Before anything else, I’m thrilled to share that M. has started his own blog on another hosting site. He loves theme parks and endlessly conceptualizes rides which I think are great but would realistically never come to life. So he writes about them in detail instead. You can find these ideas at ImagiDreaming with Fesh!

A set of poems recently appeared in the issue 1, volume 15 of Likhaan: the Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature, you can read it here.

Without giving away too much, I also want to share about a book I’ve been working on since 2019, and has moved into becoming a work that uses fiction and poetry. It isn’t a verse novel like Charlotte or the Iliad. It should be interesting, and I am taking my time, as always, knowing I will arrive at the best way to shape it. I’ve done away with the pretense of having a writing life or of even having a network of writers. There is no pressure to publish, even though I’ve gotten in touch with a publisher (who gave a soft ‘no’).

Most of the time I spend shaping a domestic life with M., or working. I take somewhat long drives and explore the city we’ve moved into at the end of 2021. Outside of New York City, where M. and I met and made a life for about a year, car culture dominates the wide open spaces of peripheral-urban “cities” designed to sustain mono-cultures created by corporate monopolies. From lawn grass in the suburbs to box malls of the same three or four names, and movie theaters that, at any given day, will show movies made by big studios. Once, on an exploratory drive, I took a detour into a subdivision that was so still and devoid of any movement, with houses designed the same way and painted the same colors of beige and gray, they seemed more like mausoleums than homes. Then again, all this is punctuated by lush greenery, beautiful wildlife, good food (which I might start writing about, as well—I am too busy enjoying myself cooking and consuming), and the occasional kooky and weird places.