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epilogue

1/5/2017

Victoria and I took the Spring 1989 semester off from Union Seminary. On our way to India, in Bangkok, I got a letter from my father. It was an ecstatic letter written in a large generous hand. He had just learned from an East German genealogist with whom he was corresponding that his great grandfather Seyfarth was a helmsman on a merchant ship.

One hundred years ago, my father wrote, Chinese pirates in the South China Sea had attacked them. They had to winter in Hong Kong. The South China Sea! Where you are now, your ancestors have been before! To my father, who has worked painstakingly to recover the storyline of his East German laboring ancestors, this news held an immense significance. His own work in Asia had been a return.

If we track back and out far enough in any of our lives, our stories dispel the illusion of fixed boundaries, fixed national origins. We all create in some ways what Australian aborigines call "song lines", a musical cartography of the land. By singing the story as they traverse the land, they bring it into being. By my father's letter, I traveled with a new sense of the a kind of mixed up, mestizo history. We are always leaving, always coming home.

despedita/ buenvenida

1/5/2017

It’s 1972 and none of us know that Marcos will remain in power for fifteen years, Imelda will dance with George Hamilton, thousands will be ‘salvaged’ or disappeared, Ninoy Aquino shot in the head at this airport where I am waiting for my flight to leave.

Nixon will approve Operation Breakfast, the carpet bombing over Cambodia, then instigates the Watergate break-in and finally faces impeachment, Vietnamese ‘boat people” will wash ashore on coasts throughout Southeast Asia – Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore, even across the South China Sea in the Philippines; the Khmer Rouge will walk victoriously into Phnom Penh and empty the city, to be expulsed four years later by Vietnamese troops. President Pak Chung Hee, who has just declared Martial Law in Korea, will be deposed.

I don’t know any of that or when I will return.

And I can tell you now: we never forget our first homes, whatever colonies they inhabit. Their images fill the rooms of other homes we choose.

Goodbyes are necessary.

They serve as a ritual act to establish what Sanchez Ferlosio calls "protective borders" between those left behind and those who leave. When misfortune strikes and one must flee, the memory of those goodbyes salve the ache of separation. Saying goodbye hides the fear of no return, that once gone we will wander the skies wearily in search of a resting place.

But we are always leaving and arriving. And so it is with this story, a difficult intuitive journey that ends only as I am really prepared to go. Theology, I have learned, reveals itself on the road. "The clue of the beginning," offers Nelle Morton, a feminist theologian, "is more often than not discovered until near the end - entirely too late to back up and start over again."

We are always leaving always coming home.

rain, bombs, blackout

1/5/2017

Two months after the last of my family leaves, it begins to rain. It rains continually for three weeks. The typhoons didn’t really hit us until the last one. The floods have risen considerably the rice bowl region of Luzon has been under six feet of water. About 300 people are dead. Manila is a soggy soggy mess. I’ve helped with relief work last Monday and yesterday, filling boxes with food.

President Marcos declares curfew to finish repairing the roads, he says. Curfew: once you’re somewhere at 10pm you can’t leave til 4am.

Then the bombings began around Manila from March through August. They're meant to send a message, not massacre. The blasts occurr late at night or early in the morning so few people were hurt. Here is a calendar of the bombings: in March, the Filipinas Orient Airways and the South Vietnamese embassy were hit. In July, bombs shattered places I knew—the Phil-American Life building where we’d gone for theater, and the American Express office. In August, the bombs hit first at PLTD (the phone company), the Philippines Sugar Institute, then a water main in Quezon City, again the Phil-Am Life building, and then an armoured car in front of the PBC bank. Later that day, a twelve-pound bomb was found in the Dept of Foreign Affairs.

And then on the night of Wednesday, September 20th, the real explosion. I joined friends for Bernstein's Mass at the Meralco Theater along Ortegas Avenue. We learn the next morning that just down on Ortegas Ave, Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile escapes an assassination attempt -- there are b&w photos of bullet holes in his car.

The 1935 Constitution states that the President can declare martial law only in cases of rebellion, insurrection or invasion or imminent danger thereof.

On September 21, 1972, Marcos declares Martial Law.

That Thursday, no one goes to work or school. We rise early at Villanueva household to a state of controlled chaos. Everyone is home in the most tense of lockdown holidays: Uncle Vil, Auntie Eva, Clyde, Leslie and Kenny. The radio is buzzing incoherently, the Manila Bulletin never arrives, and all TV stations are snowing. Someone in PhilAm subdivision comes over to tell us that there is gunfire at the ABS-CBN TV station nearby on Bohol Avenue. Lopez, the president of the company was a fierce critic of Marcos, and this is payback time. (He was imprisoned along with Sergio Osmena II for five years.)

When the black rotary phone starts ringing, it never seems to stop. Uncle Vil tells us some of it. Some times he listens into the receiver, hangs up, and confers in a low voice with Aunti Eva, who shakes her head slowly, in disbelief. He does tell us this: there are emergency meetings in Congress, the military arrived in jeeps at houses last night and detained this and that church person, a few have disappeared. We had no idea the massive impact of Marcos' next move.

Enrile writes in his memoir,
“Political noises and wrangling were dissipated. Rallies and demonstrations disappeared from the street. Congress was closed. Schools, colleges and universities were also initially closed right after the declaration of martial law but after a month, classes resumed except in a number of colleges and universities. The radio airlines and television broadcasts were cleared of the incendiary and bombastic attacks of commentators. They were silenced.”

American Exile /dreams

11/30/2014

Union Theological Seminary, New York, 1999

I have these dreams: I live and breathe under water, a shimmering light green air. Or: our country is occupied. The enemy, hidden, is everywhere. We are the resistance, hide underground, moving and fighting, terrified to be seen. Or: I have learned to fly, a highly technical skill that I learn in a series of dreams. It's a secret.

As far back as I know, I have been white. Passing through the yard, they say, "ay manika!" (doll) and pinch our cheeks. Manika: fragile, pretty, pale, precious. By sixth grade, I am not manika enough. Too much: clumsy, nose too high, a whiteness bright like neon signs in Quiapo, Makati, anywhere.

We grew up in the limbo of exile. Home, an American family island in the Philippine Sea. Our world teemed with a mix of aromas: banana-q, garbage, sampaguita, and wind, sun, and music wilder than the American life of grandmother's house. I learned how to be Filipina and that I was not; knew my U.S. passport's privilege but didn't know how to be one. My sisters and I were ex-manikas, "white monkeys," Manila girls in a world pummeled by typhoons, wildcat strikes, student riots, and then, in 1971, curfewed nights.

I live with the name, white monkey, because it's apt enough. A curse for the children of white fright, colonial blight, American might.

Before Victoria and I left on our five-month trip through India, I had another kind of dream: I travel with a woman lover to meet her people in a secret mountain encampment. We stop at a bar enroute. Some women are playing pool. One glances at me, turns to my lover and asks, "Have you told her yet?" "No", she says. The dream shifts, as if unlocked. I am inside and outside of it simultaneously. My lover isn't who I think she is. She is utterly alien. As she morphs into a Kafkaesque creature, I think calmly, "at least I loved her first as human. It will make the transition easier."

There are fish adrift in their aquariums with whom I have more in common than most friends. I live under water again, open my mouth to unshaped sound. No one knows that I am utterly alien, that our world is occupied. No one knows this because I can't speak the language. I can't escape, though I can fly. And no one understands me when I speak. Neither do I.

Ang sakit nang kalinkkingan,

11/30/2014

Ang sakit nang kalinkkingan,
Damdam nang buong katawan

The pain of the little finger is felt by the whole body

Our house on Basilan road is increasingly more empty. By 1972, Dad has taken a job in Chicago at McCormick as Director of the Institute on Urban-Industrial Society. He leaves with Margaret in at the end of school. Margaret is adamant to stay with grandmother for the summer. We don't know until many years later the terrible sense of abandonment she feels at being left with grandmother when we traveled through Europe in 1967. We all believed that Margaret's persistent prayer got Scott the 199 draft number. Johanna gets German measles the day before dad and Margaret leave for the United States.

It's exhausting to remember that year now. Mom remains behind, once again, to close out our years in the Philippines: Poethigs 1957-1972. Johanna engineers the final sale of our items. Annie is looking for a post in Spain. I’ll stay with the Villaneuvas, Grinos and Palms to finish up one more semester of high school.

By July, Mom, Erika and Johanna are on their way to the Greek isle of Samos to meet up with Uncle David. Tense, unhappy Erika cries all the time. Mom says she calms down when she hears the names of all the people she knows - Annie Cresing Kerry Scott Margaret. Johanna escapes to teenage exploits, Uncle David needs space.

My mother’s letters are depressed and weary but she looks gorgeous and wind swept.

Sapang Palay, Carmona, Tondo

11/30/2014

I didn’t know dad knew about Elizalde. If Elizalde was no friend of cultural minorities, he wasn't much loved by Manila's urban poor either.

Dad's idea of a family outing are visits to factories (steel, sugar cane, shoes) or squatter resettlements of Carmona in Cavite and Sapang Palay in Bulacan, thirty kilometers from the city. Not so much Tondo, a squatter area near the North Harbor. My father, "Dick," to his colleagues, is on all the urban-industrial committees: Interchurch Committee on Urban Resettled Families at Carmona, Cavite, the Urban-Industrial Mission Committee of the National Council of Churches of the Philippines (NCCP) and The Philippine Ecumenical Council for Community Organization (PECCO). He teaches at the Asian Social Institute (ASI) and writes on these issues for Church and Community and Solidaridad.

The early 1970s is the heyday of Alinksy-style organizing and the Catholic base community movement. The ecumenical movement is strong. Rev. Henry Aguilan, a protege of Chicago organizer Saul Alinsky, offers CO training coupled with Friere's conscientization in Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Back to Elizalde and Tondo.

Of all these organizations, the best known is ZOTO, the Zone One Tondo Organization, a people's organization at the Tondo foreshore land that uses Alinksy-style organizing. PECCO brings seventy Tondo organizations together to create the Council of Tondo Foreshorelands Community Organizations (CTFCO). Dad, Fr. Dennis Murphy and Fr. Blanco, both Jesuits, and Fr Ed Gerlock a Maryknoller, are among the advisers. Sometimes I think dad loves his Catholic "buddies" more than the Protestants. (Trinidad Herrera, a ZOTO woman organizer is my hero. I write a song about her after Martial Law.)

CTFCO tries to head off another government plan to relocate the squatters. UCCP folks set up an appointment with President Marcos after their agitation to get land grants near the docks in Tondo.

Fr. Ed Gerlock regales us about their visit to President Marcos when he visits my father later in the month. About fifty of the Tondo organizers are allowed into Malacancang. They file into President Marcos's office. He is sitting behind his magnificent mahogany desk. He listens, takes notes on their complaints against government officials, and offers kind words. Then he waves at an official for them to be escorted out. Rev. Henry Aguilan speaks up, “But Mr. President, you haven’t answered our demands.” In the end, President Marcos promises them the land, but they would have to take responsibility for overseeing its distribution to bona fide residents.

Two hours later, members of CTFCO call a meeting in Tondo. One thousand show up.

For a while, priests, pastors, and community organizers wonder if the government is trying to subvert the movement; soon no one needs to wonder. The President assigns Elizalde to the Tondo project. Elizalde, the king of Panamin, creates a rival group. He then invites the officers of CTFCO without advisors to his yacht. They return home well fed, with P1,000 each. But the president of CTFCO is guilt-ridden. He confesses to his priest and returns the money to Elizalde. Elizalde is enraged. He tells him to leave his house, curses the honest leader.

Other officers won’t admit to receiving any money, so now the struggle is to keep the group from splitting up. Of course, there are accusations floating around that their advisors are CIA agents.

After Martial Law, life will turn worse for Tondo inhabitants and ZOTO organizers.

David's Tasaday adventure

11/30/2014

When David Baradas visits again, he's been living in Cubao near his sister. Can he leave his Maranao treasures with us? He's on and off to Mindanao. Mom can't hide her delight. She artfully distributes his cache around our Basilan house sala: brass pots, a sarimanok, a mother of pearl inlaid chest (he got one for us too), a full-scale kulintang, two large brass gongs, exquisite woven fabrics and a three-foot drum. And she mourns them when they leave us.

David Baradas at our screen door, back from Mindanao. From where, he doesn't say. "Something's going on. " He's anxious. It's mysterious. He mentions Manuel Elizalde, who has discovered a “stone age tribe.” Why is he so worried? He sits forward on the couch, he grips his hands. "Something's going on, Dick," he repeats like a novena. Then, "I have to get out of there" as if to warn himself. We -- all of us with different levels of understanding -- are worried too. Elizalde is up to no good.

Our anthropologist disappears. In July, news of the "gentle Tasaday" rips through the world. They are tool-using hunter-gatherers, lost in the south Cotobato rain forest, near the T'boli and Manobo, other "lumad," indigenous communities of Mindanao. Are they T'boli? In a matter of weeks, National Geographic, NBC, hundreds of magazines feature the “Lost Tribe of Mindanao." Elizalde founds Panamin for national minorities a cabinet-level position. Panamin is supposed to support research and protection of this stone age tribe.

Eventually, after Martial Law, the hoax is unveiled by a Swiss journalist and the media circus has a second round. The story, retold, is more complicated. Elizalde escapes to Costa Rica with $35 million raised by Panamin. He squanders the money, becomes addicted, and dies impoverished in 1997. Instead of a hero, he's the perpetrator of the greatest anthropological hoax since Piltdown man.

By this time, we are back in the States becoming 'Blue Seal.' I am the first Poethig to return in 1986 - to work in the Bataan refugee camp. I finally track down David Baradas who has moved to Baguio. We are a little awkward, now that I am grown up and have brought my girlfriend. But he still looms larger than life. He consults on museum collections. In his Baguio house, adorned with beautiful cloth and carvings, he serves red rice, mushrooms, fresh vegetables because he doesn't believe in a fridge. We don't talk of the Tasaday.

reunion

11/30/2014

Margaret reunion with Annie and Cresing's family in the US.

blancitude

11/30/2014

Franz Fanon didn’t mean us when in Wretched of the Earth, he wrote of “individuals without anchor, without horizon, colorless, stateless, rootless, a race of angels.” We weren’t wretched or stateless, but weren’t we aimless, without anchor, horizon, root?

What is benevolent imperialist "white love"? And the love we receive, who is its target? Children of America’s Blue Seal Coca Cola power, kids playing white-skin-brown-mask. Does it count, this angst as a postcolonial tax?

We, young girls growing up in public, privileged with whiteness when we'd rather disappear. For public space, the public face. Sometimes we're not Manila Girls. We're just missionary kids and I'm not hybrid, but a monstrous postcolonial invasive species. The blight of blancitude, the rage of angels.

Noli mi tangere

11/30/2014

“Why are they staring at us?” Nedesna asks the question everyone is feeling. Our barkada is in Quiapo for a movie at Id-ee-al theater. My friends are made visible by me. It happens everytime; they don’t like it. Well, live with it for a while, I think unkindly.

Take a seat in the park of our subdivision, Philam Homes. A man sidles up to talk. I move, another man comes over. Do I need a chaperone to sit? Every alone is an invitation. The only privacy is the Catholic church, eternally open for the Blessed Sacrament, so available for adoration. It offered some diversion.

Here's a secret to noli mi tangere: become invisible. The trick's to ignore all the people staring at me, just make them go away by turning off the outside world. This “trick” has allowed me to do very risky impulsive things, because I negate the world in order to live in it.

When no one is watching, others are waiting to share. That’s what we learn after so much exposure. “Help me, ma'am” he says. I’m in third grade, a good citizen, so I obey, because he asked. “Help me ma'am". Ma'am? I am seven and a half. He’s in his car. He's jerking his cock. It's my first shame. Help him what? This is a world of matter-of-fact nakedness. Men pee on the side of the road, kids run naked in the rain, so have I. But this is a deep, secret hiya. On buses, in movie theaters, anonymous hands spider under my legs, across the seat. Auntie Soli hrumphs, "what's new?" She tells about the anonymous hand that fondled her padded bra in a dark movie theater. She cackles, we cackle. It happens to any dalaga. Maybe, but we mk also know it's because we are white meat and not mahinhin.

And now, there's no way to be hidden, even my dreams break the barricade: military occupation, pools of shit, a black bird drags a broken wing. What insurgency is this? I taste the dread in the night, but in the morning, best to disconnect, swallow the bile, smile.

By sweet 16, my psyche untangles its tether and pulls up the anchor. I am in a safe harbor and can recognize the shore, but no one is watching as my boat lifts over the swell and out to sea. Not me, not the family, not experts, and, I don't know, does God?

Can't make myself belong here anymore, can't bend down and disappear, can't go along. Sick of small talk. Can't crawl into the hole. Now it feels like a forced exile, and I swim through a current of desire and resentment. If I connect home to my passport, will I relieve this dread?