Author: Roel Concepcion

Literary citizen. L.A. native. Writer and explorer.

Notes

Camp Crame

Post author By Roel Concepcion
Post date January 25, 2026

“In the hours just before Martial Law was officially announced on the evening of September 23, 1972, the Camp Crame Gymnasium became the site where the first hundred or so political prisoners – those caught from a list of about 400 journalists, educators, politicians, and others on a list of “National List of Target Personalities” who were labeled “subversives” because they had openly criticized Ferdinand Marcos – were brought before they were moved to other facilities such as Fort Magsaysay in Laur, Nueva Ecija or the various detention centers in Fort Bonifacio.”

— Wikipedia

I will forever remember — for those who lived through it and died because of it — what the Marcos regime did to the Philippines.

Notes

Disorientation for the Viewer

Post author By Roel Concepcion
Post date January 25, 2026
No Comments on Disorientation for the Viewer

It’s days like these — when murders have become fully sanctioned and sponsored — that call for the dutch angle.

Vignettes

Pistachio Shells in the Urinal

Post author By Roel Concepcion
Post date January 24, 2026
No Comments on Pistachio Shells in the Urinal

I’m inside the men’s restroom at Stearns. The city fixed the lights inside so everything was now visible. The mortar between the whitewashed bricks. The bright tile, the green accents, all dealing with the smell of piss from men and boys who don’t hydrate enough. Now I can spot the grading on the floor, where the piss dips and channels. I’m wearing my oldest pair of sneakers, and I decided to step tippy toe between the piss streams. I look inside the stainless steel urinal, shaped like a trough for tiny ponies, and I find pistachio shells.

Notes

Carson 90745

The other day, life brought me to my original stomping grounds of Carson, California, 90745 if you nasty. Hungry, I took my grumbling stomach to Tita Celia’s for a plate of tapa and eggs. We used to live right across the street from their original location. Saw that they were selling pickled mangoes so I had to pick those up. Then I finally paid a visit to Teofilo Coffee where they only use harvested beans from the Philippines. I ordered a double shot iced americano for a proper introduction to my ancestral kape. It was all perfect for the soul.

Carson, I thought I knew you.

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Lola Amour

Welcome to the rotation.

Notes

W.B. Yeats

A Dialogue of Self and Soul

By William Butler Yeats

It’s beautiful. Read it aloud — but only at a whisper.

Notes

What If

What if the future you came back in time and told you that what you’re doing is exactly how you should do it, and that what you’re creating is exactly how you should create it to get to the place you want to go?

Throw away your doubts and keep moving forward.

L.A. Music Notes

The Prolific One

“Define who you are and what you are, and be clear on that. Meditate on that and then, live and die by that…”
— Nipsey Hussle

I cried for Nipsey the other day, having finally listened to the Victory Lap album.

I was mesmerized by his voice and saddened that I will never hear it again outside of this capacity — in songs and interviews.

And I was reminded of the deaths of my favorite rappers, having grown up in the ’90s, exposed from the jump to the rise of rap and hip-hop and subsequent fall of some of the pioneers that paved the way for MCs like Nip.

So I broke down listening to “Last Time I Checc’d” and wished I could’ve lent my ears to his message a little earlier, when he was still alive.