Filipino Weekend

This weekend will have an array of Filipino flavors. Usually around this time of the year was a celebration at the park in Passaic for Philippine Independence Day from Spain. There would be folk dancing, a ton of food, and a bunch of unintentionally hilarious speeches. I can’t tell you how many times I heard a speech from some overly serious old person that was incorrect or someone sang a song against religion during an actual church service. I’d always be that guy in the back waiting to laugh out loud while everyone else had no reaction.

I’m “half Filipino” as they’d say in America. I grew up in a fairly tight knit Filipino American family which means there was always drama, and some of us are just fucking crazy. My family is from an island in the central part of what they call the Philippines. When I was a kid flying into the island, the airport was just a field with goats roaming around. Now it’s a fancy glass building although there are still goats around. As I’ve gotten older I tend to identify more with the island rather than with the whole country partially because I hate Manila. The traffic and crowding are too much, and they’re rather elitist much like Manhattanites are to the rest of America. Plus on the home island of Panay you can cruise around without much hassle. You can ride up to the hills or to the beaches to enjoy the day.

My cousin Randy and I getting ready to do some folk dance.

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Filipino culture is weird: there’s this strong matriarchal streak and yet it’s also machismo as hell. They never managed to resolve the pre-Spanish with the Latin. My grandparents (pictured below in the gallery) were symbolic of that to me. My grandmother was like royalty. She could roll her own cigar and still look like the Queen of England in my eyes. Her authority was her presence. She died when I was very young. But she left a mark on me and that ounce of aristocratic attitude comes from her. My grandfather on the other hand was a hard ass. For most of the time I knew him he was paralyzed from the neck down. But he was the patriarch despite all that. With his personality and will, and if he had the opportunity to be well educated, he would have been a billionaire. This is going to sound bizarre but the way he lived for all those years- laying in a bed, unable to do anything- the way he could command a room amazed me. It was as if he was proof that you can overcome most things in life and still crack jokes with 90% your body function being taken away from you. An iron fucking will. Whenever I feel down and pathetic I think of them. I remember you need to have heart first and everything else is just added options. I believe that generally speaking that’s the Filipino way.

Uncle “Buddy”

But the quintessential Filipino American experience to me is my uncle “Buddy”. And I dedicate this weekend especially to him. He more than anyone imbued into me a personality where you work like a madman but maintain a great sense of humor. And no matter what you try to be a nice guy. You can be surrounded by shit but still maintain yourself at the end of the day. He worked on fields in California picking asparagus and on a fishing boat filleting endless fish. I visited him in LA as a kid and will never forget hearing the automatic gunfire; and I thought my hometown was bad, lol. So when I go to the Philippines he’s someone I seek out right away. We cruise around the home island in his Jeep Wrangler and watch UFC fights in front of the electric fan. He once told me a story where he went to work for my grandfather on the farm. In his prime, my grandfather was terrifying. He didn’t care how big or tough you were. Anyone could be broken and rebuilt. And he made my uncle do things to where he would cry and could barely stand up. But it meant later on in life he could put up with all kinds of shit. I’ve never experienced anything like that. But I grew up around people who did. And that’s that immigrant power not just Filipinos can have but anyone whether from the Dominican Republic, Cameroon, or Russia. Jersey is blessed to always have a steady flow of immigrants. It keeps life real, and sometimes the Filipino dream or the Brazilian dream is a ticket to America. In turn it reinvigorates those of us lucky to be born here.