Tonight is my last night on Facebook, maybe for now, maybe forever. There are a ton of reasons why I am quitting the social network where everyone I have ever known and their mama (and my mama too!) from every chapter of my life from elementary school onward is a part of and it's not because of some sort of futile political stance against big brother who is not only watching but also selling our souls and our email addresses to the highest bidder. And it's not because the movie Social Network, revealed the scary, albeit mostly fictional, beginnings of a company built on exclusivity against the uneducated riffraff. I already knew this was the protocol when I first signed up with the required .edu email to even get an account, way before Facebook opened itself up to the masses. It's not because I hate Mark Zuckerberg and what this company stands for, although I do have about as much disdain for him as one could have for someone who they've never met or seen in real life. I mean, I love nerds, but Mark, you make it so hard to love you.

These are all valid reasons and to some extent add to the impetus to quit. The truth is, I'm an FB addict. I have been for years. I wake up in the morning and check FB, I'm on my phone and I'm on FB. I'm on my computer all day supposedly writing a dissertation,and 10 minutes into "writing" and I'm on FB. Before I go to bed at night, I check FB. And how could I not be on Facebook when my friends have such interesting lives, advertise such great causes and great parties, have funny/sad/poignant/silly/baffling status updates or post such great pictures of their babies or their pets or themselves at parties, at clubs or traveling to different parts of the world? How could I get enough when Facebook tells me when to greet friends on their birthdays, or that so and so broke up with so and so because their profiles say they're "single" complete with a heart symbol, or that what's his name got married to that girl that I can't stand (ugh!) who is NOT my Facebook friend, or that what's her face has moved and is "now enjoying the big life in the big city" or that one girl from high school is still friends with that other girl in high school and isn't that nice? How can I not Facebook when I can email 30 people at a time, post pics of my fabulous life (at least that's what I want you to believe), tag you even if the picture is less than flattering, rage against the machine and the man via status updates and interface with hundreds of people without never really having to make any sort of real effort? How could I stop Facebooking when "to Facebook" has become a verb and has entered into our daily vernacular?

I guess, for me, that was the problem. I loved that Facebook allowed me to interact with people I haven't seen in years and stay in the loop, but in some ways Facebooking has become a proxy for actual human interaction. Let's be honest, being FB friends with someone is not really friendship; forging friendships and real connections shouldn't revolve around writing on someone's wall or hitting the "like" button on their status update. Somehow I have allowed myself to get caught up in all that.I have reduced my interactions with actual people to some remarks on a not-so-real wall. I have succumbed to Facebooking, rather than calling or seeing someone and telling them: "Happy birthday! I wish you all the best because you deserve it and I am happy to call you a friend."

I guess maybe I'm taking this a bit too seriously and that I should just consider Facebook as a fun way to stay in touch, because really that's all it is, right? But more and more, the media we interact with--- TV, the radio and the internet---organize around the desire to stay relevant via Facebook and more and more we too have organized ourselves around our Facebook persona to varying degrees. I tend to think that it is kinda that serious. Serious enough to commit social network suicide---a term which I did not invent, by the way, and refers to the act of deactivating one's FB account---and for a while disappear into the oblivion of the (more) real world.

I will miss Facebook. Actually let me be more precise: I will miss my friends on Facebook. If I never go back, I will probably never interact with many of them ever again. This makes me sad. Then again, perhaps it's okay that we have people in our lives that we knew once, long ago, and who we sometimes miss. That we've lost track of them doesn't make them any less important to us because we've become who we are through the experiences we've shared with them. Such is the ebb and flow of life and its ephemeral nature is what makes us feel the sadness and joys that makes life all the more beautiful. So I say goodbye to Facebook and my Facebook friends for now, and maybe, forever. If I never talk to you again, may you have an amazing life. Thank you for sharing yours with me. For those of you who I will continue to see and talk to, get angry, laugh, eat, dance and sing songs with, give advice to and seek advice from, say hello to on the phone or have coffee with---to those I will continue to interact with in the world after I disappear from the FB universe, expect, at least, a call from me on your birthday.

Philippine Dreaming

2010-10-13T17:47:00.000-07:00

Working on my dissertation, or at least thinking about it at some capacity, puts me in contact with the Philippines everyday. Sometimes this is a Philippines, a Manila, which I recognize: the wall of heat which surrounds then penetrates the skin, the smell of exhaust and trash, the sea of people with brown skin and dark hair, like mine, just walking and walking and walking up an down crowded aisles at any given mall, horns blaring from buses and cars and jeepneys all fighting for space within this urban landscape all of which, at first, assaults the sensibilities of a body that has become used to the complacency of California living. In no time, though, my body remembers that this was (is?) home and that the seemingly frenetic pace of Manila becomes, once again, the familiar rhythm inside my chest and I sway and yield to this rhythm instinctively as one would surrender to a long lost love.

Many times I encounter an uncanny Manila, the stuff of urban nightmares, the seat of colonial anxieties, of imperial desires and capitalist excesses. This place makes my skin crawl, my heart ache and it makes me look longingly elsewhere. This unfamiliar terrain is certainly a product of my own imagination, the place where actual experience and idealized childhood memories cannot construct and therefore must invent. But often this unfamiliar Manila comes from the projections of other transnational bodies, coming and going as they please, signifying and representing the urban horror which they themselves have had a hand in creating, whether they recognize it or not. These hypermobile, transnational bodies conduct business or seek pleasures beyond the imagination of their mundane lives. Manila is the gateway for the fulfillment they seek and as they unload their Dollars or Yen or Euros onto this landscape, the Philippines of my dreams is transformed and alas, becomes unrecognizable.

Then again, it has always been this way, hasn't it? It has always been an imagined place. The Philippines, with its 7,000 islands, has always been a place of fantasy, a nation imagined by Spain, the United States and by its own people. A place where mobile bodies visit, change, leave, settle, return to, reinvent. It has always been the locus of colonial desires and of capitalist interests. It has always been an uncanny and familiar place, where the only constant has to be that it refuses the most vehement signification, even when caught up in the throes of nationalist passion.

Perhaps I have invented my familiarity as much as I have myself imagined the Manila landscape. Perhaps, I too have become one of those transnational bodies; certainly my privileged role has not escaped me. But as I continue to think and write about tropical temporalities and Filipinas in global landscapes, my daydreams always return to the Philippine familiar: playing marbles on the dirt, dipping sour kamias into a handful of rock salt, mouth already watering from anticipation, riding the jeepney with my head sticking out the window and seeing a row of elbows akimbo, hand on my heart singing "Bayang Magiliw" in my school uniform, playing in the monsoon rain chasing frogs and dipping my feet into salty waters as the Pacific kissed the sand. These images remain with me always.

I think it's time again to visit home.

Summertime and the living is easy...sorta

2010-06-21T23:39:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that time is moving at speeds which my body has yet to understand, this spring was no exception. One minute I was driving back to L.A. from the holiday break, then I blink and it's June, another school year in the bag, graduations and weddings abound, the mercury rising everyday, women donning dresses in bright colors, the once green hillsides now crisp and golden and the beaches primed for sunbathing. It is summer once again!

Summer, however, always brings some instability and insecurity into my world. This not-having-a-structure thing and being alone with my thoughts all the time, vis-à-vis my dissertation, terrifies me in a profound way. So much investment into writing this thing that has become in my imagination a behemoth that cannot be tamed, has alas paralyzed me once again. No chapters done since the last. It feels like running through the worst marathon obstacle course ever and losing at almost every leg of the race. Dissertation: 3, Lisa: 1. This summer also comes with some very real worries about next year, which I really don't want to get into right now. All I can say is that it's not a good thing to be a grad student from the humanities during a time of economic crisis.

But in the spirit of making hard lemonade from sour ass lemons (stolen from the neighbor's tree of course), I am determined to make the best out of all this losingness and uncertainty. Today, I drafted a plan to finish a chapter before summer's end. Tomorrow, I will begin to implement that plan. This weekend I will hang out with a friend I haven't seen in years and I will imbibe in the some spirits to lift mine a bit. This month, I will get myself out of this funk and the first stop out of this (funky) town is the beach. Next month, I will continue to write and read and confront this behemoth dissertation. Then, I will take a break long enough to vacation in Belize with someone who makes me laugh until I can't hardly breathe and who takes my breath away when we kiss. In August, I will return to teach and I am certain that I will welcome the structure that a teaching schedule offers once again. All the while, I hope to spend more time wading in the cool Pacific waters, take longer walks while holding hands, maybe go to a flea market or two, do champagne brunches with the girls and nights out with a cocktail in my hand and music in my ears. Yes, this summer, I resolve to do all this and maybe more.

So, at the end of the longest day of the year, on the cusp of yet another season, I hold some high hopes. I wish you all a lovely summer solstice and an even lovelier summer. May the drinks be cold, the sky always a brilliant blue, the music be good and loud, the kisses be sweet and the laughs plenty.

Summer in the city...

It's been a long time. I shouldna left you...

2010-04-12T01:19:00.000-07:00

It's been a hot minute since I've been on this soapbox, so please forgive me for my neglectful ways.

The winter months of 20-10 were crazy busy with lots of small professional breakthroughs: finishing the first chapter of my dissertation, helping organize a successful conference, getting some productive and positive (okay, some criticisms too) feedback from advisers, and presenting parts of my chapter to living, breathing audiences, a highlight for me this season. After months of writing and living with these ideas, turning them over and over again in my head, looking for the holes in the arguments, then patching them up and reinforcing them and dreaming about its contours as if it were the face of some unrequited love from a distant past or a yet-to-be fulfilled future---to present all that work for the first time, to expose that process to an audience, was like revealing the contents of my messy closet to the world. For a Type A like me, it was unnerving to say the least. But the great thing about facing this fear is realizing that the closet wasn't the messy disaster that I imagined it to be, that while there were some clothes hanging precariously on their hangers, for the most part it was neat, clean and hell, it even smelled great, like newly washed laundry! This is all to say that presenting my chapter to the world at large felt great, and this experience was like a reward at the heels of months of writing in a vacuum and going, at times, quite literally, crazy. (This reminds me: must clean actual closet.)

It's springtime in L.A.la land once again and the air feels rife with glorious possibilities. To think of where I was when the cherry blossoms started to bloom all over the city last year makes this season taste all the more sweeter. Sure there will be some heartache and disappointment; already I've been rejected by some fellowships and there are things about next year which terrify me, trying to file and dipping my toes into the job market being the top two. But for all the scary uncertainties in the world of academia which can often reduce one to tears, I still militantly believe in the work that I do, in the classroom and with my diss, and recognize that to swim against the tide is a struggle, yes, but one which I know bears the only kind of fruit worth having. And as this struggle marks each of my days, I have come to realize that there is beauty in the things that make life tough, that I am what I am because there has never been a silver spoon anywhere near my mouth and that the only privilege that I know is the kind which allows me to wake up in the morning and begin anew the beautiful struggle which makes life livable and indeed quite sweet.

This spring is special too because I continue to feel some pretty amazing love and support from the special people in my life. I mean alright, you're suppose to feel love from your friends and family, but as I get older, I have come cherish my family's support even more and value my friends who have become my family in this schizophrenic town. I have said it before and will say it again, my friends---my ride or die sisters especially---have been nothing short of amazing. So I guess I spoke too soon about knowing only one kind of privilege. I am in fact doubly privileged to have such lovely people in my life to share laughs with and drinks with and dance with and sing with, and best of all, to stand with when the daily struggles of life engage on all fronts.

I began blogging almost a year ago to chronicle the joys and pains of writing a dissertation and dating in L.A.la land. During this time there have been plenty of moments when I wanted to cry or cried laughing at some of the dysfunction of dissertation and dating. But there have been some pretty magical moments and right now, I am pretty much covered in pixie dust, there's so much freakin' magic! It's scary because I have gotten quite good at being on guard and managing to stay composed whenever I get stuck and can't write for weeks or come home from a particularly bad date. But if there's anything I'm good at, it's plunging head first into unknown waters and so no matter what the future holds, I am right now quite happy and ready to tackle yet another chapter and bask in the magical moments this spring will undoubtedly bring.

Tonight, I will sleep with the sound of April rain in my ears and as much as I love sunshine, I can appreciate that this water from the sky brings with it nourishment. This year so far has already been pretty amazing and I know, now more than ever, that despite the many beautiful struggles that lie ahead, I believe things will be okay, because like the earth after a good night's rain, my heart feels full and my soul is nourished.

Right now or late night meanderings

2010-02-23T01:58:00.000-08:00

The older I get, the more my body feels the sleep that I am not getting. Soon enough it all catches up and I find myself unable to get up some days, fatigued from weeks of running on 3 or 4 hours of sleep. Tonight will be one of those sleepless nights and as the clock glares at me past midnight, my mind remains surprisingly active and, apart from my eyes feeling a little dry, I feel like I can go for a few more hours. It's so manic, this lifestyle of grading and reading and teaching and writing. I feel like I can never get away; this very moment is supposed to be my writing break and I find myself, well, writing some more. And as I type these words, I am slowly emptying my mind of some burdens, both professional and personal, and I find myself regaining some sort of equilibrium, albeit fleeting.

There it is again. More and more I think and write about the ephemeral moments of life. Perfect moments where suddenly you find that you are gazing down onto your own reality, watching yourself move and interact, framing it in your head, storing it in hopes of accessing it later, outside of yourself and yet wholly within yourself too. Is that what it means to live in the moment? I mean, I know what it means to live in the moment: to appreciate the now, to not look beyond the present, to avoid over thinking, to do and say with precisely what feels right, right when you feel it. But for a classic Type A like me, living in the moment feels like a myth, an urban legend, the chupacabra of lived experiences. I plan, make To Do lists, make mental lists, fill up my calender and color code the clothes my closet and the books in my shelves. That's who I have always been and living in the moment is something that I have to force myself to do, which kinda defeats the purpose.

Perhaps it is the accumulation of years that have led me here, but lately I have come to realize that these perfect events are quite temporary, that while for some they may come often or others few and far between, it remains true that these experiences have beginnings and endings and if we fail to recognize their preciousness at the precise moment of impact, we can never regain what is lost and worse, we can never recall the feelings of joy or contentment or accomplishment or peace associated with that experience. And while we may have more moments just like that one, we will never have the same exact one. So when I find myself enjoying a perfect morning with a great cup of coffee, or dancing with my friends, or hugging my niece during the holidays, or singing songs with my cousins, or sitting on the couch laughing with my brothers in the house where I grew up, or strolling through a flea market holding hands, or realizing that my students and I are actually enjoying discussing a book, I try as best I can to hold on to those feelings, store 'em up in my heart and in my brain so that when things get tough or sad or even just plain boring, I can summon up those moments and those feelings in order to ease the bruises in my soul and regain some lost balance.

To live in the moment for me will always be hard because to do that, all the damn time, would be to forsake a fundamental part of me which tends to look ahead, always in search ways of doing things better, of striving to be better. Ultimately though, our grand narrative is nothing but a collection of these fleeting moments---happy ones, tragic or sad ones, banal and ordinary ones too. To live a life that is full, for me, means looking ahead toward new horizons to conquer, looking back in order ground and anchor one's self, all the while striving to recognize that right now, where I am in space and time, is exactly where I need to be and I have to be okay with that because I know all too well that in a minute things will change and then it's on to the next. So I celebrate these ephemeral moments and if that's what it means to live in the now, well then I am happy to report that right this second, I am here languishing in the transient beauty of it all.

Early morning musings

2010-02-22T08:32:00.000-08:00

As the sun streams into my living room window on what promises to be one of those rare, beautiful L.A. days---a bit of rain followed by clear blue skies and sweet, crisp air---I fold my legs under a plush throw, gaze at the stack of grading I have to do, sip my warm coffee slowly and feel quite at peace. Two months into 20-10 and I am feeling quite accomplished. Finally, a chapter under my belt! Yes, the first chapter is a daunting task for anyone. While doing coursework, even before endeavoring to write a dissertation, I have already heard some stories of first chapter mishaps and heartbreaks, of taking more than a year to write, of never ever being satisfied with it, even after the diss is filed, or worse, of those who never finish because that first chapter never really materialized In those days, while taking courses and managing okay, I quickly told myself: I will be in and out of grad school, 6 years max, no more. Exams, prospectus, advance, write, write, write then file. Like a targeted scud missile: efficient, not much collateral damage, hit 'em where it hurts. Boom!

Well, as we all know, modern warfare ain't pretty, in fact it's jacked the fuck up. And while I do not intend to diminish the gravity of the damage we inflict on each other while at war by making this comparison, I will say that writing this dissertation feels like going to battle, already bloodied and battered from the previous fight, every time I sit myself in front of my computer and place my hands on the keyboard. Efficiency and time lines flew out the window while writing my prospectus and as I actually began to write---6 months after the trauma of my defense---every determination for a 6-yr plan was left stranded by the wayside like a cheap hooker, knowledge earned from coursework felt more like undiscernible echoes, like vague childhood memories, and pounding the keys to produce a word, a sentence, then a complete thought, felt like punishment, like pushing a boulder up a mountain or watching a big ass bird peck at my insides as I lay tied to a rock, only to endure the same fate the next day.

Alright, alright, I am being a bit dramatic. But I say all this to show how manic one becomes while writing for hours on end, not uttering a single word, or seeing another real-live human for 12 hours straight, fueled by adrenaline and coffee alone. Such was the experience of getting my first chapter in on time. I must've looked like the town loon. In fact, I swear I saw my walls vibrate that one time, at 4:10 in the morning.

Despite all this, when I came to school to put a clean copy of that chapter in my adviser's box, a wave of euphoria swept over me and I knew that no matter how hard things become, I will always know that I can produce. Now, we're not even talking about producing a good chapter, whatever that means. We're talking about just getting thoughts down onto paper and making an argument that I, at least, believe in, and organizing disparate thoughts into something readable. The good may come later in the form of another chapter or a new project altogether, but for now actually producing was good enough. It's winning the small battles that matters in the long run.

Right now, the sun is high over the horizon, and from my window, I can see palm trees swaying from the breeze against blue, blue skies. I need a refill on the coffee and in a moment I will be wading into these papers, elbow-deep in bad prose. Later, I will return a recalled book, already heavy with fines, and this afternoon, I will discuss one of my favorite books with my students, hoping that they like it, or at least find value in it, as much as I do. Such is the life that I have and I feel entirely good about it as we speak. It is a feeling that can only come at the heels of accomplishing such a daunting task. And while tomorrow, I may not feel this way---as my list of TO DO tasks grows by the second and because soon (like, this week!) I will have to begin writing the second chapter and as I realize that I have, once again, over committed myself to doing other things---right now, this very moment I am enjoying this rare feeling of contentment and I am quite happy and that life is indeed good.

Fighting words

2010-01-31T16:58:00.000-08:00

During the moments when I find myself lost in my own writing, unsure of what to say next, unable to translate the images in my head into words, utterly ineffectual, there are certain writers I turn to in order to help me find my way once again: Fanon, Cesaire, Said, Barrios, San Juan and many others. I dive in, melt into the words, float above or swim against them and I let them take me to the same familiar places only to find new gems to take back with me. After a while I come back and somehow, I am able to fight my way through the traps and pitfalls in my own head in order to write that sentence or paragraph, giving some shape to images that I wrestle with even in my sleep. Today, I am writing about the spectacle of suffering in Filipino film and I am disheartened by the ostentatious display of crying, dispossessed, displaced and abused bodies splayed on screen for our entertainment. I hate that suffering becomes posited as a condition of belonging and citizenship; that to be a "good" Filipino one must first suffer for family, homeland and God.

I suppose it's my own fault that I am, for lack of a better word, suffering through this. I did choose this topic. But it's one thing to endure writing a dissertation; in the grand scheme of things, this is by far a pretty innocuous endeavor. There are always scarier battles being fought, more dangerous places to be, pain more intensely felt, lives more profoundly disrupted by war, natural disasters, poverty and injustice. All of this, a dissertation can only talk about, try to make sense of, find moments of resistance to and even that is already beyond the scope of my body of knowledge.

So in this moment, I find refuge in Amado V. Hernandez, Filipino poet, guerrilla fighter, labor leader and all around bad ass. In 1951 he was arrested for his labor organizing and while in jail he wrote some of my favorite poems which is later published in the collection titled Isang Dipang Langit or A Stretch of Sky, after a poem he wrote while gazing at the small piece of sky visible from his jail cell window. "Kamay" or "Hands" is another favorite of mine from the collection and today as I find myself lost in my own writing and disheartened by what I have produced, I once again turn to this poem about the meaning of struggle, about our own potential to make and unmake the world around us through work, the power of one's hands to protect those who cannot protect themselves, to shape and mold and to quietly show love without demanding much else. I leave with a quote from this poem, which I love so, with words so beautiful that it hurts each time I read it, a pain that is most welcomed as I try to fight through my own thoughts and words. Salamat Ka Amado sa iyong pakikibaka.

"Ang mga kamay ko'y binihasang sadya

sa kakaharaping gawai't dalita;

pangit ang daliring humabi ng sutla,

tumuklas ng ginto'y kamay ng paggawa.

Habang ang kamay mo o aking Pagibig,

kambal na bulaklak---mabango, malinis;

kung may sakit ako or nasa panganib,

dantay ng kamay mo ay isa nang langit.

Nguni't tingnan yaong kamay ng Orasan,

may itinuturo't waring nagsasaysay;

'Tao, kayong lahat ay may katapusan

na itatadhana nitong aking kamay!'"

---from "Kamay" by Amado V. Hernandez, 1956.

2009 Laundry List: My Year in Brief

2009-12-31T13:35:00.000-08:00

For me, the best New Year's resolution is to strive to be closer to the best version of yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah a little self-helpey, but I truly believe in this. Often, I fail to live up to this promise and when this happens, I try to remind myself that it's not always about the big breakthroughs but the little victories of the day-to-day which ultimately fortify our selves in the making. So cheers to winning some battles, and in 2009, here's how I celebrated:

-danced with eyes closed to good reggae every Tuesday

-read trashy magazines on the beach

-road trip to Santa Barbara, blasting MJ, for wine tasting and to find Neverland

-summertime with cousins and nieces and nephews, marveling at how much they've grown and the passage of time

-laughed with my students

-sipped strong coffee curled up on my couch as the morning sun flooded into my apartment.

-deep breaths

-karaoke with friends

-happy hour truth or dare

-vodka tonics with lots of lemon

-smiled at strangers

-pedicures

-pilates

-marveled at British architecture

-reconnected with long-lost friends

-got lost in my own thoughts

-girls' nights out

-flirted with boys

-hung out with my brothers doing nothing and laughing the whole time

-sang in the shower

-started writing my diss

-baked snickerdoodles

-watched Glee religiously

-started blogging

-got pretty for dates

-watched lots of films

-extended birthday celebration into birthMONTH celebration

-bought gifts for friends

-made new friends

-forgave and let go

-laughed like crazy

-loved intensely

This was definitely the year of many battles fought on the ground, down and dirty. But then this makes emerging from the fray feel like a real accomplishment and the small victories all the more sweet. So Happy New Year, dear friends, family and readers! I hope 2009 brought some joys into your life, no matter how small. And as we enter this new decade, I wish you all the very best of what you can give and get from the world at large! Happy New Year!

Taking stock and looking forward

2009-12-17T01:12:00.000-08:00

As the dust settles on the multi-city, multi-party celebration of my 30th birthday, I find myself thinking about some of the major events and breakthroughs of the last few years. I will forever remember my 20s as one unbelievably amazing adventure, marked by moments of hilarity and grief, gains and losses, journeys near and far, by lucid visions of who I want to become and by muddled waters of uncertainty, by finding love only to lose it all over again, all in hopes of finding myself content and happy in my own skin. Those of you who are reading this and know me understand that this year has been an especially trying one. From being paralyzed with my dissertation writing and producing not a single page for at least 6 months to coming to terms with the end of my almost 5-year relationship with a man who I thought was going to be my partner for life—I honestly thought that I would come out from this year timid and cowering inside my hidey hole, deathly afraid of the big bad world. As January and February melted into spring, I felt myself so changed by these experiences that I hardly recognized the girl staring at me in the mirror with the sad and tired eyes, desperately trying to keep it together, quietly telling myself: “Breathe. Do not fall apart. Breathe.”

But this entry is not about all that was lost and cannot be re-gained, nor is it about coming undone, being destroyed and never recovering from the hurt of the past. Rather, this entry is about what happens when falling apart makes way for the process of putting it all back together where it once was, and actually, come to think of it, where it’s always been just quietly waiting to be recognized once again. This is about learning extraordinary lessons that come from heartbreak and taking these lessons and using them in order to live an even more extraordinary life. It’s hard when you begin to think of yourself solely as the other half of the equation and that you cannot possibly function properly without your other. I have always believed in partnerships and hoped that this one was actually going to stick. When it didn’t, I really didn’t know what to do with myself and it was as if I was missing the biggest and best part of who I have become. But see, that was the problem. This wasn’t the biggest, nor the best part of who I am. Sure, I gave my best and worked extremely hard to make it last, but at the end of the day, this relationship, nor any other relationship for that matter, cannot erase the fundaments of who I am, that I was whole before I entered into this “partnership” and I leave it, just as I always have been: whole and complete, unto myself.

This entry is all about celebration too—celebrating the friends and family who stood (or drank and danced!) next to me at the precise moment when I needed them the most. It’s unfortunate that it sometimes takes tragedies to help us recognize who are friends really are, but I think that it makes it all the more special when you realize who is standing with you when you are less than your best, when you are sad or pissed or full of self-pity or when you hate the world. This is the mark of a true friendship and I celebrate you, my amazing and beautiful friends—and you know who you are—who love me unconditionally and who recognized that behind my tired and sad eyes, I was still in there somewhere, that I actually wasn’t lost forever, like I believed.

Lastly, this entry is all about forgiveness. I forgive you, Charles. I do not say this to diminish the pain that I’ve experienced at the hands of someone who was supposed to love me the most and protect me the best. To forgive, after all, is a process and not some magic wand that can be waved and all of a sudden everything is okay and forgotten. I do not say this with an ulterior motive nor to incite some sort of reaction. Forgiveness is not meant as a catalyst for re-hashing the past or re-claiming what was once there; what is gone is gone and I have long accepted and made peace with this fact. I forgive you because I know that no matter how fucked up things got, we did have some pretty amazing times and that despite everything you will remain one of my greatest loves. I recognize that the life that we built together was borne out of a sincere and genuine love for each other and to forgive you is to honor all the happy moments that we had and to remember our life without remorse and regret. Lastly, I forgive you because in so doing, I also forgive myself. For so long, I internalized what was wrong between the two of us, as if I alone created the hot mess that we were left with in the end. I know now that it wasn’t all because of me and that I must be kind and forgive myself in order to move on and to welcome new experiences and new loves into my life. So I forgive you, as much as I forgive myself.

This has been perhaps the most candid entry that I have written thus far. Soon my stories will return to lighter adventures on writing my dissertation and dating men who will surely disappoint me or make me laugh, quietly hold my hand or kiss me with passion, men who will make me want to leave the date mid-way or those who will make me smile and swoon and love being a girl. I not only look forward to the infinite possibilities that my 30s will undoubtedly bring me, but I am also languishing in the present moment where I find myself basking in this wonderful life. So I say, bring it on world! And whatever adventure is ahead of me, I welcome it with open arms, from a place of peace and contentment, happy once again in my own skin.

A personal note on public education

2009-11-19T01:47:00.000-08:00

I am a product of the California public school system. When I was 12 years old my family packed up everything that we own which can fit into a few boxes and suitcases and moved across the Pacific to face everything that seemed scary and unknown. I was 12 years old when I entered my first San Francisco public school located in Visitacion Valley, a neighborhood close to where the 101 and 280 freeways converge, south of every romantic and beautiful postcard-perfect landmark, in what we now call, out of political correctness, the "inner city." But even in this apparently rough neighborhood, what amazed me as was the fact that when I went to school early enough, I was actually able to get a free breakfast and later in the day, a free lunch too. Not only that, but all my books, although old and outdated and smelling of damp socks, were also free. That field trips to the zoo, to the planetarium or to see the amazing California redwoods were all free. That using school computers--despite giving me nightmares at first because I was ashamed at my slow typing--for homework or to play Number Munchers were all for free. That indeed my whole education was free--coming from where I just came from, new to the country and not having a whole lot--this to me was nothing short of a miracle.

Yes, I was, still am, a big nerd. But you better believe that I took advantage of everything "free" that was being offered to me and made the best of every opportunity that I was awarded. Even then, at such a young age, I realize the value of the education I was receiving and never once took it for granted.

High school was no different. I went to a then experimental high school (big up Thurgood!) where I was exposed to some pretty innovative approaches to teaching and education. There, we were encouraged to think independently and creatively. Our teachers were young and motivated and pushed us to also think about the world at large, rather than merely prepare us for the next standardized test. And as teenagers across the country cultivated feelings of hate or boredom towards their schools, teachers and classmates, in high school I felt like I flourished.

It was also during this time, like many students, when I began to consider what was beyond the 12th grade. College was the inevitable next step for me which I owe largely to the exposure to higher education that I received through out my high school years while I attended summer programs and college prep courses at City College of San Francisco, San Francisco State University and UC Berkeley. All of these programs and courses were, of course, free and as I availed of every opportunity that was offered, I continued to be amazed and thankful for this kind of public education.

Now, public education is far from perfect. There remains great disparities between what students need and what they actually get in public schools through out the state, and indeed the nation. But I, and many others like me, stand as a testament to what happens when we do things right, that being a poor, immigrant from the 'hood doesn't have define one's future, that a good public education can be had and therefore must be defended.

As the consequences of this recession is felt through larger class sizes, teacher lay-offs and cuts in programs and classes, the California public education system as I have experienced it is rapidly disappearing. The Pell Grant, Cal Grant and other forms of financial assistance from the state which I relied upon as an undergrad in Los Angeles are gone. As a graduate student in the last stages of my PhD career at UCLA, funding is uncertain. And as a college instructor, the number of students that I am expected to help educate has increased considerably, leaving me with less time to focus on my own work, as well as give my students the attention that they deserve. This last year, apart from my own anxieties about funding uncertainties, I have witnessed my friends and fellow grad students take leaves of absence because of lack of funding and have seen the panic on the faces of my students as they scramble to find ways to pay for fees, books and the rent. Today, as the well-paid UC Regents vote on, and most likely pass, the 32% UC fees hike (increasing the cost of a UC education to more than $10,000 by Fall 2010), I lament the loss of the low-cost, high-quality education that the UC system used to represent. Mostly though, I am angry because with this fee hike they are telling us that college is not for everyone, that money, and not accomplishment, decides what you can become and that if you are poor and cannot pay then you do not deserve a good college education.

So, I stand in absolute solidarity with students, workers and faculty who are striking across the state. Let us all continue to fight, in large and small ways, for the right to have access to good schools, because at the end of the day, if we are truly to live up to the promise of public education, it is up to us reclaim the UC system in order to make it ours once again.

I promise I have been up to no good.

2009-11-07T23:15:00.000-08:00

Lessons learned

2009-11-07T22:58:00.001-08:00

I have learned a lot about myself every time my heart gets broken. And in the almost 30 years that I have been on this earth, I have had some doosies. It all started in kindergarten—yeah, we’re goin’ there—with a boy who instead of sharing his crayons with me, would rather run around during recess pulling my skirt up in front of the other boys in class. Sometimes, he’d be really nice and do nice things like let me cut the line ahead of him or lie next to me during nap time, but most of the time he was a jerk. So I started wearing shorts under my skirt uniform and then when he tried to pull my skirt up again, I tripped him. That was the end of him.

Then in 7th grade, there was another boy who walked me to my locker in between classes and wrote me funny letters with drawings of Taz, my favorite Looney Tunes character. Sometimes he would hold my hand and we would walk home without saying anything, sometimes we would run around during P.E. laughing and being silly. For Valentines Day, he gave me a Troll (remember those?) with purple hair and a purple jewel on his belly. He was the perfect friend for a girl who had no friends, in a new country full of strangers and strange things. He broke my heart only because before we knew it, it was the summer time, and 3 months apart for two 13 year olds is an ocean of time.

In high school heartbreak was a way of life. That’s what happens when you stick a few hundred teenagers under one roof for 8 hours a day. But as intense and immediate feelings seemed to be when you’re 16—as you think of what to say when your crush finally talks to you, or as you hope that the cute boy in Math class would ask you to prom—bouncing back from a break-up seemed easier. Perhaps it’s because at that age the possibilities seem endless, and the world is just one big playground. So while I slow danced cheek-to-cheek with a cute boy, to Janet Jackson’s “Again” or Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love to You” or to Jodeci’s “Come and Talk to Me,” and everything is so perfect that it doesn’t matter that we’re in the cafeteria and that the floor’s a little sticky or that in 3 minutes, the song will be over and I’d have to go home, I always felt like this was only the beginning and that there will be infinite perfect moments like this with other boys, and that the world was indeed my playground.

Then you get older and boys become men, and things become more serious and somehow those magical moments on the dance floor become so few and far between that they are regarded as myths or worse, fairy tales, lies that they tell us to keep us believing and hoping for things that don’t seem to exist. And just when you stop believing, something happens, and you meet someone who takes your hand, makes you laugh at silly jokes, writes you letters and then dances with you, cheek-to-cheek and makes you feel drunk without ever drinking a drop of wine. But as soon as you begin to believe in magic again, he is gone, and all you have left are memories, approximations of the actual experience, phantoms in the spaces where he used to be. Suddenly the possibilities become eclipsed by the pieces that you are left to pick up and the self you have to restore.

But despite the loss, the disappointment and the broken promises, despite making grown men cry and the tears that I’ve shed on my own, I still choose to believe in amazing possibilities. I guess that’s the most important lesson learned from all these years: that there is life after what seems like the greatest of losses, that while there are jerks who will embarrass you and leave you hanging, there are still men who can make you laugh and who’ll silently hold your hand as you walk home and that heartbreak can actually fortify the belief that there are still infinite magical moments to be had on the dance floor. This is why despite it all, I will continue to wear my heart just where it has always been, exposed and unguarded, in danger of being broken, yes, but always remaining open to the glorious possibilities that lie ahead.

And we're off! An ode to Fall

2009-11-07T22:57:00.000-08:00

Fall is in full swing and I am back after taking a much needed mental break. Blogging, at least when blogging about one’s life, can become really involved and exhausting. And after facing some of my hidden fears and anxieties in the first few entries, I was already eager to return to my hidey hole, where it’s warm, safe and full of denial. I do have a reputation to live up to which involves a very happy poker face, something that doesn’t really go well with neurosis. The good thing about blogging is that it keeps the crazy in check and, well, I really need to keep the crazy in check. So here we are!
The fall and winter seasons are my favorite time of the year. For many, it’s the spring, the eternal symbol for renewal, when flowers start to bloom, the ice melts, birds begin to chirp and hibernating bears come out squinting at the sun, ready to live in the light again, like a scene from some 1950s Disney cartoon. This is like some nightmare for me. A nightmare compounded by allergies, bugs and Easter bunnies. Yikes! For some summertime is the best time and, while I may love the beach, boogie boarding and long flowy dresses like any true blooded Californian, the summer for me means questionable employment and being completely alone with my dissertation and my thoughts all the damn time. Just awful!

So here we are. The season which for me has always carried the most potential. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in school for so long that my internal clock perks up when it knows to gear up for the back-to-school grind. What a nerd. Maybe it’s the hot, often oppressive L.A. heat giving way to crisp mornings against blue skies and fresher air. Maybe it’s all the great clothes which mimic the rich colors of the outdoors: the brown, orange, red, plum and burgundy hues which make me oh so happy to be alive AND a girl. Maybe it’s the fall t.v. line-up which offer a kind of solace, an escape from the scary world of recessions and budget cuts and fellowship applications and existential dilemmas. There is a comfort in knowing that on Wednesday, I can expect to be entertained by the best show ever (Glee!), even if it’s just for an hour. More and more, I am thankful for small pleasures. Maybe it’s the beginning of the holiday season, a nightmare for many, but for me it signals family, food, San Francisco lights and marveling at the passage of time embodied by nieces and nephews who I will always see as babies, despite how quickly they grow into amazing little people. I suppose it’s all of these things and they are all very good reasons to feel alive and hopeful which seems to carry over as the the Fall melts into winter cold.

Yes, here we are, finally! Hello Fall, my name is Lisa and I am your biggest fan.

Grand narratives

2009-11-05T01:14:00.000-08:00

This week I spent a lot of time talking to my students about critiquing grand narratives, like the Enlightenment, for example. The movement of writers and thinkers and artists who brought to us reason and science, also gave the Western world the ideology to justify colonial conquest, all for the sake of saving little brown and black brothers from thier savage selves. Grand narratives are developmental and universal, teleological stories that supposedly apply to us all. I spend a lot of pages in my work messing with those kinds of narratives, and rather than find understanding in the rigid path of history—the causes and effects of “big” events in our past which should shed light on our present moment and perhaps even the future—I look for meaning in the meanderings these narratives take. Always, always I search for the counter, the thing that tells a different, often antithetical story, whatever might be hiding in the shadows of the events marked into certainty by our history books. Always, always I try to seek out the secret whispers, the thing hiding in plain sight, in order to unmask the fallacy that we, every single last one of us, should be following a pre-determined path or a designated timeline.

I have come to be suspicious of grand narratives—like a good academic should—and yet I find it hard to avoid these so-called universals in my own life. Where was it that said we, every single one last one of us, must follow the same path? I have yet to find a believable argument for this, but every where I look, I see the results of time marching onward, as if it had always been this way forever and ever, as if this was the only tried and tested truth: we are born, we grow up, we go to school, we go to work, we find mates, we have children, we buy homes and cars and stuff in between, we grow old. Do we all merely enact variations of the same tired old story? Where are the beautiful meanderings, the whispers, the thing hidden by shadows, the counter?

In life, as with my work, I search for other paths. Perhaps this is why in life, as with my work, I often find myself unsatisfied. It took me quite a bit of time to search for the appropriate word to describe how I feel, but “unsatisfied” seems right. I feel like I am in a perpetual search for something different, something I have yet to see, something else, something more. All this in an effort to find something better. Better than what? I don’t really know. Not knowing—this perpetual stance, teetering at the edge of the diving board—is the hard part. It is a daily struggle for me not give up all the uncertainty of my life for some stability. Always, always I re-evaulate the choice that I have made to delineate from the given path. Always, always I fight with the desire to seek comfort in the conventional: normal job, normal house, normal husband, normal 2 and 1/2 children, normal dog, all under a normal sky. But while this kind of life may prove enough, and even blissful, for many, for me it feels exactly like screaming in desperation without ever being heard.

So I keep searching, not for perfection, but for the better: for better words to fill the page, better ways of understanding big events, better methods for seeing through the masks, better moments in my life, better paths to walk than the one laid out in front of me. Perhaps I will find whatever “better” I am always looking for, perhaps I won’t. That’s the fear that I live with everyday, and oh boy, as I become older and see all those around me begin to follow the path, this fear becomes all the more potent. Maybe they’ve got it all right and I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe at the end of the day, we are all looking to create our own individual narratives, no matter how similar they may look. Whatever may be the case, if given the choice, I will always, always opt for the search over the settling, because for me, whatever beauty is left out there to behold will always come from forsaking the tried-and-so-called-true, for the sake of creating new narratives to live and tell.

Heaven

2009-11-05T01:10:00.000-08:00

via http://bookshelves.tumblr.com/

Writing onward

2009-11-05T01:07:00.001-08:00

For a long time I wasn’t able to write any part of my disseration. At first, I thought it was because of brutal prospectus defense, and I guess for a while that was the reason. I was working on this dissertation proposal for so long and the whole process, punctuated by the trauma from the defense, left me physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted. I allowed myself a little vacation and figured that after some rest, and perspective, I’ll immediately bounce back and pick up where I left off, maybe even gain a renewed sense of purpose.

The first month after deciding to take a break flew by and before I knew it the holidays were staring at me in the face and I was caught up in family, friends, turkeys, Chirstmas trees, lights, presents, fireworks and then the new year. As school started again and I began to settle back into teaching, I had hoped that having a solid routine will finally get me back on track, or at the very least get me to face the copies of my dis proposal hidden away in my desk in a green folder with the comments from my committe, just waiting to be read. But as January wore on and February came along, that green folder remained in that drawer, forgotten and it seems, for the moment, abandoned.
See, this was the time when my four and a half year relationship started to unravel. Again. We broke up once before, but we decided to spend all of the previous summer and fall trying to rescue the life that we’ve built over the years. We spent Valentine’s Day weekend with my family in Lake Tahoe but the whole time I knew that we were beyond repair. As February faded into memory, our life together—-my life as I knew it—-also suffered the same fate.

I’m not going to bore you with the details of why it fell apart, because in many ways I am still trying to sort through and make sense of it all. I will say though that for me, the most difficult part about ending a relationship with someone is allowing him to become, once again, a stranger. His face and all its contours, his voice and the way that it sounded when he laughed or called my name, his foot that touched mine as we slept on opposite sides of the bed, his hand on my face gently waking me up from a bad dream—-I had to let go of it all and instead face the empty spaces where these lovely familiar things used to be.
As the days turned into weeks and into months, I eventually made my way back to that green folder. It was actually almost an accident because I was looking for some other piece of paper when I pulled out my forgotten dis proposal. Absent-mindedly, I opened the folder and leafed through the pages. As I began to read, touching the words on the page with my fingertips, it felt as if some other person had written this document. The thing that I spent months writing and researching and years preparing for through coursework, the one thing that I knew best because it was my project, my baby, felt unfamiliar, like stranger. After everything that’s happened, how can I bear to let go of another lovely familiar thing?

As you may have guessed, I didn’t have to let go this time. It seems I had to re-introduce myself to my own work, and re-discover the reasons why these words were on these pages. I had to get to know the films and the novels and figure out why I decided to build my project around them. Don’t get me wrong, the process of writing a dis remains a hard, often contentious road, but FINALLY! I am writing again.

As the my old life makes way for the one that I am living now, I am slowly but surely falling back in love with my work, which means that the paralysis that I once suffered was finally over. But more importantly, this re-discovered love means that despite the loss of many familiar things, somewhere under all that rubble, I am still here—-bruised and a bit damaged, yes, but not beyond repair. So, I continue to read and write, fumble once in a while and to make peace with all that is lost. All of this this in anticipation of one day finishing my dissertation and also discovering anew, more permanent and lovely familiar things.

Life is beautiful.

2009-11-05T01:06:00.000-08:00

This escapes me more often than I care to admit. In fact, I forget so much that I have become a genuine curmudgeon. (Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever used that word in a sentence before.) But who can blame anyone for being this way when it seems as if our world is falling apart at the seams? When we are inundated with “bad” news at every turn, when hope and change (remember that euphoric slogan?) has been replaced by the hysteric voices of Birthers and old people in town halls who think that health care reform includes a plan to euthanize them. And that’s just the ridiculous. We’re not even talkin about actual pain and misery.

As an avid news reader and watcher, I often find myself yelling at the t.v. or my computer, mad, annoyed, panicked and in despair. And of course, because I am a self-centered academic, these feelings become translated into my own neurosis about my work, feeding the existential dilemmas that seem to be a part of my daily life: Does any of this work matter? To whom? Who cares when exactly 5 people (my committee members) will end up reading this? I should’ve studied law, or medicine or business, computers or something that will make me money, then at least I’ll have that. And maybe a husband too. What’s the freakin point when the world sucks ass? Really mature, huh?
But just this afternoon, I was driving on Beverly Glen, on my way home from teaching and I see this little boy in a white karate outfit, skipping from the car to his house, cluthching a little red gum ball machine, filled half-way with colorful little gum balls. He had the biggest smile, which in turn made me smile, as I squint through the sun that glinted through my sun glasses. It was the perfect image of happy.

As I describe this moment you all, my hypothetical readers, I’m slightly annoyed by my own sentimentality, which is a grave indication that I have become so jaded over the years that I even criticize some small thing which allowed me, for a split second to move outside of myself and feel a tinge of happiness. Has being in academia all these years and writing this dissertation and the failure of my last relationship brought me to this place of being unable to recognize a good thing, a perfect moment?

I don’t even know how to begin to answer that question. I am afterall, only human, fallible, vulnerable, imperfect. But I guess that’s the point, right? That I am human and that I should allow myslef the chance to be angry or annoyed or to feel pain and to feel like I got the short end of the stick. But then I should also allow myself to smile, to appreciate the big and small blessings of the everyday, to recognize that I have got it kinda good and be okay with that and not feel guilty because I am who am, standing where I am standing, in this space and time of privilege, in the ivory tower—-and even that is okay. And at the end of a long day, while stuck in the notorious L.A. traffic, that it’s also okay to smile at a young boy and his gumball machine and feel, even just for a moment, utterly happy. Yes, life is tragic and sad and miserable and unfair. But then again, life is indeed beautiful, in many amazing ways.

A hot mess!

2009-11-05T00:57:00.000-08:00

That is how I describe the state of my dissertation. I have a draft of one chapter on a Filipino film and novel, considering nationalism, global capital, the New World Order, colonial legacies, etc, etc, etc. It’s okay, not the best, but for a draft, it’s fine. The problem is that I don’t know what the rest of the dissertation is going to look like. After I got over the trauma of my prospectus exam, I was able to re-consider my project with the comments of my committee members in mind and, well, most of what that they told me were correct. For one, my dis doesn’t quite know what it wants to be when it grows up. Is it anthropological? historic? literary? on film theory? Is it Asian or Asian American studies? Or is it Southeast Asian? Is it concerned w/ labor or representations of labor? Is it really going to consider literature from the time of Rizal to now? Clearly my dis is as schizophrenic as me. I owe that to my varied interests, and of course, my training in Comparative Literature.

Today I spent a large chunk of my time figuring out what to do with the hot mess that was staring at me from my computer screen. While a lot of these questions have already been answered, the larger question looms: What are the stakes of this project? I seem to be coming up with the same tired suppositions, leading me to the same mistakes and pitfalls that needed to be worked out in the beginning. I’m starting to think that my approach is all wrong. That I am asking the wrong questions. Or is it that I have answers to question I have yet to ask? Either way, something is missing from the equation. How do you solve for x when y is still a mystery?

In the meantime, I am also working to solve a different kind of puzzle. This one though, seems a bit easier to figure out and definitely cuter than my dissertation. I guess it really is all about the approach: keep it light, flirty, fun and devoid of talks about politics and effects of global capital—-at least not on the first date. Yeah, for this one, the stakes are not so high which, considering all the work I need to do for my dis, is just what I need.

Socrates says...

2009-11-05T00:54:00.000-08:00

“My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.”

Entry One: Diving head first

2009-10-25T23:26:00.000-07:00

Dating and being in academia is sorta like the same thing, like standing on a diving board, un-tethered, looking down into the great unknown. Granted I have been a grad student longer than I have been dating (serial monogamist, yep, I’m one of those) but I’m convinced both produce the same feelings of incredibly high highs and ass-bottom lows, often leaving me lying in bed late at night, wondering: “Did that just really happen?”

To illustrate: Last year in November, I defended my prospectus, my dissertation proposal. The feedback that I received up until that point was great. Lots of work still needed to be done, but the topic and the work thus far? Promising! So defense time came and I was pumped and ready to go, nervous, but optimistic. I had my notes, my iced tea and a fly outfit on, ready for battle. Then the rapid fire questions began. I held my breath, took frantic notes and answered the questions as calmly as I could. But inside I felt like a headless chicken running around thinking “Oh no they didn’t just cut my damn head off!” It was brutal. I walked into the room confident and walked out, two and a half hours later, a zombie, my ass on a shiny platter. Did that just really happen?

Meanwhile, after being “off the market” for almost five years with someone who was supposed to be the one, I was not looking forward to dating. Yikes! How do I start all over again? There was still a lot of work that needed to be done, some healing from the last relationship, some soul-searching and, well honestly, my ass needed working out, but finally I decided it was time. And actually the prospect of meeting someone new and maybe falling in love again excited me for the first time in a long while. It felt oh so promising! So date night came, showered, did my hair, make-up and wore a new dress, looking fly, I thought. Walked up to my date, held my breath a little and we’re off! At first it was okay, he got us drinks, and I was feelin music and the vibe. Then he started asking questions about my goals, my aspirations, how many kids I wanted to have, how much money I expected to make as a professor, my blood type, my credit score, what meds I took, etc. Well, maybe not the last few, but you get the point. He was auditioning for a maid, mother and baby factory all in one and I hightailed it outta there like my ass was on fire. I went home that night disappointed, annoyed, a little sad, wondering where did I go wrong. Did that just really happen?

Dating and dissertating. Both harder than they look, exciting and intimidating, liberating and all-consuming, investment of both time and money, with moments of sheer euphoria and utter self-loathing. Are they both worth it? Yes! At least I have to believe that it’s all worth it if I am to stay sane through out this whole process. I have to believe that when that I write that perfect sentence to complete a perfect thought or have that perfect first kiss with an exciting new guy, that all the blood, sweat and tears are worth these small moments. In dating and in writing this dissertation, nothing is absolutely certain, not the money, not the security, not the happy ever after. And as scary as that may sound, I would rather always be standing on the edge of that diving board, holding my breath, ready to jump into unknown waters, than anywhere else in the world.