“Spanish colonists adopted the Spanish word mapache from the Nahuatl mapachitli of the Aztecs, meaning “the one who takes everything in its hands.“

i wear the word femme
on a glittery purple plaque
on a chain round my neck
like a sideshow, a queering
of identity loud as a disco
to those who know
how to boogie

femme speaks gender identity
as an act, a performance
circustry and acrobatics as artificial
as the melt of pancake makeup
under hot stage lights
and if it’s an act
not a fact of existence
then any kind of body
can be femme.

while femininity is infected
with whiteness and class
women supposedly frail, slim and
slight little things who always
need looking after

and feminine men
are anathema when
white heterosexual
is the norm

a queer femme of color is far from this.
we carry our own burdens
and probably some of yours too
with pedicured toes and a face
full of every broken promise
we have ever heard

we put on lipstick in the morning
smack our lips twice and smile
once at ourselves in the mirror. sometimes
it’s the only smile we’ll see all day.
so we cherish our reflections
like we have learned to love
the rest of our bodies. the line
between it and hate still so fragile.
contained by a thin membrane
carefully grown and maintained
by unlearning

we’re not new at this.
our Wet and Wild years
at the drugstore are decades
in the distance.
Now we both listen
and speak.

We will look you in the eye
when we make a point
and there are so many points
to be made. my expertly applied
liquid eyeliner don’t mean
you can take me for granted.

queer women of color gender warriors
are actors picking out our own wardrobes
and writing aloud our own lines,
days filled with improvisational theatre
navigating sexism, racism, homophobia
nights with meditation, chanting and incense,
your performance a manifestation
of the most authentic self expression
you can conjure

our saints hooks, Lorde, hughes,
Butler, Baldwin, and Jordan,
Andalzua, Moraga and almost every drag queen ever
strutted a nightclub in a corset and slinky red dress,
we rarely go unnoticed.
rarely settle for any less than fabulous
believe that life is up for grabs
and that even in heels
and a push up bra
you won’t be a pushover.

you’ll choose your partners
and your pregnancies.
one or many or none at all
because your sexuality belongs to no butch.
and no man. unless, of course, there’s consent involved.

you have begun the process
of decolonization. tell them,
“I don’t have time for your bullshit,
I’m occupied.”
and you return
to crafting the exquisite
feminist script of your existence
on the tips of your fingers
and the walls of your airing-out closet

we’re so in touch with ourselves
you could call it
self-pleasure.

I wear mascara
but I don’t wear a mask.
don a miniskirt while I do
some mental math and show skin
while going in on the right wing.
ask me anything

but I’ll choose if I answer

I assert agency
in the midst of structure
chipping away at the cornerstone
because I’m not afraid
to ask questions.

this agency, it scares whites
and straights almost as much
as does
our desire
unpredictable
uncontrollable
as the weather
which is why we seem to spend
so much time talking about it
people want to figure it out
but I’m not hearing them
unless they’re complimenting me
on my contributions or my earrings
and the only reasons I am able to say thank you
are 1. because I’ve worked so damn hard at it
and 2. because I am thankful.

the closet is full.
this is for all my gender warriors
who live outside of it, giving the weary
some room to rest.
we are not new at this
our femme is the lingering energy
of every single woman who’s ever
been called an old maid
when she didn’t do her hair up in curlers
because she saw her priorities changing

bold, transgressive and unexpected

by rejecting limitations
we grasp universes

and like the brightest graffiti
in the most dangerous places

you just can’t tear your eyes away

Mercury’s happy conjunction on December 27 with the North Node helps us focus our goals and it is exact on Ras Algethi now. According to Ptolemy, this star is like Mercury anyway, so it will be bring out the stars strength of character, resolve, will power and a gritty determination to carry on to the bitter end. Interestingly Thereus opposes Mercury from December 26right up until New Years day. Resolutions and goals set around this time I believe will really have staying power.

Happy New Year. Mercury moves out of the shadow at 5am January 1, just in time for the dawn of 2012. It is tightly square Mars (03’) so maybe this is an omen we shall wage war with words and on the cyber highways in 2012. Mars on Denebola “ Bitter, vindictive, cruel, unpopular, loss of position and public disgrace.” [6] Ouch, some cutting edge journalism ahead in 2012. I don’t think the square is a bad omen however. I think the media is going to bring some of the big lions down. Squares get things done. It’s incisive, quick thinking, cutting through red tape, and cutting the crap. Look at the dramatic New Years day chart, sharp. Welcome to 2012!

On the YouTube screen, five young Asian American Pacific Islanders are sitting on a couch, introducing themselves to the viewer. “Hi, I’m Kane. I’m the director.” “I’m Farah, the executive producer…” The five are producers of a documentary in progress, “Uploaded: The Asian American Movement,” a project about the effect of new media on API visibility, pan-ethnic identity, and a new form of community in the arts and entertainment.

Many Americans, including longstanding API activists, are familiar with social change movements, from the civil rights movement to Seattle’s Asian Coalition for Equality to the birth of American Ethnic Studies: movements which often used protests, marches, and boycotts as tactics. In this online movement the banners are digital ones, scrolling across the top of a screen, rather than butcher paper held in the streets. What’s their message? Can these new forms of visibility and celebrity, through new media, activate social change?

Continue reading…

Whether we listened, learned
laughed, loved
Whether we brought joy
into the world.

The universe resonates
with the vibrations we emit
The planet’s face
a reflection of our own.

What do we bring?
And what do we bring forth?

In yoga we are told
to breathe into a stretch.
That the points of most pain
are the times for greatest growth.

You can tell you are improving
when your grimace slowly transforms
into a grin, without much thinking.
You feel yourself pushing

past what you thought
was the endpoint, the maximum,
like when you couldn’t take anymore
and your body suddenly gives and you

become offering. become bounty.
and your boundaries
are no more.

Like the Earth, our bodies
know the harvest.

Breathe
into the stretch.

Happy Birthday Brother.

The crystal shop owner
knows you only
by what you are buying.
S/he

sees you early on your journey
pick up sage for cleansing
and a star for your wall
to remind you the direction

you’re headed. Soon you are back
for more sage, as past burdens
make their way to the surface
to be cleared by the smoke

the crystals call you, one by one
intuition becomes clairvoyance
and you take home a tiger’s eye
or lapis lazuli, and discover what happens

when you carry in a heated palm
latticework wrought in molten rock
formed at the point of the earth’s transition,
a perfectly polished relic of a stone

from a mountain range in a land
of a people who have never been conquered.
The aquamarine which bore the energy
of the memory of years of molestation and then

broke in two after that phone call with your mother.
The amethyst cluster under your pillow
that inspires those technicolor dreams. The rose quartz
which, s/he tells you, never stays long

“because you keep giving it away.” Then,
on a thin silver chain, a quartz pendulum
that circles left for “Yes,” back and forth for “No”
and shivers, meaning, “What a silly question.”

The pendulum swings in every life.
Yours tells you “sometimes.” Or “for now.”

The crystal shop owner knows you
by what you bring home. And the next time you meet,
s/he slips behind the curtain to the back room,
stepping beyond to find you what you will need.

It wasn’t till I moved to the UK that I had even considered going veg. But as life would have it, I spent a good portion of 2010 living with D, a vegetarian, and all of 2011 living with S, a vegan, so the reduction of animal-based products in my diet was gradual, felt natural and was relatively pain-free. How healthy I felt when I got my daily nutritional needs from fresh vegetables, fruits and grains, zesty onions and garlic. How much lighter and full of energy I was, free from rotting animal corpses in my innards.  I knew then that vegetarianism, and possibly even veganism, was a lifestyle I could potentially entertain and maybe even sustain.

I’m not saying it has been easy. I cling to eggs and yogurt as my last lifelines to the non-vegan world, and when with family or at a gathering where the main course is meat I may still be unable able to drag myself away from the sausages. So although I have eliminated meat products from my shopping cart and, when purchasing household staples (milk/butter/bread etc.), go mostly vegan, I acknowledge that I have some way to go before the vegan value proposition is fully realized in my life.

9. Poached Eggs

On that note, it has only been in the past few months that I have ever had a poached egg properly prepared. They are delicious; thus, I am finding it extremely difficult to curtail my consumption of this particular dairy product, which I eat now probably about once or twice a month. I am just getting to know the delights of a runny yolk and perfectly poached whites over salted and peppered seeded toast, salad and hummus. This poses problems for my pro-vegan stance, I know, but how can you give up something you’ve just come to love when you haven’t even had a chance to grow tired of it?

8. Fries vs. Chips vs. Crisps

When I moved, I was fully aware that there was a difference between what we call chips and what UK heads call chips. One thing I’ve realized is that England, being the place of origin of the English language, still retains some specificity of usage for particular terms, whereas once they’ve made it to the US, they adopt a distinctly American vagueness.

Take, for example, our propensity to use the term “school” in reference to an educational institution of any level, from kindergarten through university.  English “school” refers only to what Americans would call primary or grade school through high school, which ends at 16 here, while college is a two-year course prior to university. A similar level of distinction occurs between the terms “glass” and “cup”; while to me, they are interchangeable, to my roommate, a “glass” is necessarily clear, while a “cup” means a mug or other opaque container for hot drinks. This nonchalant vagueness, ever a source of minor irritation to our European counterparts, can also be seen in the American concept of “fries.”

In the US, whether thin or thick, shoestring to steak, a fry is a fry is a fry. But in Standard English (as opposed to American English), only a shoestring fry is able to be legitimately called a fry. Steak fries are “chips,” wedges are, well, wedges, and what we would call chips (e.g. Doritos, Pringles, tortilla chips) are called crisps. Took me a minute to get all that sorted so I could make sure I was using the right terminology when describing the cut of fried potato I was craving.

7. Life without a rice cooker

Although I am Asian, I don’t eat enough rice at home to justify the cost and counter space (English kitchens are tiny) of having a rice cooker. So I’ve learned to make the staple the old-skool way, with a pot and the kitchen stove (that is here called a hob). This circumstance at first caused me extreme distress due to the the difficulties I experienced when trying to make a decent pot of rice without a cooker.

The rice would usually be too dry (this was due to cooking it in an open pot with no lid) after which I would add water and make it too soggy by accident. Then, as pots have no timers and the American way seems to be to wait for a mechanical “ding!” to tell us when our food is done, I found myself leaving the rice on for longer than I should have and burning the bottom. I scorched my best pot once in exactly this manner. After a soak and good scrubbing it was ok, but when it happened again the next time, the pot went in the garbage along with my belief in my abilities as a good Asian daughter. I had been making rice at home since age 4, and it was fine every time; was it possible that my skills had degenerated such that  I was now unable to prepare the cornerstone of an Asian meal?

Fortunately, though, I moved out of the student housing with the janky hot-plate type stove that didn’t heat evenly (the stove did it — I swear), and with the support of my fine flatmates, I was able to ascertain what was needed and practice preparing a fine pot of fluffy, satisfying stove-boiled rice — basically, a few more millimeters of water and a bit less time on the hob. Taste and serve. Good job.

6. Happy Shopper brand

The Happy Shopper brand populates the shelves of every hood corner store and grocery in the UK.  They do all your household basics for cheap, from sugar to baked beans to jam and biscuits, macaroni to baby products.  Pretty much everything is a pound or less.  Its ubiquity is testament to the no-frills nature of the products they offer, as well as their actual value for money, which I believe to be a truly English concept.  My flatmate S swears Happy Shopper macaroni is better than any other brand hands down, and she’s Sicilian, so she’s picky about her pasta. Their biscuits (we will discuss this at length later), of any variety, are as tasty if not better than their brand name counterparts, and never break the bank.

For a truly English culinary experience, go to the corner store and buy only Happy Shopper brand ingredients, a potato and a cabbage. Once home, boil the vegetables within an inch of their lives. As for the rest, follow the instructions on the packages exactly as directed and serve with brown sauce. Not exactly my cuppa tea — but you get the picture.

5. Rubicon Mango and Squash

Have you ever heard of Rubicon? Because I hadn’t until I got here. This popular juice brand  makes the type of thickened, sweetened juice drink Americans would call “nectar,” and I can’t get enough. I buy a liter carton (although the metric system is not in place when it comes to gallons of gas and highway miles, it is in terms of foodstuffs, weight and length measurements) of the mango flavo(u)r probably every week, and more when it’s on sale. It coats the throat soothingly and satisfies my thirst (and sweet tooth) in that deeply quenching way. They also make a load of other flavor(u)rs, all tropical and “exotic” fruits, from coconut to guava to lychee – my kinda company. Rawr, Rubicon. You’re hella sexy.

While we’re on the subject of juice, in the UK there is a product called squash, which is basically a highly concentrated juice syrup. It’s a cultural phenomenon, which, like fascism, is likely a leftover habit from WWII era, a time period that hits much closer to home here than it does in the US. You put a little bit of squash in the bottom of your glass (not cup) and fill it the rest of the way with water. Also called dilute drink, it’s like the UK version of Kool-aid except it’s liquid, not powder.  My official conclusion on squash is that it’s in the same drinks category as soda or beer — might taste good, but it leaves you thirsty.

4. Curry

Ah, curry. It’s as much a part of British culture as tea, football, or talking about the weather. This is of course due to the colonial past and neocolonial present of the Isles, which at one point had under their inbred imperial control fully a quarter of the lands on the surface of the globe.

Curry, for the unaware, is a dish of South Asian origin that is nearly unparalleled in its versatility. Rarely will you find a dish like it, one that can feed a large number of people with relatively limited (but nearly limitless combinations) of ingredients.  It relies on only a few basics – onions, garlic, and a garam masala spice mix: coriander (aka cilantro), cumin, ginger, cinnamon, black pepper, pimiento. You can pick up a curry at the chippy on the corner, not to mention the countless Indian and Pakistani takeaways, which are in their number reminiscent of Mexican restaurants in Southern California.  And considering more than half of California’s children are now of Hispanic origin, that’s saying a lot.

Curry’s ability to cross cultures is another facet of its brilliance. In 2010, I learned to cook it from a dreadlocked sitar-playing Nottingham hippie, who picked it up from years of watching an African friend prepare it. I saw it mastered by a Palestinian British sista, who amazed us with her ability to make any dish in the authentic, homecooked way an auntie from that culture would prepare it. Just the thought of Japanese fried chicken curry and rice from Ft. St. George makes my mouth water. Thai green curry with its lemongrass tang is one of the most amazing dishes to ever grace the planet.  A butternut squash and coconut milk version is now essential in my culinary repertoire.  Now, after having been exposed to the many wonderful faces of curry, I couldn’t give it up if I tried.

It’s late, and I’ve run out of time on this post, so you’ll have to catch the top 3 next time. You can be sure there’ll be tea and Marmite among them.