Eulogy for Uncle David

Magandang gabi sa inyong lahat. Naimbat a rabii yo amin. Good evening, everyone. I’m Patrick, the middle son of Mimi, the sister of Auntie Uding. It’s an honor to be given some time tonight to say some things about my Uncle David.

I’ve spent the last few days talking with my cousins and their children about what they knew, what they remembered, and what they loved about him. There are factual things. He was born in Balacad, Ilocos Norte, the Philippines to Nicolasa Duldulao and Blas Narciso on December 29, 1936, which means he was only five when WWII broke out and nine years old by the time the war ended. Many of our parents and grandparents understandably don’t talk a lot about the war, but there is no doubt it affected several generations of Filipinos, Uncle David among them. He eventually went to grade school for a time with the intention of learning automotive skills, but as is the case with many poor families in the Philippines—after the war the nation was impoverished and there were many, many, many poor families— Uncle David left school to go to work. By the age of 17, farming was a logical choice as most of our province was almost entirely rural.

He went away to Cagayan and learned to grow crops, to tend to them, and to harvest them. He learned to raise animals. And I have to say, that a person who learns these things at a young age and grows into an adult who deeply understands farming, the weather, the water, the land has a different relationship to time. Someone who farms as a way of life must have a strong sense of what  he  needs and wants, but he can’t be too willful. He must acknowledge and even surrender to the powers of the seasons and their climates, but can’t give up too easily. He must be both passionate and patient. He must be both active and observant. I believe Uncle David cultivated all these traits.

Uncle David came back to Balacad from Cagayan and married Claudia Gelacio, our dear Auntie Uding. Their first child, Rosemarie was born in 1962 and Guillermo (aka, Gimmo, aka James) was born just a couple years later. Soon, they had a robust family with the birth of Manang Emy and then Edmond. Uncle David was clearly good at farming and wanted to stay in the Philippines to continue that work, even as many other men from Ilocos were going to Hawaii where the wages were promised to be more reliable and much better. Uncle David turned down many petition requests for a long time. By the time Auntie Uding was pregnant with a fifth child, Jay Mars, who would be their youngest, immigration informed Uncle that this was the last time he could accept a petition to go to Hawaii for work. Sponsored by his brother Bernard, Uncle David agreed, selling livestock to pay the required fees and to fund the journey. He left his family behind with hopes of a more stable life. Gimmo and Rosemarie followed him to Hawaii and they saw Uncle David’s hard work there, how he held down several jobs and walked a long way to the tourist-ridden zones of Waikiki to work in the hotels.

By the early 80s the Gelacio clan, through no small effort of my mother Simeona (aka Manang Mimi, aka Tita Mimi), started to grow here in New Jersey. Lela Menang was here for a while, Tita Mayda and TIta Mary came. Rosemarie arrived here in ’81 and Uncle David and Manong Gimmo the next year. By the time Tita Uding, Manang Emy, Edmond, and Jay Mars came to New Jersey in the mid-80s our house at Westervelt and certainly the house on Central Ave. in Metuchen were bustling with our extended family. Tita Uding and Uncle David continued to work hard, moving from residence to residence for a little while Iselin, Clara Barton, and Westervelt when Tita Mary lived there, until Uncle David and Auntie Uding  finally bought their own home, there, in Bonhamtown on Cherry St.

This morning I went to our backyard to look at the garden that my wife, Mary Rose, has planted, she turned that bare lot into a thriving place of raspberries, native flowers, summer greens. And I walked out under our trellis to count how many paria (bittermelon) are growing. It’s the end of September and there are more than ten there now by my count. And I held the little fruit in my hand and I looked at the bee climbing inside its little yellow flower, and I stroked the bittermelon leaf so I could feel its veins in my fingers. And I thought about the work Mary Rose put in to make this whole place grow. And I know I was watching something of my mother. I was watching something of Auntie Uding. I was watching something of the work and the care and the tenderness and the joy of my dear Uncle David.

Two things that were consistent as I talked to all of my cousins and their kids. Uncle David’s garden was magical; and he was a quiet man. I believe those two things were intertwined for Uncle David. He walked to his jobs—whether the fields of Cagayan or the hotel in Waikiki or the hispital halls of JFK—quietly. It was how he cared for his family. He tended the stalks and vines of his garden, regarding their leaves and stems and fruit with a gentle quiet. The work was how he expressed himself. The garden was how he expressed himself. And sure he might hang a belt on the door to remind his grandchildren to behave. And he was no slouch with his fists as kapitan of the barrio. And he didn’t hesitate to slug a bigger man if he was disrespected. He might sing you a song you didn’t realize he knew the words to. Or he might break out into “God Bless America” or pull out his harmonica or ukelele to play. He even loved to tell the animated story of his right hook —PING! —But the quiet was how he expressed himself.

Transplanting a whole family whose stories are filled with the brutalities of colonialism, invasion, war, industrial coercion, and poverty, challenges that family’s connections. We, our family, struggled (and in a lot of ways continues to struggle) to feel connected to one another.

This struggle to remember our connection is true for every family. And every time someone we love dies, we remember that none of us has a story without the rest of us. The one true reality of a family is:We belong to one another. Love demands that we love the whole person and the whole family. For better or for worse. I confess that I am selfish, cranky, and stubborn... and so is everyone in this room. I, for one, am sorry to be that way from time to time. But I hope that selfishness is just a door to generosity, and crankiness a door to tenderness, and stubbornness a door to openness and forgiveness. We will hurt each other because we love each other. But just like marriage, we make a conscious choice to be a part of each other’s healing. I believe that is what Uncle David worked for. I know he loved to shop and scan the windows of the mall and department stores for the best brand names. I know he worked hard to buy his house and provide for family here and back in Balacad. And yet, I also understand that those are just material gestures for what his spirit wanted, which is a family that is healthy and laughing and alive, together. That was my mom’s spirit! and Uncle Charlie’s spirit! and Uncle Jose’s spirit! and Auntie Uding’s spirit! That was their real gift to us.  When we remember them, when we remember Uncle David, we honor that gift.

There are so many details of Uncle David’s life. Eight and a half decades of a quiet man is impossible to portray in the five or so minutes I have here. But I wanted to end with a note of immense gratitude. In the last few days, I got to sit down with my cousins, my nieces, and nephews—Uncle David’s children and grandchildren. And I got to touch and hold his great grandchildren. There’s a linguistic tradition in the Philippines that we had before Japan invaded, before America invaded, before even the Spanish invaded. It’s this: If a grandmother is Lola and grandfather is Lolo, then the great grandmother is Lola Tuod and great grandgather is Lolo Tuod. It literally means Knee Grandmother and Knee Grandfather. The idea is that we are at the bottom of the generational line and each older generation goes farther up until you reach the the ulo, the head, the Heavenly Creator. That is to say, for us Filipinos, the family is a body together. We form a body across generations. We form a body across time. That body, when one part is separated from another part, is dis-membered. But when we come together, when we are really present with one another, when we reach one another, we literally and figuratively RE-MEMBER our parents and aunts and uncles or lolos and lolas our tuod and our ulo. I’m so grateful for these last few days for the chance to listen to my family. To remember Uncle David. To remember our family.

Finding a Therapist

Some folks think you book a mental health professional and they’re all doing the same thing. Some folks think that once you start therapy with one provider, you have to stay with that person. I want to share a ittle about what I’ve learned about those two assumptions, as I’ve recently been talking to friends about finding a therapist. I’ve been in and out of shrinks’ offices for all of my adult life and I wanted to put something somwehere in writing about things I’ve learned for myself about how to connect with a therapist.

HUGE DISCLAIMER: This is a personal account of my own layperson’s experience in thinking about therapy. THIS IS NOT PROFESSIONAL MENTAL HEALTH ADVICE. (To that end, I can’t respond to messages or notes that ask me for opinions or advice. I think you should speak to a mental health professional.)

First of all, I understand why people hold a deep skepticism about mental health practices in the U.S.—critiques of everything from colonialist to racist to patriarchal etc. etc. views. It might not be for everybody, and some people come to accepting therapeutic approaches to mental health at very different times in life. Some never do it. There certainly are other ways to do what therapy does (community, ritual, and a whole slew of traditions). Furthermore, I don’t think of therapy as a way to fix anything. I think of therapy as pretty similar to my processes in writing and artmaking. I’m there to try to articulate and ask questions in a fairly open form. And sometimes—many times—I fail at trying to articulate and ask rhose questions. Therapy, for me, is a process (like poetry) of memory, observation, and imagination, and an opportunity to slow down, immerse myself into or emerge from some feeling that I can’t quite describe… yet.

I should say that this particular idea of therapy — a way to ask questions — has sjown me that I simply respond to psychodynamic approaches better than, say, cognitive behavioral (CBT) approaches. CBT is great for folks who want concrete strategies they can apply to their lives. Psychodynamic has always struck me as closer to my writing life. My first therapist was super traditional in his psychodynamic practice, in that he hardly said anything at all during our sessions. That’s kind of the point, that one addresses another person, speaking and speaking and speaking—hopefully with less and less inhibition—until some insight enters through the speech. Maybe some connection gets made or a particular word comes up spomtaneously that is charged with memory. And I gotta tell you, that phenomenon is very close to the pheneomenon of writing a poem in my experience. So it’s important to know 1) that there are different theoretical orientations to be aware of (another that I seem to respond well to is Family Systems, by the way) 2) it might take a while to figure out which theoretical orientation you respond best to.

That leads me to another thing that I’ve learned over the years having worked with a number of therapists. Your first therapist might not be the one you end up working with. That might have to do with the fact that you don’t click with their theoretical orientation, but it also might be because you don’t click with that particular therapist. You’re working on some really deep memory and the core makeup of your psyche. Not every professional is a fit. Sometimes (oftentimes) chemistry is a huge factor in whether or not the sessions work. Sometimes you know right away whether or not this person is going to work out. You gotta be patient in this regard. Sometimes you have to meet with a single therapist a few times before you really get a feel for their approach. And sometimes you have to meet a few different therapists before you match with one whose approach and vibe work for you.

That’s all to say, it can take some time to find the right therapist. That can feel impossibly challenging if you’re in crisis mode. It seems to me there are few quick fixes. My best experiences have been therapeutic relationships that have lasted at least a year. And sometimes insights don’t happen for months or years after a therapeutic relationship ends. It feels really important not to rush the process of either finding a therapist or the process of therapy itself.

This leads me to one more guideline for myself that I learned somewhat later in life. This one is very practical: I always, always ask in the very first session with a new therapist: What is the protocol for terminating our sessions? I think it’s very easy to feel obligated to stay with a therapist when it’s just not working out. I do think you should discuss with your therapist if you have questions, concerns, or feel discomfort about what you are or aren’t getting from your sessions. Sometiems you just know right away that it’s not a good fit. Sometimes it takes a while to know that. In either case, you have every right to step away from a therapeutic relationship, and you should ask how that’s done right from the beginning. In part that’s good, practical information, but also it’s a way to remind and empower yourself in case you do want to find someone who is a better guide for the inner work you want to do.

This is an era when it’s easy to feel disconnected from the world, your neighborhood, your family, your social circles. I think people are turning to all kinds of things—some useful, some absolute trash—to help them get a hold. Therapy has been one way for me to tell myself a new story about my fear, anxiety, joy, excitement. For me, it really does accomplish things that my writing alone cannot. But both my writing and my work in therapy have felt like corresponding spaces—two places for me to bring my confusions and maybe even make meaning.

Eulogy for Nicholas Llanes Rosal

On behalf of my brothers and our families, we want to thank all of you for your gestures and words of sympathy over the last couple weeks. We especially want to thank Tita Thelma, Christine, Tony, Kalesi, Tita Mila, and others who were a part of my father’s life here in Nevada. We are deeply grateful for the love, care, and affection you gave my dad in his last years. Today, I hope to take a few minutes to celebrate my father’s life by recalling his many achievements and good works, but also perhaps reveal what I have come to understand about his inner life.  

Nicholas Llanes Rosal was born on Oct. 31, 1928 during the American occupation of the Philippines, studied in the seminary during World War II, and completed his training not just a cleric of the Church, but a theologian, and not just a thinker, but a priest committed to apostolic life, my father arrived in the U.S. in 1962 during the Civil Rights movement and a full three years before the Asian Exclusion Acts were replaced by the Federal Immigration Laws of 1965, the former of which locked out Filipinos from emigrating to the U.S. for more than 30 years. He met and fell in love with my mother, Simeona (Mimi), in Chicago. My father stayed in the Midwest, and my mom left for Alberta, then Toronto,  to give birth to my brother, Nicholas Anthony. And my parents began the immense challenge of forging a family and raising a child apart from one another on either side of the Canadian border. Having read my dad’s letters during that time, I know those were profoundly difficult years for both of them for many reasons. They were aliens—officially and figuratively. After the priesthood, my dad wrote a good deal about the cruelty he experienced in America, but he also wrote—and thought—about the complex, but abundant generosity of many individuals he met along the way.

He put his thought into action in his many years of service at Perth Amboy Board of Ed, where he directed high school equivalency, night, and continuing ed programs. Over the years he volunteered at the hospital, worked as translator and conflict moderator for the local court, hosted a radio show, and was a member of the Middlesex County Civil Rights Commission. Throughout the 1960s my dad preached and administered sacraments in the U.S. Midwest and Northeast, working under Fulton J. Sheen’s Propagation of the Faith. He had received a full scholarship to the University of Salamanca, the oldest university in Spain, but chose instead to study at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern. Previously, his doctoral dissertation at UST focused on the Philippine Independent Church founded by Gregorio Aglipay, close kumpadre of the brilliant scholar Isabelo de los Reyes. My father opposed Father Aglipay and Mr. de los Reyes theologically, but all three shared an immense affection for Ilokandia, the beloved land of their language and birth. Moreover, my dad was a great admirer of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Aristotelian, who set out to prove the existence of God by logic, by syllogism. But I believe my dad shared more with St. Augustine, their temperament of passions, which could make him a difficult man to be around, those closest to him can attest. More importantly, my dad had an Augustinian desire to tell personal stories with unflinching self-scrutiny as a way to achieve God’s grace. Like Augustine, my father was a chronicler, and my dad must’ve written thousands of pages about his own life, family, culture, and history in multiple genres. Perhaps his proudest literary achievement is his book on Ilokano.

But he was also a musician. He composed original works and arranged religious, secular, and folk songs for piano and organ. This is a man who loved music. And music is yet another way to chronicle, another way to remember. What most people don’t understand is: when you listen to a musician, like my father playing Schubert or “Pamulinawen” or one of his own compositions like “Un-Unnoy,” you are not just listening to a man playing; you’re listening to a man listen — very, very deeply. Of course, my dad was an extrovert. He loved to chat up strangers, argue, flirt, provoke, make people laugh. However, this card-table charisma, this family-gathering garrulousness, was stored and replenished in reserves of his solitary (and therefore virtually invisible) but intense listening. He understood that prayer was not just reciting a memorized supplication or declaring one’s faith or silently making requests of the Almighty. My father conducted his private life in a way that suggests he understood prayer as a kind of listening. I was in the room with him and saw his downcast gaze, when he received the call that his brother Antonio had died after Katrina, how my dad hung up the phone, turned to me, and wept. Listening may be the moment we become most vulnerable, most human to anyone. This is no different in one’s relationship to God, one’s listening to God, one’s vulnerability.

For my dad, much of this lifelong contemplation was an agony, in the Classical Greek sense of “struggle,” like Christ’s agony in Gethsemane. By listening—however imperfectly—my dad struggled toward forgiveness. Not forgiveness in the abstract, but in the two principal scriptural modes: God’s forgiveness of us; and our forgiveness of one another. This is a man who wanted to forgive and be forgiven.

Sure, this was a man who burned oatmeal to a crisp on a cookie sheet; a man who spoke four languages and delighted our Italian barbers with his Latin; a man who was not great at mahjong or betting ponies; who would come down from his bedroom at 3am to greet my friends who would be playing spades in the basement, telling each of them to make sure they go to church; a man who took his granddaughter Remi to the Chinese buffet after school; a man whose rage could flood a whole house, ebbing only after weeks, months, even years. I say, remember the charmer, the lively talker. Remember the irascible grump. But also, remember the man trying to get closer to God, clacking away at a typewriter late at night, studying at the piano, the man with a scarred violin held beneath his chin or a cheap flute poised at his pursed lips, the man closing his eyes... his listening, a gift, a failure and gorgeous prayer all at once, a stillness, an attention, an intention, a devotion, an extension of love itself, a testament to mercy, both human and divine.

Quilting Water Undergraduate Prize

A few years ago I had a grad seminar on improvisation and ritual that met for siix hours on Saturdays. And on the first day, I asked the smal group of writers if they wanted to go to the beach. And of course, they said yes. So we ate the food that each of us brought for each other (something we did every Saturday) and they hopped in my car and we got to know one another a little. We got to tell each other stories and talk aout talking story. That class culminated in an event that invited community from in and out of Rutgers-Camden where everybody got to eat and drink, share their memories, nightmares, fantasies, stories, and dreams about water by writing and drawing on a huge eight-point campus made of butcher paper—a kind of collaborative graffiti project (I know, a tautology). Well, the experiments of that class have now evolved into Quilting Water, a Directors Signature Project that I've brought into the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice.

Now, we are interviewing people about water from around the world.

Along with discussions and experiments with another great grad seminar in Spring 2020, we piloted some interview questions and a process which now we have begun to send around the world. We have now collected stories in regions of the continental U.S., but also South Africa, Brussels (by way of Somalia and Italy), the Philippines, Japan, the Atayal tribe in Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Puerto Rico... and much of the interviews done really by word of mouth. There's much more to this, not the least of which is a future colaboration with local quilters from Camden and led by Camden artist Renata Merrill.

So I'm really happy to announce that the ISGRJ at Rutgers-Camden and the ISGRJ Office of Undergduate Intellectual Life are launching an Undergraduate Quilting Water Prize, with a $1000 award each for six students across all three Rutgers campuses. They'll become a part of the ISGRJ intellectual and creative communities, collect water interviews, collaborate on art, and receive mentoring from working artists.

I have to thank my colleagues at ISGRJ as well as all the students at the RUC MFA program who have helped me with this crazy idea, not to mention the Quilting Water team. Special shout to my brother Mark who kindly designed the Quilting Water logo.

We're really at the very beginning of this, but I hope you'll follow as this conversation—which really is very small in that it's person--to-person—evolves.

I remind the QW team and my colleagues at ISGRJ that although there'll be an archive of stories, some beautiful quilts, and hopefully a book, what we're really making are many opportunities for people to get together and talk, which is also getting together and listening. We've partnered with my colleague Dr. Keith Green and his Af-Am class and now with Kathy Engel over at NYU whose art and public policy class is gathering interviews—and more, I believe. (If you're interested in recording an interview for Quilting Water, you can email me at patrick [dot] rosal [at] rutgers [dot] edu, particularly if you speak another language and/or know someone you might interview abroad and/or can and want to invite someone from a local or global community of color to contribute their responses to our archive — though none of these is a requirement, and anyone can interview anyone. Note: when emailing me the subject should read 'QW interview request' If you teach at the secondary or college level or in a community gathering class and would like to participate, please, all are welcome. I would ask for your patience in advance as I'm slow to email as some of you know well.)

Here's the call for the Undergraduate Quiling Water Prize: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdZLUY8sc_3agTa_43whRFy23IclTWFZn_csVM003lGF7T3GQ/viewform

And you can see a bit more about Quilting Water, including a link to my Scarlet Scholars lecture from last fall (runtime just under an hour) that tells a little of my own story as an artist and how Quilting Water came to be https://globalracialjustice.rutgers.edu/what-we-do/directors-signature-research-projects/quilting-water

Re-seeing Thesis

I’ve made some experiments in my classes and thesis has been the last one to undergo a radical re-seeing. I’m certainly not done with the revision / re-seeing of what a “class” or a “thesis” is. But I feel like I’m connected more meaningfully to the questions that I brought in with me way back when I did my MFA. I have more technical / theoretical language around the pedagogy, but I’ll save that for another time. I wanted to share the spirit of my work with these writers here. This is the body of a letter I sent in December to the MFA thesis advisees I’m working with right now.

_________

Every tradition is passed down (‘handed across/over’ in Latin). The recipient of tradition has to decide how they might hand it down when it is their turn — as received or changed, transformed or preserved, etc.

We mostly talk about the thesis as a class within a curriculum, a way to mark your academic and writing career. What if we shifted our idea of the thesis from academic task to sociopoetic practice? more specifically, as something received and then passed down again? or simply a chance to do shit together?

What do you see as being handed down to you? Can you describe it? Do you have a sense of its history and culture? Can you describe this, too? I’d like for you to reflect on the tradition of the thesis. And then ask yourself, what if we don’t just think of the thesis as an academic form but emphasized a specific aspect of it — ritual? Not assignment, but assay. Not correction but direction/vector... insurrection. Not mastery, but mystery.

Every ritual can be identified by some collective desire (across space and/or time). Can you begin to name some collective desire? What comes to mind when you reflect on your own desire for your work and how it intersects with this collective one? What can we do together in practice to mark an entry into our collaboration? What do you want to do to mark the specific entry into your thesis work?

Furthermore, nearly every ritual cares for something. What does this thesis-as-ritual seem to care for? What (whom) would you like your work to care for? What might you want to preserve? What might you change?

If you look ahead to April and May, how might you mark the end of this particular segment of your journey? How might we do this together?

Willie Perdomo to read at Atelier Rosal on April 27!

SATURDAY, APRIL 27

Poetry Workshop 4-5:30; Open Mic and Featured Reading with Willie Perdomo 6-8:00 PM

READING IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC ((see below for nominal workshop fee)

Workshop:

We think of poems as a means of expression, but poems can also be a way to ask questions. They can help us investigate things we don’t understand.  

Atelier Rosal—a gallery, performance venue, and frame shop at 74 E. Cherry St., Rahway, NJ —is very excited to invite you to a two-hour community workshop with poet Patrick Rosal, where you’ll have the opportunity to generate some of your own writing based on the work of Aracelis Girmay, W.S. Merwin, Pablo Neruda, and Willie Perdomo. All levels are invited to a limited number of seats in the workshop. 

If you would like to participate in the workshop, please RSVP to rosalwriting@gmail.com to reserve a space. We are happy to offer this workshop with a nationally known artist for a nominal sliding-scale fee—$5 to $25. (THE OPEN MIC AND READING AFTER THE WORKSHOP ARE FREE!)

After the workshop, Atelier Rosal will hold an open mic, and Willie Perdomo — nationally acclaimed author hailing from East Harlem (aka El Barrio), New York — will read from his new book, The Crazy Bunch. Poet, professor, and publisher Roberto Carlos Garcia will introduce Mr. Perdomo. His new poetry collection will be available for sale and signing.

Workshop begins promptly at 4:00 pm. Open mic and reading begin at 6:00 pm. Wine and cheese reception to follow.

Getting There:

Atelier Rosal is located at 74 E. Cherry St. in the heart of downtown Rahway.

By train: Two New Jersey Transit lines (Northeast Corridor and Norh Jersey Coast Line) drop you off at Rahway. Once you descend from the platform you are less than a block from Atelier Rosal (on the Westbound side of the tracks).

By car: Routes 35, 27, and 9 are very close, all of which are reachable by the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway

Artists:

WILLIE PERDOMO is the author of The Crazy Bunch (Penguin Poets, 2019) The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon (Penguin Poets, 2014), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the International Latino Book Award; Smoking Lovely (Rattapallax, 2004), winner of the PEN Open Book Award, and Where a Nickel Costs a Dime (Norton, 1996), a finalist for the Poetry Society of America Norma Farber First Book Award. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, Poetry, Bomb Magazine, and African Voices. He is currently a Lucas Arts Program Literary Fellow and teaches English at Phillips Exeter Academy. 

PATRICK ROSAL is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Brooklyn Antediluvian, which was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award and winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets . Rosal’s other three books are Boneshepherds, My American Kundiman, a winner of the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award, and Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive, winner of the Asian American Writers Workshop Members’ Choice Award. The recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fulbright Research Program, Rosal has taught at Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Texas, Austin, Bloomfield College, in addition to Kundiman’s summer writing retreat, carceral facilities in Chicago and Alabama, and youth programs throughout the country. He is an Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University-Camden.

Poet, storyteller, and essayist ROBERTO CARLOS GARCIA is a self-described “sancocho […] of provisions from the Harlem Renaissance, the Spanish Poets of 1929, the Black Arts Movement, the Nuyorican School, and the Modernists.” Garcia is rigorously interrogative of himself and the world around him, conveying “nakedness of emotion, intent, and experience,” and he writes extensively about the Afro-Latinx and Afro-diasporic experience. His second poetry collection, black / Maybe, is available from Willow Books.  Roberto’s first collection, Melancolía, is available from Červená Barva Press. His poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Bettering American Poetry, The Root, Those People, Rigorous, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Gawker, Barrelhouse, The Acentos Review, Lunch Ticket, and many others. He is founder of the cooperative press Get Fresh Books, LLC. A native New Yorker, Roberto holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation from Drew University, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

About Atelier Rosal:

Atelier Rosal was founded by Nicholas Rosal and Heidi Loder-Rosal as a multi faceted arts resource company. Originally formed in NYC and working under the name of MH Fine Art Framing, the company has been trusted with precious works of art for over a decade as well as supporting the arts community with gallery level art openings and events. 

At Atelier Rosal, we will continue to service our past, present and future clients, who typically are architects, interior designers, artists, collectors, and people who just want their precious photos, works on paper or unique works cared for, with the quality workmanship that has been the foundation of our reputation.

Beyond custom framing, we offer works by local artists, jewelers and crafts people for the purpose of promoting the creative and unique talents of the area. There will be workshops for the purpose of continuing the education and promotion of creative thinking and development of studio skills.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT HEIDI@ATELIERROSAL.COM

What Do You See? A Rotating Potentially Eternal Totally Whimsical Fellowship With Microscope

A few years ago, this poet hung out with field scientists—biologists/ecologists—who had terrific things to say about their work. Despite their different offices and buildings and bosses and discipline names and physical tools and conference destinations and governing bodies, the poet suspected the artist and the scientist shared more than a little common practice. It was true!! Scientists, too, are trained observers. John Dighton, the poet's colleague who studies fungus and mushrooms, told him (the poet) his careful looking (the scientist's) becomes a habit even in just daily life walking around. The poet said, ME TOO! Dighton also told the poet that during his training (the scientist's), scientists were required to draw whatever they looked at. And he told the poet about another scientist friend of his who said that when he retired, he just wanted to have a room and a microscope.

The poet's other colleague Leah Falk, also a poet!, showed the first poet we mentioned this website of surplus science gear and the poet saw these little handheld 16X microscopes. And the poet said, well I’m gonna get a bunch of those and give them away just so people can look at shit.

So the poet, who is a bored member of the Institute of Contemporary Collaborative Imagining, did it. And the poet turned it into a fellowship. Big grants are given to artists who use electron microscopes or who embed text and other things in your genes. This isn’t one of those fellowships . BUT…

Maybe you WILL look at a bunch of shit! Maybe you’ll make a drawing or a song or a story. Or maybe the microscope will sit on your kitchen table for a while Or maybe you give it to a child and ask them what they see. Or maybe the microscope will break. Or you’ll lose it… Or maybe you'll put your institution underneath it. Or maybe a team of spiders will carry the little machine off into a field. Or maybe… maybe… maybe…

You can hold on to the microscope for as long as you want. You can do what you want with it. The only thing that we ask is that you hand it off to someone you think might appreciate it as an object or a tool or as an occasion for paying attention or imagining. That is, you nominate the next fellow by passing the microscope along. If you could also give this note (or a copy of it or some version of it—oral, written, coded with flags, etc.) with the microscope to the next fellow that would be pretty great. And then that fellow can nominate the next person to receive the microscope and these non-instructions. And then it goes on and on around and around and around...

We have a limited supply of microscopes, but the model potentially allows everyone on the planet to be nominated at some point! 

Eligibility: You want a little microscope (with a light and a battery included; we're counting on our fellows to assume the cost of replacing the battery or just using the microscope in good light... or in bad light and putting the dark under a 16x lens). And you don't mind passing it along to someone else who is likely to use/not-use it and pass it along. 

To apply: Send an email to rosalwriting@gmail.com with a few sentences or a drawing or something letting us know you're interested. And if you feel like telling us what you'll do with the microscope, that's cool. And especially if you feel like you have an idea of whom you'd pass the microscope on to, that's cool too! (We like exclamation points! And we don't know; how to use semi-colons;;) We'll need your mailing address to send you the microscope. Let us know if you want to be named in the ether or on one of these digital worlds as a recipient of the What Do You See? A Rotating Potentially Eternal Totally Whimsical Fellowship With Microscope. Feel free to list the honor on your resume or cv or in your promotion file, and if you're feeling especially weird put a smiley face after it :-)  Or a bunch of semi-colons ;;;;;;;;;;;; like winks without the nose and mouth. 

Deadline: March 31(ish), 2018(ish)

Another unfundable project brought to you by the Institute of Contemporary Collaborative Imagining. Pronounced "icky", baby.