Okay, one more post before I get back to work.
Do you ever hear Chinese-American writers use a lot of Chinese in the things that they write? Probably not, right? Why do Spanish speaking writers always feel the need to write things in Spanish? Does it make it more authentic? It sounds pretentious to me. Especially when they don't translate in the text. I was listening to some short stories written by some Latina women last night on NPR, and nearly all of them felt the need to be all authentic and write random words in Spanish, when English would have been perfectly acceptable. It's formulaic! It's not just Spanish speakers. I went to a show where some random semi-popular Samoan girls were reading their poetry and doing the same thing. After a while it got annoying. Japanese writers don't do that. In an Ethnic Lit class I took at Cal, the Indian writer didn't do it, the Native writer didn't do it, the Chinese writer didn't do it, but the Mexican one did. It's like a prerequisite! I can do it too. Here:
I sat down with Obaachan at the kitchen table.
Rice powder gracing the stained wood grain.
I put the picture in my pocket.
Nani sore, musuko?
Nothing, Obaachan, I say
Sou desu ka.
Yes, Obaachan, I say
Atashi wa...
Obaachan doesn't finish her sentence.
The deep red maguro and nearly pink toro
Fitted perfectly on the cooked kome, the gohan
She used the chawan and tsugued the rice in the rice-cooker
Nee...
I pay no answer
Nee, musuko. Ano hito... Dare kashira?
I don't know how to respond.
Linguistically, intellectually, emotionally
Ano hito wa... anata no... ne?
She doesn't know how to ask the question. I don't know how to answer.
Ano hito...
Yes.
Ah. Sou desu ka.
The amaebi, tai, hamachi, all finding their place on the sweetened gohan
Ganbatte ne.
She puts down the sashimi and looks at me over her purple megane
Kono kazoku wa... Gomen nasai.
She bows her head slightly. I don't know why she's apologizing.
Aishiteru, musuko.
I love you too, Obaachan.
She starts in on the saba.
I am puzzled.
My phone rings.
It's him.
See?? It's great, isn't it? BECAUSE YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHAT SHE'S SAYING. It's a stupid device. They use the language like it's a device. So annoying.
Monday
And we're back.
I haven't blogged in 7 months. Not since Grandpa died. Since then, I have moved to LA, got a new job, see very few people that I care deeply about, have lost a little weight, lost another person close to me, moved in with the girlfriend and the cat, and met some interesting people along the way. So, basically, since I last wrote on here, nearly everything changed in my life. Mostly for the better, thankfully.
LA is not so different from the Bay Area. The main differences are of course the weather, the traffic, and the immense geography. It takes so long to travel from any one place to another. And the traffic makes not a lick of sense either. I am glad for the holiday season because no one is going to work, which means my commute is 15 minutes both ways instead of the usual hour.
I haven't written a creative word in months. When I was in the academic setting of Cal, I wrote all the time. Partly to prevent myself from studying, and partly because it was just easier to write when surrounded by creativity. I know I am in the global capitol of the entertainment industry, and I should be in my creative element here, but I'm just not. I haven't been able to write a poem, a story, or (clearly) a blog post since moving down. My life is so far from creative now. I'm a piece of clay that has had the water sucked from it. Even this post lacks a certain beauty that I once had in my writing. It makes me very sad to see this. Perhaps if I write more on here, then I will get some of it back. We shall see how long I can keep this up.
I was looking for a TKD place down here for a few months. No dice. All these places cater to kids, and I'm a little spoiled having trained with adults for 7 years. I would love to train at UCLA, but the hours are a little ridiculous for working professionals like myself, and USC doesn't allow non-students to participate in the program. I went searching for an Aikido place and found two interesting prospects. Once I land a permanent job at SCE, where I am now as a temp, I will definitely invest in a few months of classes to get my chops back up. I really miss AKD. I told the masters at both places that I was only a 4th kyu, which is sort of like saying I'm an intermediate who can roll reasonably well, but can't do much else. It will be sort of exciting to start over again, having beginners mind at a new place to learn from a new master. It will be good martial arts practice for me to empty my cup of all the things I think I know and fill it with things that I do not. That is the true meaning of martial arts practice. The teacher is the student is the teacher.
I have embraced my Buddhist roots a little bit more in the past few months. I have been dealing with a lot of loss, and being able to let those things and people go has been a great unburdening for me. It is freeing to be able to be okay with not having something. Being Buddhist really helped me in all the transitions I have had to do in the past months. I think it may have started up when I was writing my personal statements for USC, which I by the way am not planning to attend. I decided that while my personal statements were artistic and beautifully formed expressions of myself, it was okay to take part of them away and change them completely as needed. Art is a transient experience rather than a solid piece of form. A painting will change in both meaning and actual form from the time it is first created to when it turns to dust. Every stage between is art, and different from the adjacent stages. That does not cheapen the art but deepens it and strengthens it. And then when I had to move back home from Berkeley, i let go of a lot of things. A lot of possessions primarily, but also plans that did not pan out. Realizing that I was where I was in my existence and not before nor after helped me to realize that where I go from here all depends on how I am right now in the moment. One of my Muslim friends said to me "you should just believe in God, Ben." I proceeded to defensively explain my beliefs about what I consider to be "God," which is something similar to The Force in Star Wars. Instead of her telling me something Islam-centric to convert me, she simply said "yeah, sure that's God." In literary theory, it is generally understood that people create art and write to understand and bring themselves closer to what is known as the "sublime." The sublime is considered to be all that which human beings cannot experience themselves. We can climb to the top of a mountain, but we will never know the mountain; we can fly in airplanes but we will never feel what it is like to be a cloud; we can die but no one can know what that feels like or what happens after. Those are all "the sublime." Just like the big lion from Narnia said, "I am known by another name in your world." I think it isn't particularly difficult to reconcile my Buddhist beliefs with my understanding of "the sublime." In Zen Buddhism, the primary practice is to "just sit," where you bring yourself closer to your true self through meditation. What is your "true self?" When you strip away all the things that make you your "false self," all that is left is what the Christians would consider a soul. That is when you, in Buddhism, reach "enlightenment," or "Nirvana." "Heaven." "Jannah." All describe a "place" or state free from suffering and full of joy. Closer to God. Closer to your own divine and true self. It's really all the same. All strive to bring yourself to a level of understanding of yourself, of the world and universe, and all strive to bring you to the end of your worldly sufferings.
I end, as always, with a haiku:
Sitting in silence
What is the mountain? The cloud?
Someday, I will know.
LA is not so different from the Bay Area. The main differences are of course the weather, the traffic, and the immense geography. It takes so long to travel from any one place to another. And the traffic makes not a lick of sense either. I am glad for the holiday season because no one is going to work, which means my commute is 15 minutes both ways instead of the usual hour.
I haven't written a creative word in months. When I was in the academic setting of Cal, I wrote all the time. Partly to prevent myself from studying, and partly because it was just easier to write when surrounded by creativity. I know I am in the global capitol of the entertainment industry, and I should be in my creative element here, but I'm just not. I haven't been able to write a poem, a story, or (clearly) a blog post since moving down. My life is so far from creative now. I'm a piece of clay that has had the water sucked from it. Even this post lacks a certain beauty that I once had in my writing. It makes me very sad to see this. Perhaps if I write more on here, then I will get some of it back. We shall see how long I can keep this up.
I was looking for a TKD place down here for a few months. No dice. All these places cater to kids, and I'm a little spoiled having trained with adults for 7 years. I would love to train at UCLA, but the hours are a little ridiculous for working professionals like myself, and USC doesn't allow non-students to participate in the program. I went searching for an Aikido place and found two interesting prospects. Once I land a permanent job at SCE, where I am now as a temp, I will definitely invest in a few months of classes to get my chops back up. I really miss AKD. I told the masters at both places that I was only a 4th kyu, which is sort of like saying I'm an intermediate who can roll reasonably well, but can't do much else. It will be sort of exciting to start over again, having beginners mind at a new place to learn from a new master. It will be good martial arts practice for me to empty my cup of all the things I think I know and fill it with things that I do not. That is the true meaning of martial arts practice. The teacher is the student is the teacher.
I have embraced my Buddhist roots a little bit more in the past few months. I have been dealing with a lot of loss, and being able to let those things and people go has been a great unburdening for me. It is freeing to be able to be okay with not having something. Being Buddhist really helped me in all the transitions I have had to do in the past months. I think it may have started up when I was writing my personal statements for USC, which I by the way am not planning to attend. I decided that while my personal statements were artistic and beautifully formed expressions of myself, it was okay to take part of them away and change them completely as needed. Art is a transient experience rather than a solid piece of form. A painting will change in both meaning and actual form from the time it is first created to when it turns to dust. Every stage between is art, and different from the adjacent stages. That does not cheapen the art but deepens it and strengthens it. And then when I had to move back home from Berkeley, i let go of a lot of things. A lot of possessions primarily, but also plans that did not pan out. Realizing that I was where I was in my existence and not before nor after helped me to realize that where I go from here all depends on how I am right now in the moment. One of my Muslim friends said to me "you should just believe in God, Ben." I proceeded to defensively explain my beliefs about what I consider to be "God," which is something similar to The Force in Star Wars. Instead of her telling me something Islam-centric to convert me, she simply said "yeah, sure that's God." In literary theory, it is generally understood that people create art and write to understand and bring themselves closer to what is known as the "sublime." The sublime is considered to be all that which human beings cannot experience themselves. We can climb to the top of a mountain, but we will never know the mountain; we can fly in airplanes but we will never feel what it is like to be a cloud; we can die but no one can know what that feels like or what happens after. Those are all "the sublime." Just like the big lion from Narnia said, "I am known by another name in your world." I think it isn't particularly difficult to reconcile my Buddhist beliefs with my understanding of "the sublime." In Zen Buddhism, the primary practice is to "just sit," where you bring yourself closer to your true self through meditation. What is your "true self?" When you strip away all the things that make you your "false self," all that is left is what the Christians would consider a soul. That is when you, in Buddhism, reach "enlightenment," or "Nirvana." "Heaven." "Jannah." All describe a "place" or state free from suffering and full of joy. Closer to God. Closer to your own divine and true self. It's really all the same. All strive to bring yourself to a level of understanding of yourself, of the world and universe, and all strive to bring you to the end of your worldly sufferings.
I end, as always, with a haiku:
Sitting in silence
What is the mountain? The cloud?
Someday, I will know.
Tuesday
Thursday
Branching Pathways
I’ve been thinking a lot about the past, specifically about the dreaded question of “What if?”
Recently, while at work, So-youn’s email address popped up in my gmail chat list. Knowing that So-youn herself couldn’t have signed on to her email account, my brain immediately processed that someone was posing as her.
me: hello... who is this? I freaked out a little just now...
so-youn: im sorry i freaked out and signed out. this is ***. it says she is on invisible. i didnt mean to confuse anyone. im not even reading her email. i dont know why i logged in.
me: well, I'm not confused...but just surprised. Hello, ***.
Long story very short, ***is very cool and we relate to each other on several tangible (ie. she has my glasses and phone) and intangible (ie. she wants to save the world and she has played with both ends of the academic spectrum) points. She’s loads smarter than anyone I know, and it is all I can do to keep up with her dizzying intellect at times, and I sometimes have to look up words she uses during our internet conversations. Anyway, so I’ve been thinking a lot about So-youn the last couple days, primarily because of my new friendship with ***. I looked back at all our old email correspondences and chat logs on gmail yesterday and the day before. She certainly left a mark on me. She once invited me to her birthday party, and I didn’t go. Part of the reason was that I was really busy with whatever schoolwork I wasn’t doing at the time. The main reason, however, was that I feared feeling awkward meeting people that I didn’t know. Ridiculous, right? Not going to her birthday party is one of my great regrets. So-youn taught me by example the value in reaching out to those around you. She loathed at the term “networking” but regardless of that, she was really good at it. Going to that party of hers was her attempt at connecting her friends together; she said so herself. That was another thing she was good at: finding two people and seeing a thread that would connect them. That is why I think *** and me finding each other through seemingly random happenstance is yet another notch in So-youn’s belt. Even from the next life, she is able to connect people together. It boggles my mind. Wherever she is, I know So-youn is smiling.
I have been having a lot of those “what if” moments recently. Not only with all the potential time I could have spent or moments I could have shared with So-youn, but also in regards to a certain one of my friends who hasn’t yet graduated from college after 7 years. We used to be really close. The closest two platonic friends could be. And then the barrier broke, and we found ourselves infatuated with one another at the most wrong of times. Our friendship as it was ended shortly after that. We can’t go back to how things used to be. Because of what she said, what I said, what we didn’t say, or we did or didn’t do. To skip ahead to the now part of the story, she’s been at junior college for 7 years, since graduating high school. That’s a long time. I would understand if she had real hindrances to entering a university, but she doesn’t. The only thing keeping her back is herself. I have wondered if the end of our relationship, as it was 5 years ago, could be the cause of her not being able to extricate herself from community college. She had maybe 3 positive people in her life going to school with her when I was a city college student, and when we all left to four-year universities, she was left with people who could care less about succeeding in the world. I am not intending this to sound like I am high and mighty at the top of my ivory tower, and that the only success one can have is academic and monetary success. If these people showed the slightest bit of talent in any un-academic field, I would take back my statement, but other than the token wannabe musician, her friends are wasting their lives thinking that figuring out what bling to wear to class is more important than what class to actually take. If I had been there for her back then, if I had perhaps dated her like she wanted, could things have been different? Would we have worked out? Obviously no one can say for certain. I know she has dreams and she wants to do something of merit in the world, but she’s taken and dropped the same math class for the last 4 years, and that one math class is what is keeping her from moving on. What if I had been there? Could I have helped her? Would she even have asked me for help? Again, who is to say?
Ending with a haiku.
Like a cat, it stares.
It’s there, wherever you are.
Then now, then later.
Recently, while at work, So-youn’s email address popped up in my gmail chat list. Knowing that So-youn herself couldn’t have signed on to her email account, my brain immediately processed that someone was posing as her.
me: hello... who is this? I freaked out a little just now...
so-youn: im sorry i freaked out and signed out. this is ***. it says she is on invisible. i didnt mean to confuse anyone. im not even reading her email. i dont know why i logged in.
me: well, I'm not confused...but just surprised. Hello, ***.
Long story very short, ***is very cool and we relate to each other on several tangible (ie. she has my glasses and phone) and intangible (ie. she wants to save the world and she has played with both ends of the academic spectrum) points. She’s loads smarter than anyone I know, and it is all I can do to keep up with her dizzying intellect at times, and I sometimes have to look up words she uses during our internet conversations. Anyway, so I’ve been thinking a lot about So-youn the last couple days, primarily because of my new friendship with ***. I looked back at all our old email correspondences and chat logs on gmail yesterday and the day before. She certainly left a mark on me. She once invited me to her birthday party, and I didn’t go. Part of the reason was that I was really busy with whatever schoolwork I wasn’t doing at the time. The main reason, however, was that I feared feeling awkward meeting people that I didn’t know. Ridiculous, right? Not going to her birthday party is one of my great regrets. So-youn taught me by example the value in reaching out to those around you. She loathed at the term “networking” but regardless of that, she was really good at it. Going to that party of hers was her attempt at connecting her friends together; she said so herself. That was another thing she was good at: finding two people and seeing a thread that would connect them. That is why I think *** and me finding each other through seemingly random happenstance is yet another notch in So-youn’s belt. Even from the next life, she is able to connect people together. It boggles my mind. Wherever she is, I know So-youn is smiling.
I have been having a lot of those “what if” moments recently. Not only with all the potential time I could have spent or moments I could have shared with So-youn, but also in regards to a certain one of my friends who hasn’t yet graduated from college after 7 years. We used to be really close. The closest two platonic friends could be. And then the barrier broke, and we found ourselves infatuated with one another at the most wrong of times. Our friendship as it was ended shortly after that. We can’t go back to how things used to be. Because of what she said, what I said, what we didn’t say, or we did or didn’t do. To skip ahead to the now part of the story, she’s been at junior college for 7 years, since graduating high school. That’s a long time. I would understand if she had real hindrances to entering a university, but she doesn’t. The only thing keeping her back is herself. I have wondered if the end of our relationship, as it was 5 years ago, could be the cause of her not being able to extricate herself from community college. She had maybe 3 positive people in her life going to school with her when I was a city college student, and when we all left to four-year universities, she was left with people who could care less about succeeding in the world. I am not intending this to sound like I am high and mighty at the top of my ivory tower, and that the only success one can have is academic and monetary success. If these people showed the slightest bit of talent in any un-academic field, I would take back my statement, but other than the token wannabe musician, her friends are wasting their lives thinking that figuring out what bling to wear to class is more important than what class to actually take. If I had been there for her back then, if I had perhaps dated her like she wanted, could things have been different? Would we have worked out? Obviously no one can say for certain. I know she has dreams and she wants to do something of merit in the world, but she’s taken and dropped the same math class for the last 4 years, and that one math class is what is keeping her from moving on. What if I had been there? Could I have helped her? Would she even have asked me for help? Again, who is to say?
Ending with a haiku.
Like a cat, it stares.
It’s there, wherever you are.
Then now, then later.
Monday
Friday
untitled
The sun breaks
and here I am, still
again.
Please do not stab at
the bloody heart of my blackened womb
where the love of you once sat
now burned
now crispy and brittle
and dry.
The sun breaks
and here I am, still
again.
Cry with sorrow as you break my bones.
Wail wildly as you gouge out my eyes
and stab at the bloody heart of my blackened womb.
Red and violet lights flashing under my skin.
Angry purple scars streak over my soul and chest,
where the love of you once sat,
now vacant, cold, and deafening in its silence.
The sun breaks
and
after you have had your way
after you have shattered my will, my soul, my love
thrown against the wall and ravaged on the floor.
After that.
Here I am.
Still.
Again.
and here I am, still
again.
Please do not stab at
the bloody heart of my blackened womb
where the love of you once sat
now burned
now crispy and brittle
and dry.
The sun breaks
and here I am, still
again.
Cry with sorrow as you break my bones.
Wail wildly as you gouge out my eyes
and stab at the bloody heart of my blackened womb.
Red and violet lights flashing under my skin.
Angry purple scars streak over my soul and chest,
where the love of you once sat,
now vacant, cold, and deafening in its silence.
The sun breaks
and
after you have had your way
after you have shattered my will, my soul, my love
thrown against the wall and ravaged on the floor.
After that.
Here I am.
Still.
Again.
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