Now/here no/where woman

Sometimes I feel small, like this. Sometimes I know this is not a bad thing.

The Little Boss and I went to see the Birds of Baguio and Benguet Photo Exhibit at the Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary . I carried her so she could see them up close and she pointed to each and every photo demanding, "What's that? What about that? What about this one?" I dutifully read out the name of every single bird featured in the exhibit: Scale-feathered Malkoha, Luzon Sunbird, Citrine Canary Flycatcher, and so on.We discussed the colors of their feathers and the shapes of their beaks. Some of the birds were already familiar to her. The crow and the shrike are frequent visitors in our garden. Shrike in the hands of the Artist-in-Residence, with the Little Boss' first hesitant touch. Taken October 2013. Once a young shrike in flight crashed into our picture window and lay on the ground, stunned. The Little Boss and the Artist-in-Residence held it lovingly in their hands and as soon as it pushed against their palms they gently released it. That was The Littl...

As part of the recently concluded Markets of Resistance , I gave a short talk in Katipunan RestoArt, near the old Dangwa station, on a few facets of the market that are meaningful to me as a Baguio girl. Sharing my stories again here. (Some of this stuff I've said before, here .) There are markets and there is the market, economies of places and places of economy. I want to share stories about the market place – the Baguio public market – as cosmopolitan, exotic or exoticized, historical, human, home, hostile, changing. The market as a mirror. The market as cosmopolitan, is also the market exoticized: Let me begin with a quote from the book, “From Land of the Headhunters: Being an account of a summer holiday in Baguio, 1924.” This was a manuscript found by Bencab in a small antique shop in London in 1977, which he published as a small book in 1991. The author, who left no trace of his identity in the manuscript, quotes a “local guide book”: “The up-to-date Filip...