airport limbo

LAX, my least favorite air hub in the United States.

Airports are interesting spaces. They are like limbo. You are neither here nor there. You’re not traveling exactly. You’re waiting. That’s what people do in airports: wait.

In the departure terminal, we wait for movement. We wait for flights. We wait to get going on our business trips or holidays, reunions or great escapes. There is this undercurrent of restlessness that comes before the start of any journey.

At the arrivals, we wait for our baggage, for our rides, for our loved ones. People wait with love and anticipation, with fear and anxiety. There is always an element of excitement there.

Airports can be purgatory for travelers too. Luckily, that’s not exactly how I’m vibing it today. It may be bittersweet being at the airport again, but its not as bad as a waiting room for hell.

I can’t help but look back at the variety of different airport experiences I’ve had this year. Probably the most I’ve traveled within the span of year ever. And since early June, LAX is my 12^th airport. In New York alone, I’ve flown into or out of the three airports that service the area. And before this time, there was India and Singapore in January, Palawan in March, Madrid in April.

This is beyond unusual for me. I am neither independently wealthy nor is traveling a part of my job. I feel my blessings. I can only say that when I decided to acknowledge that I wanted to be a part of the world, that going on a journey was a part of my heart’s desire, the opportunities to do so started to unfold for me, some appearing like manna from heaven and others I myself manifested.

I’ve had a lot of intense moments of introspection during my time in these airports/indeterminate states. It’s a fitting activity in limbo, gauging where you are in your head and heart spaces as you straddle two worlds.

When I left India in January after two and a half months of intense yoga study, I felt full and energized, ready for the madness of returning home, by then I think I knew that I would be shaking up my old life, though, in ways that I could have barely imagined. I felt poetry and bliss in Madrid, the possibility of a bright and shiny new love in Telluride, awkwardness in Seattle, and emptiness in Oakland.

And now in LAX, I feel limbo itself. I am between two chapters, or perhaps between a series of books—where does the heroine go before the author pens the sequel? No man’s land? She exists in space but has no form. No story to cling to.

I feel very much between things. I’m at the end of this trip with one week to go before returning to Asia and three weeks before India for 5 months—my next big adventure. This trip itself is a break from that static island life in the Philippines, a time of transition to a different way of living, of loving, of being.

I feel the recent weight of great sadness and loss and the light potential of the unknowable future. I feel the differences between life in America and in the Asia. I feel the pull of my loved ones here in the US as well as those in the Philippines.

I can’t say this is a new sensation. I’ve always felt torn between the East and West, duty and desire, what I love and what I think I should do. Then again, aren’t we all in some way or the other confused by this world full of opposing forces?!

This time, however, I can feel its intensity as if it were both a vacuum as well as this concentrated sense of the entire universe, everything and nothing. And in this dividing line, this crossroad, I am shifting. On the other side I will be as always me and at once will never be the same again.

the heavies

Its been an intense few days, which considering the general intensity which my life has taken on recently is saying a lot.

I partly blame the moon. I get moody near moon days, as my body cycles accordingly to it.

I'm also delirious from three-days of non-stop activity, squeezing in just about as many reunions as I possibly could. My mother's taken every opportunity to mention that I should not have left everything for the last week, which is her round about way of saying that she disagrees with how--or rather with whom--I spent my first week here in LA.

Of course, stubborn to the bone, I tried my best to sweep it aside and get through the weekend, which was my one opportunity to touch base with so many of the bright lights, the real stars, of my LaLa Land. Still underneath it all, that feeling remained, quietly frustrating me.

Last Saturday, my high school girlfriends Tracy and Marissa took me to see a friend of theirs, guitarist Jinsoo, who was playing with acoustic soul singer songwriter piano-man Chris Joyner at jazzy little Hotel Café in Hollywood.

(It was great hanging with my girls! – a statement that needs to be qualified in greater length in another article altogether!)

Though the set was short, I loved the sound of the band. Joyner’s songs were soulful and performed with such heart. And one in particular, a playful tune called “Heavies” seemed to define the sensation I was grappling with.

Its a fun song, but still quite observant of life's struggles. The chorus goes: "Oh no, here come the heavies. They're going to hit hard so you better get ready. Oh no, here come the heavies again."

We all have tough times. We all get our fair share of heavy burdens. I get that. I’m not winging really, I’m just saying: “I know you (referring to "the heavies"). I know you’re here with me. I know there’s a reason that you’re hanging around, and I’m willing to learn and grow from it. But when we’re through, I mean it, we're through."

To listen to the track, you can visit Chris Joyner's myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/chrisjoyner

soul food

There are all sorts of different kinds of hunger.

There is the most basic, of course, one of physical necessity. Our stomachs are empty, we must fill it. We eat to live. Though sometimes many of us forget, we either neglect our needs or over indulge our senses. We starve ourselves or stuff ourselves to death. Then there are those that are in no position to do either.

Everywhere in the world there is hunger. I've seen it in the Philippines and in India. And it happens here too, in this fabled land of plenty. Though poverty here in the United States is nothing compared to that of the developing world, it doesn't make it any better. And the sensation of empty stomachs, living on the streets, being down and out is pretty universal.

Yesterday, I joined my Tita Evelyn at the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition, a small non-profit group that exists on donations and volunteer work. My mother also cooks for them once a week. And I was eager to see what they were doing. I know from talking to them both that they loved their volunteer work, that they had tapped into a beautiful way of expressing their love for their fellow man with the hours they spent there.

Seven days a week, on the corner of Sycamore and Romaine, the coalition food truck parks and sets up a food line, where hundreds of the area's struggling men and women get a nourishing hot meal, for many of them the only food they will eat on that day.

On Friday evening, I poured juice. Later, I washed serving trays and the giant soup pot with a garden hose at the back of their kitchen head quarters. It felt good to take part, to participate in compassion in action. We fed about 250 hundred in all.

I think its a worthy service to feed those less fortunate. But there's more to it than just food. Or rather, just as there are different kinds of hunger, there are different kinds of sustenance too. At the food line, the volunteers served more than just casserole, soup, and bread. They dished out smiles and kindness, encouragement and support.

In truth, everyone needs the nourishment of soul food. We all just need to unlock our personal storerooms and freely dispense hope, faith and love, which when given out is restored two-fold. This is the food that will change our world.

If you are in LA and would like to know more about the Coalition, please check out the following YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__HTBBA_8ec

For more info on how you can get involved: http://gwhfc.org/GWHFC_default.html

roots in city of angels

Blue skies in West Los Angeles today on the way to the Food Coalition truck.


Last week when I arrived in Los Angeles, I wrote this:

"I'm in LA. Home. Supposedly. Though it doesn't feel like it. I look around my mom's new apartment. Different. We were walking around Hollywood to dinner this evening. Different. Did I mention, we were walking, in LA? Different!"

I was feeling what I usually feel when I first touch down in LA: awkward.

But today, with only 3 days left of my time here, I feel what I also feel before each departure, this strange well of love. The city's quirks may frustrate me, having grown up here I feel justified complaining about them, but I also understand her. I've always felt an affinity to her strangeness, perhaps it reminds me of the awkwardness that I feel in my own person, this being struggling to be greater than she is, sometimes missing miserably, other times, well...

With a few days left to go, I'm running around like crazy. (Right now, I'm at Primo Cafe on Sunset Blvd stealing some moments to myself before running off to help my Tita (Auntie) Evelyn who is volunteering at a food truck feeding the homeless). And already today, I've had morning practice with Noah Williams at Silverlake, coffee with a yoga friend Sheila, brunch with my high school girlfriend Tracy, and taught my friend Marcel a mini yoga class at Equinox next door. After the food truck, I have a late dinner with my college friend Staci in Los Feliz. And there's more over the next two days!

Everything is concentrated. Its a potent mixture of nostalgia and love. And I am thinking the unthinkable: that I like LA. Its my loved ones who live here. They make the place. They also can't help but ask the question, when are you moving back? And today, between engagements, I did catch myself wanting more time, desiring to be closer.

I don't know why, but I'm always surprised when I feel all this amazing energy. This crazy place is home to so many people that I love. And because of them I will always have roots here, anchored by their oasis-like hearts in this expansive urban desert.

the weeping willow, woman warrior

My mother and I have been checking out the garden oasis of the Los Angeleno desert. Yesterday, we took ourselves to the Japanese Garden in Van Nuys, a project of the local water reclamation plant. There, we walked around, sat and meditated, and took photos. The 6 acres were filled with little gems: rock gardens, lotus ponds, shrubbery wonderland. But of all the trees, the weeping willows really caught my attention. In the brochure guide, it said that the tree was a symbol of the feminine: kind, understanding, flexible to change. Being very zen of course, the manicured pines that dotted the garden symbolized the masculine, strong (and in my opinion, stumpy in comparison to the elegant willow).

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be a woman. The roles we take up, some of it cultural, others seemingly built into our genetic code. And the willow really resonates with me. Its inherent softness. In terms of foliage, its a bountiful tree, one you can really take up shade under. Its graceful as wind sweeps its leafy tendrils hither and thither. In the Celtic tradition, it is associated with the moon, water and the goddess, with dreaming and intuition. In other cultures it symbolizes death, mourning and deep reflection.

If I were a tree right now, I would be a weeping willow. I feel so much of its strength, so much of its magic, and so much of its sadness.

I feel like I have to qualify the sadness--though I am, if I'm really honest, filled with a subtle sorrow--as one that sees the difficulties of the world, that observes it, feels the sting of it without being victimized by it because willows are strong too. Though their curtain of leaves bend to the wind, its center is steady, its roots are strong. Her branches are merely dancing.

tangents, star wars and silver linings

I was driving up Highland Avenue this evening on my way home to Hollywood where my mom lives when I see Han Solo, Darth Vader and Obi-Won Kenobi walking down the street, the later two with capes flowing in the wind, light sabers on hand. It made me smile, such is street life in Hollywood, colorful, strange and unexpected.

I love Star Wars and the universal themes that stitch the story together. I love the idea of "the force" and how there is a need to have balance between the archetypal opposing forces, light vs. dark, good vs. evil, man vs. machine, etc. Somehow, there is always a balance. And when things are out of balance, disaster strikes until balance between the two can return.

Balance was something I did not have a good handle on today as I wobbled in my some balancing yoga postures. I wasn't surprised, my body usually empathizes with my emotional state. And today, I was feeling wobbly internally too. So much has happened lately. So many changes and challenges.

There have been a few clouds hanging over my head these last few weeks. Some have been dense and foreboding.

Today, the sky has been dotted by clouds. But with each cloud, there is a silver lining.

I feel the sting of harsh words from a close family member. Through the hurt, though, I see more closely the things that are bothering me.

I feel alienated that many I lean to do not understand me, that the way I am dealing with things is different from their value systems. Then I get an email from Saras, a new acquaintance who just read this blog and understands where I am coming from, offering soothing "balm" and a friendly ear. I also receive a beautiful and understanding letter from my wise little sister.

I feel the heaviness of heart and whirl of emotions. From all sides, I've been feeling an assault. My dog dies. My mom challenges me. My open heart bleeds profusely (ok, I exaggerate, but it does trickle so). Then, just as I feel I'm hitting a low, Denise Hughes, a beautiful devi from the Universal Shivite Fellowship retreat that I've been attending, waves me down from my car quite out of nowhere to tell me that the chaos in the world (I'm amazed that she had sensed it, I think I seemed calm throughout the retreat) is also a part of God Consciousness too (our topic for today). It made me cry to hear it!

I feel the loss of a love, but am comforted by a friend whom I know will love me forever.

Its not an easy world. Things are not always as I wish they would be. Each up has a down. There is good, there is bad. But thank goodness that there is a balance in the force, even when we think there is none, its there, in the sidelines, waiting to have its impact. And while things aren't exactly even right now, I know that they are trying to be. Sunlight peeks behind each dark cloud. Where there is darkness, there is also this all pervasive light.

contradiction in terms

I am about to head to bed, again, later than I'd hoped. Outside, I hear choppers and sirens. It could be a war zone out there. The sky is this bright lilac gray. LA's electric smog-infused sky, so different from the breathtaking night-scapes of Boracay or Bellingham, where one sees stars against cosmic blackness. Here, the stars are on the side-walk, where tourist traipse over them. Earth bound, they need polishing, the City of Angels defeating logic.

So it makes sense that we meet here, the axis for contradiction in terms, he and I, redefined or rather finally defined as friends. Its a wonder that a love could be so great that it ends before beginning, that it could bypass the gravitational pull of two so in love it is like the force of celestial beings wanting nothing more than to orbit each other.

I am trying to make sense of it. But am I trying to reconcile the irreconcilable? Is love really so unwieldy? Or do we make a mockery of it by trying to define it at all? (Its no wonder the job has fallen into the hands of poets. Words alone are insufficient.)

I said to him today, "love knows no bounds." Its a cliche, but I believe it. Still, my limited head continues to be baffled by love's infinite vastness.

bay area integration

I've arrived home in Los Angeles. I use the term "home" loosely. Its where I grew up. Its where my mom lives. And when I come home to visit her, its here. Even when the apartment changes, its still LA--a topic which deserves it's own article, so complex are my feelings about this city. But I'll get to that later. For now, my thoughts gravitate to the list of friends that must be contacted, get together dates set, connections that I have only a brief time to revisit and tend to, my little desert cacti garden, dry but juicy.

But I know that somehow it will work out, as it has the last two and a half months, which has been absolute magic on the friend front.

The Bay Area, where I was just at, offered the most eclectic web of friends. I felt this interesting convergence of my different parts. My different social groups were all at once validating my presence, I could see who I was through their eyes. With Q, I am sweet college Karen, who she met in '98 when I was her resident. With Cybil and Gwen, I am Kazzie, the spastic balikbayan, American Filipino returning home to the Philippines. With Reggie, I am Kaz, former night owl in the Manila scene. With Deborah and Sharz, I am a fellow yogini and Mysore friend. With Randan, Reggie's beautiful partner, well, aside from a brief encounter 7 years ago, she got to know me for the very first time.

Recently, I've been mulling over this feeling of personal disintegration. There was my island life, my Manila life, my LA life, my life as a poet, my yoga life, my life as a writer. They all seemed so compartmentalized. There was some mingling here and there, but for the most part, each bit felt separate from the other--which I do recognize as a normal occurrence as well.

This last weekend, however, as I traipsed across the East Bay and SF to spend time with this eclectic assemblage of friends, I felt not disintegration but integration. Though these different segments didn't meet each other, they met the same person, me, who I am, the total amalgamation of my sum experiences, habits, personalities.

Most people, if they are objective and fair, will see what you let them. Perhaps, in the past I showed people a few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle out of my own reluctance and lack of self-confidence. I showed friends what I thought they would like about me. I anticipated judgment because I was judgmental of myself. This is hard to admit, let alone write. And to be honest, I didn't really understand it myself until now because as I type this I feel a knot loosen in my chest, a sign that this must be true. (I feel like I should apologize for such poor behavior on my part. It wasn't intentional, I promise...)

But recently, the events in the Pacific Northwest (heart ache induced stress followed by realization and acceptance) have forced some veils to drop. I feel the effects of it. I feel more real and vital, I feel more whole, I feel more certain of the world around me and of who I am. Something shifted. I stopped getting in the way of myself. And since then, I've let myself be. And this is who stepped off the plane in Oakland, the sum total of me, unabridged, uncensored, a little snotty-nosed, a little worse for wear, but wholly totally me.

To those lovely folks in the Bay Area who appeared out of the woodwork to greet me, thank you, I love you. Thank you for being a part of this journey!