My Father's Tongue (final)

Big ups to Kuya Bobby for helping me with the translations, I'm really bad at that. Most of the guesses I came up with were way off. Thank you so much for your help! I'm going to be performing this along with other members of JMU's Word is Born during the Vision Conference in Memorial Hall on Friday, April 5th. Be there!

My Father’s Tongue

At birth, God gave my father his tongue:
Muscle
With it came the freedom to laugh
Mag-tawa
to cry
mag-tangis

At home, my grandparents gave my father his tongue:
Rinconada, Bicol-Nabua
and with it the knowledge to speak truth
kamaturan
or tell lies
ambog

At school, the teachers gave my father his tongue:
Pilipino, Tagalog
and with it the skills to read
mag-basa
to write
mag-sulat

In college the professors gave my father his tongue:
English
with it a taste of America
a taste of the dream
pangaturugan

When martial law came, Marcos cut off my father's tongue:
Revolution, democracy
Because he wore jeans and rode a motorcycle
Rebelde
He spoke of freedom
Kalayaan

In America, my father silenced his own tongue:
Career, American dream
His silence brought odd jobs washing dishes and making decks.
Trabaho?
On minimum wage? Di, you mean slavery.
Pang-aalila

Now, here I stand
American born and raised
High school degree out of the way
college degree on the way
hell, maybe even a six pack on the way

It seems like I know everything

And yet,
I stand before you ashamed
ashamed of what I don't know:
My Father's Tongue.

My Father's Tongue

I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling when I started to repeat words in my head. I don't even know why. The phrases started to get longer, and they started to gain structure, and then they started to actually sound good. So i got up and started writing. Not because I wanted to, but because I probably wouldn't be able to sleep if I didn't. So yeah, here it is straight from the page. I'm going to talk to my dad tomorrow and ask him to help me with translations. After every emotion, or whatever, I'm going to have a translation in the different dialects. I have big plans for this. Expect updates.

At birth, God gave my father his tongue:
Muscle
With it came the freedom to laugh
to cry

At home, my grandparents gave my father his tongue:
Rinconada, Bicol-Nabua
and with it the knowledge to speak truth
or tell lies

At school, the teachers gave my father his tongue:
Pilipino, Tagalog
and with it the skills to read
to write

In high school (college?) the teachers (professors?) gave my father his tongue:
English
with it a taste of America
a taste of the dream

When martial law came, Marcos cut off my father's tongue:
Revolution, democracy
Because he wore jeans
he spoke of freedom

In America, my father silenced his own tongue:
American dream
His silence brought odd jobs making decks
minimum wage

Now, here I stand
American born and raised
High school degree out of the way
college degree on the way
hell, maybe even a six pack on the way
It seems like I know everything

And yet, I stand before you ashamed
ashamed of what I don't know:
My Father's Tongue

I'm Cool

My roommates rock...

...for four reasons:

1. “I really wish the ‘T’ in T-Pain stood for Thomas. That way he could name his next album Common Sense.”

2. “There’s this weird Asian guy in my Math lab that walks up and down and always has his head to one side. He’s the most socially awkward person I’ve ever met. So this guy and my friend were working on a Math lab project and they needed a third person for their group. The weird kid literally looks around and calls out ‘Looking for party!’”

3. They are the whitest people on the planet and they have a large poster of deceased hip hop artists on their wall (next to a poster of Dora the Explorer, but that's another story).
4. Moments like this.
   

Sagaba

Blue Scholars - Sagaba

I've been running this track at least ten times a day for the past two months or so. Everything from the break to the flow just screams chill...

Best line:
"fo shizzle it begins to drizzle"
Clearly someone ran out of rhymes but how can you beat that?

Honestly, this is my jam and I was bummed as shit when they didn't perform this at their show in February up at Cornell. DJ Sabzi dropped the break for this track but Geo started up some other flow. I was kinda pissed but it was a Blue Scholars show, son, so I couldn't really be mad. I still want Geologic's Katipunan hoodie, I would rock that shit all day every day.

Yo, for real, son...

...I say "nigga" a LOT. For real, today I was chilling with my boys because it was raining and we couldn't play tennis (real hood, street tennis of course) and I'm pretty certain I said "nigga" more than ten times in one sentence. Mind you, it was a long sentence. It was one of those distinctly Jonathan sentences that goes on for a while but doesn't necessarily mean anything once it's out there. Frankly, I don't even remember what we were talking about. All I know is that once I was done with my bit it was quiet. My boy Day-Day was the first to speak up:

"Son, you said nigga a LOT."

Again it was quiet, we were thinking about it. He spoke up again:

"For real, though, we all be saying shit way too much."

Once more, silence, even longer this time. The six of us: three Filipinos, one Cambodian, and two "Niggas" were somehow made to ponder our diction for what seemed like hours. As I considered how it was I became so comfortable with the term, I also wondered what the others were thinking. The thoughts of my black brothers were of particular interest to me. I'd always wondered what their stand on our use of the term was. What were the rules for its use? The black man has since come to own the term, but did we qualify? Was our status as minorities payment enough for a title that had so long been derogatory? Was the power of the term's negativity derived from the word itself or merely from the history we had so long associated with it? Were we niggas or did we just want a nigga be?

As all these thoughts ran through my mind and, I can only assume, the minds of my friends Day-Day looked around and then stomped his foot. We looked up, stunned out of our mental meanderings, expecting a revelation to end all revelations.

Day, with a passion in his eyes opened his mouth and declaratively asked:

"Yo, how a bitches cooch gonna smell like strawberries!?"

Shock.

"Naw, for real though, nigga. I dun smelled a lot of pussy in my day and I ain't gonna say they stank or nothing but they smelled like pussy. I was 'chilling' with this girl the other day and I wiped my nose, you know, cause I had the sniffles and I breathe in and I'm like, 'Damn, girl, what is that smell?' And I didn't mean it like that but she definitely thought I did. She started yelling at me like a nigga supposed to know every smell in the world."

Shock.

"I be wondering what she be washing with, you know? It's whatever, though, I still piped. Fuck that bitch, anyways. Whatever the fuck her name is. I just call her strawberries, now."

The moral of the story? Fuck if I know, it's just funny.

God, I love coming home.

Another ride home

My dad asked me if I was keeping track of election news, knowing well the answer. He told me he was as excited as ever about this year because it would be his first time voting for anything relevant. He's going to be taking is oath as a naturalized citizen in April and plans to register to vote later the same day. He's lived in the U.S. for 27 years but hadn't even considered becoming a citizen until just last year. His disdain for the American way of life had prevented him from doing so, but he has since come to terms with the fact that other people are wasteful and it doesn't mean that he has to be. He's going to make is own American lifestyle.
Back to his first vote. In the Philippines, the voting age used to be 21, and the year my father turned 21 was the same year Marcos declared martial law in the P.I. Shortly thereafter my father had to flee the country because of his ties to communism and the New People's Army. He nearly cried when he told me this story, it was an odd and rare moment of weakness. At the same time, however, it was more a show of how strong his idealism is. Now, 27 years after arriving in the U.S., he will finally have a voice, however small, in the discourse that decides the destiny of his home nation and he couldn't be prouder.

Neither can I.