Bloom pt. 2

Some great moments from the past week, and more notes on my writing process

Surreal is how I would describe the past week. I have been well and content for a while now, like I’ve been going through a slow but calm emergence from a shell I’ve been in for a few years. But it felt sticky, like wading through muddy waters. My head has been above water, but the effort it takes to keep it that way requires all my energy.

Last week, however, felt clear. Easy. Some of the most happy and memorable moments of this year took place within the span of seven days.

On May 9, I took an early morning flight to Los Angeles to watch one of my favorite artists—Agust D or SUGA of BTS!—perform live at the Kia Forum in Inglewood. The experience was exhilarating: lining up for hours at the merch booth, meeting a new friend at the line, dressing up with style and weather in mind, grabbing food and drinks before the concert, yelling and dancing during the performance itself, coping with the post-concert crash after the two-hour high.

While there, I also had the opportunity to briefly reconnect with my aunts and cousin who, for a long time, have supported me in ways I am only really starting to see now. Tita Lai, my dad’s sister and my godmother, handed me a paper bag of presents during our ten-minute visit outside her apartment. There, she also advised me about how to prepare for my interview with the USCIS, when the time comes; “Magdala ka ng luggage, dalhin mo lahat ng pwede. Tapos gumawa ng mga kopya, para sigurado!” Tita Lil, who I didn’t get to say goodbye to on the morning of my departure, left two boxes of the ube mochi pancake mix from Trader Joe’s for me to take back to Texas because she saw how much I enjoyed them the day before.

The visit was brief, but memorable. I spent all of May 11 at the airport trying to get some sleep. From the Austin airport, Michael picked me up and we drove by P. Terry’s for some veggie burgers.

On May 12, while I was at my desk in the office, I received an email from my lawyers with the subject Case Approved. The USCIS had apparently waived the interview and went straight to approving our petition. I didn’t expect the waived interview, nor the relatively short timeline, but it was certainly a massive relief. Just days after that conversation with Tita Lai, the timing of this notice felt serendipitous. While I don’t physically have my Green Card yet, it seems I am now officially a legal resident of the United States.

On May 16—the day Jupiter entered the sign of Taurus, for the astrologically inclined—I received an email about my submission to the Tomaž Šalamun Chapbook Prize. The editors had nominated my manuscript as a finalist, and, like my submission to Quarter After Eight, I expected the good news to be followed by a rejection sentence. We loved your work, but…

I had to reread the email about ten times to comprehend that the judge Hoa Nguyen had selected my chapbook as the winning submission. That I was the recipient of the prize this year.

The prize comes with an honorarium, publication by Factory Hollow Press, and a one-month residency in Ljubljana, Slovenia next year. The chapbook will also be translated into Slovenian, and I will be given the chance to do a reading at the Tomaž Šalamun Poetry Centre during the residency. Immediately I called Michael, who was in the midst of managing a hectic restaurant opening, and shared the news with him. Variations of I can’t believe it were bounced back and forth as I cried with joy.

This was a monumental win for me. Revelations will be my first chapbook. In it are poems I am very proud of, and I am incredibly excited to share them soon. The residency next year will also be my first, and it will take place in a country that, prior to the chapbook contest, I knew very little about. The prospect of discovering a new country, with a history and culture currently unbeknownst to me, thrills me, as does the opportunity to focus on my writing for one month straight. I cannot express how grateful I am to the judge and editors for seeing something in my work that warrants this distinction.

I have been writing practically since I learned how to read, but for a long time I had not treated it as work. It was something I did between classes (sometimes even in the middle of boring ones), while in transit, or during particularly difficult moments of my life. After college, writing got further demoted as I focused on work, struggled with the concept of a career, and aspired for true independence. In one conversation, a friend asked me what I would do if money weren’t an issue. I want to write, I said. She responded, Why don’t you? A number of reasons crossed my mind: it’s not practical, it doesn’t pay well, the kind of writing I enjoy has little demand, I’m not good enough to be a Writer, I think I’ll hate writing if that was what I had to do for a living, I disliked the sense of exclusivity that tends to protect literary circles. Still, I find myself spending hours and days writing, even though there is no one to read it, no one to pay for it, no problem it can solve, no questions it can answer.

I had written a poem called “Revelations” in September 2021, which was published soon after in Unbroken. Writing the poem felt like discovering an itch, and I wanted to explore the ideas behind it further, so I thought about expanding it into a collection. I have always wanted to write a book-length poetry collection, but I never allotted time in my day to work on it, as though it will one day just spring out of my head, fully formed and armored. So that had to change; in November 2021, I sat myself down and committed to treating my writing as work. To it I needed to devote time, study, and resources, so I did. I broke my long commitment to only read digital books and started buying new titles again, rediscovering the joy of paper and handwritten annotations. I kept a notebook dedicated to my work, and recorded fragments that inspired me, that I wanted to be in dialogue with, that I wanted to revisit later on.

As is my tendency, the work happened in bursts throughout 2022. After the first few weeks, my energy slowly fizzled out and my writing slowed. An incredibly hectic work season that had me sleeping past midnight most days edged out the few hours of writing I used to do in the evening. For a few months, my notebook was left untouched, and I had paused reading again. It took a while before I resumed, but eventually I was able to build a short manuscript that, since the first draft, has undergone multiple revisions, additions, and omissions. The difficult months spent in limbo last year, during which much of the work for the manuscript was done, turned out to have been fruitful.

Now, a few days since the announcement, the excitement still hasn’t worn off. I have spent a small portion of the prize money to buy books from one of my favorite publishers—as a way of returning the flow towards publishers and other writers, in deep gratitude—and made several small feasts at home to celebrate the accomplishment. Today, the first day of my weekend, I worked on my sourdough bread—my Sunday routine—and deep cleaned the house, almost as a ceremony to create a bright, open space. I wanted to mark what feels like, in many ways, a new beginning.