.a basement.

my wonderfully long MLK weekend was spent back home at my parents' house in "the valley"...*aside: well, my house too, i guess...esp since traditions of filipino family rearing (to which my parents hold steadfastly) dictate that i shall be living with them until such a time as i am wed* x) hahaha
...this is pretty much the valley as i know it, as i have known it for the past 23 years...and i like to think that in that time, i've gotten to know it pretty well, having loped around most of the area, from granada hills all the way to universal city and even out to glendale .the north-eastern part of the valley being the only region completely foreign to me....


but no matter familiar a place, or a person, is...no matter how well you think you know something...there's always more underneath. it's like that episode of desperate housewives, where lynette goes into her neighbor's basement and finds that wall...moral of the story: everyone has something in their basement.

jurca's "white diaspora" and davis' "patrolling the third border" kind of cracked open those basement doors. i had never thought about the suburbs in that context before.

something jurca wrote early on in the reading hit home: "the suburb is the exemplary location, not only of middle-class advantages, but of middle-class abasement; moreover, its abasement is a function of its advantages. the material benefits, however 'great,' are...handicaps" (4). i wouldn't call my family privileged, but i would definitely say we are blessed. my parents worked for the "stuff" they didn't have growing up so that they could give it to my brother and me. .and i saw the same pattern in a lot of other families too, especially in high school. don't call me ungrateful, but there's always been this nagging feeling in the back of my head that being handed all of it might have diluted in me some of that gumption my parents had. .my brother is another story. maybe the lack of struggle left a gap in spiritual/emotional development...a gap that we valley kids, in our boredom, filled with all sorts of wayward activities, creating that seedy underbelly of suburbia that shows like the OC and Laguna Beach like to splash on screen these days. .i actually had that idea back when i was in high school: to do a real world-type show about the valley.

so...does that make my generation an abasement of the last? would you even be able to tell if you came to the west side of the valley, where i live? probably not. because we're all at the newly expanded westfield topanga mall buying "stuff" .with daddy's credit card, thank you...yes, guilty as charged *wry smile*. to distract people from what's in the basement...

...growing up, i never really felt that there was any dearth of diversity. .although, in retrospect, there was. nor did i ever observe bureaucratic motions to exclude. .again, hindsight is 20/20, especially now that i think about all those times the valley tried to secede. my own naivety and egocentrism held me in the belief that it was the white kids at school who constituted the different, because they were different from me and my family. .yes...hahaha...i thought filipinos were the majority population and everyone ate lechon, carecare and lumpia at home...silly me...didn't realize the truth until middle school. xP

as for the inner-workings of politics and their effects on social climate, etc....just as far over my head now as it was when i was barely 4 ft. tall. *shrug* .honestly, i'm not the person to ask about social issues...i try to learn and understand much more now, but i'm still at a loss as to why we can't all just get along. but if you spend time in the different corners of the valley, you'll see that we're a very diverse community. granted, everyone sorta sticks to their own...but the way i see it, ethnic clustering is only natural when a country is populated by waves of immigration. to the best of my knowledge, it didn't result in the valley from "the man" turning his bureaucratic wheels to keep property value up. .but then again, i try not to spend a lot of time in calabasas, or thinking about it, if i can help it. all the recreation spaces i frequent are free and available to whomever wants to make the drive. .and i've seen the parks used in all manner of recreation, too...hahaha.

i often wonder if being filipino has sheltered me from experiencing the kind of exclusionary treatment davis talks about. for me, it had the ring of espionage and spygames...secret town meetings to discuss the best way to legally and quietly keep them out, so that no one was the wiser...definitely the kind of stuff you plan in a basement...and ironically, all for the abasement of certain groups. but i never felt it was an issue in the valley i lived in. .and i definitely call myself lucky for it, because i don't know how i would've handled anything like that, especially if directed specifically at me or my people.

in aloft, i think chang-rae lee definitely has the bird's eye view on jurca and davis and their issues...all that...that's what jerry battle is constantly going on about...the question of whether or not suburban life, as it is stereotyped and characterized, is to the benefit or detriment of the people who choose it. he seems to vacillate between the two...and i agree, it's a tough call. *disclaimer: in the interest of getting the whole story first, i'd like to reserve most commentary i have about aloft for after i've read the entire book...i am currently battling through chapter 9.

previous to this class, i had my thoughts about living "in the middle of white suburbia" as i used to say in high school. i mostly thought it was a whole lot of boring: the same people, the same places, the same routine...all the same. yes, we valley people are superficial and materialistic, but some of us know it, have a good sense of humor about the whole thing, and try to be better. i can pick out the trends that jurca and davis discuss, if i have to...but while the sense of we have 'houses', but no 'homes' seems almost right .i've seen it with almost all my friends, but haven't experienced it first hand., the rest just doesn't seem to apply to the valley as i know it, on the surface...but perhaps it's all a matter of interpretation, maybe i need to fling the doors to the basement wide open and actually go inside. i'm faced with a certain context and maybe i'm just trying unsuccessfully to make things fit.......that neighbor whose house lynette let herself into was a swim coach. maybe she got the message wrong.

someone tell me if i got the message wrong............someone (*cough* prof tongson *cough*) tell me if i've babbled on and on about nothing and need to have more focus next week...

*aside: how is it that blogs lend themselves so easily to rambling?