Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve 2012

To start the day, I got three pieces of Oiliebollen which I thought could only be purchased on Sylvester but everything seems to be available from strawberries to baby corns. No stress, we promised ourselves so we spent the early part of the day reading and eating in between these oily but delicious Oiliebollen.

What to eat on the holiest night of the year? Got excited looking at the huge crabs

at the weekend market and got this piece looking so unfriendly. I thought  I would make this recipe of

crabs with black beans, crabs cooked in coconut milk or just steamed. Rushed again to the village supermarket to get last minute ready to grill stuffs for a Plan B Noche Buena. 

Merry Christmas!

I am a Migrant Woman: December 18, International Migrants Day

(Photo Source:unmultimedi.org)

Wishes of Migrant Women (Photo: Pinay von Alemanya)

I am a migrant woman. I am a culture bringer and mediator. I bring the best of myself to this land of my destination and take back the virtues of my host country to the land of my birth. I have the privilege to work for the causes of other migrants who might not have the same privileges and rights I am now enjoying. I believe I live in the best of both worlds I have now and for this I am very grateful and appreciative. It's International Migrants Day. Let's celebrate!

RH (Reproductive Health) Bill now a law

Photo Source: philstar.com

right to life

a woman is not a pear tree
thrusting her fruit into mindless fecundity
into the world. Even pear trees bear
heavily one year and rest and grow the next.
An orchard gone wild drops few warm rotting
fruit in the grass but the trees stretch
high and wiry gifting the birds forty
feet up among inch long thorns.
Broken atavistically from the smooth wood.
A woman is not a basket you place
your buns in to keep them warm. Not a brood
hen you can slip duck eggs under.
Not the purse holding the coins of
your descendants till you spend them in wars.
Not a bank where your genes collect interest
and interesting mutations in the tainted
rain, anymore than you are.
You plant your corn and harvest
it to eat or sell. You put the lamb
in the pasture to fatten and haul it in
to butcher for chops. You slice
the mountain in two for a road and gouge
the high plains for coal and the waters
run muddy for miles and years.
Fish die but you do not call them yours
unless you wished to eat them.
Now you legislate mineral rights in a woman.
You lay claim to her pastures for grazing,
fields for growing babies likes iceburg
lettuce. You value children so dearly
that none ever go hungry, none weep
with no one to tend them when mothers
work, none lack fresh fruit,
none chew lead or cought to death and your
orphanages are empty. Every noon the best
restaurants serve poor children steaks.
At this moment at nine o'clock a partera
is performing a table top abortion on an
unwed mother in texas who can't get medicaid
any longer. In five days she will die
of tetanus and her little daughter will cry
and be taken away. Next door a husband
and wife are sticking pins in the son
they did not want. They will explain
for hours how wicked he is,
how he wants disipline.
We are all born of woman, in the rose
of the womb we suckled our mother's blood
and every baby born has a right to love
like a seedling to the sun. Every baby born
unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come
due in twenty years with interest, an anger
that must find a target, a pain that will
beget pain. A decade downstream a child
screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched,
a firing squad summoned, a button
is pushed and the world burns.
I will choose what enters me, what becomes,
flesh of my flesh. Without choice, no politics,
no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield,
not your uranium mine, not your calf
for fattening, not your cow for milking.
You may not use me as your factory.
Priests and legislators do not hold
shares in my womb or my mind.
This is my body. If I give it to you
i want it back. My life
is a non-negotiable demand.

-marge piercy 

(Source: ehealthforum.com)

 (Source: Facebook cross-postings)

12.12.12

Yesterday is gone and its tale told.

Today new seeds are growing.

Rumi

(Source: Facebook: Rumi Quotes)

Persimmons, a poem about memory

Persimmons * (1986)

Li-Young Lee

(b. 1957)

     In sixth grade Mrs. Walker

     slapped the back of my head

     and made me stand in the corner

     for not knowing the difference

     between persimmon and precision.

     How to choose

     persimmons. This is precision.

     Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.

     Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one

     will be fragrant. How to eat:

     put the knife away, lay down newspaper.

     Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.

     Chew the skin, suck it,

     and swallow. Now, eat

     the meat of the fruit,

     so sweet,

     all of it, to the heart.

     Donna undresses, her stomach is white.

     In the yard, dewy and shivering

     with crickets, we lie naked,

     face-up, face-down.

     I teach her Chinese.

     Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I've forgotten.

     Naked: I've forgotten.

     Ni, wo: you and me.

     I part her legs,

     remember to tell her

     she is beautiful as the moon.

     Other words

     that got me into trouble were

     fight and fright, wren and yarn.

     Fight was what I did when I was frightened,

     fright was what I felt when I was fighting.

     Wrens are small, plain birds,

     yarn is what one knits with.

     Wrens are soft as yarn.

     My mother made birds out of yarn.

     I loved to watch her tie the stuff;

     a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.

    Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class

     and cut it up

     so everyone could taste

     a Chinese apple. Knowing

     it wasn't ripe or sweet, I didn't eat

     but watched the other faces.

     My mother said every persimmon has a sun

     inside, something golden, glowing,

     warm as my face.

     Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper,

     forgotten and not yet ripe.

     I took them and set both on my bedroom windowsill,

     where each morning a cardinal

     sang, The sun, the sun.

     Finally understanding

     he was going blind,

     my father sat up all one night

     waiting for a song, a ghost.

     I gave him the persimmons,

     swelled, heavy as sadness,

     and sweet as love.

     This year, in the muddy lighting

     of my parents' cellar, I rummage, looking

     for something I lost.

     My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,

     black cane between his knees,

     hand over hand, gripping the handle.

     He's so happy that I've come home.

     I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.

     All gone, he answers.

     Under some blankets, I find a box.

     Inside the box I find three scrolls.

     I sit beside him and untie

     three paintings by my father:

     Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.

     Two cats preening.

     Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.

     He raises both hands to touch the cloth,

     asks, Which is this?

     This is persimmons, Father.

     Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk,

     the strength, the tense

     precision in the wrist.

     I painted them hundreds of times

     eyes closed. These I painted blind.

Some things never leave a person:

     scent of the hair of one you love,

     the texture of persimmons,

     in your palm, the ripe weight.

Source: 

http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nap/persimmons_lee.htm