Red is The Color of My Love

If you've visited here before this will be no secret to you, but if this is your first time then it's important that you know: I am a brand geek and an ad geek.
I believe in the power of brands, I believe in the power of communication. At our best, we can shape positive behaviors and offer up a world of choices and better options. In our most shining moments, we harness these powers in ways that leave the world better. Or at least try to. I have written a few times about how I continue to fall in love with the (RED) campaign. I love its big ambitions and love the progress it continues to facilitate.

As we gear up for the holidays and wage into the most generous time of the year for most it's important to remember that true gifts cannot be bought in department stores or through consumables. The gifts that matter most set the course for a virtuous cycle and hit the biggest problems that plague us. It is one of those simple, profound ways we can help.

If we truly believe we are in this together, here's an inspiring way to do our share. Click here to create your own panel in the iconic quilt, make a pledge then harness your social networks to inspire people to do their share. What greater gift than to give future generations a world where they are free to love, free of AIDS.

Notes from The Road

I have resisted the urge to be hard on myself for not writing enough. I have resisted the temptation to lay the blame elsewhere. Life is what it is, and sometimes there is no room even for the things that matter the most. I have started an experiment, instead of reading on the train I've started writing. If it's an issue of time and space being limited, I thought to make use of the time and space available to me.

For real. Leaving the iPad behind, and focusing on the trusty Moleskin and pen. Sometimes it's a fragment that comes to me, sometimes the begin of a thing that eventually becomes a writing artifact. Last week, on Tuesday this notion came to me. I am still waiting for the next train ride that gives it more shape. But here it is, an impulse from the train. A notion of a piece of writing:

"As if there was anything else she knew how to do, she let him in. Again. Without question or condition. She let him back in."

Watch this space and see where the ride take us.

Before the Flash Mob...

...it was just giddy, spontaneous, unchoreographed bustin' out. For real, just people dancing. With people. For no good reason but to dance.

 I was reminded of this over the weekend, when a bunch of us took a shopping sidetrip distraction between brunch and happy hour. We were at a quaint Brooklyn shop called Something Different and they were playing eighties tunes. Who can resist???

This 'Reality Bites' scene below is a close approximation of what happened when Tiffany's I Think We're Alone Now came one. Except in our case, we were all dancing and joyful. We love each other, and celebrate each other's gangsta. And danza.

Where Have All the Best Friends Gone?

You may or may not have noticed the radio silence, but the day job has kept my mind preoccupied lately. Working through a brand's character and personality (at least if you do things the way I tend to) sends the thoughts on wild rides. As I looked through Jungian psychology, the fundamentals of branding and a snapshot of female popular culture I could not help but as the question: Where have all the best friends gone? The last big chick friend flick was "Thelma and Lousie." This was in 1991, then close to the end of that decade "Sex and The City" took the world with its real-talking, stiletto strutting strong women and their deep friendships. Sadly, with the success of the show and consequent increased production budget and caché, the fashions and romance often seem to have eclipsed the heart of the matter: women nurture women.

Gratuitous bromance hunk shots appear
thanks to www.sheknows.com

Meanwhile the world has come to embrace male friendships, celebrating them through the birth of the bromance and it seems the tides turned on female friendships with the introduction of the term frenemies. Granted, it isn't exclusively for female use only, it is quite alarming that while the press celebrates the shirtless Lance Armstrong + Matthew McConnaughey tandem training for the NY Marathon they taint the Oprah - Gayle friendship with speak of closeted lesbian love. I started to worry. Then, I found a spark of hope in the most unlikely place - the box office! 

This summer's top grossing film
was by and about women.

This summer, guess which comedy flick kicked every other film's butt at the box office (well, except for the one that utilized similar gratuitous hunkiness in its promo)? A charming, heart-warming, witty, well-written, well-acted film authored by women, celebrating the friendships of women. The film is called Bridesmaids and it was the summer of 2011's top grossing film, with an impressive $26 million the weekend it opened and Box Office Mojo reporting box office sales of $283,444,100.

I realize life gets busy and hectic, blog posts take time to write, Facebook and Twitter can make us forget to actually stay in touch but we gotta gotta gotta romance our most treasured friendships, we simply must. I am not asking anyone to run around shirtless (unless of course that's what you and your girls are into, then by all means go!), I am simply putting a loving reminder out there: your girls need you, this girl needs you. 

My blood sister, my treasure
www.motheringearthlings.com

Before I go walking and not talking, let me salute my girlfriends, and the men of my inner circle. You are the loves of my life, the sass to my shimmy, the chili salt to my body shot. You all know who you are. We brunch together and poem together, we dance together and booze together, we have seen so much life together and look ahead to so much more. I only have one blood sister and she's the bomb, still I must be doing something right because lucky me, I get to choose an arsenal of amazing women (and men!) I am thrilled to call my girls, my sisters, my friends.

I will probably tag you on this post, or  tweet at you - but that's just right now. Just you wait till I see you, you'll get an old fashioned hug and then some because that is how we love.

A New Place to Call Home

There is no exact number I can come up with when I try to count the number of times I've moved in my life. More cities than the fingers of two hands, and enough countries to occupy all the fingers of one hand. Even still, finding a place that feels so much like home in a city that is so far away from most of the people who know you best and love love love love you is always a magical thing. It's been a week to the day, and the report remains stellar.

An early drawing by Gaél, a foto with a story I might tell you, an old-school writing kit from my brother.

The place is warm and nurturing, somewhere between a beachside fire and a shot of whisky. Neat, of course. It sits on a tree-lined street, where today an HBO series will be shooting (yep, it's THAT pretty). My desk sits facing the street, so I get a cool breeze as I think and work surrounded by mementos from friends and family. This new life is punctuated by touches of where I am from, a pair of ash trays bearing the words "Casa Vallés" from Abuelo's collection; the scapular my great grandmother brought to the Philippines from Spain - a present during my First Holy Communion, one one side The Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin on the other. It is all part of the dichotomy of who I am, and I like it like that.

This is how we do breakfast chez nous.

For all the time I've lived in New York and for as much as I love this city, I have not felt like I could claim a space and call it home until now. The art that sits waiting for me to get my bearings will soon board a ship and find themselves, as I have, in a new place to call home. Until then, I continue to get to know what this new home will mean to me and my story. I invite you to come over for a meal, we do quite well in the food and beverage department. I may be a New Yorker but I will always be a hospitable Filipina at heart, ready with a big hug, warm meal and clean sheets for my friends. Come visit us in Brooklyn, donde hay vino para el vecino.

Oh, Vast Sea

Oh night of poetry, oh open heart.
Oh moon playing all your tricks,
tonight you win. Here I sit misty,
longing.  Nothing to console me,
not my stoop, not this starless sky.
Not the cup, not the apple. Not
the pop of cork, not the haste
of these champagne bubbles.
What I need cannot be found in
the pulsing city of cities I now call
home. I have learned to live with
the ache, the watery eyes.
I take this sadness to bed
fall asleep thinking of my loves
and the parts that keep me away
from them. Tomorrow when
the sun rises I will look away
so I do not see the ocean, the
sky, the vast land. I will look
inside and find them all in
my pulse, in my breath.
I will close my eyes.
They will be
there, right there.

(a work in progress written after a magical night of Poetry at the Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn) 

Hey, Jo You So Fine I Love You Long Time

When the white man first came, he brought
The Book, a cross, goblets of wine, white bread,
silk robes and the promise of a Heaven.

When he left, he took our sun and mountain,
our worship, our medicine, our brown magic.
He lined his trail with mosaic bastards,

the aberration of a people who once sanctified
women and battled with spears,
yo-yos, blow guns, western wind.

The white man came again, this time in
camouflage and boogie-woogie. He brought
Santa Claus, democracy, and hand grenades.

He took our fight and aimed outwards to the
yellow neighbor and his Kamikaze, took our
women for servants, sex slaves, nurse maids.

When he left he took our words and letters,
our lessons, our drum beat, our open fist.
He lined his trail with shrapnel and gunpowder,

flattened our cities, tarnished our dreams.
When is the white man coming back?
I look around and see his ghost everywhere,

he is never there. Why won't the white man
love my country anymore? Has he grown
tired of our unflinching love?

The bountiful lands he pillaged for rice, pineapple,
bananas, tabako, mangoes, coconuts are barren now.
They long for the white man's science again,

My tears have always come with ease, this is
something you learn in my country. I remember
when the white man told me tears are prayer,

blessings from the white god with the high nose,
The cheek the white man never touched
still burns from his un-loving.