triggers.
doing clinical shifts at the psych word. a man who rationalizes his abuse toward his filippino wife. someone he  "met" on this internet websites. moved to the phils with american money. his dollar went a long way. bought him a wife, a house, air conditioning. he was doing her a favor because he didnt try to get her deported even tho she wanted to leave him. she got mixed up in the wrong company. rationalizations. jesus. white supremacy. militarism. third world womyn. the dumping grounds of american military trauma. womyn are bought and sold. marriage is a contract. US visas is a reward. abuse is a bonus. children are an anchor. not being deported is a favor.

a friend tells me of his conversation with a pedophile. survivor of childhood abuse. perpetrator of childhood abuse. 14 year old boy whom this person thinks of as a girl. hidden secrets. shame. trauma reliving regenerating. the cycle doesnt end.

a friend calls me. they had been sexually assaulted. someone i know. this is the 4th one.

anger. rage. desire for resolution. trauma is painful and trauma strikes. people rationalize. trauma embodied and becoming human dehumanizes us.

then israeli attacks on gaza. collateral damage in the form of one year old toddlers, months old babies.

can't even go there.

Migration

I haven't found a writing home for a while. But now, I revived an old blog that had existed way before this one. It reflects more of the mindspace I am in. I find myself unable to write on this blog without thinking of the context in which it began, where I poured so many heartfelt thoughts and angry vents. That context is different now. I no longer work full time as a CNA. I do home care now, and only part time. I am also a nursing student now, and dealing more intimately with the emotional/mental/financial stress of my mother's own medical condition (a product of medical malpractice, so fuck the medical industrial complex and insurance and sickening lawyers. I hate corporate lawyers. Passionately.)

So, I have migrated to a different blog space: www.hojindetroit.wordpress.com. <3 Thanks for reading.

I love travelling. I love the feeling of new worlds placed side by side in my mind. I am the constant that exists, walking down new streets, resting my eyes on the configurations of buildings spread out across varying widths of streets, sitting on bus seats patterned within varying fades of colors. If it makes any sense at all, I watch myself travel. I feel like a character out of Motorcycle Diaries, filming my own adventures in my memory. If one man's travel can be made special, into a film, so can mine. 

I saw an art piece recently, where an undocumented mother holding a child says, "You travelled around Europe and they called  you adventurous. I crossed the border with my child and they called me a criminal."

Adventurous traveller. Criminal. Adventurous traveller. Law breaker. Adventurous traveller.

Such powerful distinctions.

im back.

I feel ready to be back, again. Coming back to the page is the physical and visual expression of me connecting with myself again. I go through waves and cycles of being ready to reflect and be connected. In the past few months, I have felt a new kind of disconnection from myself. It's new because it wasn't something I necessarily lamented, even though it was not easy. There was something inside me that was not able to control myself, and neither did I want to. Sometimes, I go through such phases of disconnection and feel extreme emotions of depression. But this time, things feel like they are floating by. There is sadness, there is death around me. And maybe it's my way of distancing. I don't know. But, in these periods, I appreciate, and miss the moments of connection with myself.
I miss translating thoughts into words, I miss trying to capture how I feel into language, I miss images that come to mind when I try to express myself. I miss writing without being self conscious. I miss a quiet night where all I want to do is to be alone with myself.
Why this doesn't happen more often, I dont know. But one thing I know is I have stopped writing, when thoughts are circular. I remember when I was around 16, and I looked at my diary and realized that each day, I was expressing the same angst. And I felt silly :) And so, I am going to try not to do that when I realize that I am doing it. And I hope my friends can be honest enough with me to tell me when I do too:)
There are some circular thoughts in my mind. I have found myself needing to talk about certain things alot. I have found myself not moving forward. And I think I am not moving forward because I havent changed my perspectives on certain relationships. I am stuck. I want to move on.

So much about me on this post. So many "I"s. Yes, I am curious about myself these days. I am allowing myself to change. It is something I havent done in a while. It is a change that is happening within myself because of the changes that have taken place in my political life in the past 2 years. Not all of this is good. I am trying to figure out how to make the best of this. But I am changing, and I am realizing that. It's a weird feeling. I dont have control, and I am curious. Sometimes hopeful. Sometimes not. I have some people around who ground me. I am thankful for them.

Also, I wanted to recommend this awesome piece. I hope to return to these precious words later:
http://blackgirldangerous.tumblr.com/post/23492833416/10-things-us-queers-and-the-rest-of-yall-can-do

processing, reinspiring

i always keep things inside till they well up and i have no choice but to write
i'm waiting for their swelling of emotions that make it inevitable for me to crack open some of this sadness.
but, maybe that's what makes me so unpredictably emotional. maybe i should learn to be more measured in how i express these intense emotions that i have...

recollecting myself.

i am having a hard time in nursing school.
i just had to admit that to myself.
the discipline is hard, the not working is relaxing, but guilt trippy and stressful, and...the culture is rough.
i'm just not very cut out for passive aggressiveness. and the racism in the school., in its explicit and implicit ways, really affect me.
be tougher, be stronger.
and, just say, fuck em. cos all that matters in the end is that im a good nurse, not them. not these petty peons.

on a positive note, im going home to visit my family w M
i'm excited about that. about the break. about not having to go to school.

i taste the thrill thumping in high school dance halls,
i shrink from the sharp pain racing from my father's tough callous hands
i hear his distance as stress sucks him ever further away
i smell the crisp fresh air of duino, blue, deep, clear, clean
i feel the way my mind is frozen, shocked, sudden, static.

i am searching.
for a way amid this confusion.

Still the diary of a disparaged CNA

its not over.

to have to breath deep,

again, not

giving up and sinking into this

slimy pool of their voices

silencing, drowning mine that is

yelling at the top of my lungs

to 

be heard

acknowledged

and not to be

stifled

snuffed

under

accusations of aggressiveness hysteria and the many stabs

at my righteous rage.

Hello, world

It's been a minute since I wrote on this blog. I think partly it's cos I really disliked the layout of the blog but was too lazy/slow to change it. Blogspot has this "dynamic" option that looks kinda cool, but...actually really confused the fuck out of me. So back to simple option. If thats gonna make me write, it's worth it looking shittier :)

Small things count. I'm learning this in nursing school as well. Small things like how you have to take extra time to gear up in protective wear cos the patient is in isolation, makes it such that you dont go in as often to those rooms..and not surprisingly, that patient in isolation, who actually needs *more* care, actually gets the short end of it. So, need to fight against this instinct to be, yes, lazy, cos it has real impact on someone else's life.

Small things count. Like how it's stressful for me -- in the microaggressions piling up everyday sort of way -- and how I have to talk myself in my head into going to school, being excited, being interested to learn. It's too much minutia and kinda emotionally exhausting for me to revisit all the ways that my awful class mates grind me down, that I won't mention them all here. I get really irritated with myself for being angry. But, that's why I am mentally avoiding school and everything associated with it. Yes -- my other excuse besides just being a lazy bum right now.

On a positive note, I'm trying to channel all this anxiety and isolation in school toward more constructive ends. I'm trying not to be a loner in class -- which I had been for the past 2 quarters partly cos I have been wiped out from the organizing related to Occupy, and also partly cos I have been so annoyed with my classmates. But, those that I dislike don't speak for all of my classmates. There are some decent good people around and I am trying to make the effort to get to know them, to be more social and less, well, judgemental. Also, my friend S and I are going to start some kind of more radical nursing club kinda thing. So even though I have a lot of rage, I am trying to channel it and not let it burn me alive. Let's see how this works out.

I have been meaning to write longer pieces about the readings I have been doing. The Hunger Games (yes!), Fanon, Richard Wright and the like. I am trying to do more internal work and processing. I am missing something. I can't name it yet. But it's a part of me trying to understand what kind of a revolutionary and person I am, and am becoming. It is a humbling feeling.

Weird. Maybe it's me being paranoid but suddenly I am wondering how much of this vulnerability I am putting out here is going to be traced by the state and by haters. I did just get called a "fucking bitch" by some asshole whom I just flyered to. I grew up watching TV serials on how anti-colonial fighters got tortured by the Japanese imperialists and how comfort women were made of prisoners of war. Makes me pissed thinking about how the state was getting all us young ones paranoid and pumped up about nationalism and the like, when they themselves as such fuckin' collaborators with imperialism all through and through. I remember at a young age thinking through all the scenarios of torture, rape, assault and the like and reminding myself how I need to prepare for such a time and how to react so I won't betray my country. They just messed with my young psyche and emotions! I don't think this is unique to me. Many female bodied people have been taught to censor our bodies and actions fearing such moments. But some days this vulnerability feels stronger than others and I don't feel free. And sometimes I think there's something really wrong with me.

I don't feel free, and small things count. 

There's a lot to be afraid of, and small things turn into big things quickly. The cold blooded murder of Trayvon Martin, the refusal of medical treatment for Anna Brown, the shooting of Rekia Boyd by the off duty cop...and then the ongoing assaults on free speech on campus, ease of arrests, secure communities...this is alot. What did Germany look like before rise of the Nazi party? How do we know where we are going? How do we change that course?

What strikes me particularly, is Fanon's last chapter in Wretched of the Earth, where he writes about the mental disorders caused by colonialism. I can't help but think about if Anna Brown had been a rich white woman, she would have been alive and treated with hella respect. But because she was a Black woman who had to be assertive to advocate for herself, she was hauled instead into jail and left to die, and refused care simply because she was profiled as a drug user. And...so drug users are refused medical care now? This kind of oppressive, white supremacist treatment *makes* people adapt to it in ways that warp and distort us.

Fanon's last chapter in Wretched, and the Dying Colonialism have been such powerful pieces. The Dying Colonialism has a powerful way of analyzing how colonialism shapes and warps the practices, culture and traditions of oppressed people. It has such a powerful and tangible way for understanding how struggle and revolutionary change is part of the transformation toward a new culture, new humanity, new being -- that is rooted in the present, that is rooted in change, that is movement. The man has some shitty gender politics but I still gotta say he was super ahead of his time.

I really crave being, in freedom