Pagbalik Ko (My Return)

I had an opportunity to tag along with a friend to Cagwait, Surigao. Located on the island of Mindanao, it was the perfect getaway, especially after the Unearthing exhibit. In fact, we left early in the morning following the exhibit reception.

Cagwait is a small town with a two kilometer stretch of white white sand beach on the Pacific Ocean. One day a couple staying at the same guest house invited me on an outing to a nearby island. We made our way on a fishing boat for some good swimming, but arrived during low tide. No swimming for us, so we headed back and that’s when the real adventure began.

On the boat ride back in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the rudder on the engine broke. We all whipped out our cell phones texting for a rescue boat as Manong Bangka, the fisherman operating the boat, started rowing with his single oar. The rescue plan was arranged. We’d row to a nearby tower where a rescue vehicle would pick us up. Well, lucky for us we came upon another fishing boat accompanied by two canoes. Soon lines were tossed between all boats and easily enough, we had a caravan. The fishing boat towed us and the other two canoes tied a tow line to our boat. We were on our way back.

It started POURING down rain. Storm like rain. Seattle like rain at its worst. Luckily there was a plastic bag on board where we could toss all our bags that carried our digital cameras. Finally, we got as close as we could go to shore. Since it was low tide, we had to jump out of the boat and wade through waste high water. It stopped raining by then and once fully ashore, we walked through mucky sand and litter lined beach. Who knows what kind of muck was all over my feet. Good times. We got to town completely drenched as we awaited the truck that would bring us back to the guest house.

Upon returning, my friend, who stayed behind, could put her concerns to rest. She had visions of me being stranded at sea and being carried away by the ocean to the nearby independent island nation of Palau. She imagined herself calling my sister in the States to tell her to expect me soon as I’d been deported for illegally washing ashore on Palau. Lucky for me, there is such a thing as a happy and dry ending.

Both of us were sick for two weeks. Oh, the confrontation. Me, I had a cough from hell that wouldn’t go away. Coughing up yellow phlegm, several nights of interrupted sleep do to coughing fits, pink eye. Tif, she had a bad cold. We were also both feverish for a little spell.

Complete denial leading up to Skeleton Woman. Both of us. And like the story, she wouldn’t stop following us, we couldn’t shake her until we sang some form into her and gave her a voice.

But once underway it was a whirlwind of activity. Crunch time. Tif and I work very differently, but our process was very fluid to create our collaborative mixed media assemblage, a triptych called Skeleton Woman: Life/Death/Life. Tif is very intuitive and me, I’m very conceptual. I have a vision and hold to it like there’s no tomorrow. What I learned from this process is to be flexible with my creative vision. I actually had planned to make the rib cage differently, out of pieces of wood, rather than the pieces of tin that made the final product. What happened is the exhibit space wouldn’t let me attach a hanging overhead panel to the white backdrop panel, which prevented me from suspending my rib cage. Back to the drawing board with less than 24 hours until opening.

With some ingenuity from Tif, I was able to execute my vision in exactly the way I imagined. It was perfect.

The literal journey. We chartered three jeepneys: one to pick up the materials for our piece, another to transport it to the exhibiting venue, and another to store it once we took the exhibit down. The emotional and confrontational journey. I had to face my questions about death cycles in my own relationships. What does it mean when one of us goes through the Life/Death cycles, but only one of us is willing to stick it out and stick around for the new Life cycle? How does one complete when a partner can no longer be part of the cycle and leaves the other to complete alone?

All that stagnant energy and questioning began to circulate and move through me once we started nailing shell to wood, once I started bending tin, once my Skeleton Woman took form. My cough went away and I finally stepped into and claimed being an artist. That, though, is another Life/Death/Life story of its own.

I reveled in looking at my artwork hanging on the panel. My first ever exhibit. Not bad for someone who has struggled her entire life with accepting herself as an artist. No more.

The exhibit opening on March 1st at the Philam Center for the Arts in Manila was a well attended celebration. Each artist took a story from Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ Women Who Run With the Wolves and it was fascinating to see how each one interpreted her story. Mine, a collaboration with established painter, Tif Guevara, was a mixed media assemblage triptych called Skeleton Woman: Life/Death/Life, and based on the story “Skeleton Woman: Facing the Life/Death/Life Nature of Love.” We each created a piece and then collaborated on a third to illustrate different stages of the story that we entitled:

1. The Accidental Finding of the Treasure
2. The Invitation
3. The Heart As A Drum

The story of Skeleton Woman starts with an Inuit fisherman who gets excited by the tug on his fishing line. Thinking he has a big catch, the fisherman excitedly pulls up his line. He doesn’t notice at first that Skeleton Woman is entangled in his net instead and hanging from his kayak. Incredibly frightened, he starts paddling for the shore and once there, starts running. To his horror, Skeleton Woman follows him still entangled by his line. When he finally reaches his home, he’s sobbing from the ordeal, but safe in the dark of his home.

When he lights his lamp, there Skeleton Woman is, a jumble of bones all out of order, heel over shoulder, and knee in rib cage. Having compassion, the fisherman untangles her, lays her bones in order, and then tucks her into furs for warmth.

The fisherman eventually falls asleep and as it sometimes happens with sleeping people, a tear escapes his eye. Noticing this tear, Skeleton Woman crawls to the man and drinks his tear as if it was an endless river to quench her thirst. Now laying beside him, she takes out his heart and bangs on it like a drum, and as she does so, she sings the flesh back onto her bones and comes back to life. She then sings his clothes off and when they awaken, they are wrapped around each other.

Tif’s piece, The Accidental Finding of the Treasure, speaks to the totality of the catch at the end of the hook that is one’s beloved. At first, it’s lovely as the honeymoon stage of relationships are, but to be in a relationship is to also embrace the cycles of relationships that wither and are not picture perfect. Skeleton Woman brings all those elements, all those dynamics, and all those ways of being that reside in the shadowlands. That is, those things that our egos do not want to acknowledge about ourselves and our intimate relationships. Skeleton Woman intuitively knows when it is time for cycles to die and when it is, “illusion dies, expectations die, greed for having it all, for wanting to have all be beautiful only, all this dies.” (Estes, 1992, p. 140). When her arm turns the wheel of the death cycle, it also turns the life cycle simultaneously.

The door in The Invitation, our joint piece, is synonymous with Skeleton Woman. The door is an opening, an invitation, and so is Skeleton Woman. The fisherman finds her in his home, but doesn’t toss her bones back outside, he instead rearranges them and then falls asleep. According to Estes (1992) sleep is returning to one’s young soul, especially within the male psyche, that knows how to self-mend wounds (p.153).

A tear hangs from our door in the top corner and the bottles in the opposite bottom corner act as vessels. Estes (1992) calls it the tear of passion and compassion (p. 155), and such tears are tears of creativity that know how to weep for love and loss, that know how to embrace the cycle.

Drums call things into being. Drums made of a heart have to do with matters of the heart, essence, and destiny (Estes, 1992, p. 159). My piece, The Heart As A Drum, is the final of the triptych. In it we see a rib cage with a heart missing and a bone, a ready mallet for its accompanying heart drum. This piece is an unfinished story, one that is still unfolding, a hymn that awaits a concluding melodic phrase because it is a new life cycle. The rib cage is suspended and the heart awaits its next verse to sing something still unknown into being as the cycle unfolds.

Reference
Estés, Clarissa Pinkola. 1992. The Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Sotires of the Wild Woman Archetype. New York: Ballantine Books.

I’m going to be in an upcoming exhibit for Women’s Month called Unearthing: Womynist Bones and Sexuality. Ten diverse artists explore the stories and archetypes from Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, each displaying a piece of work from the book.

I am collaborating on an installation that explores the story of Skeleton Woman and the archetypal story of Life/Death/Life. This story is about the cycle of life, death, and transformation into a new way of being in intimate relationships. It’s about how death is an often feared, ignored, and suppressed ally, and natural one at that, in relationships. It’s about acknowledging the cycles of highs and lows, dry spells, and difficulties that only death can hold. It is also about death’s twin, life, and that they are not mutually exclusive in a relationship.

The exhibit opens on March 1 at the Philamlife Center in Manila. For more information, visit http://unearthingexhibit.com.

I made the long trek with a friend to Sagada, Mountain Province. Home to the indigenous Igorots, we didn’t know when we made our plans that we would arrive just in time for the town festival with locals donning their native regalia.

Sagada has a beautiful landscape with beautiful cliffs and caves that serve as traditional sacred burial grounds. The full moon lit the end of our hikes home from trails to ancient burial sites.

I had flashbacks to Dharamsala, India, as I walked down the main road of the town proper. The only thing that was missing was a hot cup of chai like I would have in Dharamsala, my only unmet craving.

And all throughout my time Mountain Province I was in awe of the terraced farmlands that graced the countryside.

I got hit with a bad, bad case of stomach flu and fever from a hot Indonesian noodle dish. Sayang because the food at the restaurant is good and I don’t think it would be wise for me to return. My guess is that the veggies were washed under tap water and not cooked enough for my American grade immune system. Unfortunately I am not armed with a stomach made of steel.

Fortunately, I am under the care of a very dear friend and my fever broke last night. I’m still weak and sadly I believe it’s wise not to attend a yoga class tomorrow. Rest up pa la.

In addition to very cold, ice water cloth baths to break the fever, I did a cooling pranayama called shitali pranayama. Great for cooling your body down during hot weather or after a vigorous yoga practice, shitali pranayama was also helpful with cooling my body down from the fever with noticeable difference. It definitely helped to alleviate the feverish headache.

So until my system is well enough, I’ll include pics of my favorite barangay eats to inspire and motivate me to get better very soon. Enjoy.

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I went to my first yoga class of the year – Anusara Inspired at Bliss Yoga in Makati.

As a yogi, I try to maintain mindfulness of these questions:

• Where am I being challenged, especially with certain asanas that I resist, in my practice and how can I grow from it? How can I engage more deeply and mindfully with these asanas?
• How is my ego attached to the asanas that I am comfortable with and that I feel I can do well?
• How can my breath be an ally to the fears that are present in my practice and beyond?

When I entered Francesca Regala’s Anusara class, there was a lot of anticipation and excitement. I welcomed her questions that guided the day’s class: what do you want to let go of that’s blocking you? Fear. And when it came time for us to do inversions, yes FEAR. Headstand and handstand render me unenthused with an unarticulated fear from my shoulders. The prep for headstand, Dolphin Pose and Dolphin Plank, is such a bitch according to my shoulders and resistant fear.

However in class, that doesn’t stop me from trying. So into Dolphin I went and kicked up my legs from my core and all of a sudden I was in headstand not wanting to come out of it.

In vispassana meditation, the yogi scans the body, mindful of sensations that eventually disappear. In that practice one eventually realizes through scanning the body that nothing is ever permanent. And the physical practice of yoga, as in this Anusara Inspired class, serves one’s awareness in the same way. I realized that the stronghold of a fear I held in the end had no power and was easily a fear that I let go of. I left the class feeling empowered and inspired to get into handstand.

Of course I wouldn’t have arrived at this point without the wonderful questions that Francesca offers with each class and the space she holds to deepen the practice.

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