Now/here no/where woman

I wrote this four years ago. The struggle remains the same, so yes, publish. And god, I so want to be over this dilemma. 2016. Yesterday I was proofreading my manuscript at home when the Little Big Boss came over crying. I had to put my pen down and console her. She didn't want to leave my lap so we compromised. We put her play doh on the table and I tried to work while she played. It went smoothly -- for about five minutes! Haha! The Artist in Residence is familiar with this scene. Starting when she was eight years old, she had to come along with me to academic conferences. She'd stay in her chair reading, or drawing and writing in her notebooks. People praised her and commented on how she was remarkably well-behaved. I had no idea just how remarkable her ability to sit still and focus was, until the Little Big Boss came along. With this one, sitting together quietly for a stretch of time is a much bigger challenge. The things that kept the Artist content at conference...

I received a letter from a friend today! It's been ages since we've heard anything from each other. The last time he had anything to say to me, it was about what he called The Tragedy of the Privates . My dear friend, Five years ago, I left your cozy little kitchen to work in the field. It might have felt to you like we lost touch. Not entirely, if you ask a sweet potato. I've told you how news travels in the plant world. You've moved to another city and word has reached me that you have planted some of my relatives in your small plot of soil in back of your apartment. This is wonderful, because now I can send you this message. Since we last spoke, I've been doing extensive fieldwork around the world, in places where humans and root crops are dependent on each other. In a conference at which sweet potato fries were served for snacks, I learned of auto-ethnography. Intrigued, I decided I should give it a try. As you can imagine, it's challenging for a ...

I live in a city where you can hear the rain approaching from a distance. I love that sound. Sometimes it's like knowing a lover is on his way, because he keeps his promises. Other times, it's like waiting for a god that is not your own. You stand your ground because there is nowhere to run. I will never forget one stormy night in a hut in Balwang Daan, on the island of Coron. I was there for fieldwork. There was a pause in the rain and I stepped outside to pee. When I switched off my headlamp I was enveloped in darkness. As I stood up I heard heavy movement in the distance. It sounded like a giant was crashing through the jungle from the other end of the island. It sounded like great trees were bowing and falling with every step it took. It was the wind! Every muscle in me wanted to run back inside. But there was a small part of me that wanted to wait and see. I stood facing the direction of that immense sound and willed myself to stay put. It continued crashing through ...

My sister and the Artist-in-Residence and I follow an heirloom recipe for polvoron so rich in butter that if you drop one from a height of 2-feet, it won't crumble. We arrived at this figure through repeated tests. Shaping polvoron could well have been my first experience of entering a meditative state of mind. But I never enjoyed wrapping them individually. In our house the polvoron is stacked in a pyramid on a cheese plate and consumed on-the-spot. I also used to get blisters from packing the heavenly powder in so tightly. We need a good pair of molds. Not the cheap, tinsel-like stuff you can get these days. When I was a kid we had an old pair of polvoron shapers made of copper. I wonder if we'll ever find polvoron molds like that again. Wishful thinking on a Monday morning.

Today the woodcutters started work on one of three dead trees in our garden. These three trees were here before I was even born. I wish I knew who planted them and with what thoughts. I wish I could know how they died. Could we have saved these three, somehow? Others have gone before them and I worry for the last tree standing. The first tree to fall towers five stories higher than our roof. When I was seven years old, the ground around that tree was covered in camote. Before that, a canvas artwork that became part of a series of photographs by my Tatay was hanging between that tree and another one that had to go. There's a photo somewhere of me and my poodle, Star, at the foot of this tree. Star and I grew up together from when I was two years old until she was 11. And I remember another photo of a childhood friend and I beside this tree. You can't even see the tree's branches in the photos. Only its solid trunk. Where are these photos? I need to find them. The woo...

2009 rode roughshod over a lot of people. I had a miscarriage in January 2009 and with that baby, who waved at me in the ultrasound with ten fingers and ten toes and a face I could almost recognize, I buried a dream. Even so, I had imagined a seed was planted in that grave and that it would sprout from the earth, grow into a towering tree of love, and spread it's shade above us. Months later I was desperately drowning my sorrow in all the wrong waters. I found myself at the dead-end of a wonderful relationship that had lasted eight and a half years. Hundreds of people were left reeling from the aftermath of Ondoy and Pepeng. I didn't get the giant tree of love I wanted but in it's place a beautiful, lush, disorderly garden was thriving and teeming with untamed life, and death, and life. I only had to see it for what it was. Also last year, my family mourned the death of a grand aunt whose love for all of us was greater than the sum of all parts of the clan, and whose partin...

Seeing my irate nanay raise her middle finger at a jeepney that had just barely shaved past us and left us gagging in a cloud of black poison, the six-year old in me sensed that this was a powerful gesture. I asked her what it meant. Nanay must have realized that she had let slip the veil of propriety that mothers are expected to wear. "It's a curse," she said perfunctorily, and taking my hand she walked briskly down the street as if to usher me away from the spot of my almost-awakening to something adult. I was delighted to learn something new and magical. From then on I went about surreptitiously giving the finger to condescending adults (always have loathed them), channeling all my childish indignation through my middle finger. I firmly believed that henceforth these unwitting adults were doomed to live unhappy grownup lives. (Pero redundant pala ang curse ko.) I can't remember when or how I finally learned what the middle finger signified. But I think that by the...

Excerpts from a journal entry written January 9, 2008, Phnom Penh: "We knew we had reached Toul Sleng when we saw barbed wire fences around the corner. When we entered the gate the hairs on my nape and arms stood on end. The air in that place is heavy with agony, anger, grief, and depravity. "We first went to Building A, where interrogations were carried out. The rooms had iron beds and shackles on them and worst of all, photos of torture victims that had died on the beds. One room still had blood stains on the ceiling. It was difficult to breathe. I didn't know whether I wanted to cry or vomit. By the 5th room at the end of the hall, my knees weakened and I had to sit down. ( Pan ) was blurry-eyed and red-nosed... I had to send a text (home), to connect myself to love. I'm crying now as I write this. "After a few moments we entered Building B. The first row of rooms contained photos taken by the Khmer Rouge of all the detainees that were brought to S-21 for int...

Tito Krip arranged for the both of us to visit Mom E. before his flight back to Manila on Sunday. It was mother's day. I wasn't sure whether she would remember me. The beginning was awkward. I told her that I was in the writer's workshop in 1993. Tito Krip told her I was my father's daughter. She turned to me and said kindly, "Your father I know." We made small talk and eventually (inevitably) the conversation led to poetry. Mom E said, "It's harder to write short poems, because you have to be precise." Feeling emboldened by this (most of my poems are short), I hesitantly asked her whether I could show her a poem. Mom E's eyes lit up and she said "Yes, of course!" I was so happy. Now we both knew why I had come. I showed her my draft of Invisible Light , on which I had crossed out words and scribbled changes and crossed them out again. "Oh good," she said. "It's a short one. Good." She nodded approvingly. She...

This is the poem that I placed in my womb beside you: Freight I am the ship in which you sail, little dancing bones, your passage between the dream and the waking dream, your sieve, your pea-green boat. I'll pay whatever toll your ferry needs. And you, whose history's already charted in a rope of cells, be tender to those other unnamed vessels who will surprise you one day, tug-tugging, irresistible, and float you out beyond your depth, where you'll look down, puzzled, amazed. -- by Maura Dooley And this is the poem for after you'd gone: Red Onion, Cherries, Boiling Potatoes, Milk - Here is a soul, accepting nothing. Obstinate as a small child refusing tapioca, peaches, toast. The cheeks are streaked, but dry. The mouth is firmly closed in both directions. Ask, if you like, if it is merely sulking, or holding out for better. The soup grows cold in the question. The ice cream pools in its dish. Not this , is all it knows. Not this. As certain cut flowers refuse to drink ...

The book we've all been waiting for is here at last!!! I'm so happy for my Big Little Sister, BFF Lia, and my Nanay!

Last year on All Soul’s Day I joined a motley crew (when it comes to mountain biking in groups it’s always a motley crew) of 14 beloved Baguio biker boys on a long ride through beautiful, utterly satisfying trails skirting Mt. Yabnong and Mt. Ugo. I carried a small bundle of flowers strapped to my backpack, along with my water, my home-made oatmeal bars, and my marble potatoes baked with olive oil, butter, rosemary, and smoked pork. After about four hours of biking through wonderful forests on a rough single track trail, we came upon a waiting shed (the only cement structure to be seen in the middle of nowhere!) with a clear view of Ugo. We stopped for lunch and thick, cold fog closed in on us. After eating, I tied the flowers to a post and silently said a prayer to my Lola, telling her how much we miss her, how we try to live up to her. She was no less than Super Woman, after all. When I was done, we continued biking. The fog cleared, and the warmth of the sun on my skin felt like Lo...

... nostalgia! Albert makes fresh, wonderful salads and fresh, luscious drinks at the Cafe by the Ruins, which turned twenty this year! Here Albert helps to hang up a memory wall filled with old snapshots of foodies, hippies, wannabes, and their progeny.

The exhibit could just as well be called, "What we have lost, and what we have replaced it with." But that's too wordy for an exhibit title. The show can be viewed in SM from today until January 30, 2008. For inquiries email: baguiobenguetstudies@gmail.com

A text message came out of the blue today. Kumusta na, padma? regards mula sa coron island. And so I replied... Good a.m. po! Kumusta na po kayo dyan? Kumusta na ang coron island? And so I got this text dispatch from Coron Island: Mdjo ok lang kami d2 sa coron island. Kulang nalang ikaw at ang regalo ko sa pasko. hehehe. Mdjo malaki ang improvement ng coron kaya lang mdjo talamak ang bilihan d2 ng lupa. Grabi lalo na mga pulitiko. Kung d2 ka lang dami ka masulat sa news. bigas d2 ng NFA rice 23 ang kilo. Wala ka pa mabili kc ginagawang commercial rice. Ganun pa rin ang nangyayari kahit ancestral domain ang coron island? Ang coron island d nila kayang galawin kc napa title na namin kaya galit mga pulitiko. Inggit sila sa coron island. Ngayon ay TTCIA name ng coron island. Tagbanua Tribe Coron Island Association. TTCIA. At registered na rin kami sa SEC. Mdjo lumaban kami kaya titulo na buong isla padma. Buti naman. Naalala ko nung bumisita ako CADC pa lang po at hinihintay nyo pa title. ...

Today is Tihani's birthday. What I remember vividly of her is her laugh, a sharp staccato. On fridays and saturdays we'd start the night at Rumours with a double vodka tonic each. Then we would trek over to the now-defunct but still missed bar called Perk and guzzle several beers, yakking and cackling the night away. She was convinced that I was a witch, and I was convinced that she was psychic and not entirely benign herself. As a lark one valentine's day we booked a table at the Cafe by the Ruins and boisterously laughed our way through dinner, which made the mushy couples in all the other tables squirm uneasily in their seats and send dagger looks in our direction. We were oblivious. We were comfortable. Screw valentine's day games, we said. I also remember the pained look that would cross her face when we got to talking about life's biggest trials -- the families we were born into, the income we didn't have yet, what we really wanted to do in life (we didn...

In fact I had forgotten that it was today, and that it happened on a Monday, 17 years ago. I was reminded only by these three candles that I spotted this morning, while out enjoying a walk on the first, un-clouded, sunny morning in three days. Many people had died on the lot where the candles were lit. Reading the simple sign made the hairs on my arms rise up in a wave until the nape of my neck. I was standing on a street in QM outside a classmate's house when it struck. We had a clear view of the Baguio Hilltop Hotel collapsing from where we were. I had to walk home, all the way across town, because no taxis or jeepneys were picking up passengers. Every one was just trying to reach their homes. When I walked through Burnham Park, I saw some one's hand sticking out from under a fallen concrete welcome arch. I remember the hand was grey with the pallor of death. It was also bloated. I decided to avoid Session Road, for fear that there would be crowds and more collapsed buildings...

If it's smoked and salted and dried, it's called kiniing in Southern Kankanaey and much of Benguet, or kinoday in Ibaloy. Sagada is the only place I know of where people smoke their etag, and call it etag. I call it etag because I love buying the stuff in the Sagada market, or texting Sagada friends for it, but if you're going to try out these etag confusion recipes in Benguet, what you want is kinoday or kiniing. Recently I made pork and beans from scratch, as a matter of personal redemption. The one time I was given pork and beans at home, I brought the wrath of my mother upon myself. My mother always cooks everything from scratch, with the freshest, in-season ingredients, and with much love. I have vivid memories of my mother expertly drawing one of her precious knives across the necks of chickens I had raised and fattened myself, and holding them over a stainless steel bowl as the bright, red blood dripped from the twitching bird. By contrast, I have few memories of my ...

In search of a memory, I open a drawer in my mother's house. I find intricate paper cuttings of goldfish swimming in lotus ponds, which I bought in China the year I lost two friends to murder and decided I had to leave Baguio, for a while. Those are not the memories I wanted to find. I dig deeper into the drawer. Underneath the paper cuttings I find this letter, which I wrote that same year and at the beginning of the one term I taught part-time in Ateneo. It still isn't the memory I am after, but it has caught my attention and I let it take me where it will. 'Dear Class, 'You are pessimists and optimists at once. On the one hand, you are all more or less willing to believe that you have nothing to lose and everything to gain through enrolling in your core courses, whether or not they interest you. In this sense, you are optimists. 'On the other hand, an alarming number of you say that you do what you do because you must comply with "the system" or lose, a...