Sarah Palin for VP

What was McCain thinking?
A woman that he really only talked to...once.

"Hey! She's a woman. She's clearly conservative. It's perfect."

Those left-over female Clinton supporters ought to be insulted that the McCain campaign thought that they would be swayed just because Palin is a woman. Nevermind that she's an ultra-conservative, who shares no platform with Clinton on her positions; so long as she has breasts, give the woman a prize!

Palin makes the "inexperience" argument that the McCain campaign proudly totes irrelevant. Tell me, how does a woman who's been governor for less than two years (with a supposed preganancy inbetween), mayor of a god-forsaken small town of less than 10,000 for six years, and 3 years as an operator in an oil-money funneling "company" beat out Obama?
Obama, who has been a senator for three years, state senator for seven, and a community organizer for most of his adult life?

And now, for a hilarious piece of op-ed from the New York Times:
Vice In Go-Go Boots?

"...Sarah is a zealot, but she’s a fun zealot. She has a beehive and sexy shoes, and the day she’s named she goes shopping with McCain in Ohio..."

"...she has some expertise in Russia because it’s close to Alaska. “Back off, Commie dude,” she says. “I’m a much better shot than Cheney."

Sit-down Song-edy

So, my friend Alison showed me some YouTube videos of this great band/comedy team called Flights of the Conchords. They're two dorky, guitar-strumming New Zealanders whose songs range from a satirical look at "the issues" to a song about a woman and who she believes to be her long-lost lover. Their musical parody beats Weird Al Yankovic by miles. Inbetween your own spurts of laughing, at times you might notice their impressive lyric craft or harmonies.

As of last year, they have their own TV show about trying to make it big in New York. Some are cynical about the effect "fame" will have on their creativity and how much material it'll provide them with, but I have faith in the spirit of the dork.

Here's two of their songs:

The Issues

Jenny

...

The Hidden City

River Days

...

IT happened.

She did not yet know to beware those thickets, not to ride alongside these place where THESE things happened. She was not aware of those awful black clouds of punctuation marks, hovering in the unsuspecting shade.
The wind combed through her hair, estuaries and rivulets of air along hte flood plain of her main.
She cruised along the path, in a one-speed, two-pedal, rotary machine and then...
SPLAT.
IT happened.
And a twitching black spot, came to rest in peace in the hollow along the arch of her nose. There it was:
an unintended insectoid murder, committed at the tender age of ten.
At the courthouse, they would scoff at crime carried out with so little skill:
a one degree turn of the head would have let the creature glance off, leaving the victim, the evidence in the road.
a two degree turn of the head and it would have been just left stunned, your typical hit-and-run.

Hear what my grandfather told me,
this, his statement bold:

"All great works of intellect,
from Socrates to Poe,
I do recollect,
were conceived upon the toilet.

Yes, it was the secret
of these portrait men,
that gifts bestowed,
were discovered whilst seated
upon a humble commode!

Yes, all deep philosophy
was born of men,
out back,
pondering
in the latrine.

Yes, all insight into the
insanity
depravity
of man,
was dissected upon the can.
(Archimedes, one rare exception)"

--> Running -->

I was sitting with a friend, and I asked him,
"What brought you to Deerfield?"
He said to me,
"We're all running from something."

True story.
But I wish, sometimes, I knew what it is we're running to.
Are we even running towards something? Or are we just moving our legs forward the way our praents taught us? Did we have a purpose then? Back when every step taken was rewarded with adoration and awe? Did we have even the faintest idea where our doughy little legs would take us?

Does it matter if we know where we're running to?
If we did, would we try and veer off course? Would we stop to wander by the wayside? Would we still look off to the horizon, or would we simply behold each grain of dirt beneath our feet? Is it the journey or the destination?
Or would we simply stop?
If we walked backwards, refusing to look onwards, would it be the same thing? Would we try and walk our hands? Would we take to our wings? Would we try Something, Anything, to believe we're making our own way, instead of traversing the same trodden path our ancestors laid?
Would it change anything?

Under the confidential umbrella-embrace of a maple tree, someone whispered to me, "No."
But, was it a "No, it won't change anything, and you will swim lakes and walk mountains beyond mountains and still arrive at the same location"?

Or was it a...
No, it doesn't matter at all and
you just keep running all the while?

May 22, 2008

The wind sends the pods of helicopter trees
to pirouette through the air,
whirling madly in a one-man death drop
They dance unbidden,
for as for as they'll be taken.
Until they touch down upon the earth and
collapse
into the roles of where-you-will wayfarers,
they dance no more...

GOODbye, GOODbye

There are goodNIGHTS, fareWELLS, and soLONGs, but there's nothing quite like a GOODbye.

"I miss you" or "I thought of you today" 's are delightful.
But they're also kind of...puzzling.
I always feel a small bit of disbelief. When it comes to the time for GOODbyes, I'm always surprised by the people who come to see me off. "I actually made an impression on you?"

The people of my past were like polaroids, tucked away in my mind after the GOODbye. There's the shutter...shake them a bit, and wait for the picture to settle in. Every now and then I take them out and comb over my memories, hold them out at arm's length and say, "Now those were some good times..." But they always stayed frozen like that. And you couldn't keep up a conversation with a polaroid, and a fading one at that.

I thought I was a wormhole traveler when it came to these affairs.
I'd arrive one day, from nowhere and make myself comfortable. Then, another wormhole would be opened up for me, and I'd be herded along to jump through that hoop.
I'd climb out, and I was supposed to close up the wormhole all neat and tidy behind me. The universe would be as it was before me, complete without me. As long as I didn't leave that tiny zipper-bit open, then neither they nor I would have to admit that nature of things: there was one world for the one US before the GOODbye, and there were two separate universes after the GOODbye: the one for a certain ME, and the one for THEM.

So when people poke a slim bamboo pole through that open zipper-bit to prod me and say, "You exist. You always did, and you still do,"
I take out my polaroids and shake them a few times.
Maybe they haven't settled after all...

And Time Just Keeps On Ticking...

There has been tumult and...confusion...and a small sense of betrayal.
It turns out that Sara, one of the victims, wrote the hate mail.
She disappeared in a wisp, and the Disciplinary Committee hasn't made its decision yet: to kick her to the road, or to let her walk there herself.
With the initial shock came a hurt, knowing that the incident that brought together a few members of the community was not sparked by someone's genuine hate.
But then I realize...it was.
Refelct: What kind of torture, what kind of underlying circumstances and attitudes would cause Sara to cry out, to dismember herself in order to flesh out the reality.

So the DTF called a meeting in Ephraim Williams with the headmaster.
I don't know what we were expecting. Some answers, maybe? Some compassion, some real emotion instead of the same old scripted propaganda?
She couldn't release anything, really, about the case. But she asked that we "stop communications with Sara concerning hte DC" so that she could "move on from the icident" and "separate herself" form the community.
Wrong answer in a room of people full of her friends and admirers.
So we tried to move onto remedies, and like always, the headmaster wanted to hear specific incidents. When will she get it? So rarely do we get directly, openly attacked. It's those little things: little snubs snickers, and unwillingness to acknowledge the presence of a problem, that paint the picture. They're the multitude of seemingly meaningless strokes that form this impressiont picture of opression. You don't have to even be the one being idrectly discriminated against to feel suffocated by this culture.


When the meeting was over and the faculty had dispersed, a few of us stood in the living room, seething, suffused with dissatisfaction.
But the living room of Ephraim Williams made something in us want to retch: somethig in the neatly polished wood and the upholstered chairs meant for cozying the bottoms of important people. It was saturated in a certain Deerfieldian essence, and it reeked of hypocrisy.
We rushed out of Ephraim Williams, feeling enraged, maybe even slightly militant. We escaped out, where maybe we could stand under the spoitlight of street lamps and finally be seen, where maybe the still night air could carry the echoes of our anger to the apathetic.
Jane declaimed to the night,
"I'm sick of this provisional bullshit, trying to change people without making them angry, without making them feel uncomfortable! I'm sick of this guerilla warfare, I want a battle! I want them to come out and fight me!"

We laid out our plans like hopeful young radicals, contemplating causing a riot.
Amanda tried to rationalize us, or at least rein in our shaking passion, insisting upon careful documentation of the problem.

And this, I remember with the clarity of a polished mirror:
Jane was riding ahead on her bicycle, and she called over her shoulder,

"Aren't we proof? Aren't our lives documentation? Isn't Sara documentation?"

So it goes.

Figures.

On the way to Hoe down, I was complaining to Nick about how much I miss L.A.
He asked me,
"What's so great about L.A.? There's Hollywood, and all that pollution."

I replied,
"Well, it's a pretty diverse place, I'd say. Everyone can live together pretty happily under that grey smoggy sky. Or at least they make a good effort to."
While I won't go so far as to say that race issues are non-existent, they weren't the main focus. We had other things to worry about: our vanity, our pollution, over population, illegal immigration, the drug trade, and our violent young men killing each other in the streets.

I miss it terribly. It was a common question when you met someone to ask, "What are you?" You couldn't make assumptions about ethnicity or culture based simply on appearance in a place THAT diverse.

Let's take my old high school for an example. Demographics:
53% White, 25% Latino, 10% Asian, 7% African American, 3% Filipino, 1% Multiracial, 1% Native American, 1% pacific Islander.
Languages spokenat home?
Spanish, Farsi , Tagalog, Mandarin, Arabic, Russian, Armenian, Cantonese, Indonesian, Hindi, Urdu, Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, and...Gujarati.

Go figure.
No, I realy mean it: go figure THAT out.

False Advertising

When will they realize that the "American" in "Asian-American" is not some insignificant appellative, some simple technicality? As simple as it would be to simply lump me into the group "Asian", there IS a difference. The "American" has made all the difference in my life, and in the lives of those before and after me. It would forever be a cause of turmoil and grief.

Life was always a balancing act, trying to stand on that little hyphen, not leaning too far to one side: Asian enough to avoid the label "twinkie" and "forgetting where you come from." American enough to fit in and try and break away from the old stereotypes.

I've been thinking:
maybe that's always been my problem.
All my life, I've been trying to make myself comfortable on that tiny hyphen, and the even smaller space within that as a Filipino American, and the EVEN smaller category as a mestizo Filipino American. Maybe's that always been the problem: I've always been worried about the reverberations of my ever-changing identity, that flowing stream of consciousness and experience, fit in perfect harmony with a label that was narrow, restrictive, and static?
Yes, those labels shaped my experience, but a single label is not equated to my experience as a whole!

Letters to...?

April 3, 2008

I thought of you today.
There was a thunderstorm last night, sounding off like a herald the coming of spring. Today, there were green sprouts pushing their heads out from in between the corpses of yesteryear's grass.
And then, I remembered: there's a place where the grass dies out of negligence, never out of nature.
Where you are.

April 12 2008

We're on the road for an away game today.
Driving along hte flooded banks of the Connecticut River, I have finally deduced why snowflakes and autumn leaves left me starry-eyed and amazed this year:
There's something beautifully power about the seasons: their inevitability, unconquerable. No matter who you are, how much money you have, you too must bend to their will and accept the passing of time, the new life and death of things.
It's so unlike home, where every inch of "civilization" seems to be an obstinate refusal to accept the nature of things.

April 13, 2008

So I've been thinking, maybe that's the problem with L.A., or at least that plastic culture, that obscenity that we broadcast over the media.
On another day, I shall write and remember midnight dim sum at Chinatown, eating alongside Olvera street mariachi, and the many steaming plates of basmati rice and koobideh you and I have shared.
Anyways, back to that atrocious plastic culture...
we grasp for our immortality like rabid dogs. There are plastic surgeons in my PennySaver Ad, and fitness clubs and spas scatter and sprout like wild mustard. People stretch their skin this way and that way, dancing under the light of lasers and tanning beds, desperate for even a taste of nectar and ambrosia.
By somehow staying forever young, ignoring the hour glass of time, we can alos turn our back on the rest of the world, and what' important. We can persuade ourselves ot push global warming down on the agenda, despite the fact that my memoirs will surely be titled, "How Smoggy Was My Valley?"
Why, our top industry, Hollywood, shells out delusion like a pimp.
Movies, moments of activity posing for "life" only perpetuate the lies. they lure the masses into dark rooms to be entertained by "life" instead of going out and living their own lives. So-called "reality" TV-shows now let us do it from the comfort of our own sofas.

As if that weren't enough.

Take the lush gree nlawns and backyards, thriving in the desert, fed by the dying trickle we call the Colorado River. Even the wildfires that we foolishly combat year after year: the natural destroyers and life bringers that are necessary to our ecosystem. They too, are brought under the whip.
Yes, we the insistent, god-grasping, proud, we tear up the hills of brush, in this land of chaparral and sky we lay the concrete for our own Tower of Babel.

But...don't they know? Don't they realize?
God can see us all too clearly through that magnificent hole in the O-zone.

Wisdom from My Brother

So I I was having an IM conversation with my brother, Ben, the other day. This is the brother who took over the dead Pan-Asian Society, raised it to active participation in the DTF and campus life, and renamed it the Asian Student Association.
I was complaining to him about how Asians don't fit well into the "minority" group. (Though he did remind me that our family doesn't even fit very well under the umbrella of "Filipino")

cazilla11: I want to fight for equality, but the truth is, I've faced so little discrimination in my life.

Vizilla: There are lots of ways to fight inequality, you don't have to pretend to be part of the discriminated group.

cazilla11: But if you don't, people turn around and say, "Well, what do you have to worry about?"

Vizilla: Exactly.
You have to realize it's a mostly thankless thing.
You have to do it because you think it's worth helping people, because most people are pretty rotten, worthless, pieces of shit even if they are discriminated against.
So you just have to believe in justice, or some crap like that.

Take a Bite Out of THIS Twinkie

So, I received an invitation to the "New England Afro Latino Student Alliance." Their mission statement reads:
"NEALSA is a regional support group for minority boarding school students in the New England area that addresses common issues within each individual school. The mission of this group is to help minority students happily exist at their various schools."

When are people going to start understanding that minority is not always equal to "black or latino"?
Now I know the critics are going to say, "Do you really think discrimination against Asians is equivalent to that experienced by black of hispanic people?"
And I will readily admit: no. But that doesn't mean we don't face it as well.

We're lucky: the majority of Asian immigrants come from educated backgrounds, and if you'd really like to hold on to stereotypes, parents drive their children like workhorses when it comes to school.
So America turns us into the "model minority."
"Asians work hard, and they hold the top percentiles in standardized tests. We can always rely on the stereotypical awkward-but-hardworking ching-chong lacky in the office. They made it as immigrants, they started off at the bottom. So why can't you?"
Let's add on top of that the tightly-knit communities formed (especially by Koreans) that refuse to mix with other minorities.
So of course, none of the other minorities consider us "people of color." Of course they laugh in your face if you say, "Well I've been discriminated against too."

Well you now what?
Being a "model minority" doesn't erase the word "minority". It doesn't change the fact that we're in the great big "not white" crowd.
In addition, being Filipino is something different from being the stereotypical Chinese of Korean.
We're sort of....the "mutts" of Asia, if you will.
Culturally and ethnically, we're a medley of colors. Ranging from pale white Europeans, "yellow"-skinned Chinese, and dark-brown Malays. Culturally, I can feel at home with a Chinese family, or a Mexican family.
The majority of Filipinos who come to US are dark-brown skinned, dark-haired, and their eyes aren't quite "chinky" enough to instantly label them as Asian. Back home in LA, the culturally ignorant might as easily label them as Mexican.
And it has happened many times, of course. My own brother, medium-toned but wearing a summer tan, once walked by one of those anti-(illegal) immigration rallies, where a group of white supremacists proudly wave the American flag. A middle-aged white woman yelled in his face, "Go back to your country, Jose!"
When my parents arrived at Connecticut in 1986, people still called my father a "brown monkey" even though his skin was no darker than the beach-bunny tan that so many girls at Deerfield aspire to.
And if you'd like more evidence that we are not on the same level as white Americans, realize how rare it is to see an Asian girl with a white guy unless she debases herself as some cute, little exotic sex kitten.

Now it's a shame that at Deerfield, the Asian Students Association only showed its face at a few of the many Martin Luther King Jr. Day planning committee meetings. It's too bad that it takes a DTF meeting involving Dr. Curtis and Mr. Emerson to warrant their attendance.

Maybe I shouldn't be so harsh:
The leaders of the ASA, like most of the Asian students at Deerfield, are international students.
It might seem like the same thing to you: they all have chinky eyes, and they all care about grades excessively.
But believe me: growing up Asian is a very different thing from being Asian-American.

Whereas those international students have lived in in entirely Asian communities, first-generation children of immigrants go through something else.
Life is one great balancing act, caught between "the homeland" and America. Growing up, my father always said to my brothers, "Do you really think you're an American? Ha! Look in the mirror."
Integrate too much, and next thing you know, you're a Twinkie: yellow on the outside and white on the inside. But even if you were a Twinkie at home, you were still "ching-chong" to the kids at school, the math and science whiz.

Wintry Mix

Play it again, DJ.
You know, that sweet cacophony
Half-rain, Half-ice
Ragged cross breed
Encasing trees in that
sleek silver sheathe.

Here comes the sun
To set off the sounds
Of a rainforest track.

But it's blaring,
Form the naked boughs
And barren ground.

The unceasing
plink, plink, patter
Of frozen fingers melting
Like slender widows
.weeping.
Unto pock-marked snow.
_________________________________

Ah yes. Another poem written when snow was oh-so-magical, when I'd stop in the middle of a path to stare at snowflakes in my hand, and frozen puddles were anomalies, not the nuisance they are today, when I'm dreaming of spring.

Call Me By Any Name, But a Rose...

Cami, Millie, Ca-MULE, Camel, Camillio, Chamomile Tea, Chamillionare, My Camille-cal Romance, Spider, Camille of House, Chameleon, Camillo, Ca-MILK, Camilla, Carmen, Cameo, Cam-zill-e.

Every person I've met has tried to come up with a new nickname for me.
I ask you,
what is SO hard about the name Camille?

By the aunties' definition, I'm "the perfect daughter" and "so payato" (skinny).

I'm Papa's "baby", Mama's "sweetie", and Chuck's "kid".

According to my demonic little cousin, I'm "an annoying bitch", but he'd probably say the same of Mother Teresa.

And of course there's always: dorkus, nerd, and fool.
Gifts bestowed upon me by my big brothers.

If you'd like to define me in terms of activities, it comes up like this:
a photographer,
a cartoonist,
a writer,
a poet,
a singer,
a pianist,
a composer,
a lyricist,
a gamer,
an artist.

But most of the time, there's a "but not quite" attached to it.

I'm a dabbler. A jack-of-all-trades. Or maybe, you could call me a Renaissance woman.
Or maybe they're all just euphemisms for "good at nothing a'tall"
?

O Sir Fever, You Are a Wily One.

I've come to the conclusion that my immune system has a pretty cruel sense of humor.

Let's begin with the fact that I never get sick. Not even sniffles. But then there was that two-year period when I got bronchitis THREE times (luckily the antibiotics still fought it off).

But now THIS:
Why is it that whenever I get one of these little numbers (phlegmy cough, runny nose, galloping sneezing, and a fever + headache), I get the fever and headache AFTER class, during study hall? I expend enormous amounts of energy to fight off slumber. When I wake up in the morning, I am exhausted from coughing, and tossing and turning all night.

But lo, and behold! That damn fever has skulked off into the night, slipping back down the rabbit hole to hell. Bereft of the mark of the affected, I am turned away from the Health Center doors. I shall wheel through another day, except with a miserable, drunken exhaustion, far exceeding the average sleep-deprivation. Utter complaints, but without that scurvy knave, Fever, by your side, it "can't be that bad."

Oh but nobody, nobody knows the trouble I've seen.

The Green Cup Challenge

So Deerfield is currently taking part in the Green Cup Challenge: an energy-conservation competition among several boarding schools, born of the Green Revolution.

After monitoring energy consumption for a month, the Green Cup Challenge begins and students are offered all sorts of incentives to reduce energy-useage. At DA, the dorm that reduces consumption by the greatest percentage is awarded $500.

Sounds great, right? And by-percentage ranking ought to make things fair.
But that's really not the case.

One of the leading dorms, Ashley, has about 6 girls, and one resident family (and it just so happens that the father is the head of the Green Cup initiative).
Compare that to my dorm:
50 girls, 3 floors, 4 resident families (one of which has two children).
Now, even if I study in the dark, my decision to turn off the lights has nowhere near as much weight as an Ashley-girl's decision.
We were bound for failure.

But the competition as a whole is flawed:
Rather than using this time to make students more environmentally aware, this is a time of fanatical extremities, when girls are doing their homework by flashlight, and we are sent tripping down dark hallways (Though, judging by the bathroom ventilator, which I hear through my room wall at all odd hours of the night, this might not be the case).
As soon as this competition ends, people will go back to leaving their lights on, the ir Ipod speakers playing tracklists to the deserted halls.
Furthermore, why are we holding this challenge in February? Isn't it more important that students develop good conservation habits at the beginning of the year? Why aren't we doing this competition when there's natural light?

I do applaud Deerfield for its efforts to be "green", contrived though they may be.

. . .

So this was the one poem that came out of emotional tidal wave that I was actually happy with.
And I kept telling you I don't write poetry.

______________________________________________

CLANG! CLANG!
The pounding of Thor's hammer,
unmistakable.

The thunderous hordes,
they march across,
unmercifully.

Oh sturm und drang
upon roiling, boiling seas!
O the slap, the clap
of Titanic waves,
they resound,
unceasing.

Athena, wicked child!
Cleave thyself free,
I have no wish
to make a captive, thee.

Where is the silver bullet
for such a malady?

Oh sweet Tylenol,
deliver me!

The Death of a Complex: The Birth of Me

This is how it goes:
I have two brothers, Ben and Charles (whom I call Chuck).
Their lives has often defined mine.
But that's changed.

I've always carried a bitterness towards Ben.
Oldest child, magnet schools, Deerfield, Harvard grad, happily married, two kids.
Sounds perfect on paper, no?
For the longest time, I resented the fact that I had to "live up" to him.
When my family moved to Seattle to help him out with his new family, I learned he was bitter and disconnected from our family. Not quite perfect as he seemed.
When the living circumstances didn't work out, I only came to resent him more for what he said to my mother, and for the year at Deerfield I was being robbed of. He was the brother who had gone away when I was a year old, and yet he he had demanded of me sacrifice.

Then you have Chuck.
Chuck, whose kind face towered over me in all my memories. Chuck, who first handed me pen and paper to express myself.
He was the failure, by book definition.
In college, he married his girlfriend of 4 years and got a job. Slowly, he stopped taking classes until he dropped out. He never went back.
6 years later, he found himself divorced, jobless, and a bit lost.

My two brothers, one failed by the book definition, the other failed by that Filipino rationale: family first.

And here I was, last child, only daughter, American-born, brought into the world just in time to witness the beginning of my brothers' growing pains.
Growing up, life was one big lecture: Where my brothers went wrong, and what I needed to do.
It was never said, always implied, but it was plain to see.
On my shoulders, I carried my family's "American dream."
Somehow, I should go to Deerfield, become successful, but still be the good Filipino daughter I ought to be, succeeding where both brothers had failed.

The other day, I had a long conversation with Chuck and I found out Ben was even less perfect than I had perceived. Chuck described one of our brother's fatal flaws as his lack of individual personality. My parents had a very specific idea of what they wanted him to be. After an embarrassing propaganda incident in middle school, he started becoming "the rebel", a new identity. Deerfield, with its upper-crust society, only seemed to help my brother into creating a new identity for himself. I do remember my father once asking him, "Do you really think you're a true American now? Ha!" The years went on, and my brother partied with his fraternity in college. At the end, he was only the identity he chose for himself.
As Chuck puts it, sort of like Gatsby.

I asked Chuck, "What is it Mama and Papa want me to be?"
He told me,

"Don't get confused into thinking they want you to be a lawyer or a doctor, kid. It took me a long time to figure out, but they just want us to have happy, honest lives. They don't want us to struggle anymore. That's all."

It sounds like something out of Hallmark card; and it seems so apparent it's silly to record. But after spending my life under the weight of my American dream-complex, it astounded me.

Now, one of the centers of my whirling pool of teenage angst has been effaced from existence.
My "life is shitty" story has been made non-existent.
And now there's this gaping hole.

Ellie suggested that maybe, the problem was that I had distorted my view of the American dream. Wasn't it always that: to work hard and earn your due. Enjoy the fruits of your labor, which no one had the right to take away?

Does this completely change me, and my work ethic? Of course not.
I wanted great things for myself, regardless.
But now I can drop the shackles from my wrists, and I know for sure now:
I'm doing all of this because I chose it.