I get back to work tomorrow after a long week off (during which I went through minor surgery and major introspection). Do I dread it? A little. Do I look forward to it? Not as much as I should, but I like the work.

At the beginning of medical school, I had a thought that has stayed with me: I am learning to suffer. Not something you really want to hear coming from an age that feeds on hedonism, but I had the thought and I've been carrying it with me, trying to figure out what it means. 

What does it mean to endure life, for example? CS Lewis proposed in The Screwtape Letters that a long, peaceful, otherwise mundane life poses a greater threat to faith than a sudden instance of crisis. The more time I have to live, the more I understand this: at times the sheer weight of living makes me question whether God is real when I cannot see him, cannot feel him. It seems easier to believe in Him when I have a problem and need saving from it, and so difficult to see how equally I need him when life rolls ever on without obvious need for divine intervention. Thus, the necessary virtue of faith. And the necessary virtue of introspection. 

In the same breath, the end of my medical training seems so far away. The current reality of my situation is bleak. There is little sleeping and little contact with the outside world. The suffering wears you down because you wonder: is this all there is? And everyone tells you it gets worse. Does it? Will I make it out in one piece? 

There is no guarantee that anything gets better, but to endure is to take the daily burden of suffering and allow it to chip away at your character until you come out the sort of person you'd like to be. Will suffering properly mould me into the kind of person I wish I was? I certainly hope so. 

Here's a thought: there's an old riddle (arguably by George Berkeley) about a tree in the forest. If no one hears it fall, does it still make a sound? The short explanation: sound is, by definition, a perceived effect. If no one is around to perceive, then it doesn't matter if the tree objectively made noise. There is no sound. The argument seems ridiculous and too legalistic to take seriously, but I use it as a jumping point for my own tangential thought: we exist separately from how others see us, but we also exist to other people as certain versions of ourselves. Does that matter? Or is it, like the tree argument, something that sounds good legalistically, but doesn't do anyone any good in what we call "real life"?

I've been stuck on this poem by Jack Mueller for weeks–so, maybe it will stay with me for the rest of the year. 

I resolve to update this blog a little more often. However often that may be! 

It is the dawn of a new year and the end of my holiday. On my headboard, there are three poetry books lined up that I read in no particular order. Mueller, Doty and Ashbery are currently on rotation–my favorites, and my mentor's. 

Two nights ago, I went out with some friends–it's an odd thing to catch up with people you've known for so long but whose current lives you know nothing about. It's meeting a stranger with a familiar face. Someone said that the older you are, the more people become shadows of other people you remember–sounds like someone else's voice, looks like someone else's ears, smells like someone else's cologne. Meeting someone after a long period of absence is something like that. You remember them as themselves, but have to piece together who you remember them as vis a vis who they presently are. It is a constant process. 

A tangential thought to this: it's so easy to give up investing time into meeting up with people. Medical school is like a little circle in the Venn diagram that is convinced it doesn't need to intersect with anyone else's circle. It's so easy to be absorbed into this medical training bubble, and I think for the most part of my clerkship year, I've willingly participated in locking myself in the system. Then, I think of people I love and whether we'll have anything to talk about after years of me excusing myself from gatherings and parties. I think of how much compassion is necessary from those who love me in spite of my schedule.

at 74, Mueller bites it 
no thanks to cancer. 
at  65, Doty. 

Some others, without 
notice, no Wikipedia entry. 

No consensus on 
what became of them—some, 
heaven, others, still here 
watching over the stars as much 
as we still do, just less communicating 
(under the presumption that we 
are still communicating.) 

On that note: 
I sit down, and 
finally tune in-
to your favorite television series, 
this pretense of connection 
based on a common 
captivation. Maybe 

I don’t enjoy it, 
and fake interest because of 
your interest. Would you call it 
hypocritical, or would it 
move you? would it 

come to mind when I 
bite it at the age of 62? 

In between 
the beginning, and 
in between the 
end is a Shakespearean Act played 
out—all the world is a stage, every 
morning wake up 
naked and out of character, 


bare bones and back 
breaking after a lifetime 
so far of breaking 
in these feet, and every morning, 
dress our grins for the show, smile 
faking, we 


puff up 
lies at everyone we 
meet—I am aware, there is 
honesty, this 
Venetian masquerade is not e
verybody, the way the worst 
boys always quip “not all 
men,” but we counter with: “enough 
men to matter,” enough 


piston weight pressure on slouching 
shoulders for enough of us to 
play the game anyway, count the 
cards in our hand and bluff 
all the way—jester, joker 
smile though your heart is 
breaking and you’re 
tempted to take your 
one last breath. 


There’s a beginning, and there’s an 
end; there are mornings you need a little 
help seeing what waits around the 
bend


hope is an ocean inspired suitor, ebbing and 
flowing, sometimes here, and when you need him: 
disappearing. It is difficult 
going through rain cloud seasons with feet 
dangling, barely 


believing in prayers you 
whisper when things were 
going better. Understand: this 


is what faith looks like—take a deep breath in, 
and hold it steady. Everyone with me, exhale 
slowly. Notice this 


reflex arc handy: your lungs 
take deep breaths again, 
and again, 


even when you anorexia starve it of 
air, chest coup-de-tat fights you, doesn’t want this life to 
end. And, maybe now is a semi-colon, a 
pause in the story, see, 


we all need a little 
breather. We all get 
tired 
eventually, but 
hope will arrive 
eventually, its 


feet soaked through thick cotton 
socks after all the pain and the 
downpour rain, but meanwhile remember this 
reflex: take a deep breath in and hold it 
steady. Everyone with me, exhale
slowly. See, then 


our lungs welcome the 
sky again, we 
breathe again, our sighs 
out are reminders: this is not the end.

at ten years old, we 
climbed skinny trees, and 
scraped knobby knees, saw the city 
bird’s eye, and listened to the rustling of 
leaves, ten years later:


in place of trees,
we lego brick stack concrete
pancake layers: higher and 
higher until we need elevators, and
then, maybe they fit the criteria for 
skyscrapers. maybe, this time, we’ll find 
what we’re looking for: 
peer through the glass shoe 
window on the top 
floor, and won’t feel the need to axe 
hack this cityscape down, won’t feel the 
need to bring the sky closer to the 
ground, to fill our hands with news
paper that says we’ve reached the clouds. 


sixteen years ago, there were red winged 
butterflies morning greeting 
flowers with 
kisses before moving 
onto someone else’s plant box—the 
all organic liberal player, heart 
breaker—we learn from their pollinating patterns 


we are all thieves, mercilessly 
taking nature’s nectar—let’s army knife carve out a space for 
summer pavilions and 
canopies, uproot these wide mango 
trees and use them for 
fire, their bodies are good for 
keeping us warm, and this 
Nara: sturdy for shelter, and it is human


nature, instinct to reach 
outward, sometimes 
upward—skyward, sun 
peeking through the clouds, and we 
soak it all up through bare 
shoulders that 
burn instead of tan. there are no 
butterflies now, because there are no 
trees, just 


an urban concrete lego-land on life support, the Pasig
river a clogged up IV line and we try to 
scrape at the sides but don’t you 
remember, we sent away the 
guys who could do it 
better on their last 
payroll, now the land 
rolls down the bank of the 
river, where we put dams in place of 
trees—as if we knew any better. and maybe I’m a 
tree hugger, 
nature lover, 
hippie, 
greenie, 
idealist, 
environmentalist, 


just another 
girl who wants to teach her future
daughter how to climb a tree. If I’m 
lucky, she’ll learn to do ir better than me.

identified by drink more than by 
name, and espresso caffeine isn’t the 
only kind of morning 
rush, it is saying my name like 
brush strokes and getting 
lost after swimming the wrong 
stream, down, and no one ever expects to end 
up in today’s version of 
here, but here 
you are: with a friend’s 
dr pepper robitussin americano, and another’s 
iced cappuccino, and still trying to coin 
flip between two kinds of 
beans, as if Jack really believed in all this 
magic. and 

maybe it’s time we round our 
backs, cat stretch 
forwards, 
slouch, cave in-
wards. yesterday 

I was sniper 
centered on north pole 
things. today is equator 
different, all kinds of fireplace 
warm and no blister 
burns. and maybe 
​
Jack was magic bean 
right instead of asylum not right in other 
places, and maybe it’s Apollo really 
bright here, not just an Iris hallucination 
lie. and, dr stranger mouths, “how 
will you know if you never try” 
-out, train for decathlon-like 
death, it’s not caving 
in if you’re expected to Pokemon 
​trainer put up a bloody good fight.

Back in high school, and throughout the first year of university, I had a brief (let's call it an intense) interest in Asian dramas and pop artists. It’s a bit out of character. I generally shy away from TV shows, celebrities, and the whole tinsel town experience. I’m usually the last to know when a personality gets into a scandal. I’m not even entirely sure I can get through an entire r&b song without changing the station. The scene is not something I’m attracted to.  So, to have a brief history of watching rather predictable love stories, listening to Asian rap, and googling Asian names just to see what they were up to is something unexpected. In fact, it’s become a bit of an embarrassing joke for me. 
​
Looking back, my attraction to the Asian scene had little to do with compelling Korean lyrics (I can’t understand Korean),or interesting plot lines (Taiwanese dramas are notorious for being predictable). Subconsciously, I think I was looking for someone to identify with, and I found that in Asian pop culture.

When I was younger, my favorite characters in TV shows, or comics, or movies would be the Asian girl. There weren’t many of them. Many articles suggest that children have a hard time delineating TV with reality, but I never felt like TV was real. No one looked like me, my family or my classmates. Everyone on screen had sharp noses and yellow hair. Everyone wore casual clothes to school. They went out to the mall after class hours. Everyone I knew had dark hair. And we all wore uniforms to school. We had to ask permission from our parents before going out even on a weekend. The culture was very different. But I think my longing for relatable figures extended beyond seeing non-Asians on screen. Even in the Philippines, my friends and I are considered exotic. Most of us have Chinese parents, and look extremely East Asian. I barely speak my mother’s Filipino tongue. In college, the most common question I got when meeting someone new was “so, where are you from?” or something along the lines of “you must speak fluent Chinese.” In many, many ways, I felt very other. I was unable to identify with local celebrities, and foreign celebrities. I was unable to identify with people outside the culture I grew up with.

​Late into high school, suddenly, just as I was becoming an angsty teenager, my class got a young Chinese teacher who introduced us to modern songs, my dad took the family to Taiwan for the first time, and the k-pop scene boomed. All at once, I had so many things I could identify to. In a way, it felt like there was a subgroup I had an affinity to—a part of global society where people didn’t ask me if I was attracted to people outside my race, or a part of society where people also found it culturally uncomfortable to talk about sex or deep seeded feelings in general but completely comfortable to talk about diarrhea or some other “embarrassing” medical condition. I’m sure this isn’t the case across the board, but the point is the feeling of belonging to a sub group. Being exposed to different cultures is great, but when you’re always seen as the one from the exotic culture, it is nice to find a space where you don’t have to explain yourself. 

And my experience with Asian pop culture has been overall enjoyable. In high school, we used to sing along to 光良’s 童話 after Chinese class. My cousin, a few years above me in school, first introduced me to Jay Chou. My Korean classmate and I bonded over K-pop back in the beginning of college. I’ve been back to Taiwan every year (sometimes more frequently) since I first went. If I remember correctly, Japanese anime heavily influenced the way I dressed throughout high school.

I think, in some ways, I fell out of the pop culture habit because, obviously, the experience of being Asian is not homogenous. As I grew older, I realized that I didn't identify with the Korean or the Japanese culture--mostly because I am neither Korean nor Japanese. But my stint with their pop cultures have, in some ways, given me a greater appreciation of the culture they hold. And, in some ways, I can see the overlap of my culture and their culture. If only for this purpose, I'm grateful for my short obsession with K-pop and Japanese anime. It's broadened my horizons, and helped me appreciate my own heritage so much more.

I also think there's value to obsessing over something closer to home. However odd that sounds. It makes you lean into your culture instead of away from it. I never felt ashamed of looking Chinese, or felt like I would be prettier if I had western features. I think part of that is because I was more enamored with Asian personalities than Western ones. If that makes any sense.

Earlier this year, an old friend sent me a link to Big Bang’s new song. The title was shamelessly suggestive—something unheard of in K-pop when we were in our late teens. It’s interesting, we both thought, how things have changed. Still, watching a pink haired young man sing about sex seems more identifiable than watching a blonde sing about an ex-lover. My friend and I have not talked since, but this is the way things go. You remember each other fondly, then allow the memory to stay in the past. 

As a closing statement to my long ramble, I’d say I’m pretty much done with my K-pop and Japanese anime phase. My connection with it was, to be honest, on a rather superficial level rather than a deep, cultural one. I am still inclined to put on Jay Chou once in a while—and I mostly understand the lyrics now so I don’t have to feel so embarrassed. Now that I'm older, especially, I get touched by his song about filial piety. I think it’s important for anyone and everyone to feel like they can identify with what goes on in the media. I suppose it’s partly the point of entertainment—we’re supposed to feel a degree of fondness with personalities. The goal is to make us (the audience) feel something, and that draws heavily on how we were raised, what we value, what we aspire towards, etc. But at the same time, I think it’s important that minorities are represented. I think it’s important that our stories are told. It’s bad enough that we feel as though some people fetishize our culture. What’s worse is seeing its value diminished and its essence misrepresented just because there are people who aren’t better exposed.

For some reason, medical school is when I develop frequent sore throats. I'll call it what it is: my health is very poor, and I haven't been taking care of myself for the sake of my academics. Here are the consequences. 

A professor once said that at one point in your medical education, you tend to think you have one of the diseases being described in the textbook. We just saw a kid with a bad cold the other day, so I'm now wondering if I've got what he's got. 

I probably don't, but it makes for fun poetry. 

admit it: we only mouth the
words to sound like we understand what it
means, and that starfish doesn’t look
like anything. it is all
tentacles and no stars. and
marks are just squiggles
someone else drew. nothing
more than temporary
tattoos. you and I—we are
real. these words are just brush
strokes, but we think it over
​again, and laugh at everything.

this particular hobby of mine isn't meant to age well, but it's heaps of fun while I'm young and reckless.

these days turn 
​to rheumatic hinged 
hips, and fibrous hanging knee 
caps, and hindsight spikes we don’t 
regret—play 
ball, play 
all, play 
hearts with it. 
win us all over.

Sunday
Dani: ​There was a big bush here yesterday, and now it's little.
Truffles: Little? Yes, it's gotten little. When will it grow back?
D: Months, years, who knows? Never if you keep chewing on it. 
T: Never?! Should I sample all the ones in the back?
D: No! 
T: I should, then, just in case I can never have this one ever again. 

Tuesday
D: You're happy today. 
T: Happiness is relative. 
D: To what? 
T: How much pellets are left in my bowl. 

Friday
D: I'm home! 
T: Took you long enough. What do you do behind that big black door anyway? 
D: There's a lot to do behind the big black door. 
T: Well, there's none of me there, so I don't understand why you'd go. 
​D: It's a little more complex than that. 
T: Maybe I should go with you next time. 
​D: I don't think so. 
T: Well then, don't go! 

Happy 4th of July from here in the US of A!

​My summer is nearly over, so my muse is once again restless. Thus, more poetry. Hurrah! Anyway, a word on the land of the free: America, to me, has always represented equity, and opportunity, and hard work, and freedom, and (extended) family. Despite the current political climate, I still believe that there can be hope and there can be peace–the thing people migrated to America for years and years ago. Spending the 4th of July here is interesting. It's made me believe in all the "naive" hopes and dreams I once had when I was seven. 

Maybe that's a good thing? 

​4th of July: we are crazy
dancing, feet instinct
moving to live band
music.


In the horizon the sky is
neuron synapsing: hand grazing mine
electric, cliff diving
euphoric, aeroplane
take-off fantastic--


your
lips pressed against mine.
One day. The hope of it.


Today: your
lips curled up to your eyes.
There are film reels of me
dancing to jazzy
songs.


And the horizon: gentle
pixie dust fall—wonderful,
awestruck, believing in fairies
again. And forgiveness
again. And grace
again. And
God again.

You have become the 
eyes underneath her 
bed, the darkness in her 
closet, the anxiety shaking her 
bones, the way you always promised you 
wouldn’t be: 

strong. 
destructive. 
hurtful. 

I watch your 
horns prop up your 
halo, and you’re still 
side-glancing into 
mirrors, believing in your own 
​reflection.

In e.e. cummings no capitalized letters style 

​A brief Truffles update: she is no longer all that small, but she forgets how long she's grown. She still tries to fit into pots meant for sproutlings and baby bunnies. I have no idea whether this hurts her feet, but she's a trooper.

A brief update on my life: I've got a month and a half before turning it in for the summer! Here's to one last sprint to reach this year's finish line. Send prayers my way because I'd really like to be promoted to third year medicine. 

​Anywho: onto the poem!

we are a pair of thieves, merciless
-ly taking—her from the leaves plants air out to 
dry, and me from the female counterpart of father 
time. she never seems to side-eye judge my 
greed—and I twisting tongue justify hers. 

there is serenity in communication 
barriers: no words just the pounding of paws and 
feet, no fear just exhale 
confessions into pointed 
ears: understand 

me more than my 
race understand how to be 
human. it is an odd species i family-belong to, and 
black-sheep wish i could understand you instead of ghosts of 
men drowning insults in sweet nectar kisses—i can hear the innuendos in their 
snake-smiles, can taste desire in their gaze, can feel heart pounding punchlines miles 
away. 

love is 
primal. politics is 
civil, so, we go on, one-night-stand
pretend it's no big deal and virgin shame
conservatives, and tiptoe around 
feelings, utter cover up 
confessions meant to feign 
embarrassment while shutterbug taking 
memories of what we really keep 
secret. 

my truth is not silent, and, therefore 
i am primal—hair tossed in the 
wind, right side shaved 
short for the brevity of our time 
together, for the 
sweltering summer months i spent 
out in the open road to 
nowhere. 

if i could steal the hands of 
time, wind it back to twenty 
fourteen, i’d steal leaves aired out to 
dry instead of glances in your direction. 

i’d steal star-crossed 
dreams and words from 
civilization, shake out excess 
instinct and keep going. 

i’d find her earlier, and 
learn how to use paws instead of 
hands. it is our handshake language: 
i call her name, assume she listens, and she 
puts her head in my palm, assumes my constant presence.