Dad

I've just awaken from a very intense dream, where my brother, Kuya Niño (a cousin of ours), and I were running away from our dad in a much larger and labyrinthian version of our home in Skyway. For some reason we were afraid that Dad was going to kill us, and it was such an intense experience to believe this in the dream. Towards the end of the dream, we realized Dad was really out to get Kuya Niño, who knew the family secret that Dad had been kicked out of the family by Lolo earlier in his life and that the only reason he was re-accepted into the family was because of the letters Mom wrote to Lolo during the time that she was writing letters to Dad. Something I realized in the middle of the dream, and even more clearly now that I'm awake, is that Mom and Dad really wrote letters to teach other when Mom was still in Saudi Arabia and Dad was already in Seattle. These letters were the transmissions of their international courtship, and the reason that I bought into the dream so hard was probably because I knew this to be true. The fictionalized detail that Mom was also writing Lolo to mend the relationship of her husband-to-be and her father-in-law-to-be seemed altogether plausible since my mom is a negotiator by occupation, as well as a strong advocate for peacemaking within the general state of our family. Also, the onset of doom that came in the form of Dad felt very familiar, something out of the paternal masculinity and strict disciplinarian I had once known but eventually forgotten (ever since Dad learned to cool his temper). For some reason, after Kuya Niño revealed the family the "family secret" in the dream (I can't remember if he spoke in Kapampangan, which would have made a lot of sense even though it's hard to form in my mind right now), I started crying, crying hard, really hard, but now I can't really remember Why. I think it was in part because I (dreamed I had) realized I didn't know certain things about my parents and our familial history, and also because there was some sort of threat of losing Dad once we had learned of his past, like it was dangerous information marked by an unknown power or fate. The end of the dream, before I woke up, was a bit weird too, in that I was blowing my nose into a lot of used tissues that we had used to kill these bugs that I didn't want to step on in a dream that I had earlier this morning, and I eventually started blowing my nose into a razor cellphone. Apparently it was Dads, and I eventually realized that he wanted me to record things in the phone that would get his life back together and reaffirm that I still loved him.

Dad, I love you and I wouldn't know what to do without you.

Remember this formula for the rest of your life

caffeine + sam-e + talking to mom = will blow away all of your existential woes

Fuck it
I'm dead
And probably
Gay too

I can't remember the last time before now when the pitter-patter of rain hit the skylights so hard, breaking the tense, purgatorial silence of my parents' house and making me so aware of the melancholy of living [in Seattle]. Spring is here and Summer will come, but where is the fun?

Superman Ice Cream

As a child my parents used to take us to Kmart for our frequent non-grocery store purchases. For those of you familiar with the old downtown Renton landscape: this was before the Sears/J.C. Penny complex across the street was transformed into a Fred Meyer and before that funny thing called Walmart was dropped in the middle of Renton, before my family discovered that warehouse in Tukwila and became avowed Costco-ites. My dad used to hate it when I would tell relatives that Kmart was my favorite store, as he would have much preferred that I told them I was a fan of the Bon Marché or luxury car dealerships to map out his routines for others. So would my white classmates in grade school tease me for endorsing a store that in their minds catered to their white-trash cousins, although I'm sure many of them were just ashamed to admit they had fell into a Blue Light Special before. But Kmart was indeed my favorite retail space; each time we entered the store I would tell Mom that I'd meet her in the toy aisle, where I'd stare in awe at all the action figures that I couldn't have. I remember getting lost on several occasions in the white-tiled maze and panicking that I couldn't find my parents, having to go to the customer service to page "the parents of a little boy named Joseph." I remember seeing the interior undergo extensive remodeling several times, understanding from a very young age that the world changes, that we have to adjust to navigating newly constructed pathways. I remember the familiar faces of Filipinas who perhaps watched me grow up and the strange language that my Mom would use with them that was recognizably Filipino but not Kapampangan, which was how I understood my parents' otherness. I remember being so fascinated by a flamingly gay Fiipino that worked there who my Mom called "Dang" because of the guy's flamboyant overusage of the term, "Dang! Ate these napkins are only 50 cents a pack, you need to get more, you know I would! Dang!" I'm sure he said a lot of vulgar jokes, but I wouldn't know since they were said in an inaccessible language and manner that I could only at the most interpret as crude.

Back to nostalgia: Kmart Café. Or whatever it was called. They had your standard American fast food fare, hot dogs and hamburgers (probably, I don't remember, I never got that shit)--and nachos. God I loved those nachos, I loved sharing them with my brother and my Dad. Icee's. Convenience store shit that I wouldn't feed my own kids (neither would my parents nowadays, knowing their more informed and strict dietary choices), but I'm still glad for the memories. The Café would later be replaced by Little Ceasar's Pizza, which was also good in my mind, those buttery breadsticks and cheap slices of pizza. But there was one thing from the Café that I recently remembered and had completely left buried in my mind: "Superman" ice cream.

Last night I had "Superman" ice cream for the first time since I was a very young, young child. Dad used to get it for us, and I'm not quite sure if it was he who discovered its secret confectionery awakening or if my brother or myself one day asked to try the ice cream based on its bright multi-colored appearance. It has three colors and supposedly three flavors: a bright red that (from what I have read but unable to taste) is cherry, a yellowed french vanilla, and "blue moon"--a blue that looks like it would taste like cotton candy but is really based on the taste of toasted almonds.

A couple of weeks ago my brother bought a bucket of the stuff and I just ignored the large container in the freezer for sometime until I saw him eating a cup of it yesterday. I asked him what it tasted like, having totally forgot about having had it myself in a childhood past, but we would not relent in conceding me the answer "it tastes like Superman!" This really pissed me off because the colors of the ice cream didn't have the same appeal to me as a twenty-something as it would a child, and I assumed it would be an awful mix of artificially flavored berries and that mysteriously true yellow color. However, in my hunger and feeling down last night I gave it a try...

And the taste was phenomenal. And as you can see, I re-lived so much.

'92 Til Infinity

Screaming Trees - Nearly Lost You (Letterman)

Wow, I didn't know Paul Mooney was their drummer (0:31).

Phantom Trip

I just woke up from a dream in which I was stranded in the middle of nowhere, far from any place-names I recognized, in the Philippines. I was on a Jeepney and people on the vehicle were mysteriously disappearing and being replaced, including the driver. We had a couple of puti drivers who were also insane and for some reason this was the only Jeepney route in the whole nation that was operating. I suspected the government, but I kept being hushed or stonewalled from finding the truth. And this is the first dream I can remember in which I was speaking Tagalog...