I never chose a topic for drepoetic. That was fine for the last year it’s been up and running. A lot of us write for no reason at all. I wrote poems here. I posted quotes, pictures, videos. I shared events. I wrote some commentary about stuff. All this was great for experimenting and feeling things out. It was a process.

For some of us, that’s all a blog will be — a journal, a sketchbook, a personal chronicle, a process of reflection that just happens to be public — which is all good. But I have recently been craving more. Like a painter who looks at a blank canvas and sees everything that is possible, I see this blog. I see what it can be.

It wasn’t until recently that I realized drepoetic was in beta. drepoetic was an unwitting experiment. As I shift towards more purposeful and determined directions in my life, my interests become more clear, and drepoetic as it is doesn’t vibe with me anymore.

I want my works here to reflect my life. As I begin to live actively and purposefully, I am ready to make the best of this form in a focused and deliberate way. I am ready to streamline. Hence, drepoetic is going under redesign.

New directions, new blogs

I have decided to ground my future blogging in two strong roots that undergird everything I do and care about:

1. My deep interest in community building, socio-political issues, and critical thought; and
2. My deep interest in art, writing, and all the wonderful things that inspire me.

Thus I plan to create two new blogs around these interests:

drepoetic 2.0

Continuing under the same name, but far from the same in appearance and content, drepoetic is going to be completely revamped. It will be a totally new blog. The new drepoetic will be the home base for all matters in art, design, music, poetry, and sources of inspiration of the life drepoetic. It will be my digital sketchbook for real — a window into my creative life and process.

drepoetic will be the site of my new aesthetic.

Project Codename: Blog 2

Within the next couple of months, I plan to launch my second blog. Blog 2 will be a site of relevent social commentary on current events, politics, culture, and community. It will also be the source for periodic updates on my life and work as a growing community builder. With this blog, I hope to exercise my critical thought and commentary to contribute to the shaping of our rapidly changing world.

Two Adrien Salazar blogs! It is a little daunting, but I am determined. My life is shifting. It’s only natural I take this work to the next level.

Expect new edutaining content and exciting creative visions flying at your eyeballs soon!

Rule number one* of starting a blog is: Pick a topic. If you’re going to write regularly then it better well be a topic you’re interested in.

Blogs are tools, and if you plan to keep bloggin, at one point or another you have to ask yourself, what do I want to do with this tool? Do I want to display my expertise in something? Do I want to practice my prose? Do I want to showcase my music taste? Or do I want some place to centralize all my brain vomit?

And if it is brain vomit, why do it online? A blog is a social tool, a public medium. So when you think about blogging, ask yourself, in what way do I want to connect with other people through this tool? Because unless you are writing an offline word doc, then other people are going to see your online vomit.

A blog can be a great way for you to get yourself and your ideas known, and a way to express who you are and what you’re about. A blog you remain committed to becomes a reflection of you and a way for people to get to know you before ever meeting you.

So if you don’t want to get bored of it and you’re in it for the long haul, write stuff you’re interested in. Then people interested in said stuff start reading your blog. They find that you’re interested in the same stuff and then they want to connect with you (via email, facebook, twitter, whatever)!

Voila: the formula for using blogs to build real connections with real people!

Oh and don’t strain yourself over topic. You can always change things up later.

*As with any set of guidelines, Rule Zero is learn the rules and then you can break them.

Jenna Rink, editor extraordinaire for Poise magazine.

If you have experience in publication, or if you ever saw 13 going 30, you will understand the gravity of this word. Redesign entails the overhaul and replacement of an existing set of guiding principles in favor of an entirely new style, aesthetic, form, and content.

My life since graduation has been undergoing redesign. This process is ongoing and it may not ever end. As a part of that process, this blog has been its own exploration — a way for me to explore how to blog and what to blog about. As my ideas and life choices crystalize, this blog needs to move out of beta.

drepoetic is going under redesign.

This means drepoetic as you know it is coming to an end.

The rare of you who noticed the absence of posts this summer may have wondered what was boiling in Adrien’s wondermind. Or more probably you didn’t. Nevertheless, there have indeed been some strange potions brewing!

In accordance with recent re-imaginings of my own life, I am re-orienting my web musings towards synchronicity with my passions.

What the hell does that mean? It means some things shiny and new will arise from the ashes of drepoetic!

It means … new blogs! Gasp!

Stay tuned as further developments are revealed.

I am now a contributing writer to wiqaable.com, the online source for unraveling the enigmatic question: “what is queer and asian?” Wooohooo!

From my introductory post:

Hello everyone!

I just wanted to introduce myself, Adrien, your newest wiqaa-blogger.

I am a poet, community builder, and whatever else you want me to be. My interests are constantly transforming but currently are condensing around pop culture, art, music, politics, community development, and social media.

In the future you can expect from me some biting social commentary on every day life and gargantuan issues that make every day life look like a holiday, all-spiced with some fierce queer and Asian one-two punches.

…

Read the rest of my introduction …

I went to a yoga class for the first time at Yoga to the People in Berkeley yesterday. My body is now more awake than ever. Mind you, this is my first exercise in years that isn’t walking to and from the BART station.

Smart choice I made — it was the most intense workout I’ve had since endurance running cross country in high school. The class is power yoga in the vinyasa-style and by the end I was covered in sweat in the hot room, while at the same time calm, relaxed, and energized.

This is the metaphor of my life right now. After months and months of reflection, I’m going live. Full immersion-style whether I like it or not.

Last week I went to Chicago for a Neighborworks America conference on social media and community. The conference was a wake up call for me, not so much for its content but for the very fact that my work sent me to the conference. I didn’t expect to be attending conferences in my first year of work as an admin assistant. But here I am.

What I’ve realized now is that I sit atop a mass of opportunity and life experiences that are at my fingertips if I wake up from my self-induced slumber and start making some bold choices.

Philosopher Alfred D. Souza wrote,

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.

I haven’t felt obstacles so much as a lack of direction. Life would begin when I decided what life I wanted to live. And it dawned on me — this is my life now. The figuring it out, the experiments, the missteps — all this is my life. It came to me like lightning that I know how I want to live. I have known this for years. I have been moving in this direction the whole time.

I am a community builder and a writer. I am an activist and a scholar. I am an artist and a history-maker. It’s taken me a while to visualize the path of this life, but I realize that the way is right in front of me. I work for the Chinatown Community Development Center for gossakes.

I have been taking the steps all along. But now I move decidedly, with purpose. I am making the life I dream of real. I am awake now. My life is moving in waves whether I feel it or not.  I am taking hold of the surfboard and diving in.

Greatest lesson from meditation so far:

My life is actually not so bad. Actually it’s amazing.

It is Sunday night and I am writing this blog post to remind you dear reader that I am still alive. Yes. It’s true.

More on this later as the story develops.

For now, please enjoy the mind explosion opening cinematic for the only band that matters coming to a game console near you.

Our poetry is the best part of our struggle and the best part of our struggle is our poetry.  – Al Robles

1. The body knows deep things

Two weeks ago I fell ill with something nasty that attacked me with a fever every day and something that felt like a fish bone lodged in my throat. I took an entire week off of work to heal.

I spent the weekend with my family, which I hadn’t really done in almost a month.

I had been stressing out about life and work in the usual way that a fumbling post-grad does not having a solid thing to grasp.

Now I know, my body forced me into a vacation I needed.

2. Graduation

It’s been a year.

How life does happen whether we like it or not.

3. Al Robles

I attended the celebration for Al Robles this past Sunday at SomArts. It was one of the most moving events I have ever been to. The atmosphere was something between a variety show, a community event, and a large family party. Al Robles. The man brings his people together even after he’s left. I want to say something about how the life of Al Robles makes me want to be a better person.

4. The struggle

Today is Malcolm X’s birthday. His memory and the passing of Al Robles urge my revolutionary consciousness to birth revolutionary action. I am trying compadres. I am trying.

5. Seeds

I have been going to meditation for the past several weeks at the East Bay Meditation Center. I am taking a class on the Eightfold Path right now. I am trying to shift the energy in my life. I am taking on beneficial practices, trying to incline myself towards good health, love, and positive action.

Everything I do right now is a seed. I am planting many seeds. And I do not know when they will bear fruit. But I am assured that they will, in time they will.

I can not force the tree to grow faster, but surely, it grows.

What if the Gmail servers crashed and you suddenly lost ALL your emails.

Permanently.

(This random thought makes me giddy.)

I wrote this last week and meant to post it. In light of the recent passing of Al Robles, it brings me to deeper pause.

—

I haven’t been back to the Philippines in five years, this April. This time marks the fifth anniversary of my grandpa’s death. The timing is not coincidental.

Five years ago in March I was with the rest of my family in Fresno. We stood around his quiet. I remember the small chapel in the hospital where we prayed. I guess it makes sense to have a chapel in a hospital.

In a few days it was over.

Grandpa was not a man who laughed heartily. My dad told me stories of how he would disappear into the mountains in Kalibo for months. Grandpa also apparently was a very ill-tempered man.

Since they all had moved to America, a certain arrangement kept him in the homes of his children, each taking their turn through the years. I asked my dad why they did this, even with all the man did to them.

“Because we’re his kids, this is what you’re supposed to do.”

Whenever grandpa was at our house he would ask me to do things for him. Buy him hamburgers at McDonald’s. Help him find things. He liked me apparently. He often called me Al or Albert, my cousin’s names. During long days he would walk the block or stand and stare out the open garage. At night I heard him praying.

The year he died all the Salazars came back to the Philippines. The Salazars had not been together on this island for more than thirty years. We carried with us a small bronze box sealed tight.

The church was hot, naturally. I was responsible for reading the Prayer for the Faithful, a litany that included blessings for the departed. I read his name written out “Lolo Amado.” After the mass, a woman kept saying “Lolo Amado, Lolo Amado” to me and laughing. She seemed a little crazy. I was probably related to her. Everyone knew him as Lolo Adoy. Even me. I just read what was on the paper.

That trip I found loose pieces of a man that I never knew. We visited his brother’s house. They fed us suman. In Libacao there was a man who cried hard because no one told him my grandpa had died.

I remember the grave of my grandma was broken open to put the small metal box next to her casket. I threw a small white flower in and then a man began to seal the grave with fresh concrete. We walked away before it was finished.

My grandpa is the country I was born, memories blurred together in humidity, the parts of me hard to get a hold of. He is as vague to me as this land of former lives and ghost possibilities that may only be half true.

I wonder if he ever wanted to really talk to me. It would have been hard. I can’t speak the island anymore. The language left my lips years ago and his English was not so good.