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  • Jarred

    It was a difficult end of the year, but a much difficult beginning to this year. I did not realize how much it took to keep myself together and sane, and I was too blind to see the bottle I have made for myself. I can see and almost touch the world from my comfortable…

  • Defeated (by) academia

    After submitting my dissertation, and now having to wait for yet another approval – I’m more keen to ask myself, how much more seeking for approval am I able to take? The past four years, I’ve felt defeated by the system which I never thought I’d feel welcome enough to take my guard down. I’ve…

  • Bayanihan

    This is a piece of gratitude to the people who held me, who saw me, who walked with me throughout the last four years. Words are not enough to express how grateful I am to be surrounded by a community who dreamed of a world otherwise – a world nurtured by hope, by an economy…

  • The Pile

    Our lives are expressed through words, through vocabularies that were handed over to us. Yet in our silent moments, we sit with a lingering yearning for worlds and words otherwise. So, we imagine. We create new imaginaries, spaces, and rules where perhaps humanity is more than a color or a belief system. Yet, as we…

  • red floods

    red floods is a story inspired by conversations on aspiring to be an academic in a colonial world, where the only currency is a good, fancy, well-kept presentation of the day-to-day mess and contradictions we live in, where reimagining futures are still somehow confined within the colonial dream. Come to the Tower and see, red…

  • Becoming River

    I have spent four years (of trying) to understand how different communities relate with the river, and what types of relationships emerge from their day-to-day interactions with the rhythms of the river. Four years, and I still feel inadequate; I like that, it humbles me. It challenges me. Some stories elude me; some forms of…

  • Peeling Onions

    It took me until today to realize that I am the woman who gets to peel the onions. The onions have always been there on our kitchen table – untouched and fresh throughout the years. It always bothered me, and I’ve tried too many times to throw it. Just as I thought I escaped from…

  • When Women Cook

    In this collage of proses and short conversations, women cook in the background.While the world grumbles for hope yet dives into darkness, women cook as if their hands are not calloused.In the kitchen, when most women are told to stay, women cook the biggest flight of history –Her story. This is what can happen When…

  • The Jail

    Over dinners, and over long walks, my friends and I talk about the purposelessness of (most of) our pursuits these days. Even in a space like the academia where we’re told that our work should always strive to be socially (and morally) relevant, the day-to-day can seem empty. The long haul feels even more pointless.…

  • Then, we started filming

    This piece is an uncomfortable confrontation about being a brown researcher working with a group of white researchers in the context of Kenya. I wish there was a simpler way to write about this, but the whole process was a dance between my doubts and my assurances. This piece is an ongoing reflection on how…

  • SIYA, SILA

    I was walking along the streets of Rio de Janeiro during the Christmas holidays. At that moment, it dawned on me that my gaze was hazed by a longing of a sense of home. As I was walking, I imagined a woman; and she started walking on the streets while everyone stared at her with…

  • Last soup of the year

    As the year ended, I found myself entangled in sticky, lingering emotions that I could not rid of despite being in a new country. I thought exploring a new country that looked like home can ease my deep-seated yearning and guilt, but the yearning lingered like garlic on my hands. The guilt coated my gaze…

  • Tainted eyes

    What we understand is a reflection of what we see and do not see. For some, their eyes are untainted from cruel realities, such that they sense a world totally different than I (we) have. And for the remainder of the world, our realities are too harsh, too deprived, that their untainted eyes will never…

  • Thousands of dances

    what stays when you’ve exhausted the mind,forcing yourself to write, to fightyet you’re called to slow downcall a friend, ask her if she wants to have a coffee what stays when you’re confronted,not by pressure nor fear,but your own lack of place, of spaceto locate your story withyet you’re remindedthat once, you committed to makingyour…

  • The Talented

    The past month was a month-long monologue of my attempt at processing questions around being enough, being known, and keeping up to certain expectations. I was confronted with conversations about starting a good run, yet dwindling along the way – and what was I supposed to make of that? I was confronted with conversations on…

  • On deprivations

    This page intentionally left blank. I am wallowing in rage, and I invite you to join me. Read here.

  • The (un)making of Hunyango

    Hunyango is a Filipino word that either means a chameleon or someone is fickle or who quickly changes side or views. I use hunyango as a metaphor of someone’s capacity to shift form, to change certain parts of themselves in order to fit an environment. As someone who was raised with an unconscious need to…

  • While we are here

    what is home, where is home, who is home?we live in these bodies, and yet when we leave our homes,we think that we could escape who we are,but we carry our shells, our flesh, our skins with us,and we are still the same body –longing for roots, for connections, for a soilthat could nurture our…

  • Manunulat

    Isang maiksing repleksyon at tula kung bakit pinili kong maging manunulat / A short reflection and poem about why I chose to be a writer.Ako ay namulat sa historyang pinalaya ng mga salita / I am from a history whose freedom came from people who fought with wordsHindi nagmula sa kawalan ang aking mga isinisulat…

  • Lilac Longing

    Unlike the dancers of the traditional Filipino dance, Sayaw sa Banga (inspiration for the cover art), this story narrates a spillage rather than balance. This story portrays entanglements with expectations rather than freedom with rhythm. The dancer walks, dances over spillages of her own longing until the dance is changed to something different. Here is…

  • The Interview

    There are certain realities that will be difficult to place in neat boxes of theories and frameworks. There are certain realities that are beyond the reach of “organized comprehension.” Some realities are easier than others, but those that are difficult remain to be oversimplified in the great quest for a “single story” that everyone can…

  • The Surgery

    April felt like unwrapping myself off of the simplicity I wore in order to sit still with the “perfection” of the city I live in. As I unwrapped myself, I saw parts of me that I hid – almost perfectly and somehow quietly – and now I have to let them breathe. Let them become…

  • essays on stubborn gaze

    This unending walk started in 2009, perhaps even earlier. But at least it was 2009 when I vividly remember questioning the words and the world around me. But I was too young, too immature by then. My experiences were limited to my small world of pain and lack of options and opportunities. Fifteen years later,…

  • Fine Dining

    I wrote in metaphors of flavors, because I feel the rage and confusion in my gut most of the time. But I am raised to be polite, so I stomach everything in, until I drown in my own inability to resist. Well, this story is quite longer than usual. So I will save your reading…

  • The vomit

    I get on a train and someone appears. Someone familiar whom I’ve avoided for a long time. He offers me a filthy jug, but I hesitate. I try to argue that I’m losing time. He stares at me, and I fall into a trance of my own dishonesty. This a short story of my unbecoming:…

  • The (un)masking

    If we could peel off our skin, what will we see beneath the skin weathered by socially constructed expectations of what it means to be a human? If we were not afraid let go of what covers our being, will we recognize what we see? This is a short story of the (un)masking.

  • catharsis

    Last week I had the chance to share my research journey to my fellow Filipino researchers. We have a very inspiring online community called #PinoyScientists, where every week one researcher can share their work. They provided us with prompts for our daily posts, so I had to reflect on almost half of my life to…

  • Letters from the Kitchen

    When I was young, everyone told me that I looked like, “Napabayaan ka ata sa kusina.” (It seems that you were neglected in the kitchen.) It was because I weighed a lot for my age, and I actually spent a lot of time in the kitchen. I liked eating; I still do. Many memorable moments…

  • DISYEMBRE

    DISYEMBRE is always a tough time of the year. It sends signals to your memories. and even to your body. It doesn’t help the everywhere you go, there might be a small trigger. And you start entertaining the question, “Am I where I’m supposed to be?” This month is a dance with my longings and…

  • NOBYEMBRE

    Without the bodies, we cease to be.Without a home, we wander around,with organs intact, but memories fading in space over time. Nobyembre invites you to a trip between pasts, present, and futures. I seem to romanticize my past, but for a good reason that the past has been rough but kind enough to shape the…

  • A flashback of past(s) and future(s)

    Back in April 2021, as part of the application process for a PhD post, we were asked to develop different materials that can show how we plan to use storytelling and other creative methods to elicit narratives of living with drought and flood. At that time, I was still working with several indigenous communities in…

  • OKTUBRE

    This month is when I step into the third year of my PhD, and I still do not identify myself as an academic. This is a conscious, biased choice. I do not want to be deeply embedded in their ivory towers. I want to keep my sense of self, my sense of humility, vulnerability, and…

  • Setyembre

    Setyembre was coming back to a time and place that I thought was familiar enough to embrace me. But it did everything but to embrace me. I was taken aback. I arrived from the Philippines with a more complete sense of who I am (was); and embodying this body and experiences weighed me down. As…

  • What I talk about when I talk about doing a PhD: Year 2

    I am halfway through my PhD. When I put it this way, it sounds like a lot of time has passed, and that I have also done many things. Perhaps I can still say that I have just started my PhD. Either way, I am still engrossed and entangled in this walk. The past two…

  • Agosto

    AgostoKung alam ko lang / If I only knewna ganito ang mararamdaman ko / that this is how I would feelsa pag-uwi ko / by being homesana ay mas mahaba ang itinulog ko / then I should have slept longerkaysa sa panahong iginugol ko / than spent time kakaisip, kakatanong / thinking, askingkung paano ba…

  • Hulyo

    HULYO is an explosion of many things. Sometimes it felt like an explosion of nothingness. Some days it felt like all the pieces were broken to tiny pieces. HULYO is also a time where I asked people to write poems using different prompts. I always wondered how science would be like today and in the…

  • Hunyo

    JUNE was a month of newness. While I was doing my fieldwork in Iquitos and Lima, Perú, life led me to the right time at the right place to meet everyone I needed at that time. So this poetry zine is dedicated to everyone I met in Perú while I did my work, learned the…

  • Mayo

    I wish I studied sciences and mathematics, and everything else in my own language. I wish I wrote about kaunlaran, i of development. Komunidad, instead of community. Kapaligiran, instead of environment. I could have said to Mama and Papa, “Mahal ko kayo.” Instead of “I love you.” I could have hugged my brother and said,…

  • Abril

    I was excited for this month to arrive, but I also dreaded it at some point. My emotions were all over the place, mostly because there were so much unknown for me. But I kept reminding myself that I committed this life to always going where I am called, and going to places I do…

  • Marso

    MARSO is a painstaking attempt to pull me out of my head. This month, I spent a long time sitting in my head and thinking, when I should have just left my thoughts and explored the days. This zine is a reminder that writing (poetry) is a commitment – it takes all of me as…

  • Pebrero

    Pebrero is a poetry collection that holds words and feelings that I could not bring myself to talk about. By turning them into poetry, I was able to have an internal conversation to help myself unpack the weight of the boxes I carry. This is Pebrero.

  • Enero

    ENERO is a collection of poems that distill my daily experiences of being a researcher; embodying this body in a foreign city; becoming while also recognizing my lived experiences; and celebrating people who have fought to see better days. The cover – a Filipina cyborg – depicts my ongoing internal debate of how living in…

  • Diez (10)

    Diez / Sampu (in Tagalog) / Ten (in English) In the last three weeks, I had to ask myself questions that up until now I still do not have answers. I probably also will not allow myself to settle at answers without growing through the whole process of this thing called PhD. I love doing…

  • What I talk about when I talk about doing a PhD

    I have always been conflicted whether to pursue a PhD. I was never sure, but the desire to do it has always been with me. I cannot remember exactly when it started, but it just lingered. I started applying for PhD positions late 2020, and through the process I learned how not to take rejections…

  • This book

    At one point, you just have to start writing. At one point, you just have to share what you have written. This short book is a compilation of prompts, questions, existential provocations of being a body in a codified world. At one point, you have to ask yourself, what kind of person you want to…

  • VOMIT

    Agency. Binary. Credibility. Dichotomy. Equity. Fascism. Gun. Hegemony. Inclusivity. Jaded. Kurtosis. Liability. Monopoly. Neutrality. Oxymoron. Polarity. Quintessential. Rage. Similarity. Transcend. Ubiquity. Validity. Wrath. Xenophobia. Yearning. Zoning This series does not offer answers. I am too limited to arrive at absolute answers. We are too limited – temporally and spatially – to really embrace certain answers,…

  • The Spineless

    Sing me your painsas I close my eyesand let the night fool meinto believing that I understand Sing me a lullabythat tells a storyhow your countrymen foughthow your country lostcount of the bodiesthat had to be surrendered In exchangeof something more valuable than oilbut cannot even capturethe magnitude of my ragethe length of my despairthat…

  • Byte by Byte

    I am a researcher. I am enamored by thinking, problematizing, understanding, and trying to craft solutions. I was part of a big program pushing for digital agriulture; we tried to enhance our food systems byte by byte. We used satellite images to capture geographies of agricultural systems, and geographies of human practices. I crafted tools…

  • More than Quantified

    One of the major pushes I had to have this binary set etched on my center-back is how development work has deteriorated to the point of treating people as data. Development and research organizations have turned to datafying people. While curating a database is essential for a number of reasons, a database is not an…

  • The Valley where it Begins

    Quite a night, quite a thought. I was alone, but my mind was together with other. Other thoughts, quite a number of questions. I knew I wanted something permanent, somewhere permanent on my fleeting body. It hit me, it hit me in the middle. I saw a valley, where I can be a river. I…

  • 01

    WE ARE NOT DATA. We are an assemblage of cells, of organs, of living systems, of memories, of stories, and of many things we may not even know of. We are not binaries; nor can we let any system label us as such. We are more than the algorithms being made to predict human behavior,…