Makana, Ka Wailele o Nu'uanu

This is how I love: quietly, away from the spotlight, but for the rest of my life. 

Hawaiian Lyrics:

 I laila i nä pali `ike ai

Ka wailele 'o Nu`uanu

E ho`okahe pau `ole

He wai nö ia e iho ai

E ka`aka`a kou maka e `ike ai

Ke kahe nei ka wailele pahihi

`Ole mai nö

He kahe mau nö ia

English Translation:

There on the cliffs can be seen

The waterfall of Nu`uanu

It never stops flowing

It just keeps coming down

The waterfall is flowing

It keeps on flowing

Never locked

It flows forever

Momma's Girl

I’ve been in love twice before, and though I am a heterosexual female, the greatest love in my life is a woman. As much as I swoon over the honorable Prince Hector of Troy and as much as the intelligence of a man still takes my breath away, my momma is the breath in my lungs. No other love could be this visceral, this irrevocably unconditional or selflessly enduring. 

This curly-haired, fair-skinned, five-foot-even, Spanish-Chinese-Tsalagi (Cherokee)-Pinay is my safe shelter from life’s raging thunderstorms. She is the steady whisper of hope in a life filled with the din of trials. She is the kiss on the forehead and a lullaby goodnight in an insomniac dawn. She carried me in her womb for nine months (and the extra week I stayed, just chillin’ in her uterus), held me to her chest and hummed me to sleep as a baby, and to this day, gives me hugs for no reason other than love. After my da died, I’ve seen her cry herself to sleep over hurtful words uttered by my da’s side of the family. It wasn’t just da, our stocks, or savings that we lost. Some friends and family, too, because there are those who equate worth with bank account balances. Once a sheltered and privileged housewife, momma took two minimum wage jobs and swallowed insults from people—including her sister—about how the mighty had fallen, and how “degrading” it is to be an educated woman working for an hourly wage. Although I put myself through university with scholarships, it is because of my momma that I graduated. It may be my name on the diploma, but it is rightfully hers. She is the reason why, although I find most ceremonies boring, I sat in the morning summer sun one June day listening to speeches and in the afternoon, gave a speech of my own. It was--always is--for her. 

Moleskine Journals + Pages

One of the three journals I simultaneously use

The sunblaze rose in this one came from a bouquet given by my momma during graduation.

Self-portrait (foot edizione) taken in Suriento, Summer 2004.

Another journal page ;o) The photograph was taken at some random train station, 'fireworks' setting.

John Hancock Tower, taken last year.

Repite, por favor?

My rosary-praying, Shakira music booty-shakin' momma just used the words "punked out" and "man up" in the same sentence, in reference to Kanye West's actions at the VMA.



Dontcha wish your momma was kewl like mine?

One of my top 3 favourite songs

Natives (Christy Moore)

For all of our languages, we can’t communicate
For all of our native tongues, we’re all natives here
Sons of their fathers dream the same dream
The sound of forbidden words becomes a scream
Voices in anger, victims of history
Plundered and set aside, grown fat on swallowed pride

With promises of paradise and gifts of beads and knives
Missionaries and pioneers are soldiers in disguise
Saviours and conquerors they make us wait
The fishers of men they wave their truth like bait
With the touch of a stranger’s hand innocence turns to shame
The spirit that dwelt within now sleeps out in the rain

For all of our languages, we can’t communicate
For all of our native tongues, we’re all natives here
The scars of the past are slow to disappear
The cries of the dead are always in our ears
Only the very safe can talk about wrong and right
Of those who are forced to choose, some will choose to fight
For all of our languages, we can’t communicate

Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it’s age old pain,
It’s ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever




--Rabindranath Tagore

There is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of these loveable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they’re often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really, want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.



--Chuck Klosterman

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices, but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thought in clear form."




--Albert Einstein

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery--even if mixed with fear--that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds--it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiousity; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man."



--Albert Einstein

Mohegan Sun Resort and Casino (Birthday 2009)

Hotel Lobby

Escalator heading up to the hotel lobby

"We must be our own before we can be another's." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

I thought about my momma when I first came across these words. As strong as she is, her whole life she has always been defined as being somebody's: she was first my grandparents' favourite, light-skinned daughter, at 20 she became my 39-year-old father's devoted housewife, and at 26 my doting momma. She never really had time to be herself. Just herself.


She's never really eaten at a restaurant alone. Nor has she gone to a cinema alone. 'Til now, she's never really lived alone. Her whole life she's had somebody to eat with, cook with, live with, laugh with, travel with...It must have been lonely, though.


I worry about her, and I worry for her. More than anything, I want her to have herself. It breaks my heart to know that she has built her whole life around my da, grandma, and me. My da's gone, my grandma's getting on in her years, and what if something happens to me? I don't want her to lose her world, don't want to see it crumbling down. I want her world to remain standing even if pieces of it shatter. I want her to persevere and not merely endure.


More than anything, I want her to have herself.

Diaspora sa Kalagitnaan ng Bansa

Sa aking lupang ipinanganakan, Pilipinas, my lament:

(Kababayan, gusto kong maintindihan kung bakit)

Why the serpentine urge to shed skin—

Beautiful skin, golden, molten brown— in exchange for faded light trapped in a bottle

Owned by those who ravaged, pillaged, and r.a.p.e.d. a nation and her people?

Kayumanggi na kay ganda, nasaan ka na?

(Sa iyong mga mata ang aking nakikita) Ebullient unspoken shame.

(Anak ni Malakas at Maganda, lahi ni Bonfacio, nasaan ka na?)

Diaspora is Denizen’s Destined Diadem

(Sa kalagitnaan ng bayan, ikaw ay nawala)