Saturday, March 01, 2008
why the sampaguita style
I was sixteen when I discovered that I just happened to wear a flower everyday. It still holds true.
My favorite dress, when I was six years old, looked a little something like the picture to the left. I always felt pretty in it.
Upon my Confirmation at age thirteen, I chose my saint name to be St. Theresa de Lisieux, also known as "The Little Flower."
My mom grows a million orchids in our backyard back home in San Jose.
Hearts, rainbows, angels, butterflies, ribbons and other gendered symbols were never really my style.
I gave flowers away to a man before I ever received them from one. I was six. And I didn't know I was saying goodbye.
The first flowers I received, in a romantic sort of way, were in the form of candy roses wrapped in red cellophane high school fundraiser-status.
When I was in a halau (hula school), I wasn't allowed to dance in a performance because I didn't have the right flower on. Nor did I fucking know what the damn difference was between flowers. Hah, embarassing.
I first saw beautiful, dried flowers at my best friend's place when I was thirteen.
Like other folks, I received and gave away hella flowers on birthdays, graduations and other celebrations.
I am more attuned to choosing flowers to draw, wear in pattern or use for decoration.
Warning: These fun facts may or may not have anything to do with the following blog.
Discovering the sampaguita is more about self-discovery. Lilo and Stitch and the glam of hula, oddly enough, popularized and shaped my imagination to declare the Hibiscus as my favorite flower. I've recently re-read M. Evelina Galang's Deflowering the Sampaguita along with other short stories that have made me think more about how I really didn't understand shit like the Babysitter's Club, why I couldn't cry in public, why we never had any money, why I still can't tell my mom about how hard school is, why I still can't get down with the Vagina Monologues, why I couldn't date someone who wasn't Filipino, why I shouldn't have been with a Filipino dude that my mom didn't know first, why it was important to dress up to family parties, why my friends tripped out when I told them I knew how to eat with my hands, and whatever cultural practice or Fil Am struggle you can name. Either way, or whatever the situation was, it just always felt like some kind of rejection from someone. The worst was and still is trying to figure where it all comes from.
It's not like I haven't tried. That's what this blog, my studies, my politics, my writings, my organizing, my work and my conversations have been for. It's been such a labor of love to keep everything in. And it's another to accept or resist how these struggles have been named for me.
The sampaguita was declared the Philippines' national flower on February 1st, 1934 by United States Governor-General Frank Murphy. A significant time in Asian Am/Fil Am [his]tory, don't you think? A significant time in which the United States was determining the status of the Philippines and Filipinos, furthering colonization and blurring the intersections of immigration and citizenship, as demonstrated with the Tydings-McDuffie Act changing the status of Filipinos from "nationals" to "aliens," or some other sources have cited "wards"... but either way is really fucked up. Source.
Having struggles named or unnamed for me has become a way of life, but not in a guiding way. If you've ever wondered about how legislation affects the everyday then I guess this is it. I've always been irked at people who "don't like politics" or worry about the "intellectualization" of feelings and experiences. Well, fuck, I don't like that shit either. But being political is different. And being anti-intellectual is invalidating. Being able to trace lineages of family oral stories and understanding the origins of my pain is important and is no doubt fully laced with some kind of politic and power.
Sampaguitas are hella small - as big as fingernails, I've read. I vaguely remembering holding them in the jeepney on the way to my lolo's funeral in the Philippines when I was six. I remember not always knowing what was going on. I don't think I've held them since then.
The sampaguita deflowers.
This blog is always under construction. This writer is has always been under construction like AOL days before modern-day MySpace when I couldn't figure what the fuck out I wanted to say. It was just time for a reflection, re-evaluation and some friggen color. This blog has turned into one of poetry, spoken word, my commentary on Life events and event postings. It will only continue to blossom. I apologize for entries that are so few and far in-between, but I've always been in that kind of hyphenation. I just need time.
Along with a new look comes a new writer. =)
x_magsalita.
// posted by Janice @ 2:50 AM 
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