places I don’t know yet

….I hope this isn’t going to turn out to be a list of places I’ll never get to. I’m turning 40. I’m still holding out hope for a world that can still allow people to travel, even after all of these years of the virus.

The two important destinations that I really want to get to: Kyoto and Barcelona. I’m dreaming of specific places in those cities, too: I want to make it to the Pontocho district in Kyoto, so that I can observe the comings and goings of the geiko and the maiko and the townspeople who make their livelihood possible. I hope that this pandemic won’t completely kill off the flower and willow world. (I should look into what’s going on there in these past couple of years.) And in Barcelona is the only place of worship that I want to actually attend as such: Sagrada Família. I know that church is nearing its completion; I would like to get there somehow no matter its state.

Other places I’d like to properly see, having never been there thus: Vienna, even if one of the places that I would like to visit there is a place of morbid cold thoughts. I’ve been fascinated by the story of Empress Elisabeth of Austria for a while and I would like to pay my respects to her, where she’s been laid to rest. Seoul is on my list of course. Maybe I’ll be able to speak the language correctly by then, or at least sound like a tourist who made the effort.

I still want to go back to Singapore, but now it’s less because of the places that I want to visit, and it’s more because of the food that I want to eat, the people I want to see, and then putting those two ideas together. It kind of hurts that I haven’t been able to go out and eat with friends as often as I’d like, and this will soon have been going on for three years. I won’t risk them or myself as quickly; and right now with this whole omicron variant even the idea of eating with others al fresco doesn’t sit right with me. So I’ve scotched all plans for that again.

On the list of places that I would have liked to see again was Hong Kong — but that doesn’t seem like a smart idea now. I’d only be angered and saddened, maybe. I went there just before the handover to China and I had always wanted to see it as the democratic territory it still was at that time, but that’s kind of in the past now. I bitterly regret that I never had a chance to go back.

Of course I also want to travel within my own country: but again, I don’t think I should be bringing the bad stuff over. So for now, my thoughts of revisiting Baguio and Cebu will have to remain only nebulous. The same goes for places that I’ve never seen before, like La Union and the Batanes islands. I sort of wish I’d known that all of this was coming and then I would have probably thrown all my resources at traveling to these places, at least, if I couldn’t still have gone abroad at the time.

I can dream, I think, and I can keep working so that I can get to these places, but — again, all that will have to wait until we’ve all come to our senses and put this pandemic down for good.

I don’t honestly know when that’s gonna be.

careful with that next page

I didn’t really do a whole lot of things over the change from 2021 to 2022? Maybe I’m wary of this whole thing because — what have the last two years been but nonstop being tired and being angry and being hopeless and being cooped up? But I did make pasta and I did put my offline playlist on, to see what kind of shuffle I would get in the ticking over of the clock.

And that shuffle came up as Epilogue: Young Forever — My Universe — Sea, and I thought, Huh. Well. There is certainly a message there. There’s the idea of having hope and having affection or love or something of the sort, balanced with the idea of “Wherever there’s hope, there’s a trial.”

That does sound a lot like me, after all. That looks like a look inside my head.

Today, New Year’s Day: I find out that Kim Namjoon started keeping a journal again, and has been doing what he can to write regular entries in it, especially to note the daily small successes, and that makes me think of my own journals.

On the advice of an art friend I had decided that I would try to keep a daily journal again, and specifically for that first year my self-made goal was to at least write one good thing that happened on each page. And it was a lovely journal, so inviting to write in, but in 2019 I had no real hope or determination to actually fill the thing up, 1 January to 31 December.

Well, here I am, on the first day of 2022 and already anticipating what I’ll write on the first page of the new journal. I’ve somehow managed to keep the habit going. And yes, maybe some of the pages aren’t filled with good things, because it’s me, because I have an Eeyore nature, but still. Most of the things I write in my journals are things I want to remember, whether they were good or bad to begin with, because I have this odd small off-chance of finding hope or a narrative or an eventual good result, some kind of good thread from the past to the present/future?

I wonder if I’ll ever get the chance to let Namjoon know that the year I started keeping that daily journal again was the year I met him and BTS properly. Eventually the stuff they did and accomplished made its way into my pages, too. I wouldn’t be the first one to say that they help/ed keep me going, but I have proof of it in my journals, is the thing.

rewire

I finally took the plunge!

Well, okay, of course, there’s a mildly funny story because it’s me? But the plunge here is, I finally decided to see if I could actually learn the Korean language for real. The course that I’d taken for one semester way back in university is — little more than a hazy memory, truly. And I regret that I didn’t know what was coming, and I didn’t stick with it, and I really should have kept going because that was right before the Koreans started coming to this country to learn English. I could have gone somewhere else in my life trajectory if I’d stuck with Korean at that point instead of treating it like a placeholder. (I know. I bitterly regret that. Mea maxima culpa.)

I mean, I know what the alphabet looks like, and I know what the BTS members’ names and nicknames look like, but. Lack of comprehension, you know? And I thought I’d remedy that. So I downloaded Duo*lingo.

But the funny bit is: I thought it was my first time using the app. No. I actually downloaded it in 2014 — an entire lifetime ago. And what was I studying on it? French! That’s from when I was still teaching English to European adults…… Yeah. Literally I can’t remember a lot about that, either, any more. I can still do some very very very basic French but. I was never fluent, I never will be.

So. Hangul, instead. And I’ve gotten through 10 days of lessons. It was super confusing at first. I still need to remember the conventions that the app follows for the translation / transliteration / transcription of certain consonant sounds. I still need to pay attention to the forms of the vowels and how they can be used, together and especially in combination.

But it’s funny that I’m marking my progress in the lessons by recognizing names and parts of names. Not just the BTS members’ names, either, because it was funny that I almost immediately ran into parts of the names of the TXT members, too. So that’s a good thing for me. It helps me keep things in mind, helps me stay on track? Because these are already familiar phonemes and words and names? Anyway. I’m trying to learn, and 10 days’ progress means something to me because I am starting at a rather advanced age to be knowing any of this stuff.

(I may have to make a tag for that. I’m going to be musing a little bit more about the passage of time. And the passage of my time, because I’m coming up on 40 in 10 months’ time.)

I think that the whole idea of learning a language involves having to rewire those parts of the brain, and yeah that’s certainly something that I’m experiencing in the here and now. I’m learning to recognize sounds and words at this point. Haven’t started on grammar or sentences or anything of the sort yet. I’m sure more brain changes will come as I get on that — slowly. I’m taking my time with the lessons because alphabet practice is not the same to me as word/phoneme/syllable practice. (Even if in many cases syllable practice IS directly connected to alphabet practice, because this is Hangul we’re talking about, here.)

Anyway. I’m almost 40 and I’m picking up a language for more or less the second first time. That’s what I have to keep myself going.

water-cooler talk

Employed from the beginning of January to the end of June

Unemployed in July and half of August

Employed again by August 16

I’ve been at the new job for about three months and change. I didn’t know what I was going to wind up doing; I was, and I still am, employed as a sort of admin person-of-all-work and someone who’s supposed to be assisting various people at the company as they need help. Someone to pick up their smaller tasks for them. That was the original intention, and I understand that many of the things that I am doing are things that they need – they just happen to tend to get lost because the people at the company are always busy or are often tugged to different appointments or other things that can only be done by them, which means their more everyday tasks can get dropped further and further down the priority list.

This is also not counting the times when they have to be out of the office for some reason or another, like their business trips and that kind of thing.

So yeah, I mean, I knew I was going to be given the back-office small jobs and I’ll make it clear. I want to do those things. I like doing those things. I honestly thought it was going to be the equivalent of filing and copying, and I have to say that it’s the equivalent because I, of course, am doing all my work virtually / remotely. I’m nowhere near the actual company’s location, and that’s how it’s probably going to be for the duration. I’ve no plans of traveling anywhere or relocating.

Except. Well. I’m surprised, myself, because I have no sense of time, and I just vaguely sense how the days go past me in my time zone. I only know that time moves because I use a page of my techo every day, writing things and small thoughts that I want to try and remember. (I wind up asking too many questions. My pages are all about existential wondering, not that the wondering really means anything because it’s not like I can stop existing, can I?) (I hope not)

I’m surprised because I’ve been at the job three months, at all.

I’m surprised because some of the things that I have learned to do at this job are – well it’s all been interesting, even when it’s been weird and / or unexpected. Not like filing or copying at all. I think I can see something that I can be really good at, and I think I’d make a surprising addition to at least one of the company’s behind-the-scenes departments. I have, a couple of times, considered that I can act in a really obsessed-with-detail kind of way and this is a job where I can actually be paid a salary for that tendency of mine. It seems to be appreciated in some ways.

(I don’t know what that performance review means because it was written by one of the people I work with, and I have worked for several of them already, over the course of the last three months. So I’m not thinking about it.)

I think that in a way they also weirdly appreciate that I’m literary because in many ways they are differently literary from me? Like, the pop culture references? Some of the references that have been made in my presence are, like, understandably older than I am. What I mean is that when I bust out the occasional idiom they seem glad to hear it because that catches the thought that was in their heads, very closely. Working through a document with someone, I recently said, at this point the question is, did we want to see the forest or did we want to see the trees? And the conversation paused for a moment because we had to answer the question – and reformulate, accordingly. So that’s the clarification I can bring, from time to time. I think that’s nice to be able to contribute that.

On the other hand, I’m not sure they get it because – did someone really have to explain to me what a “bear” (as in, yes, the lgbtqia+ term, specifically) was? I guess I should be glad no one has had reason to ask me the question of, why do you know a lot of things related to that? (Putting aside the fact that I don’t really think I’ve had cause to mention that I am, myself, queer. I guess they’ll find out next year, provided I’m still working with them, because I’ll be wearing pride colors at some point on a semi-regular basis.) I’m not entirely sure that they’ve all figured out that I’m an 82-liner and also a student of pop culture from all over the world. I’m not young and I’m also not as old as the people I’m working with, is the thing.

It’s just a thing to be thinking through, I guess. Time, and the work that I do that helps it to pass, and the people I happen to be working with from afar. (I can sulk about missing out on the free pizza, right? I can sigh because they can bring in donuts and bagels and I’m never going to be able to get in for free nosh, right?) (I didn’t even get fed by my local office because – apparently they pay for trainees’ lunches, but since I was never in a training class, I never got to eat on their dime that way.)

easy on me

I don’t want to talk about it too much on this blog because goodness knows that I have talked about it enough out in real life, and in catching up with so many people that I have lost contact with, and yes those two ideas are connected.

But yeah, this is a thing that I listened to, and fool that I was, it took me until the second or third run-through to really understand the story being told in the lyrics, and then I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. In a good way. In the Adele kind of way. You know what kind of impact that is. You know how she has that beautiful talent for telling true things, for showing off those raw and razored feelings. You know that, I know that, we’ve known it from the start and from when she started just — singing. Those pipes, those beautiful pains.

What a voice! What an instrument! I am just grateful to think that — didn’t she have some kind of operation on her throat? But well, there is her voice. There is her beautiful soul, right out there in the words that she sings. What power.

What a story she tells here.

Part of that story is reflected in mine.

That’s the part of my story I’m not proud of? Other than that I have somehow survived it. Other than that somehow I have come out the other side of it and I am still determined to keep living? That would be no small feat if I were describing it in another person. So I can say, it’s no small feat that I made it out. I got out and I am still able to find something to live for, to care for. I don’t know how I’m doing it — this is what I have journals for — I just know what I know.

And what I know is, there is a part of my story in that song, and there is a part of my story that I am driving forward still, and I am still alive for all of this. I can hear these songs. I can feel, at all.

So I’ll feel my feelings with this song, too.

Welcome back, Adele.

not quite tickled pink

But yes. Pink, suddenly. Nearly everywhere else online I’ve chosen to switch to pink, and I’m doing it to get into a fight, into a campaign, into a kind of — this is my part of the struggle for both the immediate future and the longer term.

Specifically this kind of pink. And I think I love that this pink was already there, as if waiting, as if someone knew it would be needed at some other point in the future?

That’s the cover to Map of the Soul: Persona, the 2019 EP from BTS, and it was the lead-in to the next year’s full-length Map of the Soul: 7. Not coincidentally, I became ARMY juuuuust before this one came out, in February 2019.

Here’s the intro — and yes, that’s my bias, that’s my leader, that’s RM dropping the mic right here.

So why pink? Because of things that happened in my country over the past two days. Because there are fights I’m getting into, the same fights that have been going on for a long time and they’re ramping up again. There’s a campaign to sign up for and do things with. There’s a conflict that’s been going on since 2015 and it’s been thrust back into the spotlight. There are women who have been recognized as leaders, who will continue to be leaders, who will be the faces of these ongoing fights.

I’m #ARMYforLENI. Please do not come at me for “politicization” because you and I both know that I am a Filipino citizen first and I also happen to be ARMY, and I intend to remain both as I campaign for Leni Robredo for next year’s presidential elections. I want to help her get to a position of being able to help. I want to be able to scrutinize what she does, how she helps, how she leads. I want to be able to survive the next couple of years, dammit, and the ARMY thing goes hand in hand with being a citizen.

And, I’m proud to say it, with the things that BTS themselves has been fighting for, from pre-debut. If you don’t believe me on that, or if you can’t, I invite you to listen to their work, and I will also ask you to pay attention to Leni’s work. It’s all worth getting into.

I’m also — entirely shaken by the fact that someone from my country has just been announced as a co-winner of a Nobel Prize. The Peace Prize, at that. What is really scrambling my emotions is who the laureate is, and why she was so honored. Again, this is a thing that goes back to somewhere in the vicinity of 2016. Her name is Maria Ressa and apparently her crime is to be a journalist, fearless and independent and unsilence-able, in the time of this monster of a current president of the Philippines.

A co-Nobel Peace Prize for the specific action of being a fearless and independent journalist who has borne far, far more than her share of slings and arrows and trollery from this corrupt, murderous, incompetent national government. (I don’t think it was an accident that I’m writing this portion of this blog post to BTS’s track “Am I Wrong”. My offline playlist is on shuffle, and it came on of its own accord, perhaps to keep me on track with what I am writing. Again, please, look that track up, and never never tell me they’re not politicized. I know that “Spring Day” is a song with political overtones. Yes, that “Spring Day”.)

I don’t honestly know if I can call this thing that has come up in my chest “hope”. It prickles too much. It goads and it feels like there is so much that needs doing, there is so much fighting up ahead, and I feel tired on the instant and know that I can feel tired, but have to pick myself back up and keep going, like BTS, like Leni, like Maria. People to emulate, I suppose. People to watch out for. I follow each of them for specific reasons. I want to achieve something in this world after their fashion. — That’s a small goal and a lofty one at the same time.

And for now, pink is the color that reminds me of all of this.

and i just wanna put you first.

I think, sometimes, that I may have missed one kind of calling. I wish I’d been brave enough to try being a radio DJ, once. Until then, playlists whenever the mood takes me, I guess.

(This playlist was inspired by several I saw circulating online, the weekend immediately after the release of “My Universe” [the original version].)

funny how time passes

Because my birthday happened in the middle of a work-week and I was kind of preoccupied with — work, home to rest, work, home to rest, that kind of cycle. But yes. I did turn 39 somewhere in that previous interval. And it was a very private and just-me affair; I hope no one at the office realized what I was really up to, with those fancy things that I’d brought in to eat.

So — what does that feel like, now? What has this world come to? I don’t want to talk about the sad and sorry and mucky state of my country right now. We’re descending further and further into madness and it shows, and madness shouldn’t be the case given what we have all lost at this point, and I have lost track of how much time this country has been bungled in just the course of this pandemic alone. We are still hurtling into the bad dark places. Why are we doing this to ourselves. Why can’t we seem to want to save — each other. Because I think that’s where the problem is at present, in my country. We’ve lost the plot, we don’t want to save each other.

And I myself have run out of curses to send to the palace by the river, occupied by the lowest scum of the low and their voices and their evil and their venality and …. well. I should hope that you understand what my point of view on those living things were. I refuse to call them people. Because they are not people.

Wanting to turn us into vile things, too.

So I can’t imagine wanting to — have a birthday party in these days.

I don’t want to think about turning 40 and still locked in like this.

And time passes and it is October, and I have survived this far, and so have you if you’re reading this. What helps you get through the days and years since January? What is keeping you — your version of sane? I have coping mechanisms, and I want to hear about yours. Tell me about something that made you smile in the past few days.

maybe it’s a Kitchen thing

The sensation that my brain cells were multiplying was exhilarating. — Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto, translation by Megan Backus

It should probably tell you something that I can type both the original writer’s name and the translator’s name from memory, straight off the top of my head, when it comes to this book. Yes it’s a formative text for me. No it wasn’t my first Yoshimoto, believe it or not. I was first introduced to her writing with the novel N.P — and I read it in grade school, which I like to think had a pretty profound effect on me. It’s still something worth thinking over, even now.

But that’s a story for another time. Today I want to tell you why I’ve had that sentence on the brain again. Yeah, again, like, it comes back to me every now and then, even when I’m not currently rereading the novella. Even when I’m only walking around in the world. There’s maybe something inspiring about those plain and simple words. Small inspiration it might be to some, and life guidance to others. I think that for me this is just a sentence that gets, that got, stuck in my head at some point in the last five or six years.

If you know me in real life you might have even watched me read a passage from the novella on camera. I uploaded it to FB in 2017 to take part in a reading-out-loud challenge that was sponsored by a major bookstore company. I think I did a pretty decent job of reading it? I mean. I’m not trained to act, but because of my love for the book I tried to read the passage well, I tried to put in the emotions that the words made me feel, and — yeah. I’m still okay with how I did there.

I still think I read that line well.

And it’s kept popping up in my head for the last two weeks. Easy enough to guess why. I’ve been going to work at the new job. Every shift is something new, because I’m new, and because one of the companies I’m working for is also new to this arrangement of ours. They’re trying to wrap their heads around the concept of — here is someone to whom you can delegate these kinds of tasks to. Here is someone who maybe is very new to this kind of work, but who is very experienced at keeping things organized, and who is trying to learn everything they can to be helpful.

And I am trying to wrap my head around the concept of — I know some of the things they want me to do. But there’s a bigger block of things that I need to learn and get caught up on in order to do my tasks well. And I am heading into my 40s and I don’t know how I can still do this, and by this I mean that I still know how to learn. I still think there’s a high to learning new things.

Some of the things I’m learning are useful, after all, even if I step away from the computer that I’m using for my tasks. And some of the things I’m learning are really only relevant inside the company I happen to be running these tasks for. Some of the things I’m learning I probably would have learned years ago if I’d been able to get into more run-of-the-mill work, I’m guessing. I want to kind of laugh at myself because I am still learning how to use Outlook, after all. Not the kind of thing that was relevant (or even allowed!) at some of the other jobs I’ve held in the past.

Maybe it’s just the thing that I learned how to be, as a far-too-precocious student. I wanted to know everything, I wanted to be able to cram all the knowledge into my head, and I still do, in many ways. Some people find learning anything to be difficult, and some people are hindered from being able to learn, and I think I’m lucky then. I can learn things. I can enjoy the idea of cramming knowledge into my head, whether it’ll be useful again to me now or in some other time, or not.

I know that makes me sound like I’m a lifetime swot (and I have no business knowing that term and one way of using it, because I’m not from the UK, but like, there you go, self-demonstrating example). I kind of wish I could get into the pride I feel — the idea of my brain still being okay with learning new things, with expanding. Isn’t that something we used to promote? Something about keeping our minds active. Something about being able to keep up with changing days.

Or maybe that last part is just wishful thinking on my part! Who knows?

I just wanted to think it over, to be thoughtful about it, because after all — it’s my brain, it’s a big part of me, and if I were to become fossilized now while still alive — that would be sort of a small death, I think.

back to square one

And for once I don’t mean that like — the worrying kind of reset. (Even if the medical examination bits were a little bit hard on the inside of my elbow, and the upper reaches of my nose. The sad state of affairs is that in order to be certified fit to work, the antigen swab test or some other test related to detecting the symptoms of COVID-19 has to be added to the usual suite of drug tests and everything else.)

I’d been applying to different places trying to get a job, trying to find gainful employment (I really should look into why that adjective gets used in this instance, practically making it a set phrase), and — a couple of video-call interviews later, I’m pleased to report that I’ve made it. I start soon. That’s why I had to wake up super early today and get through the medical examination; it was part of the pre-employment requirements.

I made it. I’m actually looking forward to it.

It’s not even the money that’s making me say that, for the most part? I’m actually looking forward to being able to do something else entirely. I got locked into a very specific skill set in my previous job, one that — is so distinct and so specialized that it might not have any other applications in the rest of the world. — Unless I was going to do a specific kind of voice-over work, I guess. So I’m happy that I’ll be able to have a chance to develop other skills now.

I’m also happy to report that I finished out my two-week period of waiting after getting my second vaccine shot, so I’m currently fully immunized. I’ll have to look into needing boosters in a few months’ time but that is a concern that I’m lucky to be able to put aside for now.

So I’ll raise a glass tonight. I’ll have to turn my sleep schedule around some. There are things I need to get through and things I need to carry and be aware of, from now on. New rules to try to abide by.

But I made it out of this rough patch when I wasn’t expecting to get here that quickly.

This is a nice kind of starting over.

(If you’re looking for a sign that says don’t give up, I offer myself up as today’s.)