thesis statement
i’m just a mixed little fruit who enjoys a good beverage and wants to change the world by loving it.
hey y’all,
today, i'm sippin' on a vanilla cold brew with half & half from birch on the upper east side. i'm a regular here, even though i don't live in new york city. i have a lot of affection for birch. it was the last place my husband worked before quarantine layoffs in 2020. it's less than a block from one my clients, who i do a site visit for about four times a year.
i'm always in pursuit of home. home, meaning a place where i belong. one such place that i always feel at home is a pretentious new york coffee shop. i don't know what that says about me, but something about tiny brown tables resting on black and white hexagon tiles and chrome plated menu boards make me exhale.
i've spent 30 years holding my breath, so anything that allows me to relax is a win. that's been my goal since turning 30 - find ways to exhale. unclench. just exist, with no expectations. i left 6 years of my life in new jersey to come home to north carolina. when i was a young and closeted transsexual, the northeast represented an oasis of radicalism where i could one day emerge from my cocoon and finally belong somewhere. i was obsessed with the club kids in the 80s and 90s who made the great pilgrimage from atlanta and montgomery to greenwich village.
and i was a modern club kid too, for a time. the leftist and labor communities of philadelphia embraced me in many ways, and the dolls helped me discover parts of my transness that i didn't know were even possible. i needed to get away from my insular southern roots to discover parts of myself that could not be born under those damp, restrictive conditions.
what i discovered while rotting in the prison of my own mind during 2020-2021 was that home never actually left me. i wrestled with it for awhile. did i really miss the insular sandbar community of my hometown? why was i bristling when people apologized to me when i told them where i'm from? i found that this huge point of shame in my adolescence was actually an essential part of me that i didn't want erased.
i am a cackalacky boy; no question about it. i like speeding through the pamlico on illegally modded skiffs with a cooler of coors lite. i like eating pulled pork out of a red checker-lined styrofoam container with a flimsy plastic fork. i like watching the sunset from the lifeguard stand on ocean bay boulevard. i like the smell of damp tobacco after a hurricane. i like homemade apple moonshine and sweet tea.
at the heart of it, though, being away helped me realize that there are deeper things north carolina gave me that i hope to never be parted with - a sense of community that cannot be stolen no matter what the governor says; generosity as resistance and expectation alike; courtesy and kindness ruling above all else; loving people you don't fully understand. generally, these were not the norms where i lived in the northeast.
i also discovered that i'm filipino. okay, only in part, but that part is powerful. and you might be thinking, "damn dude, didn't you already know that?" of course, but i think there's a cerebral knowing and a spiritual knowing. i knew i had asian heritage, but i wasn’t really interacting with what that meant for my personhood until i moved to new jersey.
i grew up in a two-culture home that strongly centered traditional filipino values. at the same time, those values were never named or contextualized. their omission was in the pursuit of assimilation. my grandfather became a stranger to me when he would speak tagalog on the phone with his sisters.
as i exited young adulthood into plain adulthood, i began to uncover the words for my most deeply held beliefs and the expectations i had of the world. i started reading and listening to the spiritual practices of my ancestors and those who study them. there are generations of cultural practices embedded in my bone marrow that have been clawing their way to the surface since i took my first breath.
a short glossary of life-changing concepts i'm still learning about:
kapwa - a deep connection and unity among people, even if they are different from each other. kapwa is about recognizing that we are all part of a larger whole and that our happiness is intertwined.
hiya - in layman’s terms, hiya means having basic fuckin’ manners (read this in an eastern north carolina accent). it is a way of behaving that both reflects your values and considers how your actions will affect other people.
anik-anik - the collection of small, “worthless” items for the sake of sentimentality. it is a cultural preservation practice that honors the physicality of memory.
now, i’m not a sikolohiyang pilipino expert. i’m just a student, and a humble one at that. i’m a biracial, second-generation immigrant child. i have never been to the islands. i am discovering myself third-hand through texts and oral retellings, but i know now that kapwa was already inside me. i have always felt so strongly that the point of being alive is to care for one another.
i’ve also felt like these parts of me have been perpetually at odds with each other. it is through this nascent reuniting with my heritage and upbringing, with a lens of appreciation instead of shame, that i am beginning to discover their commonality. that’s what sweet tea & kalamansi is about. i’m a mixed little fruit who enjoys a good beverage and i’m trying to change the world by loving it. i hope i can help you love it too. <3
xoxo,
kuya von
i showed you my gooey center, please respond 👉👈
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“don't you remember how we used to split a drink? it never mattered what it was. i think our hands were just that close. the sweetness never lasts, you know.”
jet pack blues, fall out boy
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eat local, buy small press, support your local library, and don’t call the police <3