Hello all. I’m moving.

So the time has come now that I care about looking professional and having official branding, and all that jazz. because of that, all my further writing will be posted on my new non-tumblr writing blog, ZAKVR. Click here to check it out.

I will not delete this blog but I am in the process of moving the works I like to my new blog. This excludes all of the poetry and a couple of fiction and nonfiction works. They will stay here for archival purposes, but if you like my writing, ZAKVR is where to find me now.

Thank you to everybody who has followed this blog, reblogged any of my works, or generally just supported my craft. I hope this isn’t the end of your journey as a reader of mine, but if it is, I hope you had a good time.

Recent disasters have left countless people all over the country in need of aid, and we owe it to the people around us to help in any way we can.

The Creative Writing students and alumni of Ateneo de Manila University will be releasing our chapbooks to the public in exchange for donations to Kaya Natin! Movement. Kaya Natin! is a trusted, non-partisan, non-government organization currently raising funds for relief goods and operations in the areas most affected by Typhoons Rolly & Ulysses.

The catalog includes 3 short story collections, 1 poetry collection, 1 nonfiction collection, and 1 comic zine. For more information on the works, please browse the blurbs of each chapbook here https://tinyurl.com/ChapbookCatalog

For orders, please visit https://tinyurl.com/CWForACause and refer yourselves to the photos above to see the specific steps on how to donate. Orders will be open from November 18 to November 30.

For questions or concerns, feel free to reach out through Facebook Messenger or send an email to admucwforacause@gmail.com.

#ChapbooksForACause #UlyssesPH #Donations

Brian David Gilbert talking about video games made me rethink how I write nonfiction | Aisha R.

In my undergraduate thesis I submitted in partial fulfillment for my bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing, I wrote a critical essay dissecting my own nonfiction; my influences, my practice, and my intentions in writing for the genre. Because I was the one who wrote it, I am legally allowed to summarize it for you in one nifty statement: I realized that I write nonfiction to try know reality, to try cut it open and understand it in every way, to rid myself of confusion and lever myself to a position of power where I am the one with the key to the puzzle. 

I did this with my nonfiction because it is heavily in line with my personality. I can’t rest until I solve the riddle. I can’t put something down until I’ve figured out how it works. I can’t just shrug and accept that I’ll never know, because I have to know—I need to know. I wrote my thesis and dissected my own writing the same way I used it to investigate the world around me, but this piece isn’t about my thesis—It’s about a piece of media I watched when I was trying to destress from my thesis.

I opened a new tab. I typed in YouTube dot com. I looked at my video recommendations, saw a video of some funky white dude talking about video games, and clicked through.

That funky white dude was Brian David Gilbert and the video series, Polygon’s Unraveled, made me rethink just how I then used nonfiction, how people tend to look at literature, and how I now want to write in the future.

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Polygon is an American video game website owned by Vox Media. They create a wide array of content, ranging from articles to reviews to—what I’ll be focusing on here—videos. Polygon’s YouTube channel churns out many interesting and entertaining videos that go from “definitely about video games” to “vaguely video game adjacent performance art.” 

Their range, in topics and execution of those topics, is quite honestly phenomenal. There’s a video where Pat Gill talks about how the monsters from Bloodborne follow the same design principles as the Muppets, a video where Clayton Ashley dissects how video games make organizing stuff fun, there’s a video where Jenna Stoeber constructs an entire new timeline where Digimon won over Pokemon. The video team at Polygon is always putting out inventive videos that enhance the source material into something new that everybody can enjoy.

I enjoy all of Polygon’s video content, but I’m here to talk about one video series in particular: Unraveled.

Unraveled is a video series where Brian David Gilbert, aforementioned funky white dude, talks about video games in ways that almost always lead to his sanity being crushed into a fine dust come the end of his video. On Brian David Gilbert’s website, he describes Unraveled as “a video series I make for Polygon that serves as a cautionary tale against taking video game lore and logic too seriously,” and cautionary tales many of the videos are. In every Unraveled, he goes on a mission to categorize, rank, test, or uncover the hidden meaning within a specific video game media and he always goes astoundingly bonkers doing it. 

To make this clearer, let me tell you what happens in the first Unraveled video: “Solving the Zelda Timeline in 15 Minutes.” 

In this video, Brian David Gilbert—hereafter referred to as his internet alias acronym, BDG— dressed in a full three piece suit, embarks on a mission to piece together every single scrap of Zelda media into something resembling a coherent timeline. He pins titles of Zelda games to the wall as he slowly becomes more manic, as the lights begin to tint red, as he loses layers of the suit like a crazed mad scientist delivering his final lecture. By the end of the video, he has created a three pronged timeline that converges into one via the use of Zelda Monopoly, of all things. BDG looks into the camera, out of breath and disheveled, and says “Don’t ask me to do this again.”

Spoiler: they ask him to do it again. Two years and 26 episodes of Unraveled later, this video series is one of Polygon’s most popular creations.

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Michel de Montaigne—a French philosopher who popularized the essay as a genre of literature—was the first person to describe the essay as a form as something that calls back to the French etymology of the word. Essay comes from essayer, which means “to try” or “to attempt”. Montaigne described the essay as an attempt to put his thinking and his process of which into a piece. It just so happened that what I “attempted” to do with every essay of mine was to try and make sense of something, specifically reality itself.

This essayistic process centered around the “attempt” is what Brian David Gilbert is doing in Unraveled as well. 

Bear with me.

I was featured in Heights’ Seniors Folio 2020! Read my essay, To Keep Safe, on page 187

To Fix | Aisha R.

Domeng has been awake since sunrise. 

His owner had taken him the moment the sun shone over the horizon, streaming into his coop in bars of light. The tie around his ankle had been gently unwound, rousing Domeng from the last fits of sleep and his dreams of victory. Vague images of blood and ripped feathers and raucous applause follow him as his owner lifts him from his coop, walking with Domeng tucked safely in his arms. 

The streets of Tondo pass like that. Shrouded in the last vestiges of certainty on their way to both of their turning points. 

The arena is deserted when they get there. His owner takes him out back to the cages. A stand of cages with rows stacked one on top of the other. Domeng is placed in the last one. His owner gives him one last stroke over his back, shuts the door of the cage, and leaves. 

Domeng doesn’t know how time passes after that. The energy inside of him blurs what would have been regular hours into swatches of moments. Owners stream in and, one by one, the cages fill up. The other roosters are as restless as he is but they don’t have it in themselves to drown in it. Instead, they pace the small expanse of their cages. Three steps, turn, three steps, turn, three steps—repeat. With nothing else to do, he follows. Three steps, turn, three steps, turn, three steps—the talon of his left leg scrapes against the rotting wood of his cell, it sends a shiver down his spine, his feathers standing on end—turn. A cacophony of manic, feverish, constant scratching, over, and over, and over, and—

“Domeng,” says Manuel from the next cage. Domeng hadn’t noticed he’d been put there. When did that happen? “Will you please stop that?”

“Stop what?” Three steps, turn, three steps, turn, three steps—

“Your pacing is giving me a headache,” Manuel grumbles, voice like dry dirt and rusted metal. 

The River | Aisha R.

Five days before Miles Santos dies, the sink in his bathroom breaks. 

It started with a trickle of water dripping from the pipes underneath before growing into a spurting torrent that soaks his knees. This is what he gets, he muses, for not switching to water replication plumbing. He goes through his things looking for anything to fix it, but his condo is a crowded mess of wires and screens. Miles manages to find a roll of duct tape tangled within an extension cord. 

With shaking hands, testaments to the sleepless nights of the past week, he wraps the leaking pipe with tape. Outside, his tablet continues playing the video he left it on. The voices drift into the room quietly, bouncing off the porcelain. Soft, pattering sounds of disaster. 

“—the eye of typhoon Tomas was located, based on all available data, at 2,635 kilometers east of Southern Luzon. This is still outside of the Philippine Area of Responsibility. It has maximum sustained winds of 130 kilometers per hour and a gustiness of up to 160 kilometers per hour. It is moving west at 30 kilometers per hour. This typhoon is expected to enter PAR by Saturday—”

Water slips past his fingers and soaks his arms. It splashes against his face, sharp and cold. Miles coils tape around the pipe over and over, choking the water back in the place until finally, the pipes yield.

“—when we say super typhoon, it has to sustain a wind speed greater than 220 kilometers per hour. Typhoon Tomas is not a super typhoon, but it still has a long way to go above water before it reaches landfall and thus has the potential to, ah, acquire more strength.”

“So it’s possible for typhoon Tomas to become a super typhoon.”

“There is a possibility—”

Miles’ hands are soaked. His shirt is damp. His bathroom floor is a glorified puddle and he’s kneeling in it, an attempt for absolution. It’s a flimsy attempt at best, he thinks. He will never be clean again.

He stands up from the mess he’s made, sits down at one of his monitors. Still cold and rapidly becoming colder, he types and creates a monster.

So I won a Loyola School Arts Award for Creative Writing: Nonfiction last May. Instead of having an awarding ceremony, us awardees decided to put together a chapbook of our works. 

My work, To Keep Safe, an essay about taxidermy and longing, can be read on page 66. This essay is not posted on this blog, so check out the chapbook here at http://tinyurl.com/LSAA2020.

This chapbook is available to read FOR FREE. However, we are accepting donations for we have partnered with Tahanan Sta. Maria, to which all donations will be going to.

A short little blog post I wrote for Communitails, a dog therapy company I interned for last year. Read it here on facebook!

So I just won a Loyola School Arts Award in Creative Writing for my work in writing nonfiction!

Let me briefly set aside the professionalism I try very hard to maintain on this blog to say OH MY GOD OH MY GOD YES YES YES!!!! 

Thank you Ateneo de Manila University. Thank you ADMU Fine Arts Department. Thank you everybody who has ever taught me. Thank you everybody who has ever read my work. This means so much to me (really. I care more about this award than my actual diploma).

Tagpuan, an online chapbook fundraiser | notes from the autopsy by aisha rallonza | now available for online purchase!

what is this

“Every year, CW graduates compile their works and sell them as chapbooks--a culmination of their endeavors as writers. In the time of social distancing and the COVID-19 pandemic, the Creative Writing seniors of the Ateneo de Manila University are launching their chapbooks online to raise funds in support of the Lumad students in Manila.   We’ve entitled this project “Tagpuan,” which serves as a meeting place or intersection of art and literature in the digital space. All proceeds from the chapbooks sales will be donated to the Bakwit School in Metro Manila, who are feeding around 100 displaced Lumad youth. The proceeds will also be used to replenish their medical supplies in order to remain safe during the time of the pandemic. We’re reaching out to help the Lumad Bakwit School as one of the many communities affected by the Enhanced Community Quarantine in Luzon. We humbly ask for your support in the endeavor.

You may contact: Teacher Elsa - 09090128952 for donations in kind (food, medicine, and other essential goods).

Credits to Juancho Luna for poster design ”

View the full list of available chapbooks here. 

contents of “notes from the autopsy” by aisha rallonza

A cemetery of the rich and a cemetery of the poor, the act of peeling the skin off of a dead animal, the relationship of mother and child put under the lens of aging, the experience of wanting to throw one's self off a building. How does death shape life? This collection slices open the body of mortality, peers into it, and attempts to make answers from the viscera.

This chapbook contains four essays: Resting Places, To Keep Safe, Growing Pains, and Are You Telling The Truth? essays that have previously been posted on this blog have been expanded or revised. The approximate wordcount of this chapbook is 19k words.

beneficiaries

All proceeds from the chapbooks sales will be donated to the Bakwit School in Metro Manila, who are feeding around 100 displaced Lumad youth. The proceeds will also be used to replenish their medical supplies in order to remain safe during the time of the pandemic.

how to purchase

1) local buyers (those within the PH) / those purchasing using BDO of GCash (able to purchase any chapbook)

2) international buyers / those purchasing using PayPal or other means (”notes from the autopsy” only)

click here to purchase the chapbook on Gumroad. price minimum is set at $2. donations above the chapbook price are very much appreciated. chapbook will be available for you to download immediately after purchase.

reblogs much appreciated!

The Drive from Cabanatuan (after Anne Carson’s “Merry Christmas from Hegel”) | Aisha R.

Are You Telling The Truth? | Aisha R.

In sixth grade, I accidentally stole a fire extinguisher. It was lunch time. I was in school. I found myself loitering on the second floor hallway, right outside the library, where I was headed, when I found myself enraptured. Right ahead of me, there was a panel in the wall. Inside the panel was a fire extinguisher. It was a panel that was usually covered by glass, but on that day, the glass was gone, leaving the fire extinguisher out in the open. At this point in my life, I was incredibly interested in fire extinguishers. I was going through a phase of picking random objects and reading about them extensively, from neon lights to lithium ion batteries to alligator snapping turtles. On that week, it was fire extinguishers, and the one in the panel was too great a temptation to resist.

I walked forward. Nobody was in the hallway. I stood in front of the panel. There were no other footsteps. I reached out, picked up the fire extinguisher, and felt the kind of inexorable glee only an eleven year old could feel upon holding the thing I had been reading about for days. I held the fire extinguisher in my hands, feeling the cold metal against my palms. That moment was one suspended in childlike awe.

The spell was broken when I heard somebody yell my name, “Ms. Rallonza!”

There was nobody in the hallway, but I had neglected to remember that this second floor hallway was directly across from another building filled with classrooms and ongoing classes. In one of those classrooms, an entire class and my old science teacher were watching me. My fight or flight instincts kicked in, and since there was nobody to fight, I ran. With the fire extinguisher still in my hands.

This is a story I tell a lot of people. Sometimes, I include the epilogue where I have to return the fire extinguisher and apologize to my teacher, but at its core, it’s a silly story. It’s the perfect mix of my impulsivity, my tendency to fixate on random objects, and my knack of shutting down reasonable thinking in a crisis. All of these elements crashed into an anecdote ridiculous enough to keep telling but mundane enough to not really matter. Initial embarrassment aside, it was the perfect story. Or it would have been, if the story were actually true.

Most parts of it were true. The setting, the fascination with fire extinguishers, the not-there glass panel, the getting yelled at. That’s around 99%. The only lie was the bit where I picked the fire extinguisher up and ran away with it. In reality, I walked over to the panel, reached for the fire extinguisher, got yelled at, and then ran away. That’s all. From one version to the other, I always thought it barely made a difference. This version certainly was more interesting, and in the grand scheme of things, it was just one wrong detail in an otherwise correct telling of events. It didn’t matter, so I told the story again, and again, and again. I had told it so many times with that wrong detail that I often forget it didn’t really happen, that I myself can sometimes remember the weight of the fire extinguisher in my hands as if it did.

My habit of lying started early, when I was a kid. From then on, I grew up getting called out for those lies. Nanay always told me I was a terrible liar. No matter what it was, from “I didn’t break it” to “I passed my math quiz”, she could always tell, and from there, she’d pull the truth out of me. Honesty is the best policy, echoed my memories of kindergarten, and I assume this was the goal of getting called out for lies, but it didn’t work with me. Instead of not lying, I just told myself to get better at it. Don’t fidget, don’t look away, don’t let your voice waver. Talk like you believe the lie just as much as you want other people to believe it too. I don’t know if I really got better or if Nanay just got tired of telling me off for it, but I never stopped. Not once.

In my defense, I only lied about things that didn’t matter. Never anything big or sincere like apologies or I love yous. I lied about the small things, like if did my homework or if I unintentionally stole a fire extinguisher. A habit that started in childhood followed me up until now. I lie about small things the same way I talk; naturally, unthinkingly, one word after the other, unbidden. A lot of the time, I don’t realize I’m lying because of how easy it is. Things that don’t matter slip off the tongue effortlessly.

So a few months ago, when my guidance counselor asked me if I regularly think about killing myself, I didn’t fidget, I didn’t look away, and I held my voice strong. As far as “no”s go, I thought that one was pretty good.

Hello, all! A revised version of my essay Resting Places was published in a chapbook showcasing the works of the fellows of the 24th Ateneo Heights Writer’s Workshop. The workshop was a wonderful experience and I am so grateful I was able to be a part of it.

You can read the chapbook here for free! The works of all the fellows are amazing and you can find my work on book page 58.

let slip the dogs | Aisha R.

When I was younger, my family had this dog named Indie. Indie was large and I was scared of him. I was maybe four or five years old and my memory fails me in those years. Memories weren’t solid moments I could hold in my hands and take apart. They were like stained glass impressions that shifted with every second. I couldn’t remember Indie as a narrative of one instance moving into another. Instead, all I had were blurry scenes and haphazard declarations my four-or five-year-old brain believed with all the certainty my brain at the time could manage. Indie was the largest dog in the world and I was scared of him. Indie prowled the space of our home like a dinosaur lion. Indie barked louder than thunder, I’m sure of it, you have to believe me.

After months of their four-or-five-year-old child whining constantly, my parents finally decided to give Indie away. They chained him to the gate and he paced back and forth, back and forth, as far as the chain would let him go until it yanked him back by the throat.

The sound of an engine. A noisy brake. A car parked in front of our house and the new owners spoke with my parents for a while, yelling over the cacophony of Indie’s barking. When the new owners unchained him from the gate and loaded him into their car, Indie yelped and yipped and snarled louder than any thunder I ever heard, restless with the fear that something was about to happen. He must have known.

And he must have known it was my fault.

He quieted for a second and looked back towards our home. His gaze met mine from where I had been standing at the door, watching as he was being taken away.

This is the only part I remember vividly. The split second of eye contact. The silence. The weight of the air around me as I watched the car drive away.

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If you google my last name, the first page brings up three of my immediate family members.