Winter Arrives

Published on by Lisa Category: Life is Never General, Notes From Home Plate



While there are 12 days until Christmas, you wouldn’t know it in our lives because school and work has consumed our lives.  Nick had his last day of class today and instead of celebrating, he is a hermit trying to finish 3 25pg papers.  That leaves me to find my own entertainment.

My job’s been keeping me pretty busy so I haven’t had much time to be lonely this week.  We fly out next Friday.
As we speak, we are getting plummeted by our first snow storm.  The roads are killer and traffic is a nightmare.  Luckily, I am three floors away from my job and Nick’s commuting is done until next semester.  While I can gripe for hours about the pains of my job, for days like today, it’s wonderful to have a live-in position where I don’t have to battle the roads.
Our apartment yields pretty park views as it blankets itself in white and our holiday decorations are out.  So while we’re too busy to shop, we’re definitely surrounding ourselves in the Advent season.
We can’t wait to come home for the holidays.

After 500 Pots, I Don’t Know What I’m Doing Here

Published on by Lisa Category: Feminism

This post is number 501.

I’ve posted 501 times to the world and it is only appropriate, then, that I find myself here, sitting in the dark, with one question:  What’s the purpose of my blog?
Recently, I put up a video on YouTube that honestly, I just did for fun.  Blessed to be in a community with women writers, I thought it would be an amusing poke in our feminist bellies to laugh at the ridiculous things people say on the internet.  I posted and I was surprised – and excited – that so many people have seen it.  I’m more than excited that it has caused some discussion about race and tolerance.  
I’ve received emails and read comment threads where some debate the intention of my project.  Mostly, “What’s the point?”  I don’t get it.  You’re making fun of people, what’s the point? What’s the point of your blog?
Well, let’s see how I can answer that…
First, I am endlessly thankful that people supported and shared the project.  Ya’ll rock!
I’m also thankful that even those who DIDN’T like it care enough about the larger picture to engage in thoughtful debate about it.  That’s awesome.
Now, here’s my other thoughts on the questions of purpose….
I first began breathing a few decades ago and in that time frame have learned a thing or two about my life.  I’m a creator.  
I paint.  Play with words.  Mix some colors.  Make people laugh.  Twist my face around  in expression.
I write.  Poetry and I arm wrestle.  I walk with feminism and wonder how I can contribute.
What’s the point?  What’s the point of making a comedy about the deeply embedded racism that exists in the corners of new technology?  What’s the point in sending a (comical) warning not to give ourselves too much credit just yet?  What’s the point of exercising creativity in new and different ways just for one’s pleasure?  Does everything have to be check marked with an agenda?  What’s the point of creating something that will be disagreed with, misunderstood, and potentially uncomfortable?
Perhaps my point is that it’s not about you.  For once, it’s about me.  My blog, my words, my creative thinking.  Perhaps it’s because marginalized individuals spend an ungodly amount of their lives fighting to get their voice out that when the sound resonates, I’m less concerned about whether it’s pleasing, and more about my own ability to tell my truth.
“What are you trying to prove?”  Uh, nothing.  I think the quotes speak for themselves.  
“A few bad apples don’t spoil the whole bunch.”   Who’s talking spoiling?  Shedding light in a dark corner is not equivalent to torching the room.
“What’s the point of the project?”  Maybe it’s just for a good laugh. Maybe it’s up to you to find your meaning, if any.   My point was to create.  The rest is up to you.
I love that people think I’m calling specific people out on the internet to humiliate them.  I have several thoughts on that:
1. Good Lord – have you forgotten that this is THE INTERNET where PEOPLE BLOG UNDER FALSE NAMES?
2. The project is not targeting 11 people.  The project was intended to throw a few absurdities together to take a look at “the dark corners of the feminist blogosphere.”  It’s not about you.  Stop thinking it’s about you.  It’s not.  It looks at trends, patterns, and I choose comments for either originality or because it’s appeared in so many forms on other blogs.
3. The project was a call for absurdities, not a call for apologies.  I’m not worried about the individuals who said these things.   I’m not worried about what I’m wearing in the video.  I’m not concerned if this is popular.  I’m interested in truthtelling, my truth.  And if what I see stings, then hit your next link on your blogroll.  There are plenty of tutorials that can help you get over your racism.  Here’s the secret, though, that they don’t tell you in infomercials:  only you can do that.
And so that leads me to the question that I asked myself 500 posts ago:  What’s the purpose of my blog?
My purpose of this blog is not very dissimilar from my purpose in life.
To find different mediums of communication to find bits of hope, confidence, and Truth in the world.
To communicate ideas, receive inspiration, witness great writing, memorable events.
To be a part of something larger, something more complex and mysterious than I can imagine.
To give a part of myself to the world in hopes of making it better.
To vent.
To find similar hearts thumping in their chests with a yearning for justice; so loud that they, too, turn to the written word to exhale their activism.
To create, try, offer ideas that could potentially touch another feminist.
To be touched by somone else’s work that I can’t find in mainstream bookstores or magazines.
To find a community of womyn I could not find offline.
To support independent thought, exercise freedom of expression, question the norm.
To build my own perspective through the careful practice of writing and poetry.
To educate people about (among many things) feminism, the Pinay experience, Filipino diaspora, Asian American attitude, and the beauty of writing for the sake of writing.
Does blogging always do this?
Hells no it doesn’t and neither does life guarantee it either.
But, both life and blogging, in their small crashing and receding waves, bring those opportunities in moments.
And that makes it all worth it.

The Call is Still Alive

Published on by Lisa Category: Uncategorized

Consider the call for absurd comments in the feminist blogosphere turned ON for, you know, ever.

Click here for the original call for threads, comments, and links.

There’s too much out there not to take a good hearty laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.

People have been asking what the point of this project is and I keep dancing to my own beat, wiggling my rear end and saying, “You know what? You’re right – what is the point of being creative for the sake of just having a good laugh while potentially looking deeper at something that rarely gets talked about. Yeah…what’s the point?”

It’s probably better to just sit on my futon and stare out the winter window with poptart crumbs on my chest.

New Vision, New Feminism, New Blog

Published on by Lisa Category: Uncategorized

From the call for absurd comments came some brainstorming.

That brainstorming led me to my newest film montage: Say It Ain’t So Feminism which you can see here on YouTube.

That montage led me to realize that I wanted an additional medium to talk to the world about feminism, my feminism in a way that writing cannot.

So, here comes my new blog: Fem Watch, which will be the home for all my digital projects – photography, films, and anything else that comes to mind. While A Womyn’s Ecdysis will remain my home for feminist writings, I will be placing any of my other projects there.

Consider this my coming out to the world.

Questioning the Wood of Feminism

Published on by Lisa Category: Feminism, Moments Poetic

For BA
For Sylvia
Sometimes defense is all we have left.

For today,
Sudy

I wrote this poem in my least favorite mood: edginess. My creativity stalls why it runs into thorny patches, but I opened up, and this is what came out.

Bakit?

Why is it not enough to simply write as a womyn of color?
Why does it change once I write of color after womyn?
like its merits decrease
or its potential increases
I’m brilliant cuz I’m brilliant
not cuz of the sheen of my hair.
I am why.

Why the echo
when say I womyn
My define
so very fine
Womyn
and I write from the insides
and I say,
Yes
I say
it’s not too much
nor not enough

I am a womyn
owning up to my race
-ism
YES
the internalized inferiority
the internalized superiority
that
YES
Skins me alive everyday

And you ask
“Bakit”
“Why you so mad?”

Bakit?
Bakit?

Why?
because I can’t say my own damn truth without
“angry”
following

“Women of color”
“Angry”
world goes YAWN.
and shirks, What else is new?

I’ll tell you what’s new
We the “Women of Color” you love to ignore then agitate for your leisure
are tilling into deep magenta brown soil you never seen
and our tongues,
pink and blistering,
cool and wide,
are sipping honey from sweeter, higher
swinging hives
than your neck can strain

And the “Women of Color” writers
that you flick off with your shoes
are reading aloud to towns and towns
with cackling and krumping to music
…too something
for you to hear

So spit your questions onto each other
and not at me.
I’m busy with other things.

Angry, sure.
Why not.
I’m angry, but I’m a lot of other things too.

Do you need to know all of who I am before you believe me?
Do you even want to know who I am at all?
That’s your question, not mine.
Cuz I know you.

I know you from those glossy cover history books my short arms had to carry home.
I know you from the holidays we gotta jump jump up and down for
I know you from the whys and cries and jiggly thighs you write about so much and call Women’s Issues
I know you from the realtor and the delivery boy
I know you

Do you know me?

I think your books are shallow.
I think that you are not capable of deepening work that contributes to anti-racist feminism.
I think your books are flat out flat and, yes,
I have read them

And your tired Who Me? Poor Me? Love ME!
sounds like that ol’ record my Pops used to play
every Sunday morning at 8
after a while, I stopped listening
and slept with peace

Why’s it not enough to say
No Me No Like Your Stuff
without being asked for my resume
and literacy skills score

Instead of quarreling over the responses
why not analyze the question first
and look at the cornering, stereotyping, sabotaging, limiting, narrow scope
of your own questions

Let’s look at the contaminated wood
of the house before you
kick out the guests who are
coughing, spewing
Allergic
dying from the air
you provide

And before you wonder why your branches
are being cut;
remember that the land your roots settle
was stolen.

From the beginning,
the wrong story was told.

____________________________________________________________________
‘Bakit’ is Tagalog for ‘Why?’