Kapwa

“Dalawang Buslo” (two baskets: what do you want to receive? what do you want to give?)

Kapwa: indigenous Filipino value of “deep interconnection, shared identity, seeing self in others.” 

Here, community connections (like art, collabs, fundraisers in my neighborhood/our planet, healing energies, more) are shared to celebrate and support our diverse stories. Maybe we’ll see each other as integrated into The Story mosaic.

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“Change Starts Here” (January 2023)

Dr. Catherine Luib, Hilot (indigenous Filipino healer) opened the “Motions and Emotions”—performances by Filipino Americans on intergenerational healing—with a community ceremony/prayer, an embodied commitment to healing. February 5, 2023 at the New Americans Museum on Kumeyaay territory (San Diego, CA.)

Part of my re-membering of my full identity (including the web of life all within and around me) is via my chronic illness. In Fall 2021, my skin began another overwhelming flare. I needed help beyond what I’d tried in the past. I was led to Luib Health Center and Dr. Catherine Luib–acupuncturist, chiropractor, hilot (indigenous Filipino healer), nutritionist, community activist, AKA, Dr. Cat–for healing and more. I receive acupuncture & other traditional Chinese treatments, join ceremonies for ancestral connection, and celebrate the wonders of the known/unknown in creative & joyful community. I also co-direct wellness events with Dr. Cat– and much more.

Geophyte Mandala (created 2021-2022). This is the “above ground” bloom. Below is where I mostly felt for the past years. Since I turned fi’ty, I am ‘officially’ embracing [read: surrendering to! trying to partner with!]
the transitions of menopause.
These collages were made at writer-artist-teacher, Susan Ito’s annual Community Silent-ish art and writing retreat in Santa Sabina, CA, March 2022. The word I ‘heard’ last summer: GEOPHYTE. These underground and cosmic ‘bulbs, tubers, corms, and rhizomes’ carry all their water and nutrients with them. They are “disaster-ready” bodies, stealthily steadily moving.

The geophytes started relating/speaking/playing with me as I made space to “meet” with them. They kindov look like a Zoom screen, don’t they?
The world(s) where the dark nourishes, where spirals of wisdom go down, up, in, out. My stories, our stories, can torch the falsifying white supremacist, ivory towers. We are the “type righters” in the form of geophytes! Carrots, garlic, ube, taro, daffodils, onions, surprise lilies, woman in menopause…

“S(kin)” 2021

An application question asks, “Where does your strength come from?” I’m sharing from a once-scary, now-emerging source. “S(KIN)” The photo I share is of different creations around where I live. They are different skins: of trees, fruits, my own. I have had to live in a bubble for decades because of my very allergic, scratched and peeling body. But in the last two years, and especially during the global coronavirus Pandemic, I have been learning to touch and relate to Nature’s own scratched and peeling bodies. “Allergy” means “strange action to something strange.” My skin disease, atopic dermatitis, means “strange” (atopy) as well. “Stranger” also means someone who leaves for a long period and returns.

I no longer believe I am a stranger to myself nor to nature. I can finally sit and listen, converse, relate to nature as my skin kin: S(KIN). There is power here.