Not captured. Not discovered. 

Instead acknowledged. Instead honored. Instead revered. 

Be careful, for items may have shifted during flight

I realize that this has become a travel blog of sorts. The blog is the destination. Here, I check in my baggage every once in a while. 

And then I carry on, carry on.

Last weekend, I flew to New York City for CTRL+ALT: A Culture Lab on Imagined Futures, hosted by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. It was a pop-up exhibition of artists who work in the medium of future visioning. In a four-day foray from the Pacific Northwest to the East Coast, I moved my mind and body on planes, on foot, in subways, and on sidewalks. I carried a notebook and wrote down what I saw: muted boxing matches and seed packet fortunes and meditation stations and speculative fiction reading lounges and anti-displacement art brigades. I carried a phone and texted who I knew: artist friends from Los Angeles and college friends from distant years past and former professors who have now become drinking buddies. I carried a longing for inspiration and walked in any direction with promise: SoHo bookstores and abandoned Asian dry goods stores and carefully-landscaped Brooklyn parks. 

I carried a need to connect with something. But I should know better than to expect New York to provide that freely, easily, without desiring something in return.

Portland, Oregon: Where intrepid individuals ford rivers on blueberry bourbon basil donuts.

Decolonizing the Arts Conference: A Report from Emergence 2016

Typically, most arts conferences that I attend do not include water-pouring ceremonies, pop-up coloring sessions, or group meditations. Yet not all conferences are created equal, and I recently participated in one that included all of those activities–and then some.

A few weeks ago, I flew from Portland to San Francisco to attend Emergence 2016, the annual convening of Emerging Arts Professionals San Francisco/Bay Area. Like many conferences, Emergence seeks to connect arts and culture workers to one another to share ideas and best practices for our field. Unlike many conferences, however, Emergence is grassroots, experimental, organized predominantly by people of color, and eager to tackle topics like revolution and justice, which were at the center of this year’s theme, “Crafting Equity, Shifting Power.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves

Candita--the curious, watchful, thoughtful, inspired Candace--disappeared for some time.

She was in motion, riding swells of waves, sometimes going under for what seemed like too long, emerging gulping air, clothes waterlogged, before finally frying in a hot tumble dryer.

Candita is making a comeback. Maybe.

I am thinking this week. Specifically, I am thinking about manifestos on buses, nourishment of skin, emptiness of pages, abundance of earth, and slowness of time. This week I stopped checking email. I looked at my bank account and detached from the dollar signs on a screen. I savored over words and the blankness between. I wrote. I checked my horoscope. I started using lotion. I ate when I was hungry. I ate chocolate for dinner on occasion.

I was born in the year of the snake. I am shedding skin and uncovering raw gleaming pink beneath. I had built up so many layers by sprinting, hiding, shaming, running on empty. I am working on shedding this skin with slow sun rays, slow turning of pages, and much-needed loofahs.

I’ve been through the shit of break ups and moving and Portland and fear and it has been hard. I have been hard on myself. But we all know it is time to make lemonade. We all know that “if we are going to heal, then let it be glorious.” Some of us (primarily the moon-readers among us) know that abundance bounds if you let it. Some of us know that fullness is a state of being.

I am making a comeback with this: “Immerse yourself in what you need. Bury yourself in its scent. Cover yourself in its light. Eat at its table. Sleep with its mistress. Refuse to be ashamed of your needs. You weren’t starving before you got here. You were born full. Believe it. Until you are satiated again.”

Or girls, or non-gender-conforming folks, for that matter. [via Xicanisma]

A View of Arts Advocacy from Capitol Hill

I don’t know about you, but I don’t often attend meetings that begin with asking for $155 million dollars.

Yet requesting such a sum was a primary goal when I met with members of Congress in Washington, D.C. last week as part of the Western States Arts Federation’s (WESTAF) Arts Leadership & Advocacy Seminar. 

WESTAF is an innovative nonprofit arts service organization dedicated to strengthening the infrastructure of the arts in the West. Serving a 13-state region, it assists state arts agencies, arts organizations, and artists through grantmaking, research, and advocacy. Each year, the Arts Leadership & Advocacy Seminar brings over sixty prominent arts leaders from the West to Capitol Hill to engage in federal-level advocacy. Over the course of the three-day trip, Seminar participants meet with members of Congress to ask for their support of policies that positively impact the arts.

This incredible opportunity to advocate in Washington, D.C. followed my participation in another WESTAF program, the Emerging Leaders of Color fellowship, this past fall. Although I have attended arts advocacy days in Oregon through the Cultural Advocacy Coalition and in Los Angeles through Arts for LA, traveling to Washington opened my eyes to a whole new terrain of arts policy. Within a group of arts advocates, it is easy to talk about the value of the arts: how they enrich education, promote economic development, build dynamic communities, and sustain us as human beings. However, speaking with legislators and policymakers--for whom the arts may be one of many wide-ranging priorities--begets a different kind of conversation.

60 Minutes with Chairman Chu

When I first heard that Jane Chu, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, would be visiting Portland in her upcoming travels, I felt proud of the city I currently call home. It would be an incredible opportunity for Portland to share its abundance such an esteemed arts leader.

When I later heard that I would be able to meet Chairman Chu during her visit to the Portland Art Museum, my heart nearly flew out of my chest.

Something to remember. (via Brainpickings)

I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list.  - Susan Sontag

I’ve been bit by the travel bug. Over the past six months, I have found myself in cities big (Seattle, Tokyo, Vancouver) and small (Maryhill, Hood River, Cannon Beach, Salem). I found that I thirsted for adventure outside of the routine of my nine-to-five lifestyle, especially in a town that largely shuts down after 9pm. I am especially thankful for the privilege of time, a humble budget, and the stability to be able to set experiences in motion. 

Last weekend, my partner and I drove to Vancouver, British Columbia. This excursion was my first ever to Canada. Surprisingly, I had not thought much about our neighbor to the north prior to moving to Portland. Vancouver does not have the cultural allure of metropolises like New York or Los Angeles, and my sole reference point for the city was its short-lived spotlight as an Olympic host site. After a few hours in Vancouver, however, I realized how much I had underestimated it.

Vancouver is striking. Undulating pine-drenched mountains tower over a massive blue bay bordered by gleaming skyscrapers and quaint Craftsman cottages. Young designer-handbag-toting sartorialists rove the city and cascade in and out of its stunning feats of architecture. Vancouver is an enchanted urban forest, both familiar and different from anything in the United States.

Asians were everywhere, which is definitely not something that can be said about Portland. Asians and Asian Canadians make up 43% of Vancouver’s population, making it one of cities with the highest population of Asians outside of Asia. Coming from a white-dominated place, this fact was not only comforting but made me wax nostalgic about my past in gloriously-diverse Los Angeles. Of course, this fact meant for delicious Asian food as well. Vegan dim sum at 3G Vegetarian Restaurant was simply orgasmic, and veggie-yaki at the neon-lit “you can’t try everything but you can try” Richmond Night Market was a complete sensory overload. Feeling like I could blend into a visible majority–despite being Asian American–was refreshing and nourished me in ways that I had forgotten that I needed.

Such a promising setup delivered with additional stellar highlights: visiting the breathtaking Regional Assembly of Text, taking an excellent architectural walking tour of historic Gastown, soaking in the gorgeous Revolver Coffee, swooning over the Marine Building, and canoeing with seals, jellyfish, and blue herons in Deep Cove.

I did not expect the beauty within this place, and I did not expect envisioning myself never leaving. As we crossed the border back into the United States, a dream of trading my passport in for a Canadian version lingered in my mind. Maybe, one day. Travel is not always the answer, but it is often the starting point. 

Onwards, friends.

George R.R. Martin

Japan left me wanting more.

I already cling to the memories of my week in Tokyo. I fear I will forget the sights, sounds, smells, feelings, the angular hills and valleys of the language that enveloped me. After so much planning to make the trip happen, it is now over, and I am left only with stories as the past rushes away.

Going to Japan was not like going home. It is technically my (great-grand)motherland, and I have no means by which to call it familiar. I grew up not knowing a word of Japanese, eating Japanese food a handful of times prior to college, and having as much sense of Japanese culture as one learns on American television and in history class. I know myself as Japanese American, a political state of being in which my name and face speak more Japanese than my tongue ever will. It is a state of being that, in post-internment America, can be devoid of any connection to the island nation across the sea.

Yet the trip filled me in a way that I needed, perhaps without realizing it. Tokyo challenged me by immersing me in the unfamiliar. Unable to speak or read, I was forced to retrain my eyes in (sometimes futile) efforts to understand, and to observe habits, actions, and mannerisms with a keenness and precision that I can easily dismiss in my home country. Figuring out how to pay for things, how to use the subway, and what was on my plate--the most common of tasks--were colored in a radically different light. Sharing space with my father and cousin, both of whom I have not spent sustained time with in almost a decade, reminded me of the connections, responsibilities, and compromises that bind familial ties. 

Coming back to the United States, I recognized how my life, while busy, had become routine. I had been sailing calm waters of familiarity and knowledge. I could not name something that has been truly difficult for me or has propelled me to radically shift my way of being within the past few months. Yes, my to-do list is always long, but checking off items from it rarely expands my worldview. 

Tokyo broke that consciousness open by exposing me to the refreshingly new--by introducing me to new ways of living, new sets of values, new levels of wealth, new relationships with extended family to nurture and build. From the outside, no city is like Tokyo. From my inside, no story exists without Tokyo. And where do I go next?

I rarely leave my apartment without a book. Sometimes, I wander into Powell’s in search of something that might be better than what I am currently carrying in my bag. That was the case when I picked up Meghan Daum’s Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids on a recent trip to Portland’s favorite bookstore.

Typically, I would not be drawn to this subject matter; however, as I climb into my late twenties, I find myself more and more often surrounded by babies--or iPhone albums featuring them. While my college social circle was overwhelmingly single and childless, I am now one of a handful of my colleagues that is not married and does not have children. In fact, ever since I have started my job at the Portland Art Museum, at least one of my colleagues has been pregnant or on maternity leave.

When photos of newborns begin circulating among friends and colleagues, I must admit that I feel very much out of the loop. This is not because I do not have a family of my own but because I simply do not see parenthood in my future. Socially, this can be a difficult position to admit. The US is a nation that glorifies the nuclear family unit, equates joy with parenthood, and expects children as the natural outcome of romantic relationships. Thus, expressing one’s ambivalence towards family-building feels like some sort of shameless midnight confession. (But, there: I said it.)