passage

in this languid landscape where
language fights to survive
i wander from word to word
stumbling through the rough syllables
of slow minds and thick tongues
i scan the land by neatly measured foot
climbing every iamb
tumbling through valleys of verse
hoping for some passage or rhyme
to quicken the heart and excite my life with lines
i can recite and lift with my breath
something soothing
to cease the tortured sentence

my mythology

i was born from the unhappy union of a withered heart and poisoned fruit. a daughter of discord. so it's not surprising that my thoughts on love and life were troubled from the start. there was no hope for something to last. no ambition for forever. things were always in a state of collapse, a tight string of strife.

the threat of loss loomed in the air and choked our lives with despair. like black smoke on the battlefield, it lingered. i often felt suffocated. beaten down. and maybe once or twice (perhaps a million times that) lifted a white flag of surrender and offered to barter truce for both sides. it never happened. it still hides, lulls, and erupts in great conflagration, hitting me when i least suspect it. this has always been a greater war than they bargained for. the gods must love unrest.

i thought things could only get better by withholding affection, by denying my self. i became a guarded child. self-protected by my isolation. it became so natural - pretend not to care. fake a smile. tell them lies. instead i got bitter.

i inherited rage and rebellion. i scoffed at hope. i took up a sword, and like a berserker with a mouth full of blood from biting my tongue, i lashed out indiscriminately, slashing at strangers with wild circling swings. better to strike first and hurt, than to be hurt. i was a good pupil who learned all the wrong lessons. i took revenge on people who dared to lessen the distance. i mocked their attempts at friendship and closeness even as i craved it. eventually the curious and kind were shamed into retreat. and the cycles of desire and despair continued.

yet for a while there was happiness. i imagined myself a sorceress, possessed of a dangerous beauty and a voice to keep men enthralled. i transformed them into swine with spells of sweet words and stares of seduction. i swelled with confidence. i felt loved. but love is an unstable, powerful magic. its strength derived from bold belief or weak mind. or both. or more. in truth i was fooled by my own enchantments.

sometimes sitting in the dark, watching for shadows at the base of the door, and within the space of solitary confinement, i lamented my name. i thought what a burden it was to be a familiar reminder of constant feuding, the personification of hostilities. if i had but one vowel to switch, my life might have had more joy. i could have been adored. i might have ushered into shrinking hearts a tenderness and rekindled passion. my mischief might have been smiled upon instead of reviled. or i might have been a blessing. a kind messenger. a calm of storm like an arc and covenant promising fair weather. alas, fate sent me as a skein to be untangled.

for years i've been working out the knots that fetter my life so that my fingers feel weak from pulling apart kinks and smoothing out string. but i'm getting there. and the stiffness in joint is a welcome ache.

it seems i've put down my shield, lay down my sword, and picked up a pen. wielding words, i suppose, as weapons to battle the past, protect me from the present, and keep my future from fraying before it's spun. i silenced the blood-curdling shouts for continued unrest and instead strain to listen to murmurs from my muse urging me to create a new mythology.

one day i'd like to share the tale of how i took a straight line of thread, stretched it toward the sky, and climbed my way to heaven.

a completely different picture

it's funny what a little music and editing can do...

this amuses me greatly.

the celebration rundown in brief

not in briefs. although that might have been fun, too. next year, perhaps.

grabbed lunch with kettlebrew at langers deli for one of the best corned beef sandiwiches around.

headed to blu monkey bar and lounge for splendid evening hanging out with the friendlies. mellow, mature, excellent spot for this milestone.

then danced at club underground where i was reminded again why i'm glad to leave the 20s behind me.

drove down to san diego for a mini-break with my penquin. went to the zoo and took tons of photos. saw a harpy eagle tear apart a rabbit carcass. watched polar bears play with water bottles. learned that clyde the orangutan shares my birthday (i'm older by a year). it was lots of fun! lots of walking, but totally worth it for me. i looooooooooooove zoos!

then on the drive back had a really decadent, unhealthy meal at the hat- a pastrami burger and onion rings. it didn't kill me, so i guess it's making me stronger. ;)

and today, i'm off to splurge with shopping, sushi, and maybe shisha.

wooo hooooo!!!!! 8-23!!!!!

life at thirty

today i turn thirty. where some people would be freaking out about getting this "old," i happily greet it with a friendly but firm handshake.

i'm fine with leaving my twenties behind me. they were good times. i got my degree, got married, bought a house, traveled some, quit my job (finally) - there's no doubt about it, the decade's been good to me.

but i'm ready for the next. and i'm hoping this three-fronted decade will bring as much happiness and good fortune as the last.

i think part of looking forward to this new life, this life at thirty, comes from dissociating myself from the idiot antics of people in their twenties. yes, it's ok to be young and crazy, but i'm done with feeling the need to flaunt my youth. and i'm done (maybe?) with getting so utterly shit-faced that i spend the later evening hours with my head in the bushes or the toilet or wherever is convenient throwing up my drink. we'll see.

and while mentally i'm fine with getting older, my body seems to be having an allergic reaction to it. quite literally. it started yesterday. perhaps in anticipation of today. but i've been crazy itchy. my skin is red and hot and starting to blister from trying to relieve the itch through vigorous scratching. it's aggravating. welcome to thirty.

hmmm, happy birthday to me, indeed.

heh

un maitre comme ca

Etre et Avoir or "To Be and to Have" is a wonderful documentary about a single-classroom teacher in rural France whose genuine love for his students and their education is so tender, so nurturing, that you wish everyone could have a teacher like this.

getting back to my roots?

lately (probably because my friend is dating a filipino and is being subjected to all that that entails) i've been thinking about my childhood memories of filipino food. for a while i felt like i had overdosed on it. i still can't eat too much pancit, but i get the sense that my taste buds are trying to get back to their roots.

when i was a kid i used to eat weird things, and this didn't bother me. crispy pata (pig's feet), vinegary blood stew with various meats inside it (we like to call it chocolate soup, but don't be fooled), ox tail kare kare (a kind of peanut butter soup. except this actually uses peanut butter), alamang (a shrimp paste condiment) - these were all part of the culinary cycle at home. traditional filipino foods were constantly on our table, dishes and dishes of them until you could barely make out the table. and then slowly it got phased out, and the table was again in sight.

the gradual disappearance of filipino foods was probably a result of a revolt against the exotic, the "other," in favor of more american fare. i began wanting what i thought my friends were eating for dinner. and i suspect my mom got sick of our complaints that the food made the house stink, or that the foods tasted "funny." and it probably wasn't worth cooking all these meals if we were going to throw most of it in the trash. and so the plates of pancit became bowls of spaghetti; the chicken tinola, pork adobo, and shrimp sinigang turned into fried chicken, pork chops, and fish sticks. and pretty soon the smells and flavors of home got a lot more bland, more "american."

by the time i was old enough to cook what i wanted for lunch or dinner, the flavors competed for my taste buds. sometimes i chose the uncomplicated, the five-minute meal. shortcut cooking. mac and cheese from a box was a favorite, pastas with tomato sauce, oven appetizers, pot pies and frozen dinners. or i would make homemade lasagnas, pizzas and burgers. but i also liked to cook shrimp. shrimp tempura, shrimp scampi, grilled shrimp. or i would have something like pork chops, but eat it with rice. everything with rice. even, bacon. delicious! i still liked tomatoes with hardboiled eggs, tortas, eggrolls, but i never learned how to cook like a filipino.

and eventually i stopped eating filipino foods altogether because it seemed that everything on the menu was bad for you. it bothered me that it always seemed fatty; it was often fried, there was always too much meat in the dishes, and sometimes it used ingredients i wouldn't dare think edible. and so for a long time, my filipino taste buds shrank.

but i feel them awakening. and i think about some of the dishes i pushed from my plate, my palate. and so every now and again i get these cravings for fritada, lumpia shanghai, sinigang, kare kare, ensaymadas, eggplant tortas, chicken tocino, pan de sal, tuyo, tinapa, lechon, longanisa...my mouth is watering listing them here.

it's 3:21, late for lunch, and i haven't yet eaten. i think now would be a good time to get back to my roots. :)

lasang pinoy

it doesn't happen often, but sometimes i get a craving for filipino food. usually when this happens i go to my parents' house and ask my mom what she's cooking. today, however, i think i'm going to try my hand at making one of my favorite filipino dishes: chicken afritada or fritada. it seems pretty easy to do, and i can make it to my tastes, add only the ingredients i like.

basically, fritada is a chicken stew with a tomato base. you start with some oil in a pan, add garlic, add onions, then add chicken, let these brown, add tomatoes and some stock, let simmer until chicken is half cooked, add potatoes, red bell peppers, olives, garbanzos - basically whatever veggies you like in your stews. cook until the potatoes are soft. i like to put soy sauce in my fritada. serve with rice. yummy!

i'll most likely make this for dinner. i'll update with pictures (maybe) and tell you how i do.

i can't wait!!!!

remember Z channel?

i vaguely remember it.

when i was growing up i think we stole (did i say stole? what i meant was shared) it from a split cable connection with our neighbor. yes, we were one of those privileged few who witnessed the beginnings of MTV, HBO, Showtime, TMC, and other pay channels.

the thing about it is that i was too young to appreciate all that the Z channel had to offer me. really the only bits of it i can recall are soft-core movies that they would air in the later hours of the evening. and before you get the wrong idea about me, this isn't the stuff i feel i was too young to appreciate. (why does that sound worse than i mean? for clarifications sake, i am NOT saying that i appreciated the soft-core movies as a youngun. you just thought that because you're a pervert.) what i was referring to are the eclectic movies, the lost treasures of the filmmaking world that i could have seen in the comfort of my living room. an assortment of actor, director, and themed festivals; obscure documentaries, movies that had been panned by critics, short-run releases, restored director's cut films - all made available, all at my fingertips, just by tuning in to Z channel. i could have been an ultimate film fanatic had i been a little bit older, had i the mental capacity to sit through avant-garde movies, foreign language classics and the like. but at that age i was more inclined to plop down on the sofa and follow the adventures of the little prince, visit mr. rogers in his neighborhood, play the HBO brain games, or see how else the Nickleodeon lineup could entertain me. (although i think this is still pretty sophisticated tastes for a grade-schooler.)

i recently watched a terrific documentary on the beginnings of the Z channel. (which is why, incidentally, i'm blogging about this.) the documentary, Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004), opened my eyes to the extraordinary loss that the demise of the Z channel has brought upon my movie knowledge and history. the guy that was responsible for Z channel's programming was some kind of mad genius curator who cared about breathing life into dying films and nurturing other's work as his own. i feel disappointed that there is no Z channel out here now to guide me through the movie jungle, to hold my hand as i explore unfamiliar film frontiers. the Z channel seemed to me like having a really cool movie buff friend to recommend movies you haven't heard of, or might otherwise have ignored, but without the pretentiousness of telling you why this particular movie sequence was flawed, or who the 2nd assistant camera person was and why that's important to blah blah blah. you know how some movie people can be.

who knows, maybe the Z channel will resurface. maybe some bold new movie meister is already planning its return. that would be awesome. i'd pay for that. and now that i'm unemployed and soon-to-be 30 i'm definitely able to appreciate it.

lorikeet lore

you've probably seen them squawking in the skies above los angeles, upsetting your morning stroll or ruining your sunday brunch; that feathered gang of green lorikeets. they appear so randomly, almost like a figment of your imagination. but they're real. undeniable as their unignorable raucous approach.

i first saw the green flock when i was a kid growing up inbetween what are now los angeles hipster towns. their existence, roaming free and wild, was always a great curiosity to me. did they fly the coop from some divey, illegal "pet shop" on the east side? were they some collector's lot of lorikeets perhaps? what is behind the lore of the lorikeets?

i convinced myself that you could wish them on to others. (yes, another one of my strange superstitions.) all you had to do was start up conversation with a local angeleno about the lorikeets, or else think of someone when you see them, and they would be blessed with the sighting. i later found through discussions with other people (ok, so maybe it was one other person. maybe two) that they had a similar belief about the birds. i remember one weekend a while back i had seen the winged wanderers. i went to work the next day and told my boss. two days later he saw them near his place. coincidence? or the beginnings of lorikeet lore? so it sent me speculating, can you really send the lorikeets to visit someone by the mere suggestion of it? and how exactly would this cycle work?

i recently saw the birds flying over my burbank home. i didn't think i'd ever see them on this side of town. so i'm thinking someone else saw the green harpies and sent them my way. why else would they come over the hill? usually these birds are found in the towns of los angeles proper. now they are traveling in wider circles. unless, of course, they are not the original green lorikeets of los angeles but rather the kin or distant relatives of those first avian anomalies. like the burbank brigade or something! so then these birds carry with them their own legend. and now that i have seen them and am sharing the tale with you, perhaps you will be harassed by their shrill calls, surprised by their lime plumage. (do you hear the crazy in me ramping up?)

well, it's just a thought.

i'm just trying to perpetuate the fictional lore of the lorikeets.

sheesh.