Thoughts | Letter-Borne Pictures

Brickman’s Prance

Posted on January 7, 2016 by vonulsa

Her tears make me happy.

In her hands I find
comfort and escape,
cooling tensions but
strengthening my captor’s
bond.
When she gives not the warmth
of sun when the moon rests,
I find the stars’ brightness
more inviting than
her bossom’s grace.
The colors are brighter when she weeps,
and the young blades cheer,
the singers lay rest,
the sailors run quick.
How her sadness gives me joy,
intriguing my satisfaction,
making me crave for
the warmth I’ve avoided
but so needed.

She can hold my hand,
She can grumble and spark.
As long as she cries, I’ll
look up at her,
and then smile.

Atop the Tower of Emma

Posted on August 2, 2015 by vonulsa

Atop the Tower of Emma

A spider of tubes embraced you
as you lay alive with eyes closed, dreaming
on your last hours. The lines from your heart
looked like waves of the Pacific.

There were no necklaces on your neck,
Like the crustacean pendant you loved,
Loaded with steel and plastic stones so heavy,
like the three tubes stuck into your chest.

The Manolos have disappeared from your feet,
And the screechy sound of your healers’ shoes
Across the hall remind me of the cacophony of your
Heels the last time we met and hugged.

Your hat has gone elsewhere, taking all
the possibilities and plans. No more wedding planning,
no more moving to Brooklyn, no more taking California,
no more collaboration of fashionistas, no more of those.

I held your hand so you do not fly away just yet.
because you were given wings when you fell to the ground,
and while you were not ready to fly,
You were already on the air.

The memories in your head must be dancing around
The roads of your brain. Washing away the times
you cherished, or maybe protecting them,
like we all hoped.

Could you hear my mind?
Were you listening to my whispers?
How does it feel to scream without a voice,
To weep without tears, and

To feel when your skin is broken?

But now I see you flying above
the lines from your heart,
But now I see you flying above
the lines from your heart,

that has now become flat and calm like a lake,
where you swam in the summer in Roscoe.

The Perfect Poem

Posted on February 23, 2015 by vonulsa

I’ve been doing the Mayer Writing Exercises, and here’s take on exercise #71 — write the perfect poem

______

The Perfect Poem

Ten over ten,
One hundred percent.
Ninety degree,
One-eighty degrees,
And three-sixty degrees.

My mother,
and my father.
Their love.

My ex-lover,
My ex-lover’s spaniel.

Hershey’s chocolate,
2% milk.
A spoon to stir.

Ten over ten,
One hundred percent.
My ex-lover,
A spoon to stir.

Your Skin Color Shouldn’t be Getting You into Colleges

Posted on May 9, 2014 by vonulsa

“I have a dream,” he said proudly as the crowd cheered, “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking in front of hundreds of thousands of people, appealed for a country without prejudice and discrimination.

Unfortunately, discrimination, in all its forms, still persists – half a century since King’s speech. In April 22, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision and reinstated Michigan’s affirmative action ban. Michigan voters passed a referendum in 2006 to amend the state Constitution and ban any consideration of race in college and university admissions. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the lead opinion and stressed that the Supreme Court’s decision is not about how the debate over affirmative action should be resolved, but about who should resolve it. This high court decision is likely to provoke more battles over affirmative action in many states. Is the ban on affirmative action the key to a fair and just college admissions? Possibly. Affirmative action has pressured universities to diversify their student body in that preferences are based on an applicant’s racial background, not in his or her academic achievement and merits. It does nothing but encourage discrimination and undermine the essence of higher learning.

Constant adjustments to the motives of affirmative action since its signing caused problems in its implementation. Allocating it today will only make things worse. The phrase “affirmative action” first appeared in 1961 in President Kennedey’s Executive Order 10925, which called for affirmative action taken to ensure people were employed “without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson stated the principles of affirmative action in his “To Fulfill These Rights” speech at Howard University. He asserted, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and say, ‘You are now free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” The 1978 Bakke case outlawed racial quotas in higher education, and under a 2003 withholding, admissions offices can only use race as a factor in a flexible, non-mechanical way as part of each applicant’s qualifications. With frequent changes in its purposes, affirmative action impedes our progress towards a fair admission process. The constant adjustments in its allocation have lead to nowhere but more complexities.

An example of allocation problem is allowing the public to vote on its implementation, such as in Michigan’s case. This can possibly increase cases of discrimination and unfair admission. Considering the changing matters of affirmative action in the last few decades, voters will most likely possess different understanding and perspectives of what they will be voting on. Eventually, educational institutions will be forced to satisfy campus diversity and ignore their applicants’ scholastic achievements, such as the case of Abigail Fisher. Having a color blind admissions process prevents racial consciousness that encourages discrimination. Furthermore, it progresses educational institution to achieve its scholastic goals without having to worry about admission policies being scrutinized by the public and bombarded with frequent mandatory changes.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor is aware of the changes affirmative action has gone in the last few decades. However, she claims herself to be a product of affirmative and publicly expresses the benefits of this law. It is no question why she dissented the ban on affirmative action in Michigan. She said in a broadcast interview, “You can’t be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.” Justice Sotomayor claims that the possibility to attend prestigious universities such as Princeton and Yale was because of affirmative action. Justice Sotomayor, whose father died when she was nine, grew up in a suburban housing in New York. Her difficult life became her inspiration to excel in school. Are we then supposed to credit her race for her tremendous success and not her hardwork and dedication? How does affirmative action want us to view student success in universities, especially the achievements of prominent people?

Race-consciousness severely undermines the essence of higher learning, and in many cases, it has tainted the reputation of many institutions. The viral “I, too, am Harvard” campaign exposed some racist and prejudiced experiences of African-American students at Harvard earlier this year. Students posed for photographs while holding boards that said, “You’re lucky to be Black… so easy to get into college,” “Surprise! My application to Harvard wasn’t just a picture of my face,” and “Don’t you wish you were white like the rest of us?” According to its tumblr page, their ‘voices go unheard,’ their ‘experiences are devalued,’ and their ‘presence is questioned.’ Ironically, Harvard will be welcoming its largest batch of accepted African-American students this fall. Harvard alum James Peter Braxton views this as an achievement of affirmative action but recognizes that, “these small victories are symbolic – at worst, they function as a mirage for real racial equality.”

Indeed, affirmative action diversified college campuses in the United States, but the stigma that came with it did not only affect students of color and ‘minorities.’ In a controversial article published by Time, Princeton student Tal Fortgang explains why he will never apologize for his white male privilege. He writes, “I do not accuse those who ‘check’ me and my perspective of overt racism… but I do condemn them for diminishing everything I have personally accomplished, all the hard work I have done in my life, and for ascribing all the fruit I reap not to the seeds I sow but to some invisible patron saint of white maleness who places it out for me before I even arrive.” The article generated mixed reactions, but Fortgang’s perspective is valid and true. His specific regard on his ‘male whiteness’ reflects an even deeper problem within educational institutions in which students perceive academic achievement as a result of the privileges of their race and sex, and not of their innate qualities and natural talents.

Studies support the idea that a student’s socioeconomic status, including his or her race, affects his or her academic achievement. This absolute correlation of two independent factors fuels persistent race consciousness, and it is one that tells students that a race performs better than the other. They cannot be blamed for this unconscious racism because the same matter of judgment generally has befallen onto them during their admission. Even then, it could have started from their high school campuses where in ’Asians’ get the A’s or ‘Blacks’ get the F’s. Affirmative action encourages this racial awareness on campus, making students conscious of the part of their identity that does not necessarily signify their potential and personal achievement. Mandating affirmative action will only sustain these false associations and stereotyping.

We now live in a different time, and the notion of affirmative action is one that we should have left long time ago. Affirmative action may have worked back in its earlier years, but in our present time, it is tipping the scale a little bit too much. Today, it is depriving college applicants of a fair admissions process. Mandating affirmative action pressures educational institutions to diversify students under an unfair process. It has given too much attention to the under privileged few that it has failed to protect the rights of the deserving many. Moreover, it encourages racial consciousness, and sustains bitter stereotypes that affect the performances of students and the credibility of educational institutions. Ultimately, one ought to be admitted to colleges and universities because of one’s hard work and determination to succeed in higher learning, not because of, in King’s words, ‘the color of their skin.’

How Social Media Has Redefined Romantic Relationships

Posted on April 12, 2014 by vonulsa

I’m not a jealous single person, nor a raging, die-hard anti-romanticist. I have observed something alarming.

You scroll down your facebook feed and you see the three (perhaps) most distinct kinds of post:

One – that viral video that will be featured on the Yahoo! News slide in a few hours. New Frozen’s “Let It Go” cover? Posted by three friends, shared by two others. That new Jimmy Kimmel stint? Done deal, with two thousand likes already in the first two minutes. But still, you like, you share, and you get liked.

Two – those never ending instagram posts of food, ootd’s, sunsets and sunrises, sceneries, more food, and then selfies. Seriously, these posts are like the red blood cells of social media, and without them… arguably, we would be having a more intimate physical human relationship.

Then here’s three, which is the reason why I was compelled to analyze this dilemma on a Friday night, — those annoying posts about relationships. How your baby bought you this, how honey matched outfits with you, and how your “bhae” is so annoying so you put eighty thousand hashtags why s/he is still awesome.

And then it hit me – social media, much to our surprise, has indeed transformed how we view our relationships, and how other people view ours. Whether romantically or not, there is a problem here. And yes, it is a problem even if seventy-four people tapped on your picture twice just so you’d tap theirs twice.

DID YOU REALLY JUST POST THAT?

I have observed how far couples would go just to share their “couple moments.” People need to slow the fuck down – for real. The only people who care about how you matched with your bhae are those who are bored with their smartphones and got nothing to do than tap twice on their oily screens. It’s not really an “lol” moment when your baby gets annoying, or when your honey irritates you but you, for some highly intellectual and logica reasons, find it cute and insanely adorable. You caught baby in the bathroom taking number 2? OMG, it’s so worth the status and you may have to post a video of it on Vine! OMFG, baby-boo bought you designer bags and overpriced candies because you were mad at him? #madasfuck #lovehim #heneverceasestoamazeme #bestbfever

It’s annoying, irritating, and completely unnecessary – especially when it happens on a regular basis.

But isn’t that the point of social media, some of you might say. Yes, we can share and reconnect with people we love and people we care about, but not on a regular basis and the most random of things. But if these people you “share” it with are the ones ending up seeing what you post personally, then what’s the point? For likes? Which brings me to…

SOCIAL MEDIA – THE BATTLE GROUND OF BRAGGING AND BULLSHITTING

#hashtagforever

#ilovehimso

#oneandonly

Says one bitch who is so inlove with her new hubby for three months. What’s sort of iffy in the picture? This bitch was in a three-year relationship before this new guy of hers. Woman! Really?

One of the things I noticed is how people seem to utilize social media to exceedingly expose their “happy” couple life. Your “friends” are happy to see these kind of things, but eighty pictures, and over labeling of “forever” and “together” seem a little too desperate. It’s not our fault that “finding the one” is perhaps the biggest goal in your life (say before a bachelor’s degree or a decent, steady job) and if your real intention is to make other people envious of your relationship, then you need help. Three hundred pictures of you and your boo is not love – it’s either your have a bad connection that you have posted photos repeatedly, or, probably, you are just a cam whore (which includes graphics-, filter-, and blur- bombardment). We do not need everyday post of how your relationship status is – as your social media “friend,” we are more concerned how far is this new “selfie with boo” is to the next “new relationship” update.

Social Media has also become a way for “exes” to get back at their “exes.” They show off how happy they are with their new-found love – with hopes that poor ex will see it, and realize your true worth. The level of bullshitting has also gone catfish level: people pretending to have found someone (magically from photoshop or just pure imaginative status). It has become this playfield of childishness and immaturity. For some reasons, our human instinct has given us this urgency to POST TO THE WORLD how in love we are, and how cute it is to be. It’s easy to post pictures and share posts – but it’s difficult to prove our true intentions with what we call “relationships.”

IT HAS SUCKED OUT A LEVEL OF INTIMACY

How long does it take to take a selfie with baby? And editing it in Pic Stitch? And choosing the layout, and then the format? And then cropping it out. Then choosing the right filter. And of course, hashtags. Or that famous quote by this mainstream author of teen romance novels. Or both. OMG, perf!

Isn’t taking pictures distracting? It seems that we’ve never learned from IG-ing food, and how it has pulled us out from the majority of social interaction. It is disappointing and frustrating that for some couple the most important thing they think of when they’re sharing intimate and special moments is by taking pictures for social media purposes. It sucks out the romance, the realness, and makes us wonder if you really are in the moment of what you are showing.

Before you trash me, let me share a personal experience. I was in a two-year serious relationship with my partner, and never once in my social media history have posted anything romantic and intimate about us. When I was in New York in time of our two year anniversary, my partner took me to Sag Harbor – surprised me with the interesting Whaling Museum, and toured me to the last place of residence of John Steinbeck, one of my most influential moments.

Being a social media freak that I am, I had the urgency to take pictures – to share on facebook or IG or Vine – but I decided not to. It was a decision that I would never forget, and would never, ever regret. I enjoyed the real and the ‘human’ moments we’ve had together. It may be a personal preference, but such memory is better written or shared orally than being interpreted by a picture in my phone, on the internet.

I don’t want to scroll down my page just to remember it – I want to remember it because I felt it when it was happening, and I felt all of it. Every. Single. Moment.

Just thinking about it brings me back the feelings of true joy and inexplicable happiness – such feelings a square picture with hundreds of likes could never portray.

WHERE ARE WE HEADED

Just sinking in the moment of reality and intimacy is especially rare nowadays. Enjoying the moment you and your partner are in, without the distraction to attract attention or even the distraction of the presence of others, should be thoroughly enjoyed – just you, and your partner.

A lot of young couple do not understand this because it’s what’s in the mainstream. Sex tapes, reality shows, scandalous tabloids… all are driving powers of social norms and expectations that make us rethink what an ideal relationship. Unfortunately, the ideal relationship is the one that isn’t captured in camera, or phone, or video.

The most successful and long-lasting relationships I have known were seen personally. A lot of them were stories shared – either told or written – by the same people who are within that relationship. The more human the source is, the more real they become. And as a listener, as an audience, it is when you see the feelings emanate from within you that you realize what is real between two people who are truly in love.

A romantic relationship is between two people – not between a couple and an audience. This is something that I think many people have forgotten, and the dumb few have overlooked (who are then followed by a dumber many). Social media was for connecting people – not exactly showing stuffs to people.

Your relationships may be none of our business, but once you post it online, attention and spotlight is on you, boys and girls. And I sure damn know that that’s what you’re looking for.