| This Pretend Life |
[Dec. 27th, 2008|10:25 am] |
I have an hour and change to drive to pick up some ingredients so I can make a fine pot of curry for this evening, and while I procrastinated, sitting bundled in my bed not wanting to go out in the cold, I started to drift down memory lane. Internet memory lane.
I went back to a bunch of the old websites and places that I used to frequent when I was younger. Many of them were just as I left them, stagnant and looking like a website from the nineties.
There was one particular poster who I admired greatly. I loved her writing, and her cheery disposition. She was a handful of years older than me at the time, about the age I am now, and I remember thinking of her and being glad that her life was a life that I could have for myself. That one day I would stop this childish and stilted life I was living in junior high and be able to be the kind of person I want to be.
I found that she still writes, and even maintains a livejournal. Her love for the wrinkled details of the world is still there, but she writes with the restraint of someone who loves and has spent time honing the craft. She's married and living in a different country. She has children and dogs, and a husband she calls twiggy.
In some ways I am in the same kind of place she was when I first read and admired her words, and while this life feels real in the way that I am glad to be doing the things I am doing, I feel for the first time in my life the oppression of time. I am afraid that I am not moving towards the things I want the most fast enough and that, while I do not look away from sacrifice, I fear I do not have the courage to disappoint those around me by moving on.
I wish that I could ask her if she feels the same way, or if she felt this way when she was my age. I want to tell her that she gave me hope that growing up didn't mean growing out of your dreams, but living up to them and bringing them into the world. I want to ask if she remembers me, and that she please don't.
But I won't. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 20th, 2008|11:14 pm] |
Things that suck about work:
The computer I use has the only delete key on the keyboard right next to the arrow keys. I come home and try to ctrl my files to death over and over again.
Things that are great about work:
There is a wonderful woman across the way who makes us milk tea. When there is a milky skin on the top of my tea, I blow on it and the series of ripples make it look like a rose.
Note: These things are [sadly] not the suckiest or [thankfully] the greatest things about my job. |
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| Is this it? |
[Jul. 13th, 2008|07:56 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  bemused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Tommy Wallach - Room in your Heart | ] |
I realize it has been a long while since I have actually used this blog to talk about how I'm doing, rather then mention the fanciful details of the mind.
But, it occurs to me that there are some people, some silent people, who read this thing and wonder, because I know I certainly wonder about everyone else, even if I don't have the willfulness to ask. So, this is now
I was not admitted to grad school. I wanted to talk more about it, but between then and now has been a steep and hurried incline, where many of those who are very important have been left along the way.
The first thing I did when I got my last rejection, oddly enough, was to quit my job. I was working a temp job as a legal assistant for a permanent makeup company, and had been invited to come on board once my contract was up. Though it paid well enough and offered some legal connection in LA for the future, the permanent makeup crowd was an interesting mixture of the vain and the lazy and, when my gradschool dreams were squelched, I knew I had to move on.
A friend offered me a job working as an editor for a Buddhist publishing company - and I took it excitedly. Afterwards, the job has been mildly problematic: having my religious and secular lives so fettered together has been strange and, at times, disheartening. I've become increasingly aware of the unsavory proclivities of the particular organization I'm working for. I also ended up doing much more than editing, which at first I lamented, but in the end it will probably prove to be a good experience. I can't think of another situation where I would have the freedom to learn advertising, accounting, typesetting, production, and a bevy of other skills that I somehow end up being the most qualified person at the company to tackle just because of my willingness to try.
That aside, the work is good - my first few books come out in September, though they are revisions of old titles. I'm currently working on a manuscript which is a collection of stories from the Buddha's life. I've done substantial editing, restructured and retitled the stories from the Chinese, am writing footnotes and a glossary, and will hopefully get to write the introduction. I look forward to being able to hold this book in my hands, though it is likely that it will not carry my name.
When folks ask me if I am going to reapply for grad school, and they certainly do, I don't know what to say exactly. The obvious answer is, "No, not right now," though the fact that people keep asking makes it seem like a less obvious answer. I feel that, though I have changed as a person, I have not significantly changed as a candidate to warrant another go, and if I could indeed squeak by because of former stringent admissions boards or tweaking my application, what then would be the point?
Steve Martin, sage that he is, said the secret to success is to be undeniably good - and I can undeniably be better than I am.
I need to get a few publishing credits. I need to enhance my language skills. I need to see the world (I'm sure a year in the Peace Corps would be just right for me).
So much change needs to happen in my life, and I have no many pans, that sometimes it hurts to see it all unfurl in fractions and inches. The question I keep asking myself, as day bleeds into day: "Is this it?"
I keep trying to make room for freedom, to be able to drop everything and wash dishes in Australia for a year, because, after all, why not, but I feel my responsibilities at the temples I help out at and with the ones I love numbly mumble, "Stay, stay."
Sometimes I wish I could want to stay, but I still have so far to go, and so long to get there. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 22nd, 2008|10:46 pm] |
George Carlin has died.
This has bummed me out way, way more than I thought it would- which is a pitiable thing since I am working on a deadline.
One of the things that kind of bothers me is that all of the stories about his death talk about the things he did in the 70's - his list of seven words you can't say on Television. This is the George Carlin I remember:
When asked about the lamentable case of America and Human kind, he always said that he was "just here for the show," and observer to watch and think as things unfold before him.
I hope you enjoyed the show, George. We enjoyed you. |
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| On Hearing for the Very First Time |
[Jun. 7th, 2008|07:39 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  curious | ] |
| [ | music |
| | David Simpson's cover of REM's "At My Most Beautiful" | ] |
When I listen to music, I often don't hear the lyrics - I miss the content of the words and instead only perceive the rising and falling melody of the human voice. Then I listen to the song more and slowly start to hear the words and finally, the meaning. When I ultimately get at what a song is saying, it is a very powerful experience for me because it is something that has been familiar to me for so long suddenly bursting forth with strange revelations.
Then my first instinct is to go, "Yes! Yes! I must show this to another!"
So I find the closest wonderful person and play the song for them with expectant eyes and an open mouth, and nothing happens.
I think that this is true in so many ways. Thoughts take time, and it is the time that is built behind them that give them dimension.
Perhaps I need to find a new way of sharing. A way of sharing myself and my life that invites others not to listen to the bombastic finale, but to hear something for the very first time.
[PS: For those interested in the inspiration, please listen to REM's "At My Most Beautiful" - for the very first time =) ] |
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| And then I poured my water on her food. |
[May. 29th, 2008|10:35 pm] |
Dear Folkses with the Mostes -
I have a great many things to tell you- I have been so busy, and most of my writing has been going towards another project which I hope to share with you soon. But, for now, please answer me this:
Am I the only person who thinks this is the funniest story ever?
Why does no one I show this to seem to think it is as funny as I do? |
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| Some Haiku for you |
[Apr. 29th, 2008|05:16 am] |
Cats having loud sex -
Moans, then thumps against my wall.
Five AM. I wake.
Edit: And then, as grogginess turned to alertness...
Five AM morning,
You gave me hot chai tea, spiced,
and twittering birds. |
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| Random Deadline Inspired Food Rant |
[Apr. 19th, 2008|05:30 pm] |
Currently, I'm working on a deadline and procrastinating in a major way, which means that it is the perfect time to share horrible stories of things which are horrendous.
The other day I had an inkling for some french'd fries, and while I was in the Carl's Jr. drive-thru I saw the most chilling new product imaginable:
A Captain Crunch Flavored Milkshake. Yes, the cereal.
As many of you are aware, Captain Crunch is made of three things:- Corn
- Sugar
- Pain (Also known as 'Crunch')
This is a corn flavored milkshake! It is very possible that this dubious brew is constructed out of the vagabond Captain Crunch dust at the bottom of a box of cereal mixed with ice cream and milk.
Admittedly, horchata and rice milk have proved that non-fermented grain beverages can be mighty tasty, but not like this. Not like this. |
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| My Grandfather's Wizard Hat |
[Apr. 7th, 2008|12:39 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | cheerful | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Tea Leaf Green - Jackson Hole | ] |
I've been spending a lot of time with my grandfather lately, as he has been helping me repair my poor, broken vehicle which is becoming less broken and impoverished by each weekend. And I continue to learn new things about him and marvel at how lucky I am to have been born his grandson.
I've written about my grandfather before, but things like that are just the beginning. In fact, I'm a little ashamed of that entry from two years ago, as the voice sounds so different from what I hear in my own mind now, and the worries seem so strange and far away.
My grandfather is a printer - specifically he works something called a Linotype machine. They aren't used much anymore, but Linotype machines are what sets the type and makes the plates that are used in printing presses. A Linotype machine looks a bit like a keyboard, but with tons of additional characters and formatting keys, along with all kinds of crazy levers and switches to control the typesetting. My grandfather took typing as an elective in highschool, and failed out of the class. Later, after becoming a Linotype operator he ran into his old typing teacher and told him, "The trouble with typing was that there weren't enough keys for me."
My grandfather's screen name is "Wizard," with his anniversary appended at the end of it. Also, his business cards say list his occupation as "Wizard." This is because my mother and her brothers thought that when he was working the Linotype machine at the incredible rate at which he worked, hitting keys and throwing levers, he looked like the Wizard from the Wizard of Oz [click for a YouTube video for those who haven't seen the film in ages or ever].
I can't think of a more fitting moniker for a man who has touched my life so deeply with his gentleness, his good nature, and his ever curious mind. The other day, I got into a silly discussion with some friends of mine about what the greatest kind of magic was [ninja magic versus the magic of high fantasy]. I now have my very true and cheesily sentimental answer: the magic my grandfather has had to transform my life and all those around him.
. . .
One more moment for the road: When I was in elementary school I had an assignment to interview someone, and I chose my grandpa. One of the questions I had to ask was what the motto of the person I was interviewing was.
My grandfather told me, "Don't think forward or backward. Think sideways." |
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| The Time Contained in Learning to Breath |
[Apr. 2nd, 2008|10:22 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  grateful | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Tea Leaf Green - Flippin the Bird | ] |
[I realized recently that my e-mail hasn't been going out - and I've been writing a lot of e-mail recently. Please allow late, rectified messages in the next few days!]
Recently I started doing a bit of yoga again, and while my pitifully inelegant downward dog reminds me of the passage of time, I have other more prominent yoga memories.
Yoga was the last class I took at my community college - in order to get an associates degree and not just transfer to a university, students were required to take public speaking and a physical education class on top of the normal transfer requirements. While I already knew I was heading to UCLA, in case things didn't work out I decided I might as well get the associates degree anyway. So, on Tuesdays and Thursdays I talked gleefully about social relativism, and on the other days of the week I did yoga.
I was terrible at yoga. I've never been very fit, and even at my most fit, not very flexible. After my first session my whole body was sore for a week. Though I was never very good at yoga, I enjoyed it very much. As I wobbled and turned red - I dreamed of that perfect tree pose that you see on so many publications.
Like I imagine most instructors do, my Yoga teacher told me that the most important part of yoga was to breath correctly. And, like I imagine most students do, I thought this was the stupidest concept ever. The most important part of yoga was being one of those sixty year old women who can, despite her age, stick both feet behind her head and make them clap. And anyway, even though one might build up to having nice breathing, a yoga newbie is having a tough time, and from that effort, labored breathing. How can you expect relaxed breathing from a beginner?
Then, when I started doing yoga again about a month ago I breathed into a stretch for the first time, and it was the most important thing to yoga just as it is the most important thing to life.
I re-read over my old entries earlier this week since I decided to publish my blog somewhere else, and I wanted to make sure I didn't write anything truly scandalous. I realized a lot of attempts to reflect over that most important period of my life in a variety of ways, but I can say, now, that two years of university, dharma, meditation, being alone and being fascinated have taught me how to breath.
And, aside from those two years, I don't know if I could have learned it any other way. |
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| The Sims, and the heirarchy of analysis |
[Mar. 28th, 2008|07:54 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Tea Leaf Green - Borrowed Time | ] |
This entry is mostly inspired by the latest episode of Retronauts. Retronauts, for the uninitiated, is the best gosh darn podcast about old video games around. It is consistently excellent and showcases a considered look at things which are not often considered.
This episode deals with the Sim games, SimCity and The Sims mostly. Within the episode they discussed the different ways that people approach playing open games with no set objectives, and it made me remember some of my own experiences and consider the further implications.
The Sims, for the three people who are not aware of the series at this point, is a game where you control a user-generated household. You guide your household of one or more simulated people through their everyday lives, tending to their mathematically calculated needs like "comfort," "happiness," and "hunger." These needs can be met through buying and using various objects, socializing with other game characters, and working your SimJob. The game offers a system of the interactions for the different needs and how they work together (for example, working gives your Sims money to buy new things, but makes your characters tired) but no discreet goals.
Like most open situations, people structure their own goals and try to fulfill them. I noticed that my own play followed a definitive pattern that I saw repeated in a lot of other's play, and it goes something like this:
- Try to play the game 'correctly' by making a full house and trying to expand to make your Sims learn new things and consistently meet their needs. This involves a lot of tedium, being a simulation of life, and requires putting in a lot of time working and managing your resources in order to accomplish the things you want. Eventually, this gets boring as it mirrors too closely the tedium that can all too common take hold of actual life, which leads the player to...
- Create the most ideal home / Sim life through cheating. This is when the player gets tired of looking at all of the neat things that can fill the game and uses the free money code to build an ideal living arrangement for the virtual people in the world, designing houses from the ground up. Once the perfect house has been created, this can commonly fall back into the first kind of play with the Sims operating in this perfectly idealized game environment. However, much of the challenge has now been removed, so play eventually turns into...
- Griefing your characters and stretching the boundaries of the game's system. Players want to know the inner workings of the game, and discover this by abusing the rules of the game system, not through cheating but by trying to ram things together in ways in which they were not designed to work to see how they work if they work at all. What happens if I have my characters lie, cheat, and steal from each other? What happens if I don't call the fire department when there is a fire? Satisfaction, in this late stage of the game, comes both from doing unconventional things and having them react in predictable ways ("Wow, the designers thought of that") as well as doing unconventional things and having them not react predictably at all ("Wow, I thought of something the designers did not!").
What I found interesting when I thought about the phases of playing The Sims is that it mirrors the way we, or at least I, try to understand things in general.
- Try to understand something as it is presented.
- Try to understand all possible elements involved in something.
- Try to understand all elements which are not part of something, or what is lacking.
<Literature Nerd>
Thinking in the vein of literary criticism, the method of analysis I most enjoy is to first tackle a text as I am reading it, trusting the reading experience itself and the elements that arise through going through a text progressively. Next I put on my New Criticism hat and examine the interactions of words and mechanics within the text, and finally consider how the text is accountable to ideas outside of itself, and in what ways it must answer to these ideas.
</Literature Nerd>
As I turned over this kind of silly idea in my head, I kept coming back to all of the different areas that this progression applied to for me.
So, have I hit upon a great human truism, or am I just a weirdo? Or both and neither? |
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| The penultimate chapter |
[Mar. 19th, 2008|02:28 pm] |
Terrible Limericks Written About Rejection
[Parts Three and Four of the ongoing mocku-mania of my graduate school applications]
III.
From University of California SD,
Which I've heard's a free society,
Were words of derision
Which masked a suspicion
That I was reading from form letter three.
IV.
Rejection from Duke was quite swell
Written with whispers instead of a yell:
"Your app was delightful,
Ideas insightful,
Now peacefully do go to hell."
- - -
I think the second line of the first limerick needs a bit of clarification. When I was deciding where to go for my undergraduate work, I had been admitted to UCSD. A good friend of mine, to convince me to go, weaved a delightful mythology where La Jolla could more accurately be called El Dorado. The university was an entirely free society where knowledge and understanding reigned supreme. All resources were pooled together and freely offered to all, who humbly took only what was needed. The beautiful people of this gentle land lived out their days in quiet enjoyment, singing songs of friendship and merriment together amid the swirling beachy air.
I ended up going elsewhere, but part of me has always longed to sing those campfire songs. That, and they had a really great comparative literature program with a few nutty professors who did exactly the kinds of things I am interested in. I am very disappointed, more than any of the others, to not be able to go. |
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| This one is about San Francisco |
[Mar. 9th, 2008|11:11 pm] |
Terrible Limericks Written About Rejection
[Part two in the ongoing disappointment of graduate school]
When John ventured north to the bay,
[and was rejected one week to the day]
He should have paused to refill
his automobile--
It was amazing he got out okay!
The above terrible limerick is nominally about getting rejected from UC Berkeley. I think it does a really awful job of conveying that, but that this job is just awful eough to loop back around the other way to awesome, as I am attempting to do with these things in my own mind.
But the limerick, and this post, is much more state-of-the-nation. I realize that, through some strange alchemical process, I have wound up with the most normalish nine-to-fiver job of anyone I know, and it tires me out endlessly on top of my other responsibilities. I try very hard to cultivate friendships where the person who I am spending time with can feel in full confidence at that moment that they are the most important person in the world to me. I think I've been lacking in this department a lot lately, just because so much of my time has been spent trying to keep several spinning plates turning.
So, please forgive me, but this is one of those "I will tell this story to everyone once" kind of posts.
Last weekend I took a trip to San Francisco. I had an incredible time catching up with old friends, making new ones, and going to one of the greatest concerts ever. There are many stories, and I will gladly tell them all if you ask, but this is a story about the trip back.
Going up the grapevine back into Los Angeles my car started to overheat, and though I tried to pull off into the nearest rest area it was too late. My car died completely, just as I was pulling in to park. I tried adding water and waiting and a whole manner of things, but nothing could get my car to start. I was towed ninety five miles back home by a kind driver named Leonard, and we talked about pets and families and barbecue.
The whole situation left me feeling rather blessed. My car is old, and I knew that, eventually, I would drive it until it died or turned into a puff of smoke and was carried off on the wind. I can see so many ways in which all these things could have been worse. I could ahve cut out on the road - cut out and gotten hit - gotten hit and DIED! But instead my car halted in very safe place exactly within the bounds of how far AAA was willing to tow me.
Getting back very late, my Mom took me car in while I was at work the next day. The dealership said that it had extensive internal damage, and that we would need to purchase a new engine which would be worth five times as much as the car. After the requisite moment of despair my Uncle and Grandfather leapt into action, calling "Shenanigans" upon the dealers and wanting to get their own look at my engine. They came over to look and, while playing with the distributor, got my engine to start.
Never trust the dealership, boys and girls.
The story, as we are guessing it to be now, was that my car was overheating slightly up through the quite treacherous mountains. This stress caused my timing belt to jump a tooth, which only made the overheating worse. This overheating eventually warped my aluminum engine. My Uncle predicts that the piston heads are warped, and they can be re-machined for a couple hundred dollars.
And that, my friends, is where things are. However, fret not, `for they are getting better every day in ways both related and unrelated which I will be able to tell you all about soon in another such post or, much more happily, to each individual with all the warm hugs, laughter, and togetherness that you each so richly deserve. |
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| So, about grad school... |
[Feb. 13th, 2008|08:13 pm] |
Terrible Limericks Written About Rejection
[part one of let us hope not too many]
This day I heard from Washington
That my application was no fun.
The news wasn't that drastic,
`Twas quite unfantastic--
I guess this can just be the first one. |
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| Our voices sound better together |
[Feb. 5th, 2008|01:56 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | amused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Tea Leaf Green - Packing Up | ] |
I have so many things I want to say, and so many blog type things that I have been working on, but my writing is just stuck in a slump that doesn't want to go anywhere. So let me share something small, and hopefully it can be a wonderful thing.
I've been running around town most nights these days, trying to become a better shape than potato shaped. Happily, this is not a new years resolution - its something that I've been doing for a couple months which hopefully means that it can become a part of my life. I have even upgraded to a little iPod, something I never thought I would do. Typically I would listen and walk or run and feel the sharp wintery wind gnaw with violin staccato at my arms. A week or so ago I was walking up a hill and the music was building to a beautiful crescendo, exploding as my legs took off at top speed.
...and the earbuds came flying out of my ears. First the right, then the left then, as I made attempts to repair each of them, both at once until I was running down a hill cloppity clopping with my arms wrapped around my head holding the last beautiful moments of the song inside my mind. Eventually I gave up, wrapped the iPod in a secure position, and got back to running.
Earphones never fit my ears quite right. My ears are shaped funny-haha. There is a picture of me - I'm about nine years old, my hair is short and boyish and I have distinctly elfin ears poking from each side of my face. I still think that my ears look odd in an undefinable way, and that this is evinced by the fact that they can contain no earbuds constructed for normal humans.
I remember a time, walking down Bruin Walk, before I was a student and before I knew its name, that a friend handed me one of her earbuds from her mp3 player to share the song she was listening to. Knowing it would be fraught with errors, but wanting so much to accept this gift I held it in my ear with my finger. Bending for my fellow traveller who was slightly shorter, I had to concentrate on holding in the earbud and matching the pace. If I let go, if I let the music smooth and lift my soul, I would lose the connection.
So I held it in, wanting to want to share the moment rather than getting to have it. And I do think there is so much of that wrapped up in so many things. |
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| Belated New Years Post |
[Jan. 8th, 2008|01:12 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Tea Leaf Green - I Try So Hard | ] |
I was going to post this on New Year's Day, when I wrote it. Then some other things came up, and I actually lost the file somehow! I just found it by looking through some old e-mail draft files. I like it even though it has a somber spiritual tone - I wanted to add some levity but couldn't find a way. Instead, let me just say this: in two thousand aught eight I want to leave California for some reason or another. Also, I want to plant and grow some vegetables - probably cucumbers.
I just looked through my archive and it seems that I write a post on New Year's day exactly every other year. This makes me think that each year, like clockwork, I consider doing it and look back to see what I wrote the year before - only to be embarrassed if I actually did write anything or wistfully disappointed and then subsequently motivated to write if I didn't.
If I had to guess at what I am going to remember about this year in the time to come, I'd say that this was the year I got my bachelor's degree. It was the year I started teaching and counseling kids at a Chinese Buddhist temple. It was also the year I lost my Uncle who I knew too little but have grown to admire to gun-packing taggers. It has been a big one.
But instead of guessing, if I could choose what I would remember, and perhaps through this very act I can, I would remember how I had slept through the last final of my last quarter in college because I had stayed up the night before baking Amish Friendship Bread and delivering them like care packages across campus with my roommates. I would like to remember that as, for all of its repercussions, one of the greatest nights of my life, and one of the times that I marvel at the fortune that brought me together with my roommates and fellow bakers - some of my favorite people who changed me in ways I will never be able to thank them for.
I would like to remember all the madness and running about leading up to the day of graduation, how tired and sick I felt, sitting with dear friends and getting my pretend-diploma, driving all the way back to my home town and collapsing on the floor, realizing I have had a one hundred and ten degree fever for the whole of it, and then, instead of going to a celebratory graduation dinner with my family, crawling in bed to sleep off my pounding headache and physical weakness.
I want to recall what it was like to not be able to sleep at night, sitting on the floor of the old monk's quarters, worrying that if a weekend being a summer camp counselor had worn so very much on my patience if I would ever be able to be a parent. I would like to remember the confusion and relief when my pack of twenty or so kids, who had given me a hard time every step of the way, kicking and screaming and complaining, all thanked and hugged me on the last day, some sad to leave.
I want to remember walking away from the University Buddhist Association, after a long year of doubt, and being confident in the people whom I had the blessing of being able to give it to. I want to remember giving my prayer beads away to one such friend whom, for all the feelings and recklessness that went into such a silly gesture, made me the most hopeful, if not the most happy, person I have been.
Hope.
Happy New Year everyone. |
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| The Saffron Revolution |
[Sep. 27th, 2007|11:52 pm] |
As some of you may know, though many of you probably do not, as I am typing this the country of Burma is undergoing a crisis. Burma has been ruled by a brutal military dictatorship for over forty years, a regime that crushes all that opposes it killing over 3,000 protestors in the seminal pro-democracy rallies of April 18th 1988.
Recently peaceful protestors have begun to gather again in Burma's major cities galvanized by a 500% mark-up in fuel prices and led by the nation's many Buddhist monks. With the support of the monks the marches grew even visiting Burma's democratically elected Prime Minister, Aung San Suu Kyi, that has been under house arrest by the military.
Yesterday, September 26th, a curfew was imposed and violence began. Thirteen people are confirmed to have been killed by the military, including three monks and a Japanese journalist covering the story. Protests continue, but hundreds of protestors have been beaten and arrested, including hundreds of monks who have been arrested from within their monasteries.
If this is the first you've heard about it, please learn more. Talk about it with your friends and family. Spread the word. Get involved. If you pray, please do that. If you are a Buddhist, please share your blessings with the monks and families effected by the violence. If you are a living being with a compassionate heart, please do what you can and hope for peace. |
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| Honey, don't you worry, its just Rock and Roll |
[Sep. 24th, 2007|11:11 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | long green coat | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Tea Leef Green - Carter Hotel | ] |
Last week the sky and the wind and the rain reminded me of San Francisco. It was jacket weather. I wrapped myself in the long green coat my brother had given me and went about my business. The only clothes that fit just right are the clothes that are just too big enough so you can wrap them around and feel them fold over themselves. So your hands can retreat up the sleeves and fingers can curl around cuffs.
A couple days ago I was walking down the street from the Oral Surgeon, in my long green coat, carrying a neatly packed and double bagged take out container filled with Pho from a restaurant in Chinatown that was guaranteed delicious when down my the intersection a group of kids started fighting. Two of the three started pushing each other, it could have been a bit of youthful roughhousing, then one kid shoved the other into a brick wall. The opposite kid lifted his leg to kick his opponent, this leg was then grabbed and the kicking child pushed to the ground.
I was dumbfounded, but had become convinced, with the kid pushed to the ground near rushing cars, that I had to do something, and I started to increase my pace towards the group. The one who fell dropped a yellow folder, which the third kid picked up and started to run away with towards me with. Just as I was about to open my mouth, the running kid stopped, turned around and walked back to the two who were fighting. The combatant who was still standing gave his hand to the fellow on the floor and lifted him up. The third gave the folder back to the second, and they walked again as a group, with big smiles in my direction.
Huh?
They talked and laughed, and passed me. I stood still for a moment, and then turned half expecting the beating to have begun again, but the three continued walking. I continued walking home, dropped off my food, and went out the door again to return to my friend who was in surgery.
There was a time when kids played in the street and fought and tumbled and, bit by bit, it was not safe outside to run and play. "Those people are different," they said, and different was unsafe. Children came inside, and soon paranoia became reality when no one was around to help if something really did happen to be wrong.
I never fought in the street, or played and ran about, rode my bike and knew the kids in the neighborhood. Now, when I walk outside and the only voices I hear are shouts behind closed doors and the only faces I see are people stepping out for a smoke I wonder if keeping kids safe is the same as telling them not to fight. |
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| How to cheat through an entry by being meta. |
[Aug. 31st, 2007|03:24 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  worried | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Tea Leaf Green at the Malibu Inn. What a Night. | ] |
Years ago, when I couldn't write I would get up from my desk, walk down the
hall, and pour myself a cup of water, drink the contents, and then walk back
to my room to begin writing. There was something about the slight engagement
of the body and the refreshing coolness down the throat that could engage my
mind. Later, when I would stare at a blank screen for long patches of time I
would think to myself that, if only I had a hallway, everything would be
better.
I'm sure I knew those thoughts were silly even at the time - but I've moved
back home for a bit, I once again have a long hallway, but its still
difficult to write because I feel like there is much to say. I want to talk
about what its like to be done with college. About the satisfaction of
completion but the sadness of the realization that development seemed to be
much more a function of time than effort, and that I am sure with more time
to dedicate myself I could continue to grow.
I want to talk about what it was like to move out of my Apartment in Los
Angeles. About trying to push a table into my car and, with tired arms and a
spent back rotating it until the marble top split on the ground. About
walking back to a couple of louts smoking under a smoke alarm, and how it
didn't matter because I was sure that the manager did not restock the
batteries. I want to let you know what it was like to lay on the floor and
stare at the ceiling acoustics which had been there every day for months but
that, until now I had not given the time to see the shapes contained within.
[Sidenote: For the first time ever, the e-mail program that I type these things in crashed - but when I started it up again all prepared to get out of writing a meaningful entry and instead write about how technology gobbled up my thoughts and forgot them, IT WAS RETAINED. I love you KDE Developers!]
I want to talk to you, and tell you about how it feels to have the whole world in front of you, and to have always believed that your life has been governed by coincidence and the kindness of others, and to be afraid that this theory is going to be tested. I'd like to be able to not know how I feel but discover it in conversation. I would like to be able to ask permission to percolate and think with you.
And though I keep typing and deleting this because I am afraid it will sound too weird, I know that I keep coming back because its important. I want you to know that I am not the same. That, now, when I lay my head down to bow, I give everything. |
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fulgorethemad's journal