tipaklong-child - Tumblr blog

[tipaklong-child]

Money fast broken. Oh well the month’s almost over anyway… what’s a little spending gonna do… looks at the total (120$ in two days) and chokes.

[tipaklong-child]

Happy madaling araw. Tulog na f.

[tipaklong-child]

Didn’t touch this blog for a month. What happened in August? Too much poetry reading not enough social media. Plus zine-making. Summer’s over. Sadface.

[tipaklong-child]

I’m digging into my savings the past few months so I’m trying to actually stick to a budget this month. Except a shipping charge came in for something and I have a subscription for something that I was gonna cancel after one more purchase and there’s a conference I want to access. Already over budget…

[tipaklong-child]

I’m alive! I’m alive! I’m alive! Don’t bury me yet!

[tipaklong-child]

A kitten aboard a floating Victoria water lily pad in the Philippines, 1935.Photograph by Alfred T. Palmer, National Geographic Creative

[tipaklong-child]

The cufflinks go together!

Lion cub wandering the forest.

[tipaklong-child]

The problem with writing in Tagalog is sometimes you want to look something up but the slang changes too fast to make it to a dictionary. Straight Tagalog sounds archaic and mixed Taglish—which is my mother tongue—sounds unliterary. A lot of local writers prefer English. Language is viewed through classist lens in the country itself.

My problem with writing Tagalog is I am rusty and have to translate myself and even then there’s connotations that are often missing in dictionary meanings. The only Tagalog I consume is from songs, a little from Filipino TV shows and news, and very very little from books.

[tipaklong-child]

Umalagad, salamat at nakauwi ang aking ama ng ligtas.

[tipaklong-child]

ᜉᜒᜈᜋᜒᜎᜒ᜶pinamili

ᜊᜆᜓᜅ͓ ᜋᜈᜒᜅ͓ᜈᜒᜅ͓᜶batong maningning

ᜃᜈ͓ᜇᜒᜎᜅ͓ ᜇ̢̣ᜐᜐ͓᜶kandilang rosas

ᜁᜐ͓ᜉ͓ᜇ̢̇ ᜐ ᜋᜓᜃ͓ᜑ᜶i-spray sa mukha

[tipaklong-child]

Slapdash pretend it’s meaningful until it is vibes

[tipaklong-child]

I worked so hard today I had to feed my brain 3x just to replenish my lost energy. And I’m so dead tired.

[tipaklong-child]

Dad opening glass doors in a mansion saying we have to use the space since it was empty. He also said watching tv would heal my eyes.

The library has turned into a booksale. And I spy some atlases and wonder if they would fit in my bag. (They don’t.)

There was something about my boss, maybe something I needed to do and felt anxious about, but it faded away already.

[tipaklong-child]

ᜉᜒᜈᜋᜒᜎᜒ᜶ pinamili

ᜊᜆᜓ᜶ bato

ᜋᜒᜈᜒᜅ͓ᜈᜒᜅ͓ ᜈ ᜁᜐ͓ᜆᜒᜃᜒᜇ̢͓᜶ maningning na istiker

ᜋ͓ᜅ ᜊᜇ̢ᜑ ᜀᜆ͓ ᜇᜁᜐ͓᜶ mga baraha at dais

ᜉᜓᜐ͓ᜉᜓᜇ̢̣ ᜀᜆ͓ ᜃᜈ͓ᜇᜒᜎᜅ͓ ᜁᜆᜒᜋ͓᜶ posporo at kandilang itim

[tipaklong-child]

Who’s Ati anyway?

My diy deity. I chose Ati because “Ate” means older sister. She’s just an externalized wiser self. But I am kind of trying to expand her lore so she may get a second name as Kaka* Habi**.

*Kaka is old Tagalog for younger uncle/aunt. (Younger than your parent) Mama is the older equivalent—which is funny coz saying it a certain way obviously means mother, and another way (with a glottal stop at the end) means generic man but apparently it can also be used to precede a name and mean older aunt/uncle. I found this out from my dad. He had a Mama Osang, Mama Doloy and Kaka Tanching. (All nicknames coz we love nicknames) Gender doesn’t seem to matter in this case.

But this makes my calling my father’s older sister Mamaxxx and her husband Papaxxxx kinda a bit of context. We just considered them second parents but the name is correct for her at least. I don’t have any Kaka because my parents are both the youngest in their sprawling families.

Of course my mother’s Ilokano so her older sisters she calls Manang instead of Ate. Not sure if they have equivalents names for her aunts and uncles.

**Habi is Tagalog for weave. Kaka Habi is actually the name I gave to a spider guardian figure for sweet dreams. Dreamweavers are what we call the T’boli in South Cotabato who make t’nalak cloth woven from designs gifted to them in dreams by their goddess. Weaving is often mythologized as the realm of goddesses who weaves human fates, and it is one of the oldest arts so it connects us to our early ancestors. Anyway all this to say that the spider for me symbolizes magic—both dreaming as well as making.

Why invent a goddess? Well sometimes we fall into atheism and find the emptiness not helpful. So we make things up to help ourselves. They’re kind of tethering and tending. Soul self-care. Ati tells me what I already know. But maybe Kaka Habi can dig deeper into the murky subconscious and tell me things I don’t.

[tipaklong-child]

White bean and cheese pasta salad made by your cousin you are eating for the first time and your sister speaks to you from the future. This is the best version of this. I will try to recreate it and always fail. Pay attention!

Later, you are with your sister’s friends (not clear which sister) and heavily pregnant, eating at a restaurant before you watch a movie together. You joke that everybody keeps paying for you now to offset when you have to feed two mouths in the future.

[tipaklong-child]

I’ve been thinking of boats lately, the journey to the underworld. I’ve been praying the rosary lately, as an act of devotion that’s more earth-based paganism than Catholic.

Anyway, N’s mother, I hope you have a safe trip to wherever you’re going. Let the Holy Mother embrace you.