choking back

Diaristic.

Only half-hidden.

There's a hidden story behind this blog. It's not possible to share at the moment. But slowly, it has seeped out to friends and acquaintances. It is a time for asserting the self. And yet curiously that self is the person of the immediate past. What happened to much older past, the period in which the only significant memory I prize is my much slimmer waistline? Sure what is going on now is very much connected, but a whole lot is missing. Is this what it means to tell one's story? Is this what it means to be "well"? Huge chunks of experiences that are not integral to the said story disappear. We are many stories and some of them are invisible even to ourselves.


Yesterday, I gave a terrible presentation in a grad seminar. I've never been good at giving one because of my lack of preparation, and, more importantly, my lack of self-confidence. I would pause and suddenly get a panic attack repeating what I just said or suddenly jumping to the conclusion in order to justify my argument and presence. It would appear that my nervousness comes out from my disbelief at my presence before an audience. I, who has nurtured an outsider status for two decades, the one who could speak but had no public avenues to express himself, suddenly finds himself at an official site of enunciation. It's hard to get used to this--to have a voice and opinions and ideas and a stake in something material. Part of the sentimentality of this blog was that it was my only space to express my frustration and perceived exceptionality as a result of my marginalization. In other words, I was worth listening to because I was looking at things, social and academic, from alien eyes. It is an egotism that I failed to accept because that would have meant I was a somebody when social conditions indicated otherwise. Going back to my presentation or any of the recent class discussions, there is this weird accent that materializes. It's not a Filipino accent por syur. The mind almost doesn't recognize how the tongue creates these sounds, which may account for my pauses wondering what is going on. Who, at this point, is in possession of me? This accent acts as a  marker of non-assimiliation.  What is somewhat amusing is the recurrence of the word "like" in my speech even in the grad seminar format. They look at me as if I have an improper tattoo. But what they fail to realize is that this is a reflection of the casualness of speech in the Southern California setting. Dude, I'm speaking in sunshine! Usually, after a disastrous assertion of the self, I fall into further doubts. However, I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't apologize for the way I think and express myself. Sure, I need to work on some things, but I shouldn't question the content and approach to yesterday's presentation. Because I was realizing while speaking that this is not what most of them expected in terms of the approach to the materials. I can't offer nice conclusions. I find those a bore. What if the connection being made with the ideas in a text do not add up but cleaves the text. And I feel that if this is the case the presentation itself should possess that form of irreconcilability. Besides, the object of presentation is to open the material for discussion. By giving definitive ideas and formulations, I think that this somewhat alters what can be discussed. One begins to react to the interpretation rather than going back to the text itself. (Is that convincing? Probably not, like whatever.) In addition, I have become a great believer in close reading (or that's what I call it). Just look at the passage itself (after selecting it as somewhat representative or relevant or most unusual) and see what is going on there. (I learned to do this at Irvine.) Of course, all this is an act of justification on my part--to ease the pain of the disaster. And why this disorganization and lack of voice? Am I less qualified than my cohorts. Um, yes! There's a level of confidence, erudition, and nuance when they speak that I lack and envy and desire so much. But where have I been the past few years? This I don't seem to have considered. This chaotic mind is a result of close to two decades of insecurity. Accumulation of knowledge and ideas has been in the margins with feelings of inferiority mixed in. The way I think and look at texts has been shaped largely outside of the academy with my face pressed on the cold glass looking in and trying to hear what's going on inside. And by some strange twists of fate (and recommendation letters), here I am in the academy. I am without doubt the unlikeliest person to be here. So this tortured speech and roundabout logic and inferiority complex galore is part of that--part of the process of knowledge accumulation in makeshift circumstances. It would be difficult to pull them apart at the moment. Perhaps in a few years, after I get used to what it means to be a legal person with an official place in a institution, I can speak in paragraphs like my classmates. Perhaps this mouth, the actual physical speaking organ, can adjust or not since I really do like my "like"s for they make me relatable to a wider circle of people, I feel. So in conclusion (ha!), I can't really apologize for my muddled presentation because that would deny the actual circumstances of my life. And now that I see this and realize this, it is then time to speak up more and do so more clearly. I need to have confidence of a different kind. I need to be muddled and confusing on another level, a much higher level.

If I claim to have a secret, I gave it away, obviously. One never knows what happens when one writes.