Ooh girl get them tats
Go out and smoke that weed
Act all hard and take them shots
Make that blog and surface them tracks
You starvin’ but you an artist
Go on worrying about selling out
Hate on all them new kids on the scene
Like you forget where you been
You’re hatin on the new slew
Like I was last year – hatin’ on you
You’re sittin at a table with that stank look
Stuck up like you been on the scene so long
Honey, how old are you? 22?

Whenever I ride the DC metro I feel like an extra in a science fiction film. It’s something spectacular.

I always compare things. To me Baguio was most like San Francisco if I had to pick a city in the United States. With it’s cool atmosphere and hilly landscape it’s an easy comparison. It was so nice to get away for the day from the exhausting heat of the Philippines to this sort of cool oasis in the sky. Okay that may be a little dramatic, but it really is a journey up winding mountains to get to Baguio and out of nowhere there is this huge city.

This is a video I took in Baguio City with my family. 11 of us took a van and stayed in a little hotel for a night. Filipinos love to cook and eat! That is what we did… and some site seeing.

I wanted to record when and where everyone was born as documentation. I once watched a Godard film and he had this collage of real locals saying their birth years and it tripped me out. I couldn’t believe how long ago some birth dates were (he was shooting in the 60s) and how so many of those captured were now long gone.

My mom is such a goof. I think it’s funny the way she holds the bag in her left hand!

Over 25 years ago my father, a young man no more than 21 and enlisted in the Air Force was stationed at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. My mom grew up in a nearby barrio Magliman and was studying commerce and accounting at Angeles University in Angeles City. My mother had to wear a uniform to college, a plaid green skirt with a white shirt and tie, a uniform the girls still wear today. My parents were both so young when they met. My mom told me they met one night at a discotheque in Angeles City when she went out with her friends to celebrate her birthday. They were married and had my sister and I before the age I am now (24). They later divorced, but the sentimentality of our tour was not about that, it was about their youth, and a time and place lost.

As we drove through Clark Air Base, it was like driving through a ghost town or like Planet of the Apes with abandoned overgrown buildings. Growing up around military bases I could imagine how nice it must have been all those years ago. As we entered we passed a long road lined with palm trees and a park. We then drove straight though a badly painted security gate, where once long ago an Air Force sergeant would have checked ID and saluted those who entered.

My parents left the Philippines after my sister was born in 1985. In 1992, Mount Pinatubo, a nearby volcano exploded and devastated the area. It also marked the closing of Clark Air Base and American presence in the Philippines. The Americans on base had to be evacuated. My Tita said that as soon as the Americans left, the base was raided. Nothing was left, even windows and doors were taken from buildings. It was destroyed those 20 years ago, not over time, but surely time added to it’s somberness.

It must have been difficult for my mom. It may have been better that she never returned and let the past stay brilliant in her memories rather than be tainted by the shambled reality of the landscape. For my mom it must have been like going back to see your childhood home to find that it’s not quite as big or lovely as you remember it… It may no longer even be there but replaced by some awful discount shoe store that’s going out of business.

We passed an abandoned and haunted looking building that was once the hospital my sister was born in. At least thats the building my mom recalled, but it may have been something else. My mom has a talent for being melodramatic! We drove through the old base housing now converted to a hotel. We drove down Friendship hwy towards Angeles City, a familiar route for my mom. It was like we were going home. As we drove, my mom explained (almost defensively) how the whole area was once covered with Americans.

I imagined young American boys in the 70s and 80s driving around in their jeeps and motorcycles, hanging out at the bars and clubs in Angeles City. It must have been the time of their lives – so young and touring the world, living in a tropical paradise with the nicest people, and the ladies… the beautiful Filipino ladies with long black hair and tan skin – like Pocahontas. I think of it somewhat like that movie Pearl Harbor, except it’s the 80s – MJ is blasting in the radio, all the chicks are filipino, and the disaster is Mount Pinatubo. I actually think it’d be an awesome setup for a movie – including filipinos singing karaoke, basketball games in the barrio, and people jumping in and out of jeepneys.

Bahala na – whatever will be will be…

Except in my imagination.

For a few days I’ve mostly been stuck at my lola’s at my dismay. I’ve just been trying to absorb the culture and get to know my family as well as stare off into space or read self help books to get through the personal growth I’m going through.

One of the most exciting things I did was go to a basketball game my uncle Ambo played in one evening. The barrio comes to life at night. It’s amazing. I am so different here.. I stick out like a sore thumb. So I got a lot of attention. My uncles team was down the entire time and then in the fourth quarter came back and won. It was so good! My uncle was a basketball star in his youth! My dad told me stories about playing basketball when he was stationed in the PI over 25 years ago so I thought of him.

Today I am in Baguio, a city in the mountains of North Luzon and, I wish i could write more but I have to get back to my family. I have very little internet access except when I decide to let AT&T charge me up the ass! Xoxo

My mom is already getting on my nerves but I guess that’s what moms are for! My mom is no exception.

We are flying Korea Air. I was so impressed by the beautiful Korean flight attendants. They wore very crisp and ornate uniforms with slick pulled back hair in a bun, a decorative hair bow that looks kind of like chopsticks and a crisp sash around the neck that sticks out. The shirts are a light silky green and skirts are beige. I felt a little creepy because I kept staring at them. They all had the most perfect skin. I need to find out what lotions they are using!!!

It’s so cool to be on the other side of the world and blogging from my phone. I’ve got my cellular data turned off and I’m on airplAne mode. All my calls are forwarded to my Skype. I’m using wifi only! This is an experiment to make sure I don’t get charged up the ass while abroad!!!

My flight from ATL to Seoul was like 16 hours. I read for most of it. I have my kindle attached to me, but no computer besides my iPhone. That’s a little strange for me I suppose!

I’ve been reading all sorts of things, but one of the big things I’m doing is reading about writing. I’ve always liked writing and blogging, but ever since freshmen college English classes.. I’ve found writing to be more and more difficult.

I would love to write more… both personal and more academic style papers. I’d really like to write philosophy if I didn’t stress out so much about perfectionism and criticism. Anyway I’ve been reading a couple of books, but the one I like best so far is Bird by Bird. The author says to write short assignments like just the first time you see the character or just one memory from childhood. She also says to write shitty first drafts. So that is what I’m doing. I’m going back and writing stories from my earliest possible memories as a child in Charleston, South Carolina. It’s therapeutic in ways. Most of the earliest memories I have are traumatic or substantial in some developmental way. I’ve been into psychoanalyzing myself lately but that’s for anther post I guess.

My blog posts are always shitty first drafts…