May Ling Su

Tag: death

  • Hello, Gina.

    Hello, Gina.

    Thank you for appearing to me in my dream. You look beautiful! The whole dream was lit in the romance I have come to see in places and people I miss. I am in an old Spanish style house in an unknown Philippine province. I am putting clothes away in a cabinet. The capiz shell windows glow in the sun. It is high noon but cool indoors. I hear a tricycle pull up outside, bags being loaded. I go out and there you are, about to get on that tricycle.

    “I’m going back to Manila,” you say. “Come with me.”

    I shake my head. “Not right now.”

    I really want to, but I decide not to. I still have things to do. I don’t think too hard about it.

    So I watch you go off on that tricycle kicking up sepia dust on that bright sunny day. I’m filled with joy having caught a glimpse of your otherworldly beauty. I feel the loss of having chosen to stay behind.

    I woke up crying and realizing the impact of another dream I had, about a month before you died. I didn’t give much importance to it at the time. I blogged about it, but didn’t name you, or let you know it was you. I was embarrassed. It revealed more than I was willing to share.

    In the dream I was walking along a beach with you. There are two guys with us. I don’t recognize any of them in my lexicon of real life guys, but in this dream world we are hanging out with them. You throw off your clothes and jump in the water. The guys follow quickly. I fumble with the buttons on my white shirt. It is taking me so long to undress. I woke before I am able to join you skinny dipping.

    I didn’t understand it then. I didn’t see that dream as a premonition. I felt remorse for being too late, regret for moments I let pass because of some stupid reason or another, a crippling awkwardness about things. A little over a month after my dream, you slipped into a coma and died.

    The last social media post on your timeline was a picture of the last beach you were on. Your kids brought your ashes to that same beach. You had gone skinny dipping for good.

    One of these days I will be able to join you in the ocean or ride away on a tricycle. Maybe I’ll catch you the next time you come around. As the sky goes dark tonight, I am reminded that pain is not the enemy. It merely points the way to the wound. Before we tend to it, we have to understand what the injury is. We have to allow ourselves to experience it. Then we can take steps toward healing and transformation.

    Everything is a gift.

    Love,

    May Ling Su signature
    May Ling Su nude outdoors on hammock

    Excerpt from Coming and Going by Regina Abuyuan:

    I suppose a lot of fallen beings now miss The Garden’s heavenly Fruits. And I’ll tell you why: 

    In that place exists Complete Bliss. A Fruit—any Fruit—plucked from its enchanted trees, and savored garden-fresh is guaranteed to bring you to the Ultimate of your Being—no matter what level of Be-ing you might be at the moment. This is an experience many seek, for both enlightenment and pleasure, and it is because of this service that many bitter beings—those denied access and who sulk salivating hungrily at the Gates—call it The Cosmic Brothel.

    Yes, dear friends. In The Garden one could find the Supreme Fuck, and reach the mind-shaking, soul-stirring Orgasm that could fire up your neurons swifter than Hermes on speed and expand your consciousness faster and greater than Zephyrus could ever impress with his smoke-rings. 

    In The Garden, Orgasms are made into Legends. That rumor about Osiris and Isis making out in The Nile and a crocodile biting off Osiris’ Venerable Dick? It occurred Right Here, when he won Isis (then a plump, ripe, rare Fruit-Woman specimen, in bloom only for every dozen millennia) in a game of dice, and chose to hump his prize in the Stream of Mother’s Milk where a gameful lizard nipped at his member. Strengthened by the milk, Isis was blessed with the awareness to search for the still-throbbing penis while Osiris howled in unholy pain. You all know that the search proved futile, but since then every being was aware of who wore the proverbial pants in the family.

    Isis was one of the few fruits to achieve Deity-status, which she probably earned by impressing upon everyone that the heat that possessed her loins equaled only the determination to find her mate’s penis. There’s nothing like a single-minded, driven woman, and she got her due reward! They never found the real organ, but being the cosmic beings they were, they discovered alternative ways to get it on, and always, in the warm creaminess of the Stream, which, in their more affectionate moments, they called their “mother”. It is because of this, perhaps, that some have thought Isis and Osiris sister and brother.

  • What’s your poison?

    What’s your poison?

    I put on the antlers Jay bought me a few days ago. It made me happy to run around naked in the woods behind our house where many a herd of deer have passed through. I keep a pile of fruit and vegetable scraps at the edge of the wood year round, but winter is when the wild life need it most.

    I hiked to the top of this cliff. Jay took my photos from the bottom of the rocky hill.

    I went down on all fours like a beast, waving my invisible tail side to side. When I descended he covered me with his arms and told me I was beautiful.

    We made love tenderly at first, then dirty, like animals. He filled me and filled me and filled me until I oozed delirious and he was spent.

    I washed up, got dressed, and picked up our kid from school. I slid to the passenger seat to let her drive us home.

    “How was your day?” I asked. She paused before she told me she had a weird day of not much happening in her classes, then at study hall her friend messaged to say that his dad died. He wasn’t ill. He just died. My daughter seemed deeply affected by that. It hit her hard to think that any day, without warning or indication, she could lose either one of her parents, too.

    I took a proactive role and said that we should go get food for her friend’s family. We got a whole rotisserie chicken, a vegetable side dish, and yellow chrysanthemums. I told my daughter to text her friend to ask if we could come over with some food. He said yes.

    By the time we got out of the grocery store, it was pouring really hard. My daughter drove in the rain to her friend’s house. It was a long way to Hope, which is the next town over from ours. She turned into a dirt road and up a hill. At the top of the hill is her friend’s house. His family had moved here from Illinois just a year ago. The car parked outside still has Illinois plates. Who knows what situation they are in now without the father?

    My daughter wanted me to come along with her. She is so shy, my kid. We put on our masks and walked up to the house.

    Her friend answered the door. He looked tired. His eyes were red and puffy.

    “I’m so sorry,” I said, as I handed him the paper bag full of food.

    He said, “None of us feel like cooking.”

    “We figured,” I said. I wanted to hug him, but I didn’t know what was right anymore. We ran back to the car to get out of the rain.

    When we got home, my daughter baked me a birthday cake while Jay and I made dinner. We talked about life and love. We told stories and laughed. Underneath it all was the thought that death comes for us all, sooner or later. The question isn’t when, it’s how.

    Find what you love and let it kill you.

    Attributed to Charles Bukowski

    We all get to pick our poison. Some people choose alcohol, drugs, sugar. Others have an obsession with thinness and beauty. Then there are those whose passion becomes a poison, revolutionaries, workaholics, lovers of all kinds.

    Jay always said he wanted a beautiful woman to kill him. She could be me, killing him slowly, one headache, one heartache, at a time. If my life was a painting, I’ve already messed up the canvas, made many mistakes and accumulated regrets for inaction. It’s time to pull together all the loose ends, the painful lessons, the dark memories of my life and transform it into a beautiful work of art.

    That night, as I blew out the candles on my birthday cake, I wished for more time to love him the way he wants to be loved as a unique and extraordinary human. I’ve only just begun to learn how.

    Love, Lust, & Liberty,

    May Ling Su signature

    P.S. See the full photo set at MAYCAM.

  • Strange Things

    Strange Things

    Shortly after Lilith: Queen of the Demons was published Jay and I became friends with a young woman named Lillian. She had straight black hair down to her waist, an hourglass figure, and a pretty smile. She used to visit weekly, always dressed impeccably from head to toe. She and Jay spent a lot of time together, cooking and baking all kinds of goodies. They were friends and sometimes they were lovers.

    When Lillian was a baby in Vietnam, she suffered a fire injury that required her to undergo surgery. The operation left her without a belly button for the rest of her life. Just like Lilith, who was not born of a human mother, fashioned out of clay by God.

    It was uncanny and I thought it auspicious to have her in our lives. There was a point when she began looking for a house to buy in which we could all live together, but it all changed when she met someone else. They got married in a whirl. We never saw her again.

    I will always consider her arrival as an otherworldly presence. The divine moves in mysterious ways. I cannot begin to fathom it. I can only be thankful when it happens.

    Lilith book series on audiobook, kindle, paperback by May Ling Su

    Another strange visitation occurred when I was recording the audiobook for Lilith: Generations of Cain. I didn’t notice it while I recorded, but during playback the angel and demon names were obscured by static.

    The first time it happened I got a shiver down my spine. I took a pause, then went back in front of the microphone like a soldier. Every time it happened I got more stubborn and determined to get through the text. Lilith: Generations of Cain is all about the power of names. It seemed to me that a presence, divine or not, was making me work hard to pronounce these holy and unholy names.

    This past summer as I worked on Lilith: Beyond the Deluge, I was on a business call with someone who went off tangent about strange situations he had found himself in, seeing supernatural creatures among people in New York City, hearing people’s thoughts from across the room. He said he felt like he could tell me these things he never told anyone. I listened to him for an hour before I wrapped up the conversation and brought it back to business. I asked for his name.

    “Michael.”

    “You have an ‘el’ name,” I mused. Many of the angels (and some demons) have names that end with ‘el.’ Azazel, Samael, Rafael, Gabriel, Baraqiel, Daniel, Michael…

    “Ah, so you know…” He sounded pleased. “It comes from God’s name ‘El Shaddai’ and ‘Elohim.’”

    I thanked him again and said goodbye.

    Before he hung up he said, “You will hear from me again.”

    I thought nothing of it. Even when I pulled out of the garage and saw a crow sitting in a tree across from me I didn’t think to tie anything together.

    I should mention that it was a special day, my Dad’s birthday and my (great grand aunt) Lola Ilyang’s death day. I facetimed with my Dad that evening, but the only way I connected with Lola Ilyang was from mysterious events that happened all day: a swarm of bees robbing my hive, the phone call from an angel, the crow in the tree. Everything brought me memories of her.

    Laurelia (Lola Ilyang) was a spinster who lived with her little dachshund, Cupsi, in a hut in the middle of a tobacco field in Pangasinan. She was the first witchy woman in my life. She had long salt and pepper hair. She told stories of the kapre smoking her tobacco. She entertained our maids by reading common playing cards for divination.

    Ten days after the odd phone call, my mother tagged me in a Facebook post. My college friend died. Deogracias Cruz. Is there a name more God-like than his? The Facebook post contained a video of Deo singing the Prayer to St. Michael.

    “Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.”

    The man on the phone said I would hear from him again. I did not know it would be this way.

    That afternoon Jay invited me out to the temple he had built in our backyard, overgrown with yarrow and lupines in the spring; tansy, mint, and goldenrod in the late summer. Jay spent the summer clearing around an arrangement of rocks and made paths to it. He decorated the place with Hindu gods and goddesses, Balinese wooden animals, and a statue of Quan Yin. There is a bed of marbles of various sizes, a solar system at the foot of a wooden frog. A Nag Champa cone burned and dripped smoke down a path in the rocks. As soon as the incense burned out, it started to rain. Thunder. We went inside.

    I made chicken soup from scratch. It’s a long process that begins with boiling a chicken carcass into broth. My daughter named it “Mama’s famous chicken soup” way back when a butcher in California used to gift me with chicken carcasses whenever I came around his shop. I set aside a wishbone for my collection. I keep several wishbones in a little teapot. I realize it’s kind of witchy but it makes me feel lucky.

    Deogracias. Thank You, God.

    Love, Lust, & Liberty,

    May Ling Su signature

  • I love you.

    I love you.

    If you are here, you are part of a strange and loving community. I am grateful that you confide in me. This is a safe place. You are accepted just the way you are. Even if you’ve never commented, I want you to know that I count myself lucky to have you. You have saved me.

    You may already know that last week, my dear friend died unexpectedly. Gina brought so much life to everyone she touched – always so present and generous. She wore herself out giving. She believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. I can’t keep living and not give as much of myself as she believed I can. I will be the best version of myself I can be, but I will also forgive myself for not being perfect. I hope you’ll join me.

    Take every opportunity to be kind and generous, even if it’s just a compliment, a smile, or a facebook “like.” Tell people you love them. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Laugh out loud. Play music. Dance. Make love. That includes making love to yourself. Yes, that’s love, too.

    I’ve been working on Book 3 of the Lilith series for a long time, struggling with the Impostor Syndrome way longer than I should have. Lilith: Beyond the Deluge is now available on Amazon Kindle. I hope you enjoy it. I would truly appreciate it if you leave me a review.

    If you haven’t yet, check out Book 1, Lilith: Queen of the Demons and Book 2, Lilith: Generations of Cain. They are available as paperbacks, kindle downloads, and audiobooks at Amazon.

    Love, Lust, & Liberty,
    May Ling Su

  • My Friend For Life, Gina

    My Friend For Life, Gina

    I went to an all-girls nun-run Catholic high school in the Philippines, very strict and narrow-minded. I was a good student but something as trivial as my asymmetric hairstyle got their nunnery panties in a bunch. What made high school life worth living was Gina. She and I connected on an artistic and literary level. She was a huge The Cure fan, so I drew her a portrait of Robert Smith. She wrote me a fantasy article for Town & Country magazine, in which I am a fabulous art curator and married to Johnny Depp. We talked endlessly about ideas for stories we wanted to write someday and we talked about sex. Sure, we had no experience whatsoever, but we were teenagers. Sex was an obsession.

    In college she went to UP and I went to Ateneo. She partied hard with her sorority sisters. I got sucked into music and theatre. She invited me to an Upsilon event once. I felt out of place. Our paths divided for the time being.

    She tracked me down in the mid-90s when I was in New York. I was performing Off and Off-Off-Broadway. She was a young single mom, making it as a writer and editor in Manila. She found out I made my own body products so she asked me to write an article for her fledgling magazine, Earthian. It was granola and green long before it was a thing. I accepted. It was my first published piece.

    In the mid-2000s she discovered an obscure anonymous blog I was writing about my pregnancy and home birth. She asked if she could publish it on Working Mom magazine. How could I say no to celebrating my infant’s birth on the pages of a glossy magazine? Gina made me feel like a celebrity.

    When she found out about my porn, she stayed on my side all the way. She defended me against attacks behind my back from people we went to high school with and if you knew her, you’d know she unleashed a fury on anyone who crossed her or her loved ones. I flew to San Diego to catch up with her when she visited in 2010. We were regulars at her pub, Fred’s Revolucion in Cubao X in 2012. A few years later, she and her family were guests in our old farmhouse in Maine. We shared stories, beer, and laughter indoors while our kids ages 11 and 12 built a bonfire in the backyard because that’s the kind of parents we were and that’s the kind of kickass kids we raised.

    She roped me in to write for Agam, the book of photos by her husband, photojournalist Jose Enrique Soriano. As executive editor, she included me among 24 contributing writers – accomplished poets, journalists, anthropologists, scientists, and artists from the Philippines. I felt like the black sheep among those luminaries, but Gina was my champion. She believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. She autographed my copy of the book: Will always be your friend, fan, and supporter – living vicariously through your groundbreaking work. Love you.

    Tuesday night I got a message from her husband. Gina was in a coma in St. Luke’s ER. No one saw it coming. He asked for prayers. When an atheist asks an agnostic to pray for a Catholic, you know it’s serious. I prayed. I used all my mental energy to summon her back. “Come back, Gina,” I commented on a recent Facebook post in which she had tagged me. Come back, Gina, I thought constantly day and night. Come back to us. Thursday around 5 in the morning I woke up with a cramp in my chest. It pinched everytime I breathed. My heart literally hurt. I messaged her husband, “Tell me something, anything.”

    She’s gone.

    “She loved you and we were looking forward to visiting again.”

    I had a difficult loud ugly cry by myself until Jay came out of his studio and held me and we cried together. I am so glad he got to know her. I’m glad I have somebody to grieve with and celebrate her life with.

    Gina recently posted a fabulous profile picture across all her social media channels and even more fabulous photos of her and her kids at a kiki ball. Just last weekend her kids thanked her for giving them “a rich uncommon childhood.” She said she won the “lotto of life.” Her latest piece, my favorite yet, the crass and soulful Patricio, was published online on Esquire posthumously. I joked to Jay that it was a memorial-worthy social media presence, one to aspire to. He asked me not to die until my profile pictures got really old and ugly.

    I got out a bottle of beer from the fridge, spilled some in her honor, and drank to my friend. Gina had a sharp wit and a fiery nature. She was a fierce mother and a fierce friend. She burned brilliantly, my friend for life. Gina burned fast, but she burned exceptionally bright.

    Love, Lust, & Liberty,
    May Ling Su