FRESHET POETICS

"One of the most beautiful words in English describes these waters streams where a river becomes the sea—they are called freshets."

"...what is being Filipino? For me, it is the grand conspiracy to be ourselves—once more or at last, or for the first time ever. I don't know what or where it is, when it is going to be. It is both an act and a possibility...Maybe it is a place, a feeling, a heart, a memory. The memory of one and the memory of many. It is a decision to remember. It is the rejection of oblivion."
--Marne Kilates

Have you been reading one of the greatest Filipino poets out there -- Marne Kilates? Coz you should have been. And if you want to know where I'll be for the first half of August, you can read him too HERE and HERE as he's synchronistically blogging about the Ilocos, my birthplace and also for "19th CENTURY ILOCANO POET Leona Florentino, [who] couldn't study because he was a woman, privately instructed first by her mother, then by a priest, both of [whom] saw her talent early, before long her poem was included in an in an international anthology published in France".

Leona is one of the three poets to whom I dedicated Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole...where, in the U.S., I began this freshet turning into YOUR sea, oh lovely Peeps.

And Marne's photos! Gorgeous. Check 'em out to see the logic as to why your Chatelaine is hirself quite GAWWWWW-JUUUUICE!