since LA

a year ago today (august 16, 2013), i moved to los angeles. marking the first time in my life i would establish long-term residency outside of the bay. it had been a crazy few days leading up to the actual move. my original target date was august 15. but when remotely searching online listings for months yielded nothing, dad suggested the week before,

why don't we go down there to find your place?

monday morning he phoned me from the kitchen, leaving a voicemail saying, 

CJ, CJ, wake up! we have to go. ok, CJ...wake up.

and off we went. the two of us drove down not knowing how long the search would take.

we'll stay until you find a place. i packed a bag for a week.

i hope it doesn't take that long! 

a few days earlier i booked a cheap hotel online located at wilshire & western for two nights figuring we could always extend our stay as needed. arriving in the late afternoon, i hopped on my computer, browsing listings, making phone calls and scheduling appointments while he took a nap. later we walked to dinner nearby. over all-you-can-eat korean bbq, we cordially argued about the present-day relevance of labor unions. then called it a night.

tuesday morning, i checked the postings again. on craigslist, there was a new listing almost too good to be true. everything i had been looking for at the right price. there were no photos included which made me wary of the accuracy of the description. it had only been posted 30 minutes earlier so i rushed to send a response right away. in the elevator on the way back from breakfast, i got a voicemail from the manager with the exact address of the apartment. we headed there right away hoping to be able to view it.

upon arriving, the manager wasn't answering her phone. stuck waiting around, i walked across the street to check out another vacancy sign posted on a gate. "camille?" a girl asked as i stood on the sidewalk waiting for the maintenance guy of this building to show me the apartment. it was the younger sister of a a high school classmate. she was living west hollywood but happened to be visiting a friend in the area. we caught up for a little bit, and she recommended checking out her neighborhood for vacancy postings.

we made our way to weho only to finally receive a phone call from the manager of the "too-good-to-be-true" apartment to come see the it right away. we returned, and i went in by myself, folder of paperwork and checkbook in hand. i loved it and applied then and there. spent the rest of the day gathering additional application materials. after preparing all the documents at kinko's, we celebrated with sushi and ice cream.

wednesday morning, we checked out of the hotel. the two nights i had initially booked turned out to be enough for the task. i submitted the extra materials, deposit and first month's rent checks, and the place was practically mine. i took my dad inside to get his seal of approval. not that it was required. in our adulthood, i've appreciated that dad [and mom] have let us make our own decisions trusting that they have raised us well enough to make good choices. but i wanted the affirmation because it was not possible without him. it was a mission we accomplished together, in less than 48 hours at that. content in our achievement, we headed home, taking detours at porto's for breakfast and in santa barbara for lunch with my great aunt.

thursday was for an ikea run, loading up the u-haul and saying final farewells. then it was back to LA on friday with dad behind the wheel of the moving truck, and mom and me driving in the car. over the next few days, we worked to transform my new apartment into my new home. living without electricity and visiting the corner taco truck for sustenance.

are you happy?

he asked because that's what all the effort was for and that's all he wanted for me. the answer a year ago was whole-heartedly yes as everything seemed to be falling into place as i had hoped. but my heart has broken many times since then. others have said that loss has taught them to live better, love better. but i've been too distracted, too exhausted and too sad to give it a good try. maybe reflecting on the past year is a step. or maybe for right now, it's okay to finally stay still in the grief and just miss him.

i feel it all

my heart wrenches as mom, my aunts, and uncle visit the casket one more time. mom is then the last sibling standing by as the funeral director removes inay's jewelry and places the pieces in her hands. our sobs reach their height as the casket is closed. and it is at that moment my cousin olivia's 2-year old daughter (the youngest member of our entire family) innocently exclaims, "bye, super lola!" and we all manage to laugh through our tears.

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a few months later, many of us are together again...this time shedding tears of joy as my cousin john marries his boyfriend since college. there are few dry eyes in the place...most present at the ceremony have known for a while the sincerity and unselfishness of their love for one another. a nearly perfect celebration of a wonderful couple only tarnished by the absence of my uncle, who refused to come to his own son's wedding.

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these past few months have brought many moments of mixed emotions (hope/grief, happiness/bitterness, excitement/anxiety, etc.). and as opposite as they may be, there has been no denying any of them. no subduing their intensity. no chance of filtering out the good. the only option being to feel it all.

we can work it out

1. we walk down the stairs to the platform of the 16th street bart station. our cousin has dismissed us from her birthday celebration earlier than expected due to the departure of half of the party, too long a wait for a bowling lane, and consideration of our work schedules the next day.

"pittsburg/bay point train in 2 minutes," my brother points out on our right. i look to our left and see, "daly city train in 2 minutes." perfect timing.

as our respective trains approach, we exchange a high five and side hug. small gestures of consolation and comfort to counter the heavy weight of grief in the air this week. we go our opposite directions.

2. buskers begin announcing their performance on the other end of the train car. they are raising funds for some reason or another. as i fiddle with my phone, they start to play a crowd-pleaser. it's the beatles. like many on this train, i've probably heard this song hundreds of times before. but when they get to these lyrics, the words seem to echo in my ears and head...

"life is very short, and there's no time 
for fussing and fighting, my friend"

3. the internet on my phone or nextbus doesn't seem to be working, and so i start my walk home from rockridge bart. i'm stopped in my tracks by something i have never noticed before. four familiar faces in a window with words that remain too true:

it's 9am in the philippines

i imagine my mom is still jet-lagged from her flight and my dad has made his way back to manila from bali.

the house in merville filled with relatives, food, and sadness.

age & travel

a writer friend of mine wrote that "the older he gets, the more he travels, the less he knows." i understand what he meant now.

it seems the more places i see and experience, the bigger i realize the world to be. the more that i become aware of, the more i realize how relatively little i know of it. how many places i still have to go, how much more of it there is still to learn.

maybe that's enlightenment enough. to know that there is no final resting place of the mind. no moment of smug clarity. perhaps wisdom, such that it is, for me, means realizing how small i am, and unwise, and how far i have yet to go.

~anthony bourdain (at the end of his peru episode in season 1)

seasons & reasons

the seasons here change subtly, and you really have to pay particular attention to notice when it happens. i feel like absence most characterizes the changes.

with the departure of summer, i can no longer smell the sweet scent of jasmine, there are no more roses in bloom and the warmth of the sun leaves us earlier everyday.
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certain turnings of the seasons are so vivid to me that i can remember exactly what i was doing or what song was playing...

one year ago, i was contentedly plugging away at an excel sheet at work with my headphones on.

they say people in your life are seasons
and anything that happen is for a reason

my mind happened to be lingering on this lyric when the phone rang.
mom was calling and she had that tone that she only uses for the gravest of matters.

i hung up
and didn't believe it because it was only hearsay,
but more so because i didn't want to believe it.
i didn't believe it until the next day
and after a series of tearful phone calls with childhood friends.

finally, i dialed one of the few phone numbers i still have memorized.
the goal: condolences and strength
for a dear teacher, neighbor and friend.
she didn't pick up and instead i got the answering machine.
the recorded greeting was mr. b's cheeful voice.

and it broke my heart from that moment on.
that he would never again interrupt our mini reunions in the brucia living room
    camera in hand, prompting us to say "whiskey!"
    instead of "cheese" at the snap of the shutter
that he got to see me graduate from college,
    but would not see his grandkids do so.
that i assumed he would attend my wedding someday.
that someone so full of life and love was gone.

the grief lingered longer than i expected
as a heavy weight in my chest
in the exasperated sobs that put me to sleep
on many of last october's nights.

the overt sadness eventually faded
and deceivingly manifested itself
as a false sense of urgency
under the guise of a carpe diem attitude.

and when that facade was stripped down,
i relearned how to take my time
and finally came to recognize the
blessings among the blunders,
love within the loss.

r.i.p. mr. b, thank you for sharing your love with the world

these are troubling times, but
while loss changes,
it's only love that truly transforms.

bookend encounters

a drizzly february morning.
1st task of the day: purchase snacks for a meeting in sf.
i'm early, and trader joe's is still closed.

alone, i wait, earbuds in, somewhat dazed,
not fully recovered from the spell of sickness
that kept me in bed for half the day before.

8:50am
a man rides up on his bicycle and waits too.
we begin with pleasant small talk,
but the conversation quickly turns
and he starts to vent his
frustrations and anger with
unemployment, hunger, homelessness, authority, life...

our discussion never actually ends.
i don't quite have the right words to say in response.
he trails off and shuffles among the crowd
that is making their way through the store's open doors.

ash wednesday mass that night
i say a little prayer for him.
for better days.
for his peace of mind.
i forget about all this until...


last night.
it's almost 10 o'clock
and i'm just leaving good friday service.

the next bus is in 27 min
so i opt for a less direct route home.

sneaks, jeans, backpack with
hood up over my head
to thwart an unexpected chilly breeze.
i feel like a student again
walking past people's park
reminded of this campus's strange coexistence of
privilege and poverty.

hello. you were sitting next to me at church, right?

yes, i was.

in half a block we exchange niceties & names:
the typical
how do you do?
where are you from?
where are you headed?

then the inevitable
(and these days often touchy)
what do you do?

i give my standard answer
then hesitantly ask him in return.

i'm not into anything at the moment,
but things are just starting to come together for me.
i was homeless for a few years,
but now i have a roof over my head.

we come to the corner of telegraph & dwight
where we are to part ways.

i'm headed in this direction now.
i'm glad to hear that things
are starting to look up for you.

thank you.
what was your name again?

camille.
in case i don't see you,
happy easter.

i extend my arm out for a handshake
and receive
a hug.

the decisive moment

there is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment

thanks for reminding me about this concept earlier this week kevin! it worked out well because i know that other photo-a-day companions are starting to realize that moments to get that perf shot are incredibly fleeting.

in photography class, we saw hundreds of slides from many of the masters. one of them was henri cartier-bresson, a pioneer of street photography and master of candid portraits. not only did he create an inspiring body of photographic work, but he also gracefully articulated this concept of the decisive moment in photography:

"There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever."

isn't that crazy to wrap your head around? one solitary instance when elements of the world come together in a stunning way that can be immortalized through photography or otherwise reduced to memory. i love the potential to seize the decisive moment, but in attempting to do so there are so many more chances i frustratedly miss out on. such is photography...and life. it is worth it to keep trying for those moments.

one more quote from hcb...

"To take a photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart. It's a way of life."

randomly a few weeks back some guy sitting next to me on bart between west oakland and city center said something similar about the mind and the heart needing to be the best of friends. my mind has known where i want to be for a while. it's just my heart hasn't quite caught up to speed. or maybe it's the other way around?

me, a year ago

randomly logged into the xanga today after a loooooong while and saw my second to last entry:

if i know one thing right now, it is this: life has never been more unpredictable than at this moment. and it's not that i have no idea what i want to do with my life or that i don't have a plan. i actually have a fairly decent idea of what i want in the long-run. it's what can happen day-to-day until the long-run that makes life now so crazy.

when i thought i didn't get into this volunteer program, i bought a roundtrip ticket to san diego for christine's wedding. roundtrip...a cycle, a circle, coming and going the same way. but fate twists and it seems for now i'm over with cycles: academic, emotional, or what not. for now, i don't have any set routes, any commitments, any routines.

after exchanging my roundtrip ticket, here i am with only a one way ticket to nyc. i will definitely be back, just not necessarily the same way i left.

that was me early june 07: back from the graduation parties in san diego, berkeley life boxed up in the garage, days in the u.s. numbered, wondering how the hell i was gonna pack for a summer out of this country. more than that, i was just so damn eager to change up my rhythm & get a new perspective. with a year passed since then, i happily see most of the dreams i had in mind fulfilled. and the few that weren't...well, i guess the events of this year changed me, and thus changed my mind. or maybe more appropriately...changed my heart. what felt right a year ago, suited me a year ago. me a year ago: high off possibilities and unable to even imagine what experiences the next month would bring. me today feels overwhelming drawn to chill moments, subtle charm, and certainty (not to say my adventurous, wanderlust days are over).

different phase in life
different expectations
different wants

and i'm glad

living and dealing with hypocrisies

EVERYBODY has them.
some hypocrisies are too deeply ingrained in my life and personal history to even do anything about. i mean, how do i justify...

...practicing a religion that was imposed on my native people by colonizers?

OR

...a berkeley education paid for my father's pharmaceutical sales income?

i'm fully aware of these hypocrisies (or maybe they're more ironies?), but i have decided to leave those be.

then there are those that i know i can choose to make different. what is integrity and credibility anyway? in my mind i know it includes deed following word, and vice versa. which is one of the main reasons i'm planning on making the move back to the east bay. i work for an org that hopes to decrease the effects of climate change by creating better transportation and land use options. all the while, here i am driving my mini-suv to bart and commuting 2 hours a day! some people (esp. my family) don't understand my logic on this. bottom line: i'm living with these inconsistencies and will adjust for them as necessary.

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came in late with watching "the wire," but enjoying it so much now. i love the bits of street philosophy especially when it speaks to what i've been thinking. just watched episode 6 from season 2 where d'angelo in a prison book club discusses the great gatsby:

He's saying that the past is always with us: where we come from, what we go through, how we go through. all that shit matters. It's like you can change up, you can say you somebody, you can give yourself a whole new story. But what came first is who you really are. And what happen before is what really happened. And it don't matter that some fool say he different...cuz the only thing that make you different is what you really do, or what you really go through...Gatsby, he was who he was and he did what he did. And cuz he wasn't ready to get real with the story, that shit caught up to him.

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in other camille hypocrisies...WHAT THE EFF was i thinking on saturday? had a fitness afternoon running around gg park and playing soccer & ultimate with the co-workers. then ruined it all with an evening of over-partying that ended badly (to say the least). sore muscles and hungover is never a good combo. that ish caught up with me, and i paid for it.

opposites

hands down one of my favorite blogs right now is "the glamourbaby trails" by ruby of ill-literacy. ever since her "SAVE CHIVALRY. Please?" post, i've been following pretty regularly.

in a recent post, she wrote about being ruled too much by her emotions when she writes. that struck me because i'm the exact opposite...worrying that i'm too ruled by composure. i looked at my blog in the past couple months, and found that no where do i reveal the overwhelming joy & gratitude i've been feeling during this time. that kind of stuff i usually hide away in my head or the journal. so proclaiming now to share more of my emotional vulnerability...which i should not confuse with weakness but think of as revelations of the heart.
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pre-pcn @ venus on shattuck: raspberry & chocolate chip pancakes plus chicken sausage scramble brunch shared by two "more-than-twin-best-homies" (self-proclaimed due to similar life circumstances like becoming the presidents/execs of their respective student cultural organizations). two dear friends who are similar in many ways, but very different in others.

one plays with the concept of being single right now because she's been in relationships for most of the past 5 years: "there are some goals that i feel like i need to accomplish on my own." the other who has been single responds "yah, it's cool doing your own thing, but sometimes there's some adventures that are better shared with another person." they sip their hot cocoa and ponder the enigma, not with self-pity but with self-awareness because whichever circumstance it is...life is still so good right now.

sailing on

life always reminds us

life perfect ain't perfect
if you don't know what the struggle's for