Lots of Monkeys

Where to begin?

At the beginning? From my birth?

My parents are from the Philippines and I acknowledge there is a whole wealth of knowledge, and culture, and life histories that contributed to who I am.

But reciting from memory, I feel like I don’t know a lot.

A short and incomplete list off the top of my head:

The Aswang. Lapu-Lapu. 400 Years of Spanish Oppression. The Marcos Dictatorship followed by a remarkable in its miracle of non violence People Power Revolution. Chocolate Soup. Eating a duck egg.

A smattering of embarrassing to my own ears Tagalog.

I’ve been complimented for my Tokyo accented Japanese but here I am. A world where a deceptively young looking and simultaneously matronly Filipino woman clicks her tongue, shakes her head, and simply says, “Sayang.”

The only thing I really know is how I got to where I am now. That part is the only reliable part. So the beginning.

Which I guess means what I know about my parents.

This blog is sort of a return to form of sorts, maybe an intermediate step, but on the other hand maybe I can never go back.

2001 entries:

Been up for a few hours so I mixed up a drink that’s half orange juice and half energy drink.

I’m calling it a “Guru-mosa.”

2021 entries:

Woke up at four this morning to avoid The Others, couldn’t stay indoors forever.

After all, laundry was not going to do itself. I didn’t realize I could have been adding a little detergent to the prewash cup this whole time. Not sure if the colors on my masks are brighter since the last wash, gonna check my instagram later for comparison pics!

We are double masking as The Pandemic continues, and supplies everywhere seem to be dwindling. Not that it matters lately, with our delivery infrastructure silently failing these past few years.

But seriously, these two week delays are getting out of hand. We’re almost out of shelf stable vanilla soy milk. Been drinking so, so many lattes at home lately!

Today is the first day in a long time that I’ve felt like singing. It’s been such a long time since I’ve felt like singing. What a terrible thing to write.

Today is also the first day in a long time that I’ve felt like being visible again.

Let me back up a bit.

Back when I decided to take a sabbatical from social media. I was just getting sick of reading everything over the course of the previous administration.

Every lie.

Every unjust, hurtful statement.

Every… you know, I’m going to be honest, this was just about every time anyone associated with the previous administration opened their mouth and said anything.

My personal reserves ran dry.

So I decided to take a break. I reviewed the last thing I remember posting. It was a picture on Instagram of a board game I played at a friend’s house. I ducked out, announced nothing, and decided to use that time differently.

I focused inward. I threw myself into personal non public slacks, private signal messages, and worked on building better relationships with my relatives and my found family.

Just about a year in, about a month before I was set to return, a pandemic happened.

A Pandemic. The kind of thing that happens in history books. The great plagues of yore. And even then, it’s only something I’ve read about. Surely we live in a time and age where we know how to handle these things because of science, and reason.

Now, 400,000 people are dead. Clearly, I was wrong. I was wrong about a lot of things. About my neighborhood, about America, about my career.

Time passed and life changed. In some ways better, in some ways worse, in a lot of ways different.

I thought I was going to make it to the second year, but well, here we are.

The first day in a long time that I’ve felt like singing, and it feels wonderful.

I’m going to analyze my Spotify Playlist that an Artificial Intelligence made for me. This is over the past year so buckle up.

I had some quick observations but then one long form analysis so enjoy.

• Lots of what can be described as High Energy Dance
• Slightly concerned about the party like it’s the last night of our lives theme
• Yes Far East Movement Still exists
• K/DA had five releases this year
• Have you spoken to your child about doing your Homework While Listening to Lo-Fi Chill Hip Hop
• I got that summertime sadness, but I found love in a hopeless place just staying alive one more time.

One More Time – Daft Punk

This song just seems like a strangely appropriate anthem for the year. The song starts with a lo-fi sample that seems stuck in time. Did someone hit the jukebox and the song started over? What day is it? Are we at a party? Where am I?

The sample sounds like a cd skip in rhythm. Each time it starts over, the song is slowly added to. This time the sample gets upgraded. Now there’s a vocalist and different filters. Each iterative loop starts with the same sample, but adds something else.

The song ends simply by fading out, but still lingers. It’s ongoing, maybe it’s moved on somewhere else but it’s still going.

And of course the Title and oft repeated lyric, “One More Time.”