Kathang-Pinay

when will we elect a poet for president? start here.
and then start a revolution.
or maybe we are already in the midst of one and don't know it.

Philippe Garcesto's Dream -- please email him at philippegarcesto@yahoo.com if you share his dream. I met Philippe at the Kapwa 2 Iloilo conference and I support his dream and vision. Please read the last two paragraphs...and you, too, will recognize these feelings.

Dear Friends,

Hey how's it going? I miss being in the Philippines. I'm back in the USA now, I just moved to Queens over in NYC. I've been here for about a week now, getting settled in.

I'm over here because I'm trying to start up a multi-media- discipline art collective here. I'm still writing the proposals to a local Filipino-American community center here, but I want to create an art movement here that represents fundamental change in the status quo. The purpose of the group is to empower the Filipino-American community by using art to illustrate the moderns truggles of the Philippines and the Filipino-American community with a broader implication of reaching out to Filipino workers all around the world.

But it won't be limited to exploring those struggles, it will be also be about providing the solution to the colonialism mindset by addressing the issues of 5 centuries of colonialism through the awareness of the self and through the celebration of our cultural heritage by fusing the past with the present to create a bold new future aligned towards living in balance with the planet and ourselves.

It is a tremendous goal, but one I am willing to fight for over here because I believe that if the people are unable to realize just how far the cage extends to, how can they truly be free? The corruption in the Philippines and the extent of the poverty there is directly related to colonial agression and the current economic stranglehold of the multinational corporations who are the heir to Columbus's conquests.

I do not have the knowledge to do this on my own, I need your help. It is my hope that through collaborating with you, together we can empower the Filipino-Youth to be proud of the cultural heritage while also bringing into the mainstream as a transformative cultural experience for the USA and the world. You have the knowledge and the connections in the Philippines, I think together through the internet we can do some inter-continental collobarations, video, visual, audio, workshops, etc.

I'm tired of living in a reality created by false material prophets. The world desperately needs a new direction, and it will not come from political leaders looking to maintain the status quo or make a tighter grip on freedom for the people. I am a child of the movement that will transform this planet.

I seek to find the balance in myself and the balance for the whole. I seek to empower the Filipino community, to be the transformative change agents. We were integrated into the USA for a reason, we were given the English language for a reason. There are 9 million Filipinos in the majority of countries in the world for a reason.

I've experience alot in the Philippines that has changed me fundamentally. Perhaps it is analagous to attempting to breathe air all of my life in the USA when in reality I had gills the whole time.

Ingats! Mahal,
Philippe

Adding Raul Pasamonte!

Leader

get your free copy of Slacker Uprising!

My Baybayin Oracle cards just arrived in the mail!
After reading all the literature and instructions, these are the first three cards that chose me:

Body/Quietly Contemplating/CLosed Door

true! true!

i caved in to facebook and i don't know what i'm doing!

This is Your Nation on White Privilege
by Tim Wise

A friend who works with "dreaming in the indigenous mind" suggested that what I'm going through is akin to an "initiation" into the next phase of my life. Initiations or rites of passage are usually accompanied by pain or suffering, chaos, disintegration, fear, a dark night of the soul, she said. Therefore, all the more important to be in community, to have a container, and have many witnesses as one passes through this process. It is also important to have rituals -- of protection, cleansing, healing -- which should be done within this circle of witnesses.

I am adjusting to this cocoon (it feels like it). The energy feels different. The focus is different. The body is talking more while the mind can now more willingly be silent. I am often surprised by tiny shifts in the consciousness. Some energies feel so new and yet so ancient.

While my sariling duwende (thanks to Kidlat Tahimik for this term) is reinventing itself, I am carried along by love pouring out of family and friends. Thank you to Venus for making sure I have Filipino indigenous music cds to accompany me.

a message from a self-named babaylan in the Philippines:

perhaps you have to explore the tacit field of visionary women and learn with them. as the saying goes, "arouse,engage,integrate and apply." when you do the babaylan life, your resources will manifest...

key word: TACIT

interesting convergences:

qi gong
shamanic journeying
yoga
belly dancing
dream weaving
angel cards
lumad music
long walks
werner herzog films

right now
inarticulate rendering
of what is both
beautiful and dangerous
i must
travel
teary-eyed
but pregnant
with the idea of
the small special
place calling
and wanting to
offer salve
refuge
i already know
what i love
awaits me.

In search of a language outside history...

by this i mean: i no longer want to write within the confines of Time. i want to write not to earn one more academic credit but to write in order to reveal our Beauty.

Time has fragmented, dismembered, beheaded, and grieved us and Yet! we are still just a breath away from our deep-seated Indigenous Soul. it has never abandoned us.

the oceans surrounding our archipelago carry its courship song to those whose ears are still tuned in to such mysteries.

in this way we keep going.