Some Notes on Abandonment

1. 

Abandon:  

                     (v): to depart  

          (n): an offering 

2. 

In my poetry collection, Dayo, I included the poem “When the Heart Catches Cold.” Written more than a decade ago, it is composed of two different poems—one after the Chinese poet, Li Bai, and the other about counselling sessions. I initially wanted to write a personal tribute to classical Chinese poetry which, at that time, provided me with much refuge. With the latter, I was trying to write about depression. At some point, I couldn’t move forward with the poems. In limbo, they existed in a work-in-progress folder, buried somewhere in my hard drive. 

Years later, I came across the Japanese phrase, kokoro no kaze, or cold of the heart. When one is depressed, as the metaphor goes, their heart has caught cold. I was also reflecting on the Japanese artform ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” which often depicts the pleasures of urban life. 

These ideas, I felt, resonated with the themes—belonging in nature, alienation—that I was exploring in the two unfinished poems. Instead of working on them individually, I combined lines and images to create something new. 

Did I revise or abandon? 

3. 

To abandon is to release, let go of the intent 

to finish, but not the vision. The opposite 

of unbecoming, to abandon is an opportunity 

to reimagine patterns forming on the ceiling, 

to sigh deeply, and reorient my breathing. 

Momentary as a premonition. Dormant 

as a noun. When I say abandon, I mean surrender, 

give in, accept that miracles occur without divine 

intervention. If not ceasing to exist, then merely 

missing a beat, an impulse, the reckless anticipation 

of an unlikely occasion, like an untended soil 

waiting for wayward seedlings, parched 

and longing for summer rain. To submit, 

succumb to the dictates of somatic rest 

and rumination. To go back to bed 

and sleep, remember a disrupted dream. 

4. 

Photographer Vivian Maier was largely unknown during her lifetime. For decades, she worked as a professional nanny and caregiver at various cities in the United States, including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. With a Rolleiflex camera, she candidly documented people, architecture, and urban curios, accumulating more than 100,000 negatives and hundreds more of undeveloped films by time she passed away in 2009, at the of 83. Her complete work was auctioned to pay bills and was purchased by collectors, including John Maloof, who developed her massive archive and introduced her stellar photographs to the world. 

In her lifetime, Maier only shared her work with a small number of trusted people and attempted to make postcards. She didn’t publish or market her art. That said, I wonder if she wanted her posthumous success or perhaps preferred her work to be kept in their carboard boxes and ultimately forgotten. 

Maier reminds me of the protagonist in Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, Hirayama, a public toilet cleaner in Tokyo who makes photographs of his daily routine with an Olympus point-and-shoot camera. In her essay, “Cycles of Light and Memory: Reflections on Perfect Days,” novelist Christine Lai suggests that Hirayama sustains his real work—that is, photography—with his cleaning job. Like Maier, Hirayama does not use his photography to earn a living. Rather, it is “a way of living,” as Lai points out “of being by oneself, untethered from the expectations and criticism of others.” 

5. 

Fifty years ago, with Presidential Decree 1412, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr institutionalized the commodification of Filipino workers through the labour export policy. At the height of COVID-19 pandemic, the Global North hoarded the majority of vaccines and traded their surplus for medical workers from the Philippines. Currently, with widespread poverty, unemployment, and depressed wages, an average of 6,000 Filipinos are forced to leave their homes and families every day to work abroad. 

Somewhere in the archipelago, 

a child waits for her mother’s 

goodnight kiss. 

6. 

“Shelters struggle to keep up with skyrocketing demand for pet adoptions during COVID-19” 3 

                                                                                                        —CBC 

post pandemic 

when people 

cower back 

in cubicles 

face-to-face 

the screens 

beaming the same 

blue hue 

gather 

share cups 

& utensils 

pop bubbles 

birthdays balloons 

act anew 

in a new normal 

while animal 

shelters run 

out of space 

for abandoned 

dogs 

7. 

The process of writing doesn’t necessarily begin or end on the page. I make poems with an understanding that they are a part of my work as a whole. That said, the completeness of an individual poem becomes less relevant when considering that every piece of writing contributes to the development of my practice. Creation is the opposite of abandonment. It is a process of becoming, a progressive impetus toward creative explorations. Notes, musings, and incomplete thoughts open up a path toward something meaningful. The challenges, lessons, and insights in every attempt to write influence my work henceforth. Seemingly random and meandering poems, images, metaphors, ideas that I scribble and forget linger, appearing and disappearing, sparking new insights. 

8. 

My poems are perpetually incomplete.