Category Archives: Attack Decay Sustain Release

Attack Decay Sustain Release

It’s all in the cards

Published on 22 December 2019 in the Philippine STAR.

How well do you really know your friends and your loved ones? How in touch are you with yourself and your own feelings?

We live in strange times — never have the stories of our lives been more readily available for the perusal of others, friends and strangers alike. But at the same time, never have we been more isolated. Yes, social media allows us to share our lives with so many people, but mostly only on a surface level. What we put on the Internet is, to some extent, still just a performance. So rarely will you happen across real depth and true vulnerability. (It’s there, it’s just hard to find.) And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing — it’s wise, to be smart about what you allow the Internet to know about you. But sometimes, our real friends are relegated into the same categories. When social media becomes our primary form of communication, a lot of intimacy gets lost along the way.

Does the Internet make you feel lonely, too? Of the hundreds — or thousands — of people you follow on Instagram, how many do you feel you really know, and really know you in return? There is a yearning for deeper connections that is more common than any of us imagine. I know I feel it.

I consider myself fortunate, in that my friend group isn’t afraid of a ‘deep chat.’ In fact, we seek them out. We’re the kind of people who, at a party, will find a quiet corner in which to sit together and ask each other the kinds of questions you don’t really get asked very often in more casual conversation. “How are you, really?” “What has been your biggest regret in life?” “Are you who, or where, you thought you were going to be by now?” (This is exactly what we did at a pool party the other week. It was, perhaps, a little antisocial to break away from the main party to find some lounge chairs and talk to each other, but I think what we ended up doing was ultimately of more value than some forced superficial niceties over gin-based cocktails. We got to know each other better.)

It’s why we’ve all been so excited for a number of items that I ordered online recently — decks of cards, of all things. The mechanics of each are different, but their purpose is the same: to encourage openness, facilitate deeper conversations, and foster intimacy by gamifying it. One of my resolutions for the coming New Year is to make better connections and to build real relationships with the people in my life that go beyond a casual hello at the club. I said I didn’t want to play any more games with people in 2020, but for these games, I’ll make an exception.

We’re Not Really Strangers

I discovered the Instagram account @werenotreallystrangers through a few other friends who followed it. It’s been a favourite ever since, mostly because its posts say many things I feel I need to hear, or need to think more deeply about. Vulnerable statements that anyone who’s ever lived a little can relate to. In the course of following the account, I learned that its creator also produced a card game meant to encourage meaningful connections and ‘deepen your existing relationships and create new ones.’

We’re Not Really Strangers is optimised to be played by two individuals, but can be played by up to six. The card game has three levels. You draw a card, the other person answers. You can opt to answer the same question yourself in turn. There are clear ‘Dig Deeper’ cards that every player can use once per round to ‘encourage transparency if you feel your partner is holding back.’ Sounds simple enough. The depth is what you bring to it.

Level 1, Perception, which, with questions like “What was your first impression of me?” and “Do I look kind? Explain” is all about exploring initial impressions and challenging the assumptions we make about others, and others make about us in turn.

Level 2, Connection, goes deeper, and asks questions that help you get to know each other better, and explore your own emotions in the process. “Have you ever told someone ‘I love you’ but didn’t mean it? If so, why?” “What is a dream you’ve let go of?”

Level 3, Reflection, is about looking back on the previous two levels and the new connection you’ve hopefully made. It’s meant to explore any new understanding of each other that you and your partner might now have after allowing yourselves to be open and vulnerable with each other. “Do you believe everyone has a calling? If so, do you think I’ve found mine?” “Why do you think we met?”

And the final card involves a bit of writing — each player writes a brief note to the other, that can’t be opened until they have parted ways.

The game isn’t always in stock (it’s currently available for pre-order), and shipping to the Philippines is quite expensive, but if you can manage to ship it to a friend in the US or have it shipped home through services like MyShoppingBox, it’s well worth having on your coffee table for the next time you have friends over.

US$24.99, werenotreallystrangers.com

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Attack Decay Sustain Release

Everything is crystal clear

Published on 1 December 2019 in the Philippine STAR.

I think it began when I decided to clean my room.

I’m a firm believer that the state of your living space is a reflection of your internal and mental state, and mine, after the tumultuous and messy ending of a ‘situationship’ that had gone on for far too long and hurt far too much, had become just as tumultuous and messy as I was inside. I felt an intense urge to clean, which I did, bit by bit. It felt therapeutic, as though by getting my things back in order, I was getting myself back in order, too.

But when I finished cleaning and everything was once again in its right place, something still felt wrong. I felt like I needed to do more. Like cleaning wasn’t enough, like I wanted to burn the recent past away somehow. I wanted to watch it go up in smoke, and then blow away the ashes. And only then would I be able to start over, start fresh.

I don’t consider myself particularly superstitious (says the girl who reads the Tarot, has at least five astrology apps, and blames everything on Mercury Retrograde) but when several friends suggested smudging my space with white sage and palo santo, I might have raised an eyebrow for a few seconds. And then I remembered how much I believe in the power of ritual, and decided to give it a chance.

Smudging is a ceremony that is meant to cleanse a space or a person of negative energy with the smoke of sacred herbs. It’s derived from Native American tradition, though many cultures have used smoke in rituals for similar purposes. Essentially, what was being suggested (by a surprisingly large number of people I knew!) was that I smoke all the bad feelings out of myself, out of my room, and out of my life. It was a little woo-woo (my new favorite word these days), but it was also exactly what I was looking for: a ritual exorcism of sorts.

Friends started jumping in to point me in the right direction. “Sage clears all energies, good and bad,” explained one in the US. “And palo santo drives out the negative and brings in the good,” chimed in another in France. Later in the week, yet another friend sent me a white sage bundle and a stick of palo santo to burn, with a mother-of-pearl shell for the ashes. (All four elements are represented in smudging: earth, in the herbs; fire, in the flame used to light the herbs; water, in the shell used to catch the ash; and air, in the smoke.)

I cracked open a window, giddily lit a candle, then set my sage bundle alight, letting the sweet-smelling smoke waft around myself, then from my doorway, all through my room, then out the doorway again. I repeated the process with the even better smelling stick of fragrant palo santo. And I really can’t tell you if I believe that doing that changed anything physically. Some people on the Internet claim that sage clears airborne bacteria and releases negative ions. I don’t know how true that is; I certainly don’t think I made enough smoke to burn out all the germs in the air. But I know that doing the ritual did something for me, emotionally.

I had already cleaned my space physically. And now, I felt like I had done something that cleaned it energetically. It was a symbolic clearing of the slate. Maybe there is no science behind it, but there were intentions, and my intentions made it real to me. That was what mattered: I wanted that lingering sadness gone. I wanted my resentment gone. I wanted a blank page upon which to write new hopes and good intentions.

If blowing fragrant smoke around a space can help shift one’s mindset for the better and burn out negativity, if it can make someone feel a little more new, then it can only be a good thing. I burn palo santo every night now, to remind myself to let go of anything bad that might have happened during the day, and to remind myself to stay open to any and all goodness still to come. To stay positive, to stay hopeful. It’s a lovely thing to do before going to sleep.

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Attack Decay Sustain Release, Photographs

This must be the place

Published on 17 November 2019 in the Philippine STAR. Most photos by Terence Angsioco and Raúl Cerezo, with a beautiful moonrise by Nicolas Geysens and a few of my own (or Valerie’s, haha).

The right place keeps finding me at exactly the right time.

When I confirmed my attendance to a friend and business partner’s super random 30th birthday weekend at Tao Philippines’ Camp Ngey Ngey in 2017, I had no idea that it would change my life. I was two months fresh off a devastating breakup, my plans to move to Berlin (that I’d been working on for half a year) went up in flames, and I was stuck in the Philippines with no idea what I would do next. So I told myself then that what I would do was to say yes to everything that came my way and see if anything stuck.

I wanted to find something — anything — that would help me reconnect with the Philippines and find a place here again. I wanted to find a reason to love it. I figured the odds of finding that something grew significantly the more I put myself out there and tried new things, met new people, and got myself into interesting and unlikely situations. A weekend on a private island in Coron sounded like just the thing to tick all three boxes.

Truly, there is nothing to write about Tao Philippines and its trailblazing founders Edi Agamos Brock and Jack Foottit that hasn’t already been written over the years since it was founded in 2006. It’s what tourism should be — a real immersion into the life, culture, and community of the places that you visit, a social enterprise that gives back to those same communities and helps them flourish and grow. An incredible journey, the authentic experience of a lifetime.

At least that’s what I’ve been told by my friends who have been on one of their expeditions. I’ve known Edi and Jack since I met them in a Berlin club in 2016 and I still haven’t been on one. (Perhaps 2020 is finally my year.)

But if the Camp Ngey Ngey experience is anything to go by, the expeditions must be truly special. Because I say this often, but I really believe that Camp Ngey Ngey saved my life.

I’ve written these exact words before, but since they’re still true, I’ll write them again: I don’t know what it is about Camp Ngey Ngey that makes it so amazing, and I don’t think I’d be able to explain the magic of it if I tried.

It’s the closest thing Tao has to a resort, but the furthest thing from a resort that there could possibly be. Guests sleep in bamboo huts called tuka huts that are equipped with a mattress, a pillow, mosquito netting, and lights and an overhead electric fan that only switch on when the power on the island switches on — from (I think) 5 p.m. to 8 in the morning, maybe sunrise. Showers and toilets are shared by everyone, and you have to bring your own towel.

Meals are served by the Lost Boys of Tao three times a day in the Ngey Kusina, family-style. You’ll know it’s time to eat because one of them will blow a shell horn to call everyone to gather, and you will come running because it’s some of the best island food you’ll ever eat. Catch-of-the-day, homegrown vegetables freshly harvested from the Tao Farm; we’ve been going back to Ngey Ngey every year since 2017 and we always look forward to the food. (My favourite: the freshest fish filleted into sashimi right in front of us, an appetizer.)

Tao’s structures never stick out or look out of place on the island; they only serve to enhance its natural beauty. Everything is built sustainably, with an aesthetic that feels natural and random, as though it just gradually happened over time. Which is exactly the case.

Apart from mealtimes and the parties that we throw in the evenings (a special privilege since we’re fortunate enough to be allowed to book the whole island), island time is free time. Some people will lounge on the beach, some will snorkel, kayak, or paddleboard, some will play a game of beach volleyball (and sometimes the Lost Boys of Tao join in — the wonderful humans of Tao become our lifelong friends, too), some play chess by the bar or gather in the Kusina to play card games or board games, some read books in the hammocks under the awnings of the Yoly House (one of the spaces on the island where people gather).

There is no WiFi and the cellular signal isn’t spectacular, so people inevitably end up gathering in different permutations and actually get to know each other, have real conversations. Hardly anyone is touching a phone, except maybe to take a photo or play some music. Everyone is disconnected from the real world and from their regular lives, and the island serves to connect them to each other, to nature, and to themselves. It is so simple, really, but that’s what makes it so special.

When I first went there in 2017, I was friends with maybe two or three of the 35 or so people that my friend Mikhail invited for his birthday. I was acquainted with perhaps several more, but didn’t know them very well. Everyone else was a stranger. We left Ngey Ngey three days later as real friends, taking that island bond back to Metro Manila. And we went back later that same year to throw a Halloween party on the island, cementing that bond even further.

I went from having nothing holding me to the Philippines, to suddenly having so much love and light in my life, and I really feel like the island gave that to me. It made me love my life in this country again, something I never thought would happen. I keep saying this to people, and it sounds really woo-woo, but I believe that the island just knows. If you set foot on it with an open mind and an open heart, it will recognize that and give you all the things you didn’t know you were looking for. It always seems to understand just what I need every time I visit, and it delivers its gifts in abundance with such generosity.

If you go there and take nothing back from the experience, it’s probably because you were unworthy of it. I think the island can tell.

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