11
25
“Sumpa”
Can you break a curse?
A family’s darkness
Self-hate
Self-sabotage
Depression
Rage
Fear
Silence
Can you break it?
Through a song, a dance, a painting
An image, a wave, a motion —a possibility
To be another, Self
To reach another, Joy
To speak another, Love
Can you break the pain?
Sumpa na sumpa
Wala na
Damn, curse
Gone
04
01
25
“Notes on Pre-Syncope”
Pre-syncope is experiencing symptoms before the act of fainting. The parasympathetic autonomic system is overloaded, sending signals to the brain that causes blood pressure and heart rate to rise and drop together. Once it drops, the body undergoes a physiological breakdown which results in fainting –falling to the ground as gravity pushes the body downwards, the body “passes out” —a loss in consciousness and then begins to reboot before re-awakening.
In my experience, I never fully “faint.” I stay in pre-syncope (heart rate and blood pressure drop staying a hairline above a coma state) and I remember everything. In extreme situations, it feels like what I can imagine as dying. Like a state in conscious limbo. This altered state of consciousness is a suspension of being, a correlation of both body and spirit. My body undergoes an intense vulnerable state: muffled hearing, white-out eye sight with colors and forms contrasted in a straining yet swirling animation, while heaviness weighs down until my body feels numb and floating. Emotions are bloated with anxiety, fear, and surrender.
There are histories of different cultures and practices, where this state has been sought after, to achieve shamanistic visions, initiations of spirit for divine messages. Where medical conditions define and limit these experiences as incurable disorders, i.e. dysautonomia (Neurocardiogenic Syncope or now Neurally-Mediated Syncope), and a kind of weakness— these conditions can also be seen as spiritual possibilities beyond the body; a portal. The bodily trauma, holistically as physical, mental and emotional, in relationship to the concept of portal is empowering. Physicians describe coping with such conditions to only avoid your known triggers (things that cause symptoms) and to consume electrolytes and salt.
Salt and preservation
salt holds the water in my cells
my body needs salt
salt as protection from negative energies…
For years the triggers were a given, but management was underwhelming. From the obvious strenuous physical ones, the most strongest or potent trigger was crowded spaces with people and their energy, their orbs of intense emotions. My senses absorb and pre-syncope begins. But now understanding my potential to that power is more clear.
Colonialism has demonized sensitive bodies and their connection to nature. “Shamanic illness” and the Catholic Church on black magic, sending the “balyans to flee to the mountains”.
My sensitive body, my fleeting soul.
Isang nilalang, pumunta sa mga bundok.
A creature, goes to the mountains.
29
25
“Shapeshifter”
River isn’t a closed system
Flowing pockets of pools rest, swirl —I wade
What do we find in these safe pockets?
I find them so gentle, a freshness after the currents and white water rapids.
Where the rocks are abrasive, when do they stop rubbing?
Like tired faces, where do they erode,
Until they fade smooth and unrecognizable.
Until the next storm moves heavy debris of broken branches, logs, and swells of organic rubble.
Displaced critter, shapeshifter.