I hope you have been well and good, as I always wish you to be. As of a few days ago, Mercury is in retrograde. The meaning of that is pretty much lost on me, the significance of it even more so, but I do know that these are not peaceful times. With this in mind – you been alright? Sleeping enough, drinking enough water? The longer I live, the more aware I am of the constraints of my own body. I don’t mean to sound too gym bro-y when I say that. Reading week just wrapped up two weeks ago, and all at once my body reminded me of how far I was pushing it these past few months – for I have spent all my break doing nothing but slumber. I’m not talking about that productive rest neither, I’m talking about straight up bed rotting, doom scrolling, Instagram-reel-sending slumber. Slumber, yeah. That’s a good word. I have been slumbering. At the very least, I’ve been getting good amounts of sleep. I’m only now amidst the process of still waking up; what was once an outpouring of scholarly work has become a sputter of its former self. Took me a while to fill up the ol’ engine, but I’m getting back into the groove of things, even if it does feel like its at the cost of my social and academic wellbeing. If you’ve been cooking along at home, do not follow my example. Live well, rest well, eat well, train well (if you are so inclined, and… perhaps… maybe… in that order.)

Speaking of all that: there is a beautiful snippet on rest that Byung Chul-Han wrote. My buddy Luke1 showed it to me this morning:

God blessed and sanctified the seventh day. The rest enjoyed on the Sabbath consecrates the work of creation. It is not mere idleness. Rather, it is an essential part of creation. In his commentary on the Book of Genesis, Rashi thus remarks: ‘After the six days of creation, what was still missing from the universe? Menuchah [inoperativity, rest]. The Sabbath came, the menuchah came, and the universe was complete.’ Sabbath rest does not follow creation; it brings creation to completion. Without it, the creation would be incomplete. God does not rest on the seventh day simply to recover from the work he has done. Rather, rest is his nature. It completes the creation. It is the essence of the creation. Thus, when we subordinate rest to work, we ignore the divine.

– Byung Chul-Han, The Dissapearence of Rituals (2019)

To that end, I make a distinct break between BCH’s rest and my slumber, on the grounds that I don’t like the idea of thinking of this time with such tenderness. Feels as if I’ve taken the Divine out of the seventh day and stretched it out to the point of disfigurement, of unrecognizability. If I were to find something tantamount to the essence of creation in these past few weeks, I think I’d find myself blasphemous. Though perhaps it is because of how deeply ingrained into the systems that be, that have forced me into reducing myself into nothing more than an output of work, of contributing to perpetual production, that I find myself so disgusted with the thought of doing nothing.

Truth be told, I have not been doing nothing – I have been doing a whole lot, I think. In between shifts and the labour of… deciding what grad school program to go into… I’ve been cramming in as much time as possible to see the friends who are close to me locally. I try to remind myself that this is the last semester of my undergrad, that I ought not to be so future-focused, that these will be the days I will look back at so fondly in the same way I’ve viewed these past few years with such sentimentality. There is a part of me that feels that I ought to be making something of myself with how little time I have left on these campus grounds. Having those you love die will do that to you. Though – I must admit to you, as much as I love my dawgs, I’m pretty introverted. You might find that hard to believe, considering how… ya know. If there’s anything these past few months of seminars and letters of intent have taught me, it’s that much of my life is a kind of performance2. A performance that I love doing, that I think I’ve done a good enough job of enmeshing my very essence into, that I take as seriously as I do my physical and academic well-being, but a performance that is, by and large, still a performance, still something that demands out of my being a certain amount of labour.

This is all to say: I’m writing this to procrastinate on a 1500-word essay. Out of respect for your time3 and mine, let me update you on all the exciting things that have happened to me since this year started.

I GOT INTO GRADUATE SCHOOL!

I’m typing this as if I haven’t been loud about it already. If you’re reading this, you probably already know that. I just wanted to document it here for posterity’s sake. Hahahaha. Not too bad for a guy like me. Big win for the Filipino community.

I HAVE OFFICIALLY MATRICULATED!

This one is a bit more new. If you haven’t heard, I got into all the masters programs I wanted to get into. My most trusted of advisors are well aware of the circumstances that I was deliberating upon. Maybe it is the Libra rising4 in me that is so contingent on making sure that I weigh my options as carefully as possible, or maybe it is just a normal thing for people to want to make sure that the next two years of their lives are going to matter in the best ways possible. Who knows?

After spending these last few weeks deliberating5, I will officially be matriculating at the University of Toronto this Fall for an MA in Curriculum & Pedagogy, under the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Truly, it is a blessing to be given the opportunity (and, quite frankly, the money) to pursue research in a field that I have so much reverence for. I’ll write more about why this means so much to me at some point this summer, but those of you who I hold close probably already can put two and two together.

These two things are, of course, downstream from a bigger movement in my life:

I’LL BE GRADUATING FROM MY UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE!

Thank God for that. Took me long enough. Get me outta here. Ahh. Just kidding. Well, kinda.

IT HAS BEEN AN INCREDIBLE YEAR FOR MUSIC (THAT I LIKE)!

• Ca$ino by Baby Keem

• Don’t Be Dumb by A$AP Rocky

• Nothing’s About to Happen to Me by Mitski

• The Super Bowl 60 Halftime Show by Bad Bunny

• Sinners having a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations

• Vanisher, Horizon Scraper (The Extended Cut) by Quadeca6

• a new album from underscores is dropping this year

I’m probably missing a few projects, but these are my favourites thus far. That Baby Keem album has zero skips, front to back. The halftime show has exposed me to Bad Bunny’s discography. Oh man, that Baby Keem album is so good. So, so, so good. The title track alone has been blasting non-stop since it released. If you’ll listen to one song recommendation, listen to the song Ca$ino by Baby Keem. Audio dopamine. Feels like I can lift skyscrapers every time I hear those synths kick in. So good.

Dishonourable mention to the newest Bruno Mars album, The Romantic. Pains me to say it as a fellow Filipino person, but I don’t think I’ve ever encountered an artist so simultaneously talented and contrived. His vocal chops and his production are some of the best out there right now, but whether its out of respect or marketability7 he owes way too much to the artists who have invented the sounds he is trying to recreate to the point where every single he releases just comes off as derivative. At least with Silk Sonic and 24K Magic, his two prior releases that also come off as parodies of the genre, they have immense vocal and production chops. The execution for this latest release feels just okay, which saddens me to say considering how much potential this dude has. One day, we will get a messy, introspective Bruno Mars song. This is not that day. Also, I Just Might is probably one of the worst songs he’s ever released, ever. Okay, enough hating.

JUJUTSU KAISEN SEASON THREE IS THE BEST ANIME HAS EVER BEEN

At least, when it comes to shonen. I might be a little biased, considering JJK is one of my favourite manga series of all time and the Culling Games introduces some of my all-time favourite characters8, but you’d be hard-pressed to find another serialized show that is filled with this much love, labour, and attention to detail. Every episode that drops feels like the best episode to date, until the next one releases. The episodes dedicated to Maki and Higuruma’s introduction are some of the best television I’ve ever watched, ever. You gotta catch up to JJK man. Oh my goodness.

Okay, that feels like an okay amount of writing. In short: I’ve been good! Busy, for busy’s sake, but also for good reasons. I hope you’re doing alright out there. I’m hoping to do something special for the month of April. If you didn’t know already, April is my favourite month of the year. It is, of course, a month for lovers. Expect to see an abundance of my writing next month. In the mean time - have fun out there! If there is anything that we can learn from multi-Olympic Gold Medalist and future world champion Alysa Liu, it is that anything worth doing can also be done in a way that is, above all else, fun! I don’t know how true that is, and I don’t think that’s the ultimate takeaway we should be getting from her incredible performance. It would just feel off to not mention how much her victory has rippled into the lives of many, mine included.

Go out and have fun, guys! Until next time.

I hope this Substack post finds you well. Have you been drinking water? Sleeping well, eating well, living well? I really miss our chats, unilateral as they may be. My wish is that, by the time you do end up reading this, your year has been kind to you. Me, personally? It’s been phenomenal. What a great start to the year. My life is catapulting towards something great. A bit indiscernible to me as I type, but I have my fingers against the pulse of something bright. That’s what I’ve been telling myself in-between lectures and seminars and closing shifts and TA-ing sessions. Last night, I attended a litany of shows hosted by the MSU-ratified club Mac One Act with my buddy Sam1. This was mostly out of support for my buddy Ben2, though I was pleasantly surprised by a few of the plays we watched. Only a few. The rest were par for the course. There was this one play that was also a musical that was very heartfelt, but the songs laden throughout were played by one of three characters whose whole shtick was being a tried-and-true, live-and-breathe-it musician. The actor who played him was great, really put his heart into it. But man, he cannot play the guitar nor the ukulele at all. There were a few times throughout the night, not just during this play, where I thought to myself: I feel like I can do this, but better. I try not to frequent these thoughts. My ego is big enough as it is, and I already have enough things I aspire to do, enough ways of living that I aspire to have. But maybe in the next few years, you’ll see my work on a stage in some capacity. Whatever that may look like.

I’ve been taking an Enlightenment-era Literature course this semester. As I write to you, my English professor currently has a lovely little fixation on astrology and horoscopes. Amidst all the chatter of Milton and Paradise Lost, it’s clear that the main vehicle for which we as a class are moving through this semester’s texts is that of astronomy, of the ways in which people of centuries past interpreted the stars up above them. I couldn’t help but do a little digging into my own celestial charts. Apparently to r/sagittarians, people with my big three3 are having a very good start to the year. Must be a good year for fire signs, based on a sample size of… whoever uses very specific birth sign subreddits. I try not to frequent these websites.

Speaking of elements - would you look at that! Three posts this year. I’m on track to beat my personal record in Substack posts within a given calendar year. You know how the term ‘lightning in a bottle’ is thrown around to indicate the rarity of an event? How all the stars must have aligned, how every condition must have fallen perfectly into place, for this thing to occur? How one must think, then, that trying to capture lightning in a glass vestibule would be borderline impossible? I’ll tell you what; this intuition is correct. I don’t think my writing is that generative, in the sense that it probably couldn’t turn on a light bulb if it tried. Though, to give myself at least a bit of credit, my blog posts are (probably) a bit easier to read than pure electricity. If not easier to read, at least much easier on the eyes. I’d like to think that my excessive usage of footnotes is nowhere near as blinding. A pretty thing to look at, don’t you think? So tasteful, so… hey, is this thing on? Ah, yeah. Okay, anyway.

The last time I wrote to you, I alluded to me applying to graduate school programs.4 I’m hoping that me posting this doesn’t jinx anything, but I have a pretty good feeling about my odds. When I get in, you will5, of course, be one of the first to know. In the awkward, nail-biting interim between interview and admittance, I’d like to get a few things off my chest. Those of you6 who have had the misfortune of having to deal with me in the week leading up to the interview by now must have heard about all my thoughts about education and pedagogy, and why I hold my relationship with school so close to my heart. I think it'd be good to get at least some of these thoughts on paper.

The fourth chapter of Teaching to Transgress is a poignant vignette that I find myself re-visiting and re-reading7 for pleasure. It’s here where bell hooks provides a fragment of a conversation between her writing persona and herself as she puts forth a candid, heartfelt account of Paulo Freire and how much of an impact his work has had on her academic and (perhaps, most vitally) personal endeavors. When you have a free moment, I’d implore you to seek out this book and read it front-to-back8. My time at McMaster, my independent research, my academic excellence, the very soul of my undergraduate degree - all of these entities owe their existence to her work and its far-reaching, widespread, rippling impacts on higher academia. Let me be explicitly clear: my envisioning of a better future for myself, for those who have come before, and for those who will come after me, would be for naught if it weren’t for the work of bell hooks and her contemporaries9 within the field of black feminist pedagogy. Quite frankly, I look at their work and I think to myself: Shit. I could instill my entire essence into a book, break my soul down into written form and pour it onto a page, and only make up a drop in the oceans of knowledge they have long-since established.

My dearest reader, I am confident in my abilities. I’ve written at-length about this before.10 Every head must bow, and every tongue must confess: the vast majority of my confidence finds roots in cornerstones developed by those who have lived long before I have. Teaching to Transgress is one such cornerstone. The following passage is an homage to the aforementioned chapter on Freire. A dialogue between myself, Remiel, talking with Don Don, my writing voice. Most of it will be a re-hash of answers to interview questions I’ve prepped that I’m also very proud of. Some of it will be newer ideas that I free write as I go along. All of this, for the sake of speaking in glory: for a few brief moments, I’ll try to write in praise of teaching, of education, and of all the giants whose shoulders I stand upon.

Remiel

    Just from reading your work thus far, and from having known you for over 20 years now, it is clear to me that you have a deep reverence for education. Could you speak more about this? Where this reverence came from, where you wanna go with it, all that jazz.

Don Don

    I would like to clarify how I mean when I use the term 'education'.

Remiel

    You think you need to? I think it's pretty obvious.

Don Don

    I think it is good to be aware of the constraints of your knowledge base. You know how far your understandings of how things ought to be reach, know firsthand the limitations of knowing only what you know.

Remiel

    Yeah you right. My fault. Go ahead.

Don Don

    When I speak of education, I speak of the ways in which I have been nourished - by all definitions of the word - through the hands of those who lifted me throughout my studies. As a student, I've had the privilege of being exposed to academia in a wide range of settings. The most prominent of these settings is my time at McMaster.

Remiel

    Are you talking about Arts & Sciences, the most prestigious undergraduate program at McMaster University?

Don Don

    Like I guess, yeah. It is through the very nature of the program - that of being in a small, tightly-knit cohort, that of being on a first-name basis with all of my instructors, that of having access to almost every undergraduate course - wherein I was able to shape my fascination for the epistemological implications of different pedagogical infrastructures. I do not take this privilege for granted, for it allowed me to be free of a few constraints that restrict the typical undergraduate student.

Remiel

    Oh for sure, yeah. There's something a bit dehumanizing about being herded up in big lecture halls. Something cold about being referred to as a student number, about having to include your student number in every e-mail sent to any relevant administrative staff. Compare that to my own experience - I can walk into 3038 right now and sit down with my academic advisor, no questions asked. Don't even have to introduce myself or nothing. Nuts, right? I've heard so much about the logistical nightmare of dealing with advisors and school guidance counselors from my non-ArtSci folks. Engineers especially, they have it the worst. Although that's probably marginally offset by how much more employable their degree is in turn. Ha!

Don Don

    I don't subscribe to the notion of pursuing higher education for being more employable. I don't like tying the value of knowledge to capital.

Remiel

    You're really preaching to the choir here, I fear.

Don Don

    If you were to take a look at my academic transcript, you'll notice how consistently inconsistent my coursework has been. I have course credits dipping into math, into computer science, in community engagement, in English, in art history for some reason; had it not been for how much elective space ArtSci students get, I don't think I would have been able to fulfill my graduation requirements on time.

Remiel

    On time. Haha. Yeah man. That was a good one.

Don Don

    It was through this interdisciplinary weaving, through the tapestry of knowledge practices I have been able to braid into my subconscious, that I've come to appreciate pedagogy at its purest: the ways in which knowledge is translated, bilaterally communicated and, vitally, co-created within classroom environments. Truthfully, being in this program has done me wonders, for it has allowed me to experience firsthand how life-giving innovative, inquiry-based pedagogy is for a student like me. My passions, my whims, my raison d'etre is a direct consequence of my time here.

Remiel

    But... There's something more to ArtSci that strikes you, right? Being able to go down to the Piraeus and practice erotic knowing, or nuance, or whatever privileges a B. A. Sc. affords you - that can only take you so far. You keep alluding to what you want to do in the future. The whole point of this article is to get the ol' grad school shakes out of your system. I know you want to get your Masters in this field. So what? You going to write a really cool dissertation that everybody will read? Change the world, by having undergrad students skim through abstracts you write years from now? I understand you believe well-intentioned education to be a revolutionary, life-giving act. I know how close you hold this school shit to your chest.  I know, you know: the future you dream of won't be found in a peer-reviewed article.

Don Don

    I mentioned earlier about the ways in which I've been nourished by those I've met through my education. My breadth of educational experiences is also marked in the opposite extremity; I was born and raised in inner-city Hamilton. I went to public school in inner-city Hamilton. I know what it's like to experience an inner-city child's life. I try to shy away from how bad it has been for me in the past - I think a large reason why I did so well in school was a direct response to me actively wanting to be away from my house as much as possible. I can write entire essays on the ways in which my personal and financial hardships have barricaded me from further academic opportunities, how these same restrictions continue to have rippling effects on my life today. This is not even considering the fiscal and staffing constraints that a publicly-funded inner-city education already has, especially when you compare the statistics of my schools to the western side (the actual funded schools, to put it bluntly) of the district school board.

Remiel

    Your time away from university is entailed by these conditions.

Don Don

    That is correct, yes. It is by God's grace that I have stumbled upon such incredible friends, mentors, and peers, who have showered me with grace, kindness, and generosity in abundance. I can sit here and list off every single teacher who has stuck their neck out for me, but I would be here for hours. There is a part of me that still acts as if I were on borrowed time. My ability to eat, to sleep in a home, to rest on a bed, to wake up having some figment of a day I can look forward to - I owe it all to the collective efforts of the community I fostered, and who have fostered me in-turn, through my education.

11

Remiel

    You're gonna say all that, while still speaking so highly of the trust-fund-baby, rich-kid-inheritance program you're about to graduate from? Be real.

Don Don

    That's a bit reductive. ArtSci also happens to be pretty white. The cohorts before me were, anyway. I think the more recent implementation of name-blind supplementary applications has paid off, for the seminars I've attended more recently happen to have much higher ratios of racialized students to zero-melanin folks.

Remiel

    ArtSci being white. Who would have thought. Just for the record - we are joking when we say this.

Don Don

    Yeah, I am. A little bit, anyway. Truth be told, Remiel, if I told you the reason I'm writing from this position today was solely because of my own merit, I'd be lying to you. I think that much is clear already.

Remiel

     That it is, though this confession of your feelings for education is a bit of a newfangled thing, don't you think?

Don Don

    No, not at all actually. Everything I speak of, when it comes to academia and its conditions, are ways of knowing - practices of knowledge, if you will - that I've long since ingrained into my psyche long before I had even dreamed of a better life for myself. Do you recall the 50th anniversary edition of Pedagogy of the Oppressed?

Remiel

    Buddy if I had a nickel for every time you brought up this book I wouldn't have had to have written up a whole SSHRC application.

Don Don

    In the preface to that edition of the text, Donaldo Macedo brings up an anecdote about a young Brazilian boy who is tasked by his teacher to go and read the first chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The very next day, that boy ran back up to the same teacher, having read the entirety of the book front-to-back. The bags under his eyes were the only indicator that he had been up all night, for he was otherwise filled with a certain joie de vivre that was spilling forth in his mannerisms. Do you recall? The boy said to his teacher, 'This is me on a page!'

Remiel

    That boy is me.

Don Don

    That boy is me.

Remiel

    Well, not actually. I'm not Brazilian, neither are you. I was born after... ah... well, a few decades after that boy read the text. But yeah, no, yeah. I remember that tidbit. That's how I felt reading through the Freire chapter of Teaching to Transgress.

Don Don

    My feelings are not too dissimilar to bell hooks, actually. She describes the liberatory theory of Freire like water, and the ways in which she had been dying of thirst for years beforehand. It was upon reading and meeting with Freire that she had been hydrated, given life anew. For me, Pedagogy of the Oppressed gives me a language, a framework, a way of putting into words exactly how I had been feeling about higher academia and the bureaucratic, nauseating, knowledge-banked structures that underpin education. Like I had been voiceless for years, like a dam holding back an unperturbed body of water. As I write, I think about the ways in which I come off as a bit intense, especially within seminars. How surgically precise I try to be whenever I articulate myself in class. There is a part of me that feels like I've been completely possessed by my reverence, as if my tongue has been moving and bringing to life what my soul has been aching to spill forth for decades.

Remiel

    Good excuse as any to justify your tendency to yap, though I don't blame you for feeling that way. To me, Freire feels like a late-night confession dressed up as an anthropological text, the kind of book that whispers all the right words. Like church. A lot of quiet, a lot of contemplating, a lot of everything and nothing coalescing all at once, a lot of revelation. Makes you wish this Earth would stay this hushed, this vulnerable, this honest, just a little bit longer... 

Don Don

    Do you have something you wish to share with the class?

Remiel

    There is a part of me that worries, sometimes, the intensity you speak of. I remind myself that my voice in a seminar is one that inherently is a political act, insofar as people with my specific socioeconomic conditions historically do not exist in these spaces. I remind myself that the way I carry myself on a day-to-day basis is one that is intentional, one that actively tries to embody my praise for education. It is one that is a bit polarizing, one that is somewhat isolating, insofar as not a lot of people would completely understand it unless they have gone through similar circumstances - but it is one that is, nonetheless, reflected in kind by the warmth of my friends, and how well-revered I am within my local communities. I think about how I'm on a first name basis with the janitors on campus. How my name is echoed in places I haven't walked. It is a nice reminder that my life is one that I am not living solely for myself.
    
    You know, I was walking around downtown on the morning of my grad school interview to remind myself about who I do this all for. I remember distinctly how bright the sun was shining that day. I'm talking sticky sweet nectarine orange, the kind of hues you'd find in the flesh of ripe mangoes from the Motherland. The Universe, the Divine, God, whatever deity or other power you believe in - I know my God, and unequivocally, I know it to be true that this entity acts out their whims through symbols and gestures. Whenever I feel a bit of sunshine, I think to myself - I must be doing something worthy of praise.

Don Don

    I think you ought to be a bit more humble than that.

Remiel

    I am saying all of this in the most humble way possible. I can only say this because of how much divinity my mentors and loved ones see in me - and I feel confident in speaking it aloud, for I see that same divinity five times over within them. I am my own reason why I sing, and so are they - are you understanding?

Don Don

    Good song and dance. That makes sense. Do you remember what that pastor said to you last month, at work? The one who works across the street?

Remiel

    'Pride is only a sin, if you're really bad at what you do.' Yeah. Yeah, it was a really funny joke.

Don Don

    Was he joking? I suppose he was trying to come off as joking. I'm unsure.  You know, it is difficult to parse people through the brief glimpses offered over coffee shop conversations. Nonetheless, I took his joke to heart.

Remiel

    Mm. I dunno. Don't really matter too much.

Remiel

    We're approaching the e-mail length limit of this newsletter. Let's wrap up this conversation. Tell me more about why you want to pursue this academic venture.

Don Don

    Naive as it may sound, my ultimate goal is to work towards a future where kids like me have ample opportunity to go on to exist within the academic spaces I've been able to exist within. In Freire-speak: more of the oppressed should be within the spaces where big decisions happen. I hold the statistically-anomalous nature of my positionality with a sense of responsibility. I've seen too many kids, just as capable as myself, slip through the cracks. I know how life-saving this education is.

Remiel

    How do you suppose we get there?

Don Don

    When I think of the educators who have blessed me, the lowest common denominator amongst all of them are the ways in which they were aware of the limits and constraints of the classroom environment. All of them were acutely perceptive of the ways in which academia tends to silo our identities - the ways in which children are reduced to student numbers, how they are left to leave all of the baggage they have going on outside of their school lives at the door before they step inside. This 'baggage', these identities that indeterminately influence the classroom experience, is fundamental to the future I envision, for I believe that the responsible intermingling of these outside influences within the classroom is the way for which truly liberatory educational praxis is achieved.

Remiel

    You wish for a classroom that pays careful attention to the identities and conditions of the student, of the teacher, beyond the scope of the classroom infrastructure.

Don Don

    I do. I think the way to scale that en-masse, at a policy level, is one that is a bit lost on me. I have spent plenty of time in my life documenting the constraints of standardized curricula, the ways in which children continue to be dehumanized. I have experienced firsthand what occurs when these conditions are actively resisted, both within higher academia and within publicly-funded education. i think the way forward, towards a future, is within this tenuous gap I've been pressing my fingers up against throughout my undergraduate degree. There is a space between pedagogical research and theory, and on-the-ground day-to-day classroom operations, a disparity that I've felt ever since I stepped foot onto McMaster. 

Remiel

    You want to be in the spaces where this gap ceases to exist. You propose that the way forward is praxis, en masse. Education, as a practice of freedom.

Don Don

    Education, as a practice of love. I think the only way forward is to work towards this future. I can't quite parse what this may look like, yet still I feel myself catapulting towards all the same. I know it to be true that this pursuit of critical pedagogical praxis is my fundamental center of gravity. Everything I have been doing has all been orbiting, ceaselessly, around the very heart of this cosmology.

Remiel

    Fire. Yeah. I guess that's about it. Any closing thoughts you wanna share?

Don Don

    Written word fails to properly evoke exactly how I feel about Freire, about hooks, about critical pedagogy. I think that's par for the course. It would be a bit silly for my heart to be found on some pieces of paper. You're better off keeping my two cents in your pocket. Years from now, when you find yourself throwing some change into the next park water fountain you come across, I'd like you to take a close look at your reflection. See the ways in which the surface of the water ripples, ebb and flow, becomes still. You can find my heart there, I'm sure of it.

Happy new year, again. Three days ago, I spent most of my time hanging out with a bunch of my ArtSci alumni friends and Luke. My least chronically online friend, David M1, had never heard of Substack before, so we (myself, David, Luke, and Sharang) spent a good chunk of our lunch discussing the nature of Substack and what folks use it for. We ascertained that the vast majority of people we know who use Substack post on it in two different ways: either as if they were writing an opinion piece on a personal column of some newspaper, or as if they were using it to echo the glory days2 of blogging.

You can guess where this blog falls in this arbitrary spectrum just based off the domain name alone. The majority of my closest friends have migrated to different parts of the world. This is by design, of course. I am plotting complete global domination, and to do so I must leave vestiges of myself in every nook and cranny of the Earth. You will find me in every little pocket. Hold your ear up to a conch shell in a few decades, and you’ll discern my voice if you listen closely. No other reason that my friends would be out and about.3 Messenger pigeons are out of season nowadays, and snails are not very good at traveling transatlantic, so my preferred means of being able to catch up with my little gremlins outside of the occasional call or the hourly Instagram reel is to post excerpts of my life here - for my friends to see, for anybody who Googles me to gawk at, for any random stragglers to be a little confused by.

One of these days, I’ll write a piece that isn’t about me. Good news for people who hate good news: this is not one of those days.4 I have a few pieces on the agenda for today. The last time I wrote to you, I spoke about everything I’ll be bringing into, and everything I’ll be leaving out of 2026. I don’t think I ever spoke about my new years’ resolutions, so let me list them all out for you right quick so that you can hold me accountable by this time next year:

• Take sleep very seriously. Bare minimum 7 hours every night. No more all nighters.

• Be less busy. Have at least one hour of scheduled5 free time per day. Be much more intentional about the time I spend on things I ought to get done, and things I want to do.

• A bit counterintuitive with the above note but: volunteer more!

• Think a bit more, probably, before doing things.

• Get better at writing. Sharpen the rhetoric. Spend less time translating, and more time precisely articulating exactly how I mean without having to double back and clarify.6

• Continue to be curious about other people. Ask good questions. Continue to let people know that I care about them.

• Do more friend intermeshing. Let my social webs intersect more often. Have more crossover episodes. I tend to attract good people, and good people deserve more good people.

• Flex my musical talents and perform at least once this year.

• Visit the tailor more often. Get to know him on a first name basis. Pay more attention to my clothing, the material it’s made of, the way garments move and rest upon my body. Look good and feel good. Show them legs off.

• Be more comfortable with taking Ls. Get more used to putting effort into endeavours that don’t end up where I want them to end up. Fall on my face more often. Make a habit of dusting myself off and trying again, and again, and again. Be unyielding, persistent, relentless.7

• On a similar note: get over myself.8

  

Jeez Louise! I’m only part way through this post and I already have eight footnotes!9 I’ve become a big fan of appendices. While I was hanging out with my president10 I brought up something along the lines of the aesthetics of citations. In hindsight I don’t really know what I fully meant by it.11 Something about reverence for those who have come before, something about the lifeblood of hip-hop being synonymous with sampling and re-mixing, something about the ways in which different kinds of in-text citation/footnote styles dictate the ways in which a reader views a piece aesthetically or semantically. There is probably something on JSTOR about this exact thing. I’ll have to write about it here at some point. I gotta stop before I get ahead of myself. Citation aesthetics was not on the agenda today. Let’s do the actual last thing on the agenda for today: a somewhat comprehensive year-in-review.

I’ll list all the notable events that have happened to me point-by-point in chronological order:

• Met a bunch of really cool new people in January that I’m still tight with to this day

• Ate about six? seven?12 plates of spaghetti

• Campaigned for the Hamilton Mountain NDP riding during the provincial election13

• Spent Valentine’s Day watching In The Mood For Love at the Playhouse with Sharang14

• Volunteered at Write Like with Laura and the prez, met Aabria Iyengar15

• Taught a bunch of anatomy workshops to kids at a bunch of different libraries and classrooms throughout Hamilton

• Got really into playing the piano

• Watched the 2025 Oscars Ceremony (Wicked did not sweep) and the first half of The Brutalist (it was alright)

• Spent an obscene amount of time in the CFMU lobby

• Became a regular at the Hub

• Spent triple digits on flower bouquets

• Hung out with my loved ones from Toronto16

• Got really, really into cooking, for myself and for other people

• Grew my hair out, and then cut it all off, and then grew it back

• Became an admin for a very esteemed toilet-fixated account

• Felt the collective grief of my people, and consequently became much more Filipino

• Enrolled in the first cohort of a really hyper-intense, experimental, condensed version of CityLAB in May17

• Art-crawled with SDP every month, with Sharang at least once, saw literally everybody in Hamilton that I knew. I looked really cool saying hi to somebody every few minutes

• Visited Vancouver! Hung out with lovely Maia and a few other folks18, got to see the ocean with my own eyes for the first time in decades

• My Father passed

• Saw Tyler, the Creator live in concert in Toronto19

• Spent the last month of summer spending as much time as possible with my best friends before they all left

• Started two independent studies in my undergrad, one of which is still ongoing20

• Became a TA while still doing barista stuff and school full time21

• Volunteered a bunch at e^2

• Spent a few sweet months with someone special to me up until the leaves changed

• Visited the Motherland

• Presented at the STAO Celebrates conference, alongside my friends at the MCYU

• Finished up and presented my research on free-writing and democratic education

• Turned 24, had a big birthday bash with most of my dawgs

• Spent new years with even more of my friends

• Celebrated my first NYE without my dad

It must be so fun to mean a lot to me. I get a kick out of every time one of my close friends mention my name in their little blog posts. Go see if you can spot yourself in the list or in the footnotes. I hope you can feel that same little hit of dopamine. I love giving out as much flowers as possible. If you’ve been reading thus far: I really appreciate you too. I don’t think it’s too parasocial to say that, considering if you care enough to read this you care enough about me. Statistically, maybe if you carry the one, I probably care about you in turn. So many cool things have happened to me. Thank you to all my friends, old and new, for making all that happen. I am the opposite of a self-made man.

It is dawning on me now, that the whole ‘getting over myself’ resolution probably won’t happen any time soon. It’s a work in progress. I started writing this post in hopes of eventually writing out my trip to the Philippines in detail for you, but I got so much footage on my trip that I think I might end up making a cheeky little video to document it instead.22 Oh, sorry, two more things to add to the resolution list:

• Make more than one vlog this year

• Get into grad school23

The one thing I regret most, in hindsight, and especially after losing so many people I once held dear this past year, is my lack of documenting people and events properly. I have awful memory. I’d like for these fragments of my life to be traceable, beyond the scope of own my personal diary that I’ve been keeping. Something my loved ones can look back on, whether its my friends or my folks or maybe somebody who will come after me. That’s all to say that I’d like to write to you more often. Perhaps not again this month, for I have many graduate school applications to lose sleep over and dozens more niche academic journals to pore over.

I think I’ve written enough for this one. The downside of writing these articles, besides how corny24 I feel while writing them, is how unilateral the resulting communication is. You be well and prosper, okay? Keep in touch while you’re out there, and keep my two cents in your pocket. If you ever come across a fountain in a park, toss a coin in. I’ll be there.

If you’ve been reading my Substack regularly, you’re also (hopefully) keeping up to date with a certain license plate curator. I’ve been waiting in anticipation for him to release a follow-up to last year’s in-and-out post. I'm very impatient. Maybe beekeeping keeps your hands all swelled up to the point where you can't type proper. He's taking a long time.

CORRECTION - WHILE I WAS WRITING THIS POST, SAM ACTUALLY POSTED THE FOLLOW-UP POST. YOU CAN FIND IT HERE. WHILE I’M AT IT, GO READ CYNTHIA’S INS-AND-OUTS AS WELL. I APOLOGIZE TO YOU, SAM’S VANITY PLATE COMMUNITY, FOR SLANDERING YOUR BELOVED BEEKEEPER LIKE THIS. I WILL NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE AGAIN.

In my fervor, I ended up wanting to draft up my own list of ins-and-outs for 2026, in hopes of being able to look back on this a year from now. The last time I wrote to you, I alluded to writing up a post detailing my trip to the Philippines over reading week. I’m sorry to say that this isn’t that post. It is in the works. In my head, anyway. I haven’t actually started to write it, but in my mind’s eye I’ve plotted out bits and pieces of what I want to say. Next post will be a whole year-in-review, where I’ll finally talk about what I’ve been up to and how I feel about what I’ve been up to, roses and thorns and all that. In the mean time, this inclination will have to suffice. After after all that? Maybe I’ll get married one day, but who knows? Preferably within the next six months, for no reason in particular. Think I’ll take that thought to the grave, but who knows. Okay, sorry, where was I?

I wrote most of this list out on my birthday, in anticipation of writing and releasing this by the time I was officially a year older. A few things got in the way of that2, but I don’t mind too much. This feels like a much more topical time to send this out anyhow. Also gives me the chance to think of a few more things on a whim to include and decide a bit more on what not to include. I can’t be giving these ins-and-outs all willy-nilly now. Can’t stunt on trust fund babies if I detail the game plan before seeing the play through. Only gonna be speaking in glory here. None of that deep shit.3

• LETTERBOXD - OUT

You hear about that Marty Supreme movie? I watched it for the first time with my dawgs a few days ago, and I have to say: it is a good movie, actually. Entertaining watch. Tyler Okonma was phenomenal for the half hour he was allowed to be on screen, and Himothée acted his ass off (literally). Very loud. Not a lot of things it wants to say, and a lot of time trying to say those things. My most immediate thought - beyond the initial what the fuck did I just watch - was that Safdie probably watched Whiplash and thought the moral integrity of the film was way too ambiguous.

God, I sound like such a filmbro just writing that. You already hear how terribly opinionated I am if you’ve been keeping up with my posts so far (or if you’ve been in my physical presence for more than a few minutes). I’m pretentious about too many things already. By the grace of God, there will be no Letterboxd account for me in my near future. The world does not need more of my thoughts. I’m overbearing enough as it is. Imagine having an actual public platform to air that all out. Couldn’t be me! Haha. Ahhhh... Okay anyway,

• CLOTHING ALTERATIONS - IN

Short torso, long legs. You wouldn’t know any better if you saw me in public. I’ve worn shirts way too long for my body all my life. I’m not a big fan of tucking button-ups casually, so all my shirts have been flapping around haphazardly all my adult life. On my birthday, I went to a tailor to give life to a few dress shirts paying rent in my closet. I now only wear those shirts when I go out. Now I get to flaunt how long my legs are, and how freakishly short the rest of my upper body is in comparison. More importantly, though - I feel very professional now. Feels like I move up a few notches on the tax bracket every time I get a shirt hemmed to sit at my hip. Give me a few more stitches and I’ll be on the sunshine list in no time at all.

• CALLUSES (PALMS, FINGERS, HANDS IN GENERAL) - IN

• FINGERLESS GRIPS - IN

• COTTAGE CHEESE- IN

• PROTEIN SLOP - OUT

• POSING (IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR, AT MY LONESOME) - IN

I’ll lump these all together to spare you from the excessive bro talk. Those who have known me for a while have known about my obsessive stints into lifting. What’s great about taking a break from picking up things and putting things down, is that the body never forgets the movements. Bones have good memory. If you’re as meticulous about keeping track of progress as I was, you don’t really have to worry about remembering the benchmarks to start at or to try and beat. Great for somebody like me, who don’t think all that much. Thank you, Don Don from 2023, for keeping track of all your lifts. Thank you, Don Don from elementary school, for being really into eating cottage cheese with canned peaches before I knew about how good for muscle growth it was. My love for the cottage cheese game is ingrained in me. Back in the day, I would gulp it down like diet Coke by the can. I don’t eat it for nourishment, I eat it for nourishment. While I’m at it, thank you Ryan Coogler for Sinners. No further questions please.

• LISTENING TO ALBUMS FRONT TO BACK - IN

I have so many playlists, you know? A quick glance at my Spotify profile will show you all my monthly rotations, all the different singles I’ve obsessed over. Love me some 3-minute doses of good brain scratching music. I don’t think this is a sign of my mental corrosion. I think it is good that I like retracing the brain grooves, good that I enjoy tiny parcels that I can revisit. I also think it is good to have a bit of change. This past year, I’ve went out of my way to try and sit down and listen to one new (to me) album, all the way through, per month. I did end up listening to quite a bit more than that (about 40ish, like really listening ) I thought my musical palette would expand quite a bit, but turns out I like what I like. Here’s a few albums that released in 2025 that I loved, in no particular order:

That Quadeca album is really something. If you haven’t listened to it yet, and you don’t want to sit through an entire album based off the whims of one man’s opinion, you owe it to yourself to at least listen to GODSTAINED off that album. My song of the year. Ear nectar. Smells like daytime lawns after a rainy night, distilled into audio form. Like that first sip of water when your mouth all parched after a mid-day nap, that kind of good. Also that Rich Brian album is worth mentioning. If you haven’t listened to him since 2020, now is your time to do so. Or you can also not do that. I wouldn’t be able to tell either way. You’re the one reading this yap sesh. Let’s do the next few ins-and-outs rapid fire.

• BEING ASKED OUT AT WORK - OUT (HOPEFULLY)

Is it something that I’m doing? Please stop asking me out at work. Please stop asking me out when I’m being paid to be nice to you. I promise that I am genuinely curious about your life, but also please know that my smile is getting minimum wage plus tips. I don’t know why this happens to me so often. I’m not that charming, I just think I’m a good conversationalist. And Filipino. Maybe that’s a rarity nowadays. Unless you are Michelle Obama4, do not interact with me while I’m clocked in like that.

• SUBSCRIBING TO LOCAL MEDIA OUTLETS - IN

I’ve been subscribed to the Hamilton Spec for the past six months. You should be, too! It’s good to keep up with your neighbours, and to fiscally provide for those who do good work close to you. I don’t know if a Shonen Jump membership counts but I’m gonna throw that one on here too. Support your mangakas. Read more manga. I can write a whole dissertation about my reverence for Tatsuki Fujimoto or for Hirohiko Araki. One of these days I’ll write a post about Jojolion5 or about how the ending for Jujutsu Kaisen’s manga was good, actually. I don’t think I’m fully grasping what a new years in or out means anymore. These feel like wishy-washy resolutions. Moving on.

• FREQUENTLY EATING, AWAY FROM HOME - OUT

• COOKING EVERY DAY - IN

I’m gonna make a whole post about my reverence for food preparation one day. Speaking of reverence:

• REVERENCE, WORSHIP, GIVING THANKS AND PRAISE (IN AN ARELIGIOUS WAY) - IN

• BEING A LITTLE DELUSIONAL - IN

• BEING FILIPINO - IN

I spent most of my New Year’s Eve at Sharang and Emma’s get-together. I had a cheeky conversation with my friend tucked away from everybody else. They’d asked me about how I’m so optimistic, what keeps pushing me forward. I was a little tipsy when they had asked me, so I don’t completely remember verbatim what I said - but I do remember mentioning treating myself as if I weren’t myself, as if I was a close friend that I was rooting for, that it was much easier for me to conceptualize wanting the best for somebody I love than it was to do the same for myself, so my self-confidence is then much easier if I were to deconstruct myself and conceptualize my own person as somebody else.

I thought about it a bit more. To be quite honest with you, my optimism is a bit more newfound. If you had known me a few years ago - right around the turn of the pandemic - you’d know that I wasn’t always like this6. Hard for anybody to even swallow that, considering my ego is as big as my head7. Let me be clear: I believe in myself so hard that you’d think I’ve gone mad. At one point in my life, it was out of spite8 though nowadays it’s a bit more pleasant than that.

I’ll talk about it more in my next post, but for now I will say: my father did not live to see me graduate. Did not live to see me make the sunshine list. Did not live to retire in the mansion I was going to buy for him. The next best thing to do is to live as if he will be there to witness it - because he will. My life is much easier to want to do well in, if I conceptualize my day-to-day as if my ancestors were living through me - because they are. I know I already made them all proud, but I also know I can do a bit more, break a bit more ground, move a bit further up. To do well is an act of worship for the ones who bled for me. Can you blame me, then, for how hard I rep me? I feel like I’m tapping the glass a bit with this one so let’s move on.

• BEING 23 - OUT

• BEING BUSY (FOR THE SAKE OF BUSY) - OUT

• BEING BUSY (AT THE EXPENSE OF MY LOVED ONES) - OUT

• BEING BUSY (FOR THOSE WHO CAME BEFORE) - IN

• MOURNING - IN

• PERSISTENCE - IN

Okay whoa whoa whoa. So many ins and outs all at once. Let me chill for a sec.

All of my gym sessions (and, if you partake, your lifting sessions too) contain copious amounts of me sitting and doing nothing. Most of my time spent lifting is actually just resting. A few days ago, while hanging out on the bench between sets, I thought to myself about how easy all this exercise stuff was. I don’t mean that in an egotistical way. If you had the terrible misfortune of being on gymtok (especially anything related to post-break-up fitness) you’d be exposed to the notion that working out is a pain, a struggle, a challenge that you must face, one that you must work through. Worse still, you’ll find folks using this as a complete substitute for proper therapy or processing of emotions. I don’t think it is bad practice to better your physical wellness and utilize it as if it were somewhat of a barometer for other things going on in your life. All the kudos to you in the world if working out makes you feel better. Lord knows it does wonders for me. I do take problem, though, with the idea that lifting weights is a form of penance, a punishment for the body that you must endure to be better.

Let me dispel all of that really quickly by saying: being in the gym is the easiest part of working out. Actually working out is the easiest part of working out. The challenge - like any good habit - is being consistent with it, but the actual process of lifting, in itself and especially today, is stupid easy. You’re in an air conditioned room, in a stable environment, oftentimes with nobody bothering you, oftentimes sitting or standing or resting whenever you feel the need to. You have agency, complete control, over the tensions and the easing of tensions in your body. If this is what punishment looks like, Hell must be a really cool place to be. In my eyes, lifting is just a neat hobby I get to do that also happens to have some other tangible benefits outside of the hobby. Again, I must stress: nothing wrong with lifting for the sake of a healthier life at all. Also nothing wrong with lifting for the sake of lifting. The moment that you problematize it, though, is the moment where you lose the plot in my eyes. Probably not good. Can’t express clearly why that is right now, but anecdotally I’ve witnessed this mindset leading you down some dark places.

To be able to do any of this labour is a privilege. I can afford to pay for a gym membership. Can afford air conditioning. Proper nutrition, rest, abundant access to knowledge and resources about sustainable, healthy exercise. I’ve been thinking of mourning in a similar manner. Morbid as it is to say, it is a privilege to be able to mourn those I’ve lost. I mourn them, in a warm bed, in the arms of my friends, in a clean home. I mourn for my father with a full stomach. My chest is hollowed out whenever I think about those who have left, but my room is tidied, my bedding is dry. How could I not work this out? How can I not work out? How can I not mourn? That’s not to minimize any of the actual labour underpinning all this.9 But if I’m in a place where I can do so comfortably, I must be pretty well off.

If you know me personally, you’d know that my past six months have been marked by my pronounced, inimitable, chummy relationship with absence. I have felt its curves with my own two hands. Know what its like to bury those who came before. Unlike the pulling and pushing of iron, there is an insurmountable weight to the grief. If effort were the sole means for keeping the people I have in my life, the vital barometer for which the Fates decide who stays and who leaves, then everyone I have ever loved would know my presence until the day I draw my last breath. Lifting, then, does wonders for me in this way, for it is one of the few constants in my life that is driven solely by my ability to persist. My gym is a little sanctuary, one where I have at least a morsel of agency, a sliver of time to worship and praise the body my ancestors have bled for. Let's hope I keep this same energy all the way through 2026.

Give thanks and praise to 2025. What a terrible year it was. What a good year it was. What a great year this will be. I should quit while I’m ahead, save that cheeky reflective writing for the next time I write to you. All this, and more, in my next post. Stay tuned for my year in review. If you missed out on Filipino Fall last year, you won’t wanna miss this one. Until then, thanks for reading this far. Tell your mum I said hi and that I wish her the best. If I see you again, then I will see you then.

One more quick thing - thank you everybody who ever comments/texts me/e-mails in response to these hitting your inbox/notifications/snail mailbox. A good man texted me a few hours after my last post, saying I do a great job of sharing enough without oversharing. It’s always a fine line between being vulnerable, and dumping the entire kitchen sink. I think, though, that the only people who read these posts are the people who know me (my friends <3) and the people who google my name on a whim. I’m cool with the former, and the latter cares enough to know about me, to the point where they’ll read these. In these instances, the balancing act isn’t much of an effort at all. Anyone who takes the time to read what I take the time to write intrinsically knows what they’re getting into already, I think. That’s all to say: thanks for reading and writing to me. You take care now, okay? I’ll write to you soon enough.

Yours,
Remiel

When I was smaller than you are now, your Grandmother would keep track of time in terms of your Lolo. Last night was never last night; it would be when Lolo had left for work. Two days from now would never be a Monday, but instead it would be when she gets to see Lolo next. In our household, there were no clocks I could understand.

Before we made the move to the big city, your grandparents and I lived out West, in a shoddy wooden shack just a well-tread dirt trail away from the station. My world ended at the train tracks; beyond them, a world that Lolo would disappear to for weeks at a time, a place I could only mark by the rumble of trains, the quieting of whistles, and the silence that follows. The trail to the station would end up etched into the Earth itself, a carved-out groove stamped out by boots bigger than mine. As the groove became more defined, so too did the gnarls and calluses in Grandmother’s hands. When she wasn’t sleeping or checking the mailbox, Grandmother would root herself in the kitchen. The tired planks on the floor were marked by the worn-out slippers that Grandmother wore, the same ones her Grandmother used to wear. From my view from below the counter, I could barely discern the colours and smells of her work, of the dishes with names my tongue stumbled across. Cooking was Grandmother’s pride and joy, the only part of her life she enjoyed showing off. It was a tradition, she’d say, that existed long before I did.

While Grandmother marked time by Lolo’s comings and goings, I would learn to measure it through her daily ritual. Before the sun came up, she would throw on a massive, quilted apron over her small frame. The fabric was stained with colours, faded and new, of prior cooking sessions. Each time, I worried that she would end up being swallowed by the apron; Grandmother refused to get one that would fit her proper, for history, she would say, could never be bought. By sunrise, the house was filled with the same familiar smell of dishes I could never pronounce, and like clockwork, Grandmother would call for me to sit at the dinner table. “Eat, before it gets cold,” she would recite. It was in the moments I tree branched into the chair, the moments where my chin would awkwardly sit just above the edge of the table, where I would get close enough to the meals your Grandmother would make. It was always some sort of stew, piled clumsily on a bed of white rice, the warmth of her hands radiating off it. If I looked closely enough, I could tell that she would be able to sandwich in an ‘I love you’ between the two.

I could tell what time of the year it was based on when the vegetables in the stew switched. I remember most, the Ancho chilies she would drop in during the summer months, for these were the only times my mouth failed to form words. Grandmother would never sit with me to eat. She would plant herself, in the creases of the kitchen floorboards, listening, carefully, for the sound of train cars, or engines, some sign, any, that she could eat, all the while glancing at me, making sure I left my plate empty. In the interim between when the food got cold, and when she would sleep for the night, she would see me off to bed, walk back to the kitchen and, after waiting a few more moments, finish off her day’s labour.

It was on the nights when the silence was filled, and when the train tracks grew raucous, that I would witness your Grandmother eat. Rarely did Lolo come back, and when he did, he would enter as quiet as the space he left in our home. I would look away one moment, and the next, he would appear to us, sitting in the chair that fit him much better than it did me. And your Grandmother - oh, I could not see much on nights like this, you should know, but it was like she had never seen a day of labour before that night. Gone were the apron, the slippers, the dirtying of hands - in their place, two full dishes, piled high atop china I had never seen prior, being picked at quietly. They would sit with one another in silence, mouths closed, and yet, through some means, they would be pouring themselves into one another all the same. Entire conversations, held taut in the now closed distance between them, were being translated into forks, clanking onto porcelain. On nights like this, I could see on her face a smile, filled with food she had yet to cook for us.

Whenever your Grandmother noticed me peering at them, she would pick me up by the waist, place me in your Lolo’s lap, and gaze at me. She stared as if to study me, as if to keep us stuck in time. She knew that the train would eventually come again, and with it, another stain on her apron - but none of that would matter. For Lolo had come home that day, and there was not a clock in sight. Tomorrow would never have to come, for Lolo was here now; time, then, did not have to mean anything to us, at least until the next time Lolo had to leave for work.

Until I was about six years old, I grew up in a tiny cul-de-sac in downtown Hamilton, about a stone’s throw away from the elementary school I went to. I say stone’s throw in the most literal sense; I revisited my childhood home earlier this month, and gauged the distance between myself and my former stomping ground. Maybe it’s because of how much I have grown, how long my arms have become, but I swear I felt like I could toss a pebble from the foot of my prior driveway and have it clank onto the metal of the school’s fence. That night, it took me about two minutes to walk from the school to my old home. It must have taken me about seven, then, when I was five. When Lolo was still around, he would walk me, every morning, to kindergarten, and every day after school I would see his face just barely sitting above the fence. I had a lot more pip in my step at that point. Minutes felt like hours, hours felt like days. Every morning, he would walk, and I’d sprint away, in front of him, albeit still a few meters away at all times, as if there was an invisible leash tethering the two of us. Every morning, it would feel like maybe this time, if I sprinted a little bit faster, Lolo would walk a little bit brisker, match my rhythm a little bit more. Every morning, I would sprint up, notice the quieting of his footsteps, and look back, and without fail I’d watch his slow, wrinkled frame setting the pace of our trip. Seven minutes. Hours to me then, only a fleeting moment to me now. Every morning, I would sprint forward, grandfather-bound, with a stern gaze Lolo would say to me, ‘Yes, yes. Just a little more. Just a little more.’ Words had become routine at this point, though til his last breath I don’t think he ever grew tired of my antics.

If you’ve known me since my very first year of undergrad, you’ll know of my brief stint as a spoken word performer. Did you know that there’s a whole laundry list of rules, when it comes to slam poetry? The biggest one you will fall victim for at least once in your slam career is that of going a bit too long. Performing a poem that lasts over three minutes will give you a point deduction3. Nobody, not even your fellow competitors, likes seeing people lose arbitrary points over arbitrary rules within arbitrary tournaments. Whenever time penalties do arise, there’s a saying that everybody in the venue will recite in tandem after the deductions are announced: ‘Damn you, linear time. You’re ruining it for everybody, but it was well worth it!’

This morning, I re-read a short story I wrote for a creative writing class last year. From Those Who Loved You, Before I Could. Crazy cool title. Way too cool, for a piece that is completely unpublished. I haven’t touched it since I submitted it, but I went a little misty eyed when I re-read the first few lines:

When I was smaller than you are now, your Grandmother would keep track of time in terms of your Lolo. Last night was never last night; it would be when Lolo had left for work. Two days from now would never be a Monday, but instead it would be when she gets to see Lolo next. In our household, there were no clocks I could understand.

Two weeks ago, there was a guest speaker in place of my professor for an English course I’m in. I was half-asleep, to be honest, so I wasn’t paying any mind, but there was a tiny snippet of her monologue that I remember - that stories have a tendency to disrupt linear time. In times of immense emotions - grief, joy, laughter - my means of processing is to spread the labour, so to speak. There is no better way to cope than to spend as much time as needed with those you love. I’ve been blessed by all the systems in my life, by the people who I can go to, who want to be there for me unconditionally. My primary means of communicating with them is often through recounting events that make me feel certain ways, through the intermixing of pre-meditated details and real-time ideas. In a sense, it feels like I re-experience these moments, that I re-surface what has already been etched into my body once more, laying it bare to the best of my ability for those to see while sprinkling in new thoughts, new reflections.

This isn’t a very unique experience. I think I’m just describing the mechanics behind how people tell stories. What I can’t ever possibly account for, though, are the ways in which these stories reverberate outwards. I say these experiences aloud, in hopes of getting feedback, consolation, honesty, whatever it is that I need from my loved ones. What I never anticipate are the echoes that follow, the ways in which bringing up yesterdays, or before the pandemics, or a couple weeks ago, disrupt my tomorrows, my next years, my few months from now, my next few hours.

I’ve been grieving a lot these past few months. I know a bit too much about loss. I’ve also been doing a lot of crazy cool stuff. I don’t ever regret bringing these moments up. Every time I do share a bit about how things have been, the labour - of mourning, of academia, of teaching, of working - gets a bit lighter. I’ve spent the whole post detailing the grief, the work, the labor - the how of the last five months. I’ll write up the official ‘what I’ve been up to’ post eventually. I think I’ll save that for the end of the year, or when I get accepted into a master’s program, or when I graduate. Who knows? That’s all to say that I’m doing good. For now, you’ll just have to take my word for it. In the meantime: happy half-way into Kislev. I had good reason, at one point, to keep track of time in regards to the Jewish calendar. I don’t have much of a practical reason anymore, but it’s a nice little artifact of a different time. I keep track of time nowadays based on how close I am to 11:59 PM deadlines by the minute. I think now is a good as time as ever to start chipping away at those, just a little more.

My father, Marlon Batger Alicpala, died on Friday, June 27th, 2025. Four days ago as I write. I feel this timer nestled in the grooves of my brain, see the number of days it has been in the back of my eyelids. I can't see much else these days. Wonder how my mirror reacts to the way my cheeks stain from excessive amounts of salt water. Wonder how well my pillows muffle the ache. I can go on about what the grief is like, but I don't think I'm ready to write about it in a way that doesn't just read off as a messy journal entry. That would be no good for you to read. When I am older, when the grief becomes one that moulds me as opposed to consumes, I will write you something a bit more delicate - for my sake, mostly, and maybe a bit for yours too. In the mean time, if you at all wondered how I have been, I will tell you: I could be much better, but I could be worse. I could be dead, that is for certain, but fate has ordained for me to be left behind instead.

I hate to write about how awful I have been. Let me tell you something else. Before my dad died, I had a whole post drafted and written up. For my first official post of the Substack I was going to do a cheeky little Q&A. I asked my friends - you, probably - to ask me your burning questions to answer. There are some real knee-slappers in there. Wish I could share them to you now, but it would be disingenuous for me to do so in the face of all of this. Truth be told, everything I wish I could tell you now, everything I wrote here for you to read, I wish I could just tell him.

For those of you who have reached out already, who have helped me in any way possible, who have given me words of encouragement and threw a bone or two my way, thank you1. I would not be able to function if it weren't for you. In times like this, my dad, in his traditional Filipino manliness, would tell me to be strong. My strength is not completely rooted in myself; it has come from those who have come before, from those who will come after, and from those who are here with me, for me, now. For that, I am forever grateful.

I will leave you with one tidbit. In the wake of my dad's passing, I've been in regular contact with his folks back in the Phillipines. My dad's immediate family, outside of his children, reside in his hometown. I haven't been back since I was four, so I'm not too cognizant of what it was like. My Lola told me that, while I was visiting, I'd tug firmly on the pants of my titos and titas and say, 'Let's go to the beach!' - for we were just a ten minute drive from the shore. This happened every day without fail. Each time, my father would echo my requests verbatim, for he too was drawn to the sea, much to the chagrin of my folks. It had been decades since I've seen the ocean. I didn't get a chance to speak to my father about my most recent trip, so I will tell this to you now. While I was in Vancouver, my dear friend Maia gave me the chance to see the ocean again with my own eyes. We spent hours walking through Granville Island and Stanley Park in quiet. Being able to see the water decades later left me with feelings I haven't been able to discern until now.

Up until recently, I've spent my adulthood in constant turbulence. Closer friends of mine know what I'm gesturing at. It was only at the beginning of last school year where it felt like I found my groove. But having to play with all the different hands I've been dealt with has made it all the more difficult to discern who, exactly, I want to be. I've gone by different names, different ways to pronounce those names, different fields of study, different vocations. I have gone through the gamut of clinging onto aspects of myself I wanted to be true, and discarding those that do not fit right. Doubtless, the version of myself that reads this a few weeks, a few months, a few years from now will be completely different, exist in ways completely unfathomable. On the day I got to trek the sea wall, though, I have never felt so sure of myself.

For you, dad, I am your son. I am sure of it.