For Ima, with gratitude

Happy Birthday, Eileen! Happy Birthday to us!

One of the pleasures of knowing Eileen is how I've come to appreciate her 81yr old Mom, Betty. Manang Betty has just completed her memoir and it will soon be published. Eileen has chronicled her Mom's return to a first love - writing. With Eileen as editor, it is also a conversation between mother and daughter.

I am vicariously enjoying Manang Betty's blossoming as a writer at 81 because my mother was also a writer. But I didn't recognize this early enough and when I finally did, she was old and tired and her memory not so good. For years I sent her blank journals and I asked her to write and fill the pages with everything and anything she wanted to. When she died, I took the journals and transcribed the pages and created a book and gave them to my family. While the gesture of doing this was to memorialize our mother, some of the things she wrote about created a little bit of squabbling between siblings who wanted to set my mother's memories right.  Of course, we later on realized that what matters more is that we now know some of the secrets she kept to herself - some painful, some sad - and how should we heal this grief in her and in us. The happy and funny parts were easy to recall and we constantly remind each other of our mother's quick wit and dry humor.

What if I had known sooner that my mother had this gift of writing? Oh so many questions...
*
Today I remember my mother with gratitude. She may not have published book, but she has authored my life and 5 other siblings. She wrote me.

Tomorrow as I sign books at the Festival in Los Angeles, I will be signing my mother's name: Esperanza.

revisiting August 2007

The Sacred Pause of Summer is coming to an end.
The power of this Stillness leaves a mark on All It has touched.
It is not for me to foretell how these markings will find their way
Into a book, a poem, a play, a dance, a painting
Or the heart of a freshman in college
Or the rambunctious energy of a toddler.

I do not know
If Fire will leave embers
To keep the hearth warm
If Air will continue
To conjure primal metaphors
If Water finally satiates
Communion of desires
If Earth will bare itself
As a Round Brown Woman
Holding her cup of potions

Of Remembering
All that's been uttered
Without words for millenia.
***
Tonight I take down the books of Summer from the bedside.
If someone asks me what I did this summer I will tell her that I disappeared into a Cave and dwelt among ghosts and angels, lizards and dragons, songs and reverie.
I will say that I dated Eros...that she led me to the Gatekeeper's den and we took back the key, released the dead bones and took them dancing.

Soon it will be Fall. With Fall comes young bodies in search of their faces.
But I will be thinking of another ocean and a sea of brown faces in orange skirts.

Oh, Beloved Stranger -- always, always, I return to You.

Tide pools and young boys

We recently returned from Sea Ranch with 6yr old Noah and his Dad. We spent several days by the tide pools where we found: fish, starfish, mussels, hermit crabs, snails, anemones, sea weed, slugs, and other creatures on the sand and sea. With his found friends at the beach, Ri and Luke, they were oblivious to time, sun, cold wind, hunger, and thirst.

I had forgotten the joy of tide pooling and watching Noah shriek with delight made me feel so happy. The boys created an "observatory" where they put the species they caught by hand into another area of the tide pool that they barred with sand so the sea creatures can't escape. I watched as they sometimes lapsed into total silence and concentration while watching a crab feed itself or while trying to coax a fish out of hiding. Other times, their joyful high-pitched shouts of joy, was infectious. This is It, I told myself. We were made for moments like these.

Right there was Magic. Watching kids and adults delight in the beauty of our Sonoma Coast - its tides and tide pools, the rocks for climbing, the shells (there were folks who were collecting mussel and abalone shells), the sand (for building sand castles), the rocks for making zen altars. Each day started with overcast and chilly winds but by mid-day we were graced with the parting of the fog and the kiss of the warm sun. Bliss.

On the way home, Noah was already making plans to return next year. I told him to remember his friend's phone no (5660133) so he can call him then.

Remembering Helen Toribio

I was cleaning and thinning out my library (books and vhs) when I came upon an old VHS tape from 2001. The tape contained segment of a Bay Area Backroads feature on Arkipelago Books and South of Market sites and Daly City. The other segment is the booklaunch event of my first book, Coming Full Circle, emceed by Helen Toribio. Other participants are: Dr. Rosita Galang, my USF mentor, Marie Romero, Evelie Posch, Michelle Bautista, and the other authors of the book Teresa Ejanda, Laurie Quillopo, Peter Golpeo, Ruth Constantino, Luz de Leon.

At this event, Helen was commemorating and honoring the legacy of Virgilio Enriquez, NVM Gonzales and Bullet Marasigan as influential persons in the Fil Am community's decolonization movement. How strange it felt to be watching this now; watching Helen do what she does best - bringing people together, exhorting the good in the work that we do as individuals and as a community. Tears welled up as I remembered her and even as I type this now, I feel my heart sing in gratitude for having known Helen.

Helen was always the first to sign up for the Kapihans at my home or in other folks' home in the Bay Area. These Kapihans in the 90s  were small gatherings of scholars and activists interested in the intellectual vocation.  Whenever a scholar was visiting from the Philippines, we would gather and take advantage of the opportunity to dialogue with them. At these gatherings we have been fortunate to meet NVM, Ver E, Jimmy Veneracion, Johnny Francisco, Melba Maggay, Delia Aguilar, Felipe De Leon Jr., Rogee Pe-Pua, Beth Marcelino, and others. We have been enriched by these Kapihans.

Once, Helen asked me: do I still need to decolonize if I've spent most of my life as an activist? I remember telling her that her life work is an example of what a decolonized consciousness looks like. We often struggled with the language issue because she didn't speak Filipino. But she intuitively understood all the concepts we were talking about -- kapwa, loob, dangal, etc.  Helen helped me sharpen my own perspectives because of the kinds of questions she asked.

In introducing my book, she said "at last...we have a word for what we have been doing all along: decolonization."

During that time I have not developed my understanding and knowledge about the Babaylan tradition and practice. But today I can say that Helen is a Babaylan in my life.

Recently, we had Prosy and Enrique at home and we discovered our common link thru Helen. Prosy said that Helen's home in San Leandro has always been her spiritual home in the Bay Area. She said that ever since Helen passed away, she has missed visiting her. We talked about Helen's presence in our lives and how her spirit continues to inspire us to this day.

Today is a good day and I have Helen to thank for it.

connecting the dots

Steve Jobs: You cannot connect the dots looking forward.
I have never heard a talk by Steve Jobs before and I stumbled onto this 2005 speech recently. His three stories about his being adopted, dropping out of college, and his close encounter with death ends with his admonition to the audience: Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

I specially like the part about being hungry and foolish. Bradford Keeney would say: be nonsense, make nonsense. don't just understand, stand under something.

Wisened old men - Bradford and Steve. I also live with a wise old man but he doesn't have a public profile. He doesn't want one either. So I go public for both of us. In spite of my own hesitation to be seen and heard. In spite of my shyness.

Summer visits

Visited with Lydia Cabasco today.

Lydia is interested in facilitating the process of healing guilt and shame among her generation of Fil Ams (22-32yrs old). As someone who has been on the spiritual path of healing herself, she now wants to help others. She is a trained coach and facilitator of SoulCollage but both of these modalities are informed by her personal background as a Filipina activist, feminist, and decolonizing spiritual person.

Later this week, Helen and Jason will be visiting as well.

And on Saturday: An Evening of Dawac Stories featuring Manang Betty Tabios.

with or without ayahuasca

Sting took it with Trudie.
Anthropologists have taken it and written about it.
And I'm not sure why I have been thinking about it.
I think it has to do with this question:
Can a radical transformation of consciousness happen without ayahuasca?
Can it happen over time? Can it happen in meditation?
in prolonged phenomenological meditation over one topic?

I suspect the answer is yes because this has been my experience.

When I read the accounts about the aftermath of the ayahuasca experience, the radical shift in consciousness seems to have as much to do with one's previous state of consciousness: split, repressed, alienated, etc. So if one is still indigenous at the core, it is possible that one is closer to the reality of 'sacred wholeness' with or without ayahuasca. yah?

Still I remain curious.

New Template, Old Blog

I couldn't resolve the posting issue on the old blog so what could be simpler than starting another one. I've been thinking of retiring the old blog anyway. The old blog is a good archive since it contains more than five years of musings - personal and otherwise.

This will be my post-Social Forum blog.

Am looking at the stacks of books for summer reading:

The Darker Nations by V Prashad
Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong
Globalization and America