kalamansi and Agape

my mind is racing.
so much keeps happening.
how to keep up?
(subtext: why do i feel compelled to “keep up?”)
(more subtext: what exactly am i trying to “keep up” with again?)

i specifically didn’t sked anything major for myself for the time between coming back from the states and going off to the last block of the Waldorf teacher training. i thought 10 days with nothing really major scheduled would be good for me. (i am reminded that i still need to write a pentatonic song for recorder; that was a personal goal of mine before the 3rd block. but, i don’t think that counts as ‘anything major’ scheduled.)

in theory, it was a good idea. in practice, the days filled up a bit.

well, at least i’m improving. i used to give myself like 3 days after returning, if that, before i was charging off to do the next big thing. and then it was a week, but i scheduled all of these major things to do, everyday, or when i was feeling ‘kind,” every other day. i did that a couple three-four times. and, i am grateful for a particular gchat exchange with my friend Sundaresvani where she reminded me that i can actually make my schedule so it’s not so unreasonably ridiculous. (my words, not hers.)

at the moment, i am in the midst of a dwindling-faster-than-i-would-like-10-full-days.
AND, i am grateful that i’ve done this back and forthing enough to learn some valuable information about myself.

like, travel takes a lot out of me.
particularly international travel.
crossing all of those time zones and date lines.
saying goodbye. (again.)
saying hello. (again.)
being up in the air for the better part of a day.
realizing that the concepts of “day” and “night” feel so contrived.

arriving on the other side of the freakin’ earth, at the end of it.
in another land.
with a set of different rules and customs.
and languages.
and climate.
and money.

it’s crazy.

don’t get me wrong, i appreciate the magic of airplanes.
i agree wholeheartedly with comedian, Louis CK, when he said that we all should be shouting “wow!” the whole time we are flying up in an airplane…because
we are “sitting in a chair…
in the air.”

WOW!

AND, i know there is a way that i feel scrambled up after doing this back and forthing. it’s like when my physical body arrives on the other side of the earth, my etheric body is trying to pick up the rhythm of the new land and adjust accordingly, my astral body was already there and is like, “what took you?”, and my spirit is scattered throughout, encapsulating all of it and, perhaps, still mostly at the other place and on the way. it takes awhile for everyone to get synchronized again. and all four of them are like, “dag. she’s doing that back and forthing thing again. attention everyone: REGROUP!”

i AM getting better at it tho.
and, it’s a lot.
perhaps it is necessary, this discombobulation.
i mean, there should be some kind of felt impact, right?
some kind of marker that a long ass journey has occurred.
give props.

it’s holy week here, and perhaps that factors into the discombobulation.
intensity is in the air.
yesterday, i drove to angeles to my favorite frozen yogurt place.
(it was a kind of last supper gesture before the master cleanse.)
and on the way, i must have passed at least 50 hooded young men, walking barefoot on the hot, hot asphalt, beating their backs to a bloody, pulpy rawness. their backs are so red with blood, i don’t think it’s real. like it’s Hollywood. and, i note, that there is something in me that wants to shield myself from this truth: these men, for many reasons mostly unknown to me, have chosen to take up this practice every Lenten season.

and, it is really hot nowadays.
summer in pampanga is rough.
the sun is intense, relentless.
and it’s only early summer at that.

i took Tita Fely, Rowell’s mom, to mass at the san fernando cathedral this morning. she asked me to take her when we were walking in the holy week procession last night. we were behind the San Pedro. she wanted to go because there was a special mass where all of the priests from all over pampanga were all going to be there to receive a blessing from the bishop, anoint some oils, etc.
also, Rowell was singing.
that’s why i wanted to go.

the whole mass, in it’s totality, was quite a to-do.
all the pageantry,
all the robes,
all the pomp and circumstance.

my favorite part was the processional of all of the priests dressed in identically beautiful ecru robes. i was sitting near the aisle, in the second to the last pew, right side, and i could see the details of their costume. all the layers, collars, and sash thingies. so fussy! perhaps all priestly robes are like this. i remember helping dress Paco Sensei for ceremonies last year and thinking, “what’s with all the fuss?” all the pulling and tucking and straightening. and then i remember seeing my Teacher, the first time, all gussied up in her ‘specially made white bamboo cloth juban and the way her black sheer robes hung ‘just so,’ wearing the rich, cranberry red kesa that we all sewed for her, and i was like, “oh! THAT’S what it’s all about.”

i liked witnessing the priests’ camaraderie. the way they shook hands and hugged and greeted each other like old friends, like old army buddies. like ones that have been in the trenches and seen combat. i like the way some of them hung on each other. the sometimes slight and sometimes overt homoeroticism. (i am so sensitive to that…)

i liked how they all smiled and joked with each other. there were one or two intense ones that seemed appalled at all of this chatterboxing. (hi.) then there were the quiet ones who smiled and kept mostly inward. (hi, too.) mostly, they all seemed genuinely happy to be there. (hi, three.)

i liked looking at all the different shapes, sizes, ages, and colors of them. some had to be younger than me. and some were in their 60’s. and some had really cool hair, like done up or spiky. one of them had this kinda corny, pasted down looking page boy cut that looked anachronistically medieval. some had facial hair, and the tita that i was sitting next to whispered to me that she thought it should be bawal, or forbidden, for priests to have facial hair. i smiled at her because she was so earnest in her conviction. some priests wore make-up, like lipstick!

some were really good looking. (thorn birds!) and some were not so much. i would see one, and i would say to myself, “whoa. he looks like my friend Maui from cebu. and that one looks like, Rolly, that one nurse. and he looks like that guy who fixed my car that one time.” someday, i’ll look into that idea of the different archetypal ‘looks’ of hu-mons. it’s caught my interest because it’s a pattern i’ve always noticed, ever since i was small. and, i’ve noticed it cuts across race and culture. those universality, connection things really do grab me.

i appreciated the ritual of this mass and even some of the pageantry.
And, i am reminded that i don’t like too much pageantry. perhaps it is my pragmatic Virgo that asserts herself. somewhere this morning, i felt a line was crossed from ‘acceptable indulgence’ (to mark the specialness of the gathering) to just plain overindulgence (ego masturbation). perhaps, it is a finer line than i previously thought.

i’m not exactly sure when i felt the line was crossed. i’m curious what were the contributing factors. maybe, it was the preachy homily given by the bishop or the lipstick or the way the choir sang so high that there was no hope for the congregation to sing with them. maybe i’ll peer deeper into this someday. or maybe not. i think i will tho, for it would be useful. it’s good information for me just to know about myself, how i hold ceremonies, and something about the importance of the overall design of ceremonies to be accessible and relevant while maintaining an appropriate level of pageantry.
ba-lahns-say!

i’m in this cleansing mode.
it has a lot to do with getting this physical vessel of mine stronger and better able to keep up. (there’s that phrase again.)
i’m getting to this point in my evolution that i am quite strong and flexible in my emotional, spiritual, and psychic health. and in the interest of true alignment, and if i am truly to be a vehicle for Freedom and “point a way,” i best get my physical body up to speed.

‘cause we’ve got shit to do.
and good shit, too.

so, i’m looking at my relationship to food and eating
and its relationship to nourishment.
and its relationship to culture.
and the ways to flex it.
and the ways to not.
not quite ready to write about this yet.
but, soon.
(or not.)

i did a bowel cleanse for 5 days.
i never did have much trouble in this department.
i go at least once a day. (sorry, if this is tmi.)
when i am in the Philippines, mostly twice, sometimes thrice.
i think it’s the heat.
among other things.

i had to mix up a teaspoon of this intestinal formula #2 with 6 oz. of juice and 6 oz. of water, shake it up in covered glass jar, and drink it down 5 times a day. it wasn’t bad, the taste, i mean. for the first day and a half, i didn’t have juice, so i just drank it in water. that wasn’t so good, for the grit. ugh. i found through trial and error, i like mango nectar the best for this cleanse. it has just enough body to hold the grit but still the smooth drinkability factor. jyess. grape juice, not so good. carrot juice not so good either.

i found i ate less because i was drinking this all the time. 60 oz. of fluid is kind of a lot. and i found it challenging to drink it the full 5 times each day. i think i did it only 4 times on two of the days. anyways, all was good in the hood, because i started going like 5 times a day after this.

now, i’m master cleansing for the next 3 days.
it’s been awhile since i did this. may 2007 was the last time, during sesshin.
i’m happy to report i’ve indigenized the master cleanse.
lemons and limes are expensive here.
they are imported from god knows where, and impractical for me to get (i have to drive 20 minutes away to the big supermarket to get them).
kalamansi, the native lime of the Philippines, on the other hand is plentiful, local, and relatively inexpensive. i paid P100, that’s like $2.10 for a kilo of them this morning at the palengke. a kilo of kalamansi will make enough lemonade for me to cleanse for 3 or 4 days, so i’m juicing those.

it’s a little more tedious juicing kalamansi. they are small, like the size of a good peewee marble, and they have big seeds. so, it takes like 25 or so to make ¼ cup of juice.
i brought organic real maple syrup, grade B, from the states. (Trader Joe’s!) i can get it here, but it’s super expensive, something like $20 for a small glass bottle. brought cayenne from the states, too. the water i pump from the ground, outside the gate of my compound.

i’ll break my cleanse on Sunday by eating Indian mangoes and brown rice. Indian mangoes are aplenty now. oranges (like lemons and limes) are not. besides, Ate Melds, my neighbor just gave me a sackful. they are all green and cute. and shiny from the treesap. they are sitting in a basket on my table, patiently waiting another 3 days.

i started the master cleanse this morning and elected not to saltwater flush before going to mass. we left at 6:30am for the 8:00am service. the hassle factor of going to mass is so high already: traffic; parking; heat; lack of bathroom; might be a bathroom but it likely being janky: for sure no toilet seat, nor toilet paper, likely no regular flusher, no soap, etc; dodging pedestrians, dogs, street vendors, and hooded men beating themselves. i didn’t want to worry. (sidebar: after mass, i noticed that the cars that were parked on the street by the church were all spattered with droplets of dried blood from the men walking past, beating their backs, while mass was going on. since i was sitting near the back of the cathedral, i could hear the steady rhythm of their lashings over everything else. i was SO grateful that a magic parking spot opened up for Pipsy right when we pulled up, a good ways from the splash zone. eww.)

by early afternoon, we got home, i dropped off the Titas, then had to run to Guagua to try and go to the bank. it was closed. gak. i am traveling early monday morning to Iloilo, and i need some cash. everything is closed for Good Friday here (the only day of the year EVERYTHING is closed), and banks are closed on the weekends. thought i was safe going on a thursday, but apparently, the bank had been closed the whole holy week.

i hate going to independent money changers because they feel somewhat seedy and janky. i illegally parked Pipsy on a sliver of sidewalk in front of an impromptu carinderia, and ran in. i think i don’t like these places because you can’t really see the person you are conducting business with. they are hidden away behind glass, behind metal bars. and the glass has all these random stickers and signage on them. and there’s all these signs admonishing you to count your money before you leave the counter, like it happens all the time that someone makes a horrible mistake. or some robber comes in guns ablazin’. it makes me nervous to count money out in the open. i get afraid someone is casing me, and then i’ll get mugged. and well, there it is. none of that happened. i survived it…again. and, writing this, i really think it’s time to drop that particular thought pattern. i have a powerful manifesting thing sometimes.

after changing money, i headed back to Sta. Rita, bought kalamansi at the palengke and a Ventolin asthma inhaler at the pharmacy because i am still quite wheezy from the states.

i was supposed to saltwater flush right when i got home. i got sidetracked tho, checking email and facebooking. then, i had a horrible headache that i kept trying to ignore. and ignore. and ignore. then i thought i wasn’t getting enough sugars. so, i kept drinking more lemonade. still, it didn’t go away. then i straight up took a swig of maple syrup. it still didn’t go away. then i realized, this must be a toxin headache. the lemonade was working it’s magic, and the toxins didn’t have anywhere to go. time to flush.

the saltwater flush is not my favorite thing to do. and, i‘ve noticed that if you chug it, it works better (and gets it done faster). i had this one roommate that use to sip it, out of a teacup. took her forever to finish the liter. Lord, it was like torture watching her do that.

after i took the flush, i layed my body down on my couch/bed. i was feeling particularly poorly. soon after tho, i felt some relief from my headache. i figured the hypertonicity of the saltwater was drawing the toxins away from my brain. (thank Goddess, and i am such a geek.) i even slept for 30 minutes. after my nap, the saltwater flush was… well, flushing. it used to take an hour or so to go through me. apparently 30 minutes here. 6 or 7 times later, i was empty. and my head no longer hurt. and i slept some more. i gave myself permission to ‘back off’ from sadhana today.

and you know, i am looking at this lemonade with some new eyes. and the saltwater flush, too. in Yoda tongue: powerful liquids they are. i remember last time i was home and we were doing fearless Yoga. my Teacher had been master cleansing, and for the 1ST time, she was touching her nose to her knee, BOTH sides, in seated forward bend. i could gage her amazement by the way she exclaimed, “toxins are real!”

toxins ARE real. and i’m curious and looking forward to sadhana tomorrow morning to see if i’ll have some more space in me, too. i’m a ways from nose to knee, but i’m convinced that it is the genuine striving that counts the most.…

the other day, i drove my ass all the way to manila to attend this talk on engaged spirituality and societal transformation. it was put on by PAG-ASA, so i knew maybe 10 of the 60 folks attending. nice to see some of them again. one of them (i named him in my Practice Period intentions) i’m working on reclaiming relationship with, and i was truly surprised to see him. (like jo kata surprised to see him). it has been awhile since we’ve connected. and, truthfully, at this point, i’m amused that i still get caught by surprise by anything and anyone who “just happens” to show up… it’s Divinely scripted, dear Muki!

so, with my PP intentions worn like my invisible rakusu (i miss that thing.), i worked diligently at reclaiming relationship. it’s a work in progress (like they all are), and much of it is done inwardly, not really requiring participation of the Other. ideally, i think mutual participation is best, but it isn’t necessary.

there will be no banners or parades or fireworks when this work is being done. there is no clear finish line, nothing to “get.” there are no award ceremonies nor is there even a guarantee that a broken friendship will mend nor rebuild. instead, a quiet steady acceptance of the history and the moment ensues. and somehow, that becomes enough. after the grasping is done, really done, it becomes the most grown up word, “enough.”

it has a lot to do with effort and release, extending, honoring boundaries, getting back up again after falling (again), all-around forgiveness, grace, humor, gratitude, awe, humility, following the out-breath, truthfulness, fierce compassion, fierce Love, self-love, expanding especially when wanting to contract, and creating, maintaining, and sustaining warmth. not to mention a good deal of pacifying, enriching, and magnetizing. good stuff. good Practice. (I hear Simha’s voice, “Practice, Practice, Practice.”)

i also spent time with my friend Jodie that day. we met for a meal at the green halo at cubao x. then, we attended the lecture together. we also got lost on the way; her sense of direction is slightly better than mine, and that ain’t sayin’ much…

i love my friend, Jodie. i like the story of how we met. i attended a panel discussion on decolonization and reclaiming indigenous chu-chu at the I-hotel in san francisco last may. it was just after the sesshin. there were maybe 15 or 18 of us in the audience. Leny was there. Mildred was there. Venus was there. Videl was there. me and my bald head were there. and Jodie was there.

Jodie was one of the speakers, and i loved her personal narrative and how she delivered it. she is hilarious for one thing. and wicked smart. and articulate. and warm. and did i say hilarious? Leo rising, i think. so, a true performer. my cheeks and belly literally ached from laughing and smiling so much that night. house of nanking is a couple of blocks away from the I-hotel, so we all went there after to eat delicious, albeit somewhat msg-laden, food. and by the time the evening was over, our bellies and hearts were full, our pocketbooks empty, and the BARTs had stopped running. it was the night before Jodie was to board a plane and move to the Philippines to teach preschool munchkins in her Tita’s school in Antipolo instead of working retail at the Gap or Forever 21. and, in the dark of that night, i drove her home to Hayward, and made a new (old) friend.

it’s funny because a few weeks before i met her in the flesh, i stumbled upon her blog. Leny had posted a link to it from her own blog. Jodie had also graduated from Humboldt State, though, something like 10 years after i did. in her blog, she mentioned a local hang out spot, Don’s Donuts in Arcata, and i was just so tickled. i had prolly gone into Don’s Donuts maybe 5 times in the five years that i lived in Arcata, so it wasn’t doughnut magic. it was a different kind. a simpatico magic. a fellow Fil-Am radical woman of color sister doing the good work….

i loved that we got to spend time together. i visited her only once before in Antipolo and met her family and her students. i’m in awe of how a lot seemed to happen in just one afternoon and night. it was like we traveled for 3 weeks. we were all over QC that night. cubao x, running red lights and miraculously not getting killed nor caught, getting lost in san juan/sta.mesa, finding PETA, hole in the wall sisig and pita pie at kebur, project 8 at 2am. meandering conversation, heartbreak and redemption, dreaming a Show, hope and fear, lots of laughter, and lots of wide-eyed looks, like “dude, it’s so awesome that we are friends and it’s kinda weird how we met”. we have a lot in common, and dude, i can speak American with her. AND taglish! i like that. it was a good afternoon/night/morning. and, i’m still trippin’ off it, all the stuff that’s come about from it.

it’s 3am here, and my friend, Rowell, is in the next room tossing and turning on the couch/ bed. he has run himself ragged…again. there are so many activities at the church for holy week. and they don’t just magically happen. there is a lot of effort that gets put into them. PA systems, programs, scripts, food, looking after Among, songs, choir practice, flowers, service, banners, etc., etc., etc. the church volunteers do an awful lot, and they do it so well, they don’t even make it look easy…they make it look invisible. really, i feel like everyone just assumes these activities and events just magically come down prêt-a-porter, polished and ready, from the Heavens. they so don’t. i know some things and stuff about this.

my friend Rowell is in “worn-out, weary, so-tired-i-wanna-just-sob-and-sob” mode, and because he is a friend that i specifically practice Agape, don’t-want-nuthin’-from-you-except-the-privilege-of-loving-you, unconditional cosmic Christ, Jesus love with, i welcome him, anytime, in whatever state he is in, and give him a soft place to land or a kick in the ass, whichever is called for in the moment. it’s mostly a soft place to land. he texted and showed up at my front door after being at the church all day and night.

one look is all it took. i got up off the couch/bed and let him have the whole thing. after asking some precursory general questions and receiving one word answers or no answers at all, i let him be. i gave him cool water to drink. and cranberry emergen-C. from time to time, i would come over and give him a few kisses on his head, touch his back or shoulder to let him know i was close by, and then, i just let him be. effort and release.

a voice inside told me that it would be helpful if he bathed, to help wash away whatever it was that needed to be washed away. i heated water and gave him a towel. i smoothed his hair while i quietly spoke just what the voice inside had said. he shook his no; he didn’t want to. “okay, friend,” i said, “if you change your mind, it’s ready for you.”

and then, i just let him be.

about an hour later, he bathed.

i made some lemonade. or in my case, kalamansi-ade and started writing this tome.

when he recovers “enough”, and not a moment before, i’ll point out this pattern that seems to play out, often, in his relationship with his Service, in the hope that he may realize that he is capable of finding a more balanced relationship with it.

he may.
he may not.
i won’t love him any less.

my Life is really good.
really good.
really full…
and really, really good.

.