Residence on earth

So this is the archetypal first statement of the first post of any sort of blog. And so it will be with this one. I know you may be asking (the royal you of course!) two things: 1) Why am I, the author, writing in English when this blog is primarily about learning Tagalog in the Philippines? And 2) Why is the name of the blog already grammatically incorrect (or at least doesn't make any sense)? Those are two very good questions, and I have to say, I mulled them over for a good two minutes myself. The answer(s) is/are this: it's easier to ask questions than come up with answers.

Yet unlike other initial blog posts I would like to begin with some thoughts about traveling to the Philippines. I am in a strange ambiguous emotional space right now, which I'm not quite sure can be categorized under "happy"or "sad". Not because I'm depressed, or anxious, or frightened, or unprepared or any of those things but mostly because I'm tired. I'm tired of living a life that seems to revolve around unpacked boxes, cluttered suitcases, back-breaking beds, and early morning/late night excursions. Since moving out of my parents' house to live in the "dorms" in college (since 1999), I haven't lived in the same room for more than a year. In many ways I live a three quarter life. The years I experience revolve around the academic year, not long enough to fully embody the modern capitalist year experienced by most, and not short enough that I can claim any sort of emancipation from the rigid structures of the empty boxes of calendars.

Yet, this Residence on earth (to lift from Pablo Neruda), is about learning to live in exile. Or perhaps better put: living exile. Still I do not mean to construct an image of myself as someone who is "oppressed" or "forced" to leave my "home." Unlike many narratives of OFWs or "political" emigrants or the romantic diasporic identity, I have not dealt with extreme trauma or extreme longing. It is a different form of exile, one that is about race/ethnicity/nation and still at the same time, everything but race/ethnicity/nation. Nor, do I want to claim that I am part of some cross-current of "globalized" cosmopolitan set of routes. No, I am far too mundane for that. And my horizons far too narrow. Still, there is a romance attached to having "roots" or to feeling at "home" in some space. Perhaps that is why property is such a lingering fetish in modern society. Perhaps that is why the domestic is always conflated with the familiar. Still, there is a certain deep loneliness embedded in living an "academic" life, and many people that I know, both friends and fellow travelers, all mention the desire to settle down, and just get a "normal" (wage labor I assume) job. Perhaps get a cat and/or buy some furniture. Don't get me wrong though, it is not like I do not enjoy the opportunities to live to "read" and "research" and "write." I think it's an amazing promise of civil society that I can have these experiences in a tactile dominated world. And I am very much eager to travel, or better put, revisit, the Philippines this summer. I just know that the fog that governs and bars my "consciousness" gets punctured and I feel, ever so briefly, the detachment from my surroundings. And in this instance, it feels less like an eternity, but more like a series of infinite repetitions. And only now can I write of its afterlife.