sapphic romantic

2011-03-03T14:06:00.000-08:00

2011-03-03T13:58:00.001-08:00

2011-03-03T13:50:00.000-08:00

Sketch #34

2010-03-27T12:07:00.001-07:00

2009-12-19T18:40:00.000-08:00

It’s officially winter break now, which means long, slow days with nothing to do, days in which I get to look around and weigh the fullness/emptiness of my life. The weight of my life—most of the most substantial weight—is the writing. There is little else. Friends, family and people in general weigh very little. I am not an unfriendly person, but it takes an immense effort to want to be around other people. That is why, this break, I am only spending one week with family and three week by myself. Usually, I spend all four weeks with family, but while my physical presence is there, my emotional/mental being has already escaped during the first week, because being close to the ones I love for too long makes me unhappy. I am too aware of them. I cannot concentrate. I mourn my decision—while also acknowledging its rightness, because I have always been afraid to think on one particular question—If I cannot stand to be around my family, if I find it unbearable to be among those I love most in the world, then who can I bear to be around? If my biological family is not my true home, then where is my true home--where do I belong if not among people? Well, I am asking this question now, and I’m not afraid to look for the answer.

All these years, I’ve been disappointed that I withdraw when I am in the midst of even the most-longed-for company—while sitting next to an attractive woman, while having a conversation with an attractive woman, etc. My personal timidity, fear, and anguish makes even pondering a relationship impossible. I long for it. I obsess over the thought of finally, someday, having a romantic relationship, then—when I’m with an attractive woman, I freeze up or I realize how different I am. Different. Sometimes—how vaguely sometimes expresses such an oppressive emotion—I am so tired and worn out of being different.

How can I achieve personal romantic satisfaction? I do not want these unhealthy emotions clawing at me during lonely, cold, restless, bored winter months—because it is always the winter that brings about the melancholy. What I usually do to stave away loneliness is think on any attractive woman I vaguely know—and she is usually a writer, and google her endlessly for perhaps thirty minutes. I look for any tiny clue of her cyber existence. I don’t usually find much information, but tiny clues here and there lets me build my imagination of this woman. I build her life, her relationships, her daily routine. I build and build her based mostly on mystery and a few lines here and there, a published essay here and there, a news story here and there. This habit of mine is one of the reasons I do not have Facebook. It feels wrong to cyber-stalk these women to their personal cyber lair. I feel more comfortable googling and finding professional information on them. Reading their Facebook information is a boundary I am unwilling to cross. I am probably making too big a deal of it, but it’s something I feel strongly about. I will not spy on them without their permission. I will obsess, but only so much. So, yes, if someone were to ask me if I had a romantic life, I could say—Yes, yes, I have a one-sided romantic life which consists of me googling people I like and looking for tiny clues of them here and there. I fall for them usually based on my endless re-readings of their essays. I fall for their literary selves. I romance them by googling them in my free time, in my restless time, in any time when I feel I need a look. These are our dates, our getting to know each other dinners, our waltzes. And these women, of course, end up existing mainly in my head—in a world where their lives intersect mine and where, most importantly, I am comfortable enough to be fully myself.

spider

2009-12-18T12:57:00.000-08:00

As I was typing, looking into the distance of the computer screen, my eyes began to slowly focus on a strange critter right in front of my eyes—like, two inches right in front of my eyes. It was a tiny golden red spider, who had weaved and weaved and lowered itself five feet from the ceiling. The web is so thin it is invisible to me, but I know that delicate strand exists because I blew and blew gently on the spider and it spun and spun gently further from my face, and I blew softly, directing, until the spider happened onto the cup of pens on my desk, and the spider’s legs danced and danced until it grasped the side of the purple cup, and it lowered itself away from my sight.

haircut

2009-12-18T12:44:00.001-08:00

After I realized I was gender-queer (back in September 2009), I decided that I finally knew what kind of haircut I wanted—short. I went to a barbershop, where a grandfatherly man called me son, sat me down in a comfy, swirling chair, set a tent-like old-blood colored cover over me, and commenced to give me the best hair-cutting experience of my life. And when he was done, he turned to my friend and said, Isn’t he handsome? A very nice experience.

I felt dissatisfied with myself yesterday, so I went to get another haircut. I was dissatisfied with the haircut I got, and the front was too long. So when I got home, I combed the fringe forward, took the kitchen scissors, leaned forward over the stinky, overfilled kitchen trash bin, and cut across my forehead, close to my forehead, so close that I could feel the cold metal of the scissors moving across my forehead. I then looked in the mirror, and discovered that leaning forward and cutting across my forehead was a bad idea, because now I look like I am balding in the front.

However, my new look has lifted my mood, because I like looking like I am balding in the front.

2009-12-15T11:35:00.000-08:00

One more final exam to go, and I’ll have a month off! Then, one more semester of science classes and no more science classes ever again. Unless I decide to pick up a masters in science someday, which right now I can’t imagine is necessary. I’ll be thrilled to be a graduate student in English in the next year or two. I have fame and glory and honor to seek!

It’s freezy chilly today, which means that my fingers have stiffened. I’m typing with gloves on, and it’s working so far. Except that the pressure of the gloves around my fingers is sometimes difficult to bear. I’m seriously considering moving south someday. I don’t want to have to tolerate many more of these Midwestern winters. My knees and legs have started hurting again.

During my month of vacation, I have two main things to do—biochemistry homework (easy) and write! I’ve already gotten back into the habit of writing a few hours every day. The reason these blog posts have become so boring is because I save my best material for my essays. A few essay topics I’m working on—nail shops, murals, Halloween, gender-queer stories, family stories, hands. I write about everything. I’m serious about this writing thing. I only have this life, and I feel like I’m running out of time, so I must get to it.

I exist for stories. I only go out long enough to collect stories, and then I go back home and ruminate and obsess until I have the key to the story. I write and write. And then I am content for awhile and then restlessness starts up again and I complain and feel bored and lonely. And so I go out to collect more stories. It’s a cycle I’m happy with because it makes me feel useful, alive, existing in the world.

A big issue with me is loneliness. I often ask myself (well, less frequency now because I feel stable and strong)—Are you lonely for someone? Do you feel sad about never having been with anyone? Do you feel guilty/undesirable/prudish because you’ve never been with anyone? The answer to all these questions is yes. The best thing I can do when I feel especially lonely is go to AfterEllen’s forum and seek out the threads which deal with loneliness, and then I don’t feel lonely anymore because there are so many lesbians in the world who feel the same way I do. After I read a few threads (often the same ones over and over), I feel better about myself, a bit less lonely, because I feel in the warm company of other solitary lesbians. Then I move on with my life—writing, cooking, daydreaming, reading, suffering through my stiff joints, speaking to the silence, grocery shopping—many, many things I enjoy doing alone.

2009-12-12T18:03:00.000-08:00

My life has changed dramatically over the course of this semester. All for the better. I am now seeing doctors regularly. We still don’t know what is wrong with me, but that’s okay. The only visible sign of my illness is my hands, which are slowly becoming crippled. I can still use them, but not as much as I want. I can’t straighten my fingers. My hands hurt all the time. Like right now. But I would like to thank these hands for hurting. They have become my truth meter, my life line, my compass. With hands like these, I have had to ask myself—Something is wrong with you. You may never get better. You may be running short of the life you’ve taken for granted. What are you going to do?

The first thing that happened were words that came in the night, whispers from that secret place, and then these words became louder and louder in my mind until I looked at them, acknowledged them, and started to say them aloud—Some people look at me and they see a woman. Some people look at me and they see a man. The truth is that I am both. And after I said these words aloud for a couple of times, I broke down and cried. I cried because it hurt to finally be saying these words. I cried into my broken hands. I cried because I had spent more than a decade being ashamed of who I am—gender-queer. I cried and cried for a week, remember all the cruel words people—friends and strangers alike—saying to me because they did not know if I was a boy or a girl. I cried for all the times I was not able to cry. And when the week was done, I was better. I became happier than I remember ever having been in my whole life. I finally fit the last piece of the puzzle to my existence.

The next thing that happened was that I finally sought counseling—to help me figure out my sexuality, my gender identity, and the pain in my hands. I’ve learned so many important lessons.

1) I want to understand the past because stories help me understand why I am the way I am. I can see the happy stories after I tell the sad stories. The happy stories are not in plain view because they are my natural state. They do not create self doubt and false realities in my mind. It is often sad stories that linger because they are painful and feel wrong. By bringing out the pain and the wrongness, I can map my way towards the happy state I am seeking.
2) It is okay to pursue happiness. I don’t have to be miserable to be alive. Disappointments will not kill me. It is okay to be a writer. It is not because I am a writer than I am unhappy. I should not equate writing with depression, poverty, and hardship. Writing is also joy, expression, excitement, adventure—the best way to have an honest conversation with myself.
3) I need to find positive reflections to fight against the bad reflections I’ve harbored all these years. People who have made fun of me in the past: it was not about me, it was about them.
4) I am not a depressed person. I have always blamed my bouts of depression on genes, hormones, destiny. I have always taken depression for granted. More often, though, I go numb because I do not know what to do. I can learn ways to lead me out of numbness.

The latest thing that happened is the grandest—I’ve decided to apply to graduate writing programs. Well, apply to one program. If I don’t get accepted, I will apply again next year. My destiny is set. I’ve always wanted to pursue a full-time writing career, but I always thought I didn’t deserve it. I thought I deserved to be unhappy. I’ve been unhappy my whole life. Perhaps I should try pursue doing what makes me happy.

This semester, which ends next week, has been an amazing and glorious experience. I am not the same person who started out the semester. I’ve never been able to say this before. All these years, I’ve been the same person just trudging along—unhappy and ill at ease with myself, hateful of myself, disgusted with myself. The simple act of saying—Some people look at me and they see a woman. Some people look at me and they see a man. The truth is that I am both—this simple declaration has changed my whole future. The biggest difference in my new self is that I no longer feel lonely and needy. I actually like myself, and so I don’t mind at all being alone in my own company. That has been the best gift so far.

Unfinished Sketch #14

2009-09-19T06:29:00.000-07:00

Unfinished Sketch #13

2009-09-19T06:25:00.000-07:00

Unfinished Sketch #12

2009-09-19T06:01:00.000-07:00

Unfinished Sketch #11

2009-09-19T05:59:00.001-07:00

Unfinished Sketch #10

2009-09-19T05:56:00.000-07:00

Unfinished Sketch #9

2009-09-19T05:54:00.000-07:00

Unfinished Sketch #8

2009-09-19T05:52:00.000-07:00

Unfinished Sketch #7

2009-09-19T05:49:00.001-07:00

Unfinished Sketch #6

2009-09-19T05:47:00.001-07:00

Unfinished Sketch #5

2009-09-19T04:48:00.001-07:00

Unfinished Sketch #4

2009-09-19T04:45:00.000-07:00

Unfinished Sketch #3

2009-09-19T04:43:00.000-07:00

Unfinished Sketch #2

2009-09-19T04:41:00.001-07:00

Unfinished Sketch #1

2009-09-19T04:38:00.001-07:00

2009-08-29T18:19:00.000-07:00

My siblings and I each have a hamster. Today, my brother’s hamster died. We have only had her for a week. When I came downstairs, she was lying on her side. Now, usually, when hamsters sleep, they lie on their stomachs, curled as tight as possible, and their breathing in sleep is a rapid fluttering. My brother’s white hamster, whom he named Ariel, was not breathing. I opened the cage door and put my fingers on her, trying to startle her awake, but she did not move. I’m waiting until my brother wakes up and then I’ll tell him.

How easy death is. And how sudden. Ariel was fine yesterday night. There is no sign of sickness on her. No wounds.

Update

My brother was shocked to find Ariel dead, but he buried her, went back to PetCo, and got a gray hamster. He also asked about what might have caused Ariel to die, and he thinks it’s because Ariel had been sleeping in her own urine and got sick from it. We’ll be more careful in the future.

This morning, I had to wait for four hours before my brother woke up. Those hours were a little scary. I sat in the dining area at my computer, knowing that Ariel was dead in the living room a few feet away. I didn’t know what to think. I shut my thoughts down for awhile. I feel sad, but better now, knowing that she is properly buried in our backyard. We tried to treat her well, and I think she lived a good hamster life with us. R.I.P. Ariel.

2009-08-25T18:58:00.000-07:00

Here's day two of my "year" and I love it so far. Waking up in the morning at 6:45 AM and not allowing myself to sleep until 10:00ish is difficult. By 6:00 PM, my head is foggy and I'm grasping at things to do to stay awake for another four hours. Good thing is I get all my school work and business done before 6:00ish, but geez, I'm too sleepy to do fun things, like write and sketch. The most I can manage is to sit in front of telly and be a drone. However, I am content at the end of the day because I am accomplishing what I need to do every day. I have no unfinished business.

And rarely do I feel guilty about being a sixth year undergraduate. Perhaps because I know I am in the right place and I am living my life to the fullest of my potential. On TV and in the media, when people find out that they only have one year to live, they live it out--traveling, seeing the world, filling their days with everything that will be gone when they fall asleep for the last time.

I think the most adventure I'll ever have is here in my head. My city, my college, the people I encounter in my life--it is all enough to fill this year. I think--more than anything else--I am afraid of expecting life, decades of life, and not receiving it. If I plan to live for decades and decades, and I do not get all these years, then that will drive me crazy. I start putting off LIFE, the everyday enjoyment and completion of LIFE, because I expect endless days. The expectation of endless days destroys the beauty of every single day. However, living day by day, receiving every year like a gift, I can do. If any forthcoming day could be my last, then it should be lived in perfection, as I want to live, as I would want my last day on Earth to be. These last two days, I have felt that I could die any minute, and I would be ready. That is what a full, accomplished day gives me, and that is exactly what I need. Nothing more.

I used to think that if I was only given one more year, I would give up everything--school and my career plans--and go back to my family, and spend the rest of my days finishing the book I am writing. That's impossible. That's not my life. Today, I am content with the stories I have written. And these two days, I have imagined something beautiful. On my desk is a stack of written pages. All one inch margins, all double spaced, 12 point font in Times New Roman. It is my essays--all the finished ones, all the ones still in my head--all completed. I don't know what I have to give except these pages.

I try and I can't imagine all the expanse of time before I was born, and I can't imagine the expanse of years after I am gone, and I don't know that these few years of life that I'm given--what was it all for? I don't know, but I have faith in those pages.

So I'll continue my life as it is, and I hope I can finish those pages.

Goals, aka what the hell is wrong with me?

2009-08-24T18:06:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of the new school year. This marks my sixth year as an undergraduate. I haven't written or sketched in awhile, and I am overwhelmed by everything happening in my life right now, so I am going to make a list titled "Goals for the new school year," which will hopefully organize all the stories on my mind.

Goal #1) lower blood pressure.

This is a big one. For the past year, I have increasingly felt tired. I sleep all the time, eat all the time. There was a time early in my college years when I went to school full time and had two jobs. Last year, just being a full time student was too much. During the summer, I had no energy, or only enough for a sketch or two everyday. I felt like I was living in mud. Starting in April, my knees started to hurt. Then three of my fingers stiffened and I could not bend them. In the middle of the night, I would wake up and my right hand would be numb and I could not move it. I would panic, touching my left hand to my right and it would feel cold, like a slab of meat, no longer part of me. I would concentrate on my hand, until I could feel it tingle and the fingers move little by little. I told my father, who told me that he too had this problem when he was young, a little boy. Finally, I went to the doctor. I haven't seen a doctor in six years. My blood pressure was really high, abnormally high, "if you don't take care of this, you will die in the next few years" high. I have had my blood analyzed. They don't know why my blood pressure is so high. I am on medication now to reduce my blood pressure. I feel better. I have more energy. I can do ten things in a day instead of just one thing. I am eating moderately, sleeping better, living easier.

Everything's back to normal, right?

No. This was just a warning. There is something wrong with me. I don't want to talk about it. It's not mental. It's physical. Fixing the blood pressure does not fix what is wrong with me. Perhaps doctors will figure out what's wrong when it's too late. I am aware of it. There's nothing I can do about it except live day by day and hope.

So this is the reason for this post: life goals for the school year. What if I only have a year to live before I die? What would I do in that year? I have thought and thought about this and the answer is: what I am doing now--going to school, preparing for decades of life. However, I would change things, so that if it is indeed my last year of life, it would also be my best. This is the only way I know how to live. I have lost my ability to imagine my life years and years in the future. It causes too much sadness and depression. I'm not sure why. Perhaps I can't imagine what I am not sure will happen.

What I can imagine is a year's worth of goals . . .

Goal #2) sleep only 8 hours at night. no more naps. There's only so many hours in a year's time, don't waste it asleep. There's eternity to sleep.

Goal #3) wake up early and study in the mornings.

Goal #4) don't stress

Goal #5) keep up with this journal.

Goal #6) don't mourn love. love is beautiful. accept that those beloved women can't return your love. they can't. it's as simple as that. accept your feelings, but do not force your love where it does not belong. no mountains of desperate yearning will change what does not yield. You have no control. love simply is or isn't. love simply then. there's a year's time to love. choose wisely love.

Goal #7) think positive. you've spent a lifetime thinking negatively. stop it.

Goal #8) study diligently, but do not let grades consume and frighten you.

Goal #9) finish the essays about your father, your life, the things that really matter to you. these essays are important. stop procrastinating. finish the story you have to tell. don't write because you want fame and fortune. fame and fortune are out of your hands now. write because you need to write. finish your story and there will be no regrets about a wasted life.

Goal #10) sketch what brings you joy and happiness, and sketch only that.

Sketch #33

2009-08-08T14:39:00.000-07:00

This is me as a little girl. No title yet. Kind of awkward-looking, but I'm practicing my ink lines. I've been in a black-n-white mood lately. Yesterday, I tried to force myself into color by doing a watercolor of a still-life. Ha. The key word here is forced, and I blew it in less than half an hour.

Sketch #32

2009-08-06T22:11:00.001-07:00

No title yet for this one.

It's unfinished. I was supposed to color it in to give to little sister Kim tomorrow when she visits, but no matter. She can advise me on it. I felt uninspired today and so blotched a sketch. Whenever I force myself to sketch, I always blotch, and it's always disappointing. I felt uninspired, so I watched Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. Hayao Miyazaki's work always inspires me, perhaps because he is an environmentalist and a feminist and his work reflects both. I mean, at his studio, he purposefully made the women's bathroom bigger and cleaner than the men's because he wants women to feel welcomed. I love this guy. If I were a guy, I would want to be exactly like him.

There's not much special about this dragon. Its face is weird. Its anatomy is weird. It's supposed to be a water dragon but there's no lines that shows it swimming through water. However, it is special for the fact that it came wholly from my imagination. I set pen to paper and sketched my very own dragon. In all my 23 years, this is a first.

Usually when I sketch, I feel fake because I have to look off of a model. This technique is not necessarily bad except that I am distracted from the sketch's needs and certain aspects of the sketch looks weird, like the face or the arm. It is better to sketch from dreams than from real life. Even if that dream sketch is blurry and confusing and anatomically incorrect, the method of capturing a vision from a dream is the best method, because the imagination is not bound by the the physical reality of a real-life model. Being an artist is about capturing the inner vision. It's about pursuing the creatures that haunt the mind. It's about the inward journey.

This whole summer, I've been mostly alone. My loneliness is the main reason I'm improving as an artist. No distractions. I have plenty of time to look inward and follow the dream beasts and dream women into the dream universe, where the best stories are.

I look at these few pitiful sketches on this site, and I know they're not enough. They're never enough. And that makes me happy. There's a wonderful world out there. Each time I watch one of Hayao Miyazaki's movies or I see a wondrous painting, I know that art can bring to life my inner wishes and dreams. Each sketch brings me closer to the door into that world. I feel like I've lost my way all these years and I'm not exactly sure how I got back on the right path, but I'm grateful I'm finally here.

I used to think that a muse, a real woman, would be the only way I could have my art, but that's not true. Women, as much as I love them, are distractions. My hopes and dreams and desires become bound up in them. I give everything. I hurt. I scream and there's not one of them who answers me. No matter. I am done with the pursuit. I keep saying that, and even if it's not absolutely true this time, each time I make my vow, it is strengthened. I can be anything--alone, rejected, denied, hurt--as long as I have these sketches. Why? Because she is there waiting for me in the dream world. Why do I sketch women so much? Because I've seen glimpses of her. She can lead me into the world where all dreams come true and where I'm the person I was always meant to be. If it takes 100 sketches or 500 sketches or 1000 sketches, I have faith. Sitting here, I make this vow--I will triumph in this journey. I go on this journey not because I want to enact revenge on all those women I couldn't have. No, I do honor to them by loving in the best way I know how.

Sketch #31

2009-08-05T23:26:00.000-07:00

The blue background is watercolor. See how the paper is crinkled? It's because I freakin' need to start doing watercolors on real watercolor paper. Note to self--You freakin' idiot! Hmm, come to think of it, I like the crinkled effect.

From now on, I am going to discuss the sketches I post. If I'm going to improve as an artist, I need to talk about the sketch. Posting and staring and mentally wondering what is wrong with the sketch is not working. I end up falling behind on posting "finished" sketches, like right now when I have nine finished sketches that I haven't posted. I won't post them all at once. That's just stupid.

Hmm, maybe I should start naming my sketches too. This one is "Dreaming of Moonlight." I don't have any complaints about it. I mean, there's nothing else I can think of to add. Not sure of what I was trying to sketch in the first place.

Oh great, if that was my attempt at discussing, I just failed miserably. Oh well, perhaps I'll figure out what's wrong tomorrow.

Sketch #30

2009-07-28T04:53:00.001-07:00

Sketch #29

2009-07-28T04:51:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I feel like the person inside of me is capable of evil.

Sketch #28

2009-07-28T04:48:00.000-07:00

I've been in a dark mood lately.

Sketch #27

2009-07-27T11:18:00.001-07:00

In honor of my sister getting her first tattoo in the last few days of her 18th year. She got one on her lower back. These are the ancient Vietnamese characters of her full name. BTW, this is not her back.

Sketch #26

2009-07-27T00:14:00.001-07:00

Sketch #25

2009-07-21T16:09:00.001-07:00

She makes me think of an elf.

Sketching and Self-Reflection

2009-07-07T22:52:00.000-07:00

I like the way a good sketch makes me feel more alive. When I’m infatuated/in love/obsessed with someone, I see more hues. I see more clearly. That’s why it makes sense to sketch during those times. Now, though, I don’t feel much for anyone. There’s Lady Librarian, but she’s more like a dream lady to me. I’ve given up trying to speak to her. I just wait until she turns away and then I give her back dark, smoldering looks. And I try to memorize her.

Is that creepy?

Well, I’ve given up being normal, being conversational, being healthily among people. Now, I spend lots of time by myself, staring at the wall or laying on the couch staring at the ceiling or squatting next to one of my plants and staring at a leaf.

More than a few times, I’ve told my sister Christine that I feel unbearably lonely. And she rolls her eyes and sneers back—Well, no wonder. It’s been years since you’ve called [name] and [name] and . . . And then I would feel even more guilty because it’s true. I am guilty of leaving so many friends behind. One day, for no apparent reason, I just stop communicating. I can’t even give a good reason to myself. Most of the time, I don’t know what I mean by lonely.

Well, lately, doing all this sketching has made me realized what I mean by I feel lonely. I feel lonely for myself. When I’m really busy, I feel lonely for the deepest, truest part of myself—who is an artist and a writer. I’m a creative person who has given up art and writing to pursue science. And it has cost me. I don’t know how to survive as an artist and a writer, so I’ve chosen a career. A scientific career. And I’m afraid that I’ll wake up one day and realize that Myself has left and what is left is a shell.

This summer is a gift. I am so glad that I failed two classed and they put me on probation and I have to spend a whole extra year in college. Because If I hadn’t failed, I would be spending this summer pursuing my scientific career and wondering why I felt so unhappy. Instead, I failed, hence I have an easy summer, hence, I chased after Myself, hugged her back into my mind, placed a sketching instrument into her hand and a sketch book into her lap, and told her to be herself.

Sometimes, I feel like going back to former sketches and reworking them, but I don’t. I have less than two months of vacation left, and I need to get as many sketches done as possible, because I am pursuing . . . something unexplainable. I’m . . . pursuing art. That’s the best way to put it. I am racking up ideas for the empty, sad times ahead, so that I can look on this blog when I’m not sketching, and I can see that my art hasn’t died yet. Oh, so dramatic, but I feel like these sketches are headed somewhere. Maybe it’s the birth pains of developing my own artistic style. Who knows.

Even last year, when I painted a thirty foot long beach mural, I could not have sketched like this. And I am not currently obsessed with anyone. So why am I sketching like this—as though there were a purpose to these sketches? Maybe, just maybe, I am pursuing my artistic career? If so, I have cause for celebration.

Sketch #24

2009-07-07T22:02:00.000-07:00

Sketch #23

2009-07-06T18:49:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, I become mesmerized with one of my sketches. I wonder—Who are you, strange one?

Sketch #22

2009-07-03T18:30:00.001-07:00

My brother and I went to Hobby Lobby and the mall today. I got another sketch book, some more sketching pens, and my brother got watercolor paper and charcoal pencils. We had to sit around for twenty minutes to wait for the bus, so we sat in the food court area, which features a carousel. I looked around for something to sketch, and my eyes lighted on a bunny. My brother said~ You should sketch something that doesn’t move. I said~ I know, but there’s nothing else interesting. So for the next ten minutes, I watched two boys get on and off bunny and I sketched it as it rushed past me every few seconds.

Sketch #21

2009-07-02T22:01:00.001-07:00

Meals on Wheels

2009-07-01T12:57:00.000-07:00

Today, as part of my Community Nutrition class, I delivered meals to the elderly and infirm for Meals on Wheels. This is the report I wrote about my experience~

On July 1, 2009, Kyle and I delivered six meals to Meals on Wheels participants within Columbia. Many of the participants were shy but very polite. When they opened their doors, I always began with, “Hi, I’m a university student and I am delivering your meal today.” The participants, all elderly except for one, would glance quickly at us, then stare at the floor for a moment, and then look around for the meal. I usually stumbled while saying my introduction because they would be reaching for the meal quickly, and then politely but adamantly saying, “Thank you,” and be closing the door—all quicker than I can twelve words. One elderly woman was the exception. She was watching for us and met us in her driveway and had kind words to say to us when we told her we were university students. The last woman we delivered to was not elderly, but her voice trembled as she said “Thank you” and she was breathless, almost dropping the meal as we handed her bag of bread over. It was my impression that it takes great courage for her to open her door to the world everyday.

I had a wonderful time delivering the six meals. Meals on Wheels “meets the psychological and nutritional needs of homebound elderly participants” by providing human contact as a nutritional meal is delivered five days a week. The food looked good. My stomach was growling. Perhaps for many participants, this is usually their only human contact for the whole day. Many homes, as we stood in the doorway, smelled musty and dusty, as though unused to company. Perhaps the participants were shy because we were new people to them, but if we delivered weekly, I think we could have eventually been able to chat and be friendly. Many participants seemed ashamed to be receiving the meal. Their downcast eyes and abrupt movements speak of shame, and I wish I had a way to reassure them that there is no shame. Instead of saying, “Bye, have a nice day,” I should have said, “Thank you for being part of this program.” That’s the way I felt—thanks for letting us feel that we do not cast away our elders into loneliness and hunger.

Sketch #20

2009-06-30T17:39:00.000-07:00

Sketch #19

2009-06-29T17:05:00.000-07:00

Sketch #18

2009-06-28T23:10:00.001-07:00

There’s a beautiful and sad story behind this sketch. This weekend, I’ve been listening to Deep Forest’s “Sweet Lullaby.” The native song, called Rorogwela, is from the Solomon Islands, and it is about an older brother comforting his young brother after their parents have died. This is what I imagine they would look like. Here are the lyrics and their translation~

Rorogwela

Sasi sasi ae ko taro taro amu
Ko agi agi boroi tika oli oe lau
Tika gwao oe lau koro inomaena
I dai tabesau I tebetai nau mouri
Tabe ta wane initoa te ai rofia

Sasi sasi ae kwa dao mata ole
Rowelae e lea kwa dao mata biru
I dai tabesau I tebetai nau mouri

Sasi sasi ae ko taro taro amu
Ko agi agi boroi tika oli oe lau
Tika gwao oe lau koro inomaena
I dai tabesau I tebetai nau mouri

Sweet Lullaby

Little brother, little brother, stop crying, stop crying
Though you are crying and crying, who else will carry you
Who else will groom you, both of us are now orphans
From the island of the dead, their spirit will continue to look after us
Just like royalty, taken care of with all the wisdom of such a place

Little brother, little brother even in the gardens
This lullaby continues to the different divisions of the garden,
From the island of the dead, their spirit will continue to look after us

Little brother, little brother, stop crying, stop crying
Though you are crying and crying, who else will carry you
Who else will groom you, both of us are now orphans
From the island of the dead, their spirit will continue to look after us

Sketch #17

2009-06-28T10:01:00.001-07:00

Sketch #16

2009-06-27T21:28:00.000-07:00

I know—seriously—a glass cup?! Am I so bored with sketching interesting women that I have resorted to water?! No, I just wanted to celebrate the fact that I now have real sketching pens. For the last three weeks, I have been sketching with foul pens that give out if I press too hard or if I press too softly or if I just press the darn wrong way. Not to mention the fact that those pens make me a lousy artist because the lines are so thin and light that I always make tentative lines and tentative lines mean that there’s no flow, no life to what I’m trying to sketch. Then, sometimes, when I’m trying to make thin and light lines, a humongous splotch of ink will burst out and ruin the sketch! Argh!

I am confident that the sketching pens—Sharpie—will usher in stronger bolder lines. Not to mention the fact that each pen costs $1.25, so if I buy 50 Sharpies, that will only cost $62.50!!

Pens are one of the few things I absolutely enjoy buying. I have fifty Magna Tanks, the only type of pens I write with. Twenty are still in their packages, fifteen are on my desk, and fifteen are in my school bag. If I do not have a Magna Tank with me at all times, then it’s like walking around naked. Magna Tanks are essential to my life. They allow me to write smoothly, without having to press too hard. They can be usually relied upon to not give out. Observe how smoothly they glide across the page:

I was very disappointed to find that Magna Tanks do not make good sketching pens, but now that I have observed and delighted in the wonders of Sharpie, I am content.

Sketch #15

2009-06-27T15:02:00.001-07:00

Artwork #1

2009-06-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

I have problems with all of the sketches I’ve posted. (If anyone viewing them can tell me what’s wrong with them, I’ll be eternally grateful. I love advice.) Most of them are unfinished—hence, lots of white space. I post them either because I don’t know what else to do with them at the moment, or because I realize that the sketch has suddenly veered into an ugly direction and if I continue, the ugliness will make me nauseous.

For example, Sketch #11:

is sort of okay, but really, it is absolutely lifeless. There’s no movement to it. I’m the type of person who’s too self conscious to dance or sing, so I let my sketches dance and sing for me. On the dance floor, I am a broken doll, but, honey, when I put that pen or pencil to paper, I know my moves. Well, sort of—I’m still a bit awkward, but I’m always learning new moves, and that’s what counts, right? Anyway, in Sketch #11, she looks bored stiff as she looks at Mr Giant Butterfly. The lady’s body looks limp. Her neck looks stiff. She looks high and haughty. Heck, Mr Giant Butterfly has more expression on his face. After I finished sketching and shading in Mr Giant Butterfly and compared him to Stiff Lady, I thought I was going to lose my lunch right there.

She’s not the type of character I like to reside in my imagination. If she’s not going to be amazed by Giant Butterfly, I want her out of my life.

So what went wrong with her? Well, here’s my theory of what is a sketch versus what is an artwork. A sketch is a copied thing: I either copy it from real life (like my feet) or from a photo (like the mother.child sketch I gave to Lady Teacher). And that’s the problem. It’s copied. The movements and shadings of my drawing instrument are dictated by what I see, not by what I feel. When I sketched Stiff Lady, I had to concentrate on getting her proportions right—on getting her eyes in the right place, her nose the right size, her arms the right length. In short, dear reader, I was not being an artist, I was being an obsessed technical perfectionist. And that’s why she came out so stiff. I was not ready to let her be herself. I was in too much control. On the other hand, a real piece of artwork is this:

Maybe I’m being an idiot show-off right now, but I’m really proud and happy with how Lady Butterfly is turning out. Lady Butterfly is a re-rendering of Stiff Lady, but this time, I let her be herself. I looked at her, listened to her, and she finally whispered to me that she looked stiff because she was jealous of Mr Giant Butterfly—and that she herself wanted to know what it would feel like to be a butterfly. So here she is, transformed—Queen of the Butterflies.

I am really happy at the moment. It has been almost three weeks since I started sketching again, and finally, FINALLY, here is my first real artwork of the summer. I will finish her wings and all the tiny details, and then, the Gods and Muses willing, I will beg my mother for some expensive French watercolor paper and put her in watercolor. I think Lady Butterfly would like that a lot. Of course, it’s going to take forever to finish the watercolor, but in the meantime, I can look forward to posting more Ugly Sketches and posting more snide comments about them. I will now go celebrate Stiff Lady’s transformation by . . . eating a large slice of apple pie.

And, of course, cheers to the memory of love.

Why I Sketch

2009-06-24T12:47:00.000-07:00

There was a high school teacher whom I adored for years and years, even after I didn’t see her again. I stopped talking to her because I wanted to be emotionally healthy and sane again. And then for years, I taught myself not to think of her every day. I never told her how I felt, but I think she guessed. As of now, I don’t think I’ll ever see her again, even though she wanted us to stay in touch.

I felt sorrow when I saw her during those last few times three years ago. Before our last meeting, I emailed her and told her how I felt about women, and then we met for dinner, and during the dinner, I realized that nothing could be the same between us again—not with the knowledge of the way I loved and perhaps why I told her. There was no way we could treat it lightly, when there is always love on my face when I see her and when she always turns away, perhaps knowing that I am watching her and the reason for it. If I had known that telling her would mean saying good-bye to her, I would do it again exactly the same way again. I have no regrets.

She is engaged now and will probably be married soon, if not already. To a good man. He has a son by a previous marriage, and so she will be happy, I think. I am happy for her.

Once every few months, I forget that I’m not supposed to think of her, and I search the internet for her name—to find pictures of her and save them, and to find where she is teaching now and how she is involved with her community.

When I sketch women, I always sketch women who remind me of her—if not by their physical features then by the expression on their faces. She is beautiful, but I did not notice until a year after I first met her. What I noticed first were the varied expressions on her face as she spoke about things that mattered to her. I was captivated. And then one day, while listening to her, I looked at her, really looked—and realized with a shock how beautiful her face and body were. Suddenly, her expressions and movements had glow and effervescence, as though I had suddenly opened my mind to her. That was when I first started to imprint her into my memory. She is still the most beautiful woman I have ever known. When I sketch, I sketch the memory of her. I sketch hope and imagination and magic—I sketch what life would have been like if she were mine. In my imagination—if never in reality—she is mine to love.

I pretend that I don’t love her with my whole heart anymore because it keeps me sane. All these years, I’ve tried to love other women just so that I can forget her.

One day, if I ever find a woman who will spend her life with me—it will be a different kind of love. The way I feel now, for this woman whom I’ll never see again—it is a love based on deep, quiet yearning—and this love has affected the person I’ve become, more than anything else that’s happened to me. I may put thoughts and memories of her away, but they are still there, buried deep in my treasure chest.

I suppose she is my muse. I painted murals for her. She has several of my artwork. If I could, I would give all my artwork to her. The first artwork I ever gave her, I gave idly, not really caring, just thinking, oh, she might like this, but the expression on her face, and the way she touched the inked lines so delicately with just the tips of her fingers—I felt as though she were touching my heart with the same love and delicacy.

Here is that pen-and-ink drawing~

And that’s why I sketch. Not only because I like observing the world through an artist's eyes, but mainly because of the memory of love.

Sketch #14

2009-06-23T18:08:00.001-07:00

Sketch #13

2009-06-22T16:34:00.001-07:00

Sketch #12

2009-06-21T17:42:00.001-07:00

Sketch #11

2009-06-21T11:58:00.001-07:00

Sketch #10

2009-06-20T10:28:00.001-07:00

Sketch #9

2009-06-20T00:07:00.000-07:00

Sketch #8

2009-06-16T16:01:00.001-07:00

Sketch #7

2009-06-15T16:03:00.001-07:00

Sketch #6

2009-06-14T10:09:00.001-07:00

Lady Librarian

2009-06-13T09:08:00.000-07:00

There’s a woman on my mind.

The most essential goal of my life right now is to be emotional stable—for long periods of time—perhaps forever. I’ve done an excellent job so far this summer. However, there’s a woman on my mind. So how to deal with this? I read lots of AfterEllen posts which say—Oh, there’s this girl. XYandZ happened. Does this mean she likes me? I’ve never felt this way before. Also, ABandC happened recently. Why is she giving me mixed signals? What should I do? I never reply to these posts, but I often think that there are two clear options—you either pursue her or you don’t pursue her. You either decide to sit down and have a heart to heart chat or you don’t. In my situation, the clear option right now is I don’t pursue and I ignore. If there are unclear signals, then I decide that it’s all in my imagination and go from there. Too many times in the past, I interpreted something incorrectly and . . . let’s ignore the Romantic Tragedies of My Life, shall we?

I don’t have the Flirting Gene. Instead, I have the Awkward Conversationalist Gene. Many times, when involved in a conversation, I purposefully say something really stupid or weird. To spice up the conversation. Very detrimental. In contrast, when someone flirts with me, I clam up and stare. I know the rule is that when someone flirts with you, you flirt back. However, I have a very slow brain. It takes me at least a minute to understand a joke. My sister can attest to this fact. Flirting, I understand, require immediate and correctly coy responses. I am incapable of this! Hence, I will not pretend that there’s anything going on.

Now that I’ve made it clear to myself what I will and will not do, then I will now proceed carefully to unburden my mind.

I tutor at the public library in the children’s section. I often see a certain librarian. She has short black hair, waving off of her forehead, deep set gray eyes, and a voluptuous figure. Her skin is so white—like cream? –like ivory? She usually wears a long sleeved black shirt and black pants—which goes well with her white, flawless skin.

I don’t know her name, her age, her marital status, her sexuality. Henceforth in this blog, I dub her Lady Librarian. I have tutored for five years, and so I’ve seen her once in a while. This summer, I am tutoring Monday to Wednesday, and when I decided to tutor, one of the chief attractions was seeing her. I think—since I want to settle in this town, I can look forward to seeing her for years and years to come. I will stop tutoring someday and settle into a job, but I am a ferocious reader, and as long as she works at the children’s desk, I will see her, since I read lots of YA literature.

There are certain people, who—when I see them, make me feel happy and safe—simply because they are who they are. I like to memorize people—to write about them, to sketch them, to think about them, and I’ve spent lots of time thinking about Lady Librarian. I don’t know anything about her. Is that a chief attraction? Possibly yes, since everything is in my imagination. Everything is possible. She could be everything.

Here’s what I want—if not to pursue her. I want to have a nice conversation with her. I want to be able to see her, say hello, ask her how her day is going, and go from there. I want to slowly get to know her. She enjoys talking to people. One of my favorite things to watch is Lady Librarian strolling among the shelves. When a child asks for a book, she strolls purposefully to the shelves. I’ve watched her countless times. I have no qualms about watching her, because how can she notice little me sitting at my tutoring table? She strolls back and forth, picking books up, pushing in chairs. Once, I dropped my pen, forgot about it because I was busy tutoring, and she strolled by, knelt, picked my pen up, and placed it next to my hand. Now, if I were a quick thinker, I would have looked up and said thanks. The perfect thing to have done could have been to lay my hand gently, briefly on hers.

However, what happens usually is that I ignore her. If she is walking behind me, I don’t turn around and say hello. I pick up my pace. There were many, many times when I could have glanced up or stopped for a moment as I passed her station, and said hello. It doesn’t have to go anywhere, I could simply say hello, smile, and keep walking. There have been a handful of times when she engaged me in conversation, and I always messed it up. Always said something stupid.

Yep, so that’s one of my goals this summer—act normally with Lady Librarian.

Sketch #5

2009-06-13T08:06:00.001-07:00

Sketch #4

2009-06-12T11:46:00.001-07:00

Sketch #3

2009-06-11T20:48:00.001-07:00

Sketch #2

2009-06-10T19:10:00.001-07:00

Sketch #1

2009-06-09T21:40:00.000-07:00

My Father

2009-06-09T18:12:00.000-07:00

Lately, my thoughts have been on my father.

When I was fifteen, I started to hate him. Too many reasons. My mother once said—You two are very alike. That is why you fight. The truest reason of all the countless reasons. When I still lived at home, and if the both of us were angry at the same time, it was unbearable for everyone. Among all my cousins, I am the first to go away to college—two hours away. And it was because of my father. I loved my family, but needed to escape my father. I hated him all the time we drove up to my university, all the time he helped me unload my luggage into my dorm room, all the time he kept giving me advice. And then we were standing next to the family van. Everyone else—my mother and my three siblings—were in the van already, and it was time for the family to go away and leave me in peace. My father stood next to me, and then started crying. Loud sobs, sniffles, a big mess. He reached out and hugged me. He whispered—I will miss you so much. Take care of yourself. I knew he was asking for more—he was asking me to forgive him for all the mean ways he had treated me. My anger and hate melted. I couldn’t say anything. How can it be that this is the only time I can remember my father hugging me? I was 19, and it was the first time my father had ever hugged me. Even though it took months, I learned to love and respect my father again.

Sometimes, people ask me if I love women because I hated my father so much when I was a teenager. No. I love women because I fall in love with women. What does my father have to do with it? I am not a man-hater. I have more guy friends than girl friends. If anything, I aspire to be more like my father because I respect the way he treats women. His whole life—except when he fought in the Vietnam War, his best friends have been women. I’ve never told him that I’m gay, but I don’t think it’s necessary. We talk about women very matter-of-factly. I ask him to describe a beautiful woman for me, and he does. I ask him to tell me about his relationships with the women he’s loved before my mother, and he does. I ask him about the best ways to treat a woman, and he does. One of the few ways that my father and I are different is that he can easily approach women and I can’t.

Sometimes, I wonder if I was meant to be a boy, his son, and then things would make more sense, but my father treats me like his son/daughter now, and I am content with that. He’s passed down his history to me, he’s slowly teaching me how to make a home a home, and with his life, he’s showing me how to deal with pain, disappointment, and loss.

I think—of all the people I know, I know my father best. And yet, he harbors more secrets than he’ll ever tell me. I have written more words about him than about anyone else I know. He is the villain and hero of my stories. He is the most complicated, complex person I know. Someday, when I finally publish my first book, it will be about him. By writing about him—his weaknesses, mistakes, prejudices, all of the ugly as well as the good—I have learned about myself too.

When I was younger, I would look at women I loved deeply, and I would say to myself—There, that’s a woman who I aspire to be. I admired women who were most unlike me. I admired women for their strengths without seeing any of their weaknesses. That sort of admiration is not something I can grow on. These women don’t show me what to do with my weaknesses, fears, self-hatreds. My admiration for these women was false, based on surface appearances. Finally, now, truly, I think that I aspire to be like my father. If someday I can give a woman and our children as good of a home as my father has given all of us, then I would have become as good of a person as I’m capable of being.

Saturday

2009-06-09T16:43:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, my father and I planted my garden. We dug trenches and placed large wooden blocks into a high barrier on all sides of our long garden. I cut open seven 40-pounded bags of soil and laid it out and pounded it down into our rectangular garden patch. In the middle of the garden patch, we tied together white wooden stakes and trellises onto which the vines of morning glory will climb. We tied small white platforms onto which humming birds can rest between their sips from our blossoms. On the left side of the stakes, we planted lantanas, flower clusters with yellow on the interior and pink on the outside and leaves emerald green. On the right side of the stakes, we planted basil and mint and purple leaved herbs. We sprinkled seeds everywhere. Exhausted, we went inside to rest and nap.

I woke up at 7:00 PM and we went to Stephens Lake Park, strolled around with my father, older brother T, and little sister Kim. We sat on white yellow speckled rocks with our feet in the water. Kim asked—Are there fishes in here? I said—Yes, and octopuses and sharks, and look there, a giant blue whale. Kim—Really? T and Kim climbed a small tiered cliff. Father and I walked and looked at the ducks as they crossed the calm lake. There were four adult ducks and fifteen little ducks. We all walked closer to the ducks. Father said—Look at how long and graceful their necks are. These are swans. That’s the leader. Look how big he is. The children and really big too. Duck children are smaller. These are swans. Or maybe geese. I looked closely. Their feathers were black, their necks were gray, and they have the majesty of swans. I said—Yea, I think you’re right. We waited and waited for the lights to come on and light up the lake, but we finally left. I said—Next time, we’ll see the lights.

At home, we all showered and got ready for a movie--The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I went out to water my garden and admire it. As I watered the central part, I saw someone grayish and dark move awkwardly sideways. A frog? No, on closer inspection, it is a bird, and its feathers are disorderly and fluffed. I had accidentally watered it and it weakly cleaned itself. I watered around the bird and dashed inside, telling everyone about the bird in my garden. My father nodded and smiled solemnly. I go outside and sit with the bird for a while. It does not mind my presence. It sits with eyes closed.

Finally, we settled down, sprawled on various parts of our long couch, and turned on the movie. I watched a baby born old, abandoned by his father onto the steps of an old persons’ home. I watched him grow up in a wheel chair, beset by arthritis. I watched him grow younger old, his legs straightening, walking across the stage, his back straightening, his wrinkles disappearing, his eyes clearing, his saggy, skinny chest and limbs growing strong, muscular. I watched him befriend a young girl. I watched them fall in love, she growing older, maturing, dancing, graceful, he growing younger, more clear eyed, face more defined and strong. I watched them separate, the time not being right for them to love each other fully. I watched them close their eyes each night, saying, in their separate beds—Goodnight Benjamin. Goodnight Daisy. I watched them meet again, finally, in the right time, and I watched them buy their house, dance on their mattress, have a daughter. I watched him leave, because he is growing younger, and one day, his lover will have to raise him, and he does not want that. I watched him leave, I watched her grow older. I watched her meeting him again, she older, sagging, he young, handsome, a beautiful teenager, with a face unsure and bewildered, a young face with decades of life to look forward to, but I watched his eyes, which tell the truth, the truth that his young body hides. I watched her grow older still and meet again with a young boy, a young boy that becomes a little boy, who becomes a baby, who becomes an infant. I watched as she—wrinkled, feeble—holds an infant in her arms. The infant has deep black eyes that look up into her face one final time before he closes his eyes. I watched her cover the infant’s face. Goodnight Benjamin. Goodnight Daisy.

In the morning, my sister woke me up and told me that the bird had died. I walk outside, and my father is burying the bird in our newly planted garden. My father said—I knew there was something wrong. It is not right for a bird to come down here to us unless it is hurt. Still, I am glad that the bird found our garden a good enough place to die in.

Update on Squirrel Carcass

2009-06-09T16:42:00.000-07:00

Today, I walked to the bus station and thought about the squirrel carcass. In the three weeks I’ve been out of town, everything has changed. The mound of dirt has become a field of grass, blossom-shaped weeds, and tiny yellow flowers on short stems. The carcass is almost invisible, covered as it is under bowing grass stems. Its arms and legs seemed bound by strawberry vines. Its fur is still visible. Where its tail used to be is now a large green blossom-shaped weed.

I wonder how many other people look for that squirrel each time they pass by its resting place. What do they think? Are they curious? Are they afraid? Maybe they think about nature and how life is a complete circle, and that no matter how cruel and painful and bitter the death was, all bodies rot and return to the earth the same way. What I think is—When it is my time to die, it would be nice and peaceful to walk deep into the woods where no one would ever find me, and lay down, go to sleep, and never wake up. It would be wonderful this way because I’ve seen what happens to the squirrel--how worms eat away its insides and how its fur collapses into emptiness once the worms leave. Animals may come and carry pieces of me away. Eventually, however, around what’s left of my body, the grass will grow. Blossom-shaped weeds will surround me. Crimson flowers on long, long stems will bow over me. Rains will wash and polish my bones. Vines will wind around my limbs and over me, crown my head, and tangle around my fingers, holding me tight.

Shopping with my father

2009-06-08T17:13:00.000-07:00

My motto is that I don’t shop for pleasure. The only things I enjoy buying are food and books and toys (magnets, water buffaloes, legos—all thrift store brought). I realized I have been lying to myself when I went shopping with my father. He makes shopping fun. We went looking for a vacuum filter on Sunday. The bunny we babysat for had peed and pooped all over our townhouse’s living room carpet and when we vacuumed up the nastiness, the dampness had set into the filter and rendered it dead—or suffocated it to such a degree that future vacuuming ventures created enormous billows of dust. Hence, we went to Lowe’s and Super-duper Walmart to get a replacement filter.

In Lowes we walked all over and I had the chance to ooo and aahh over how enormous the shelves are and how I feel like Jack in the giant’s castle. We found the shelves of filters and shrieked at the prospect of spending $30 or $25 for the wrong kinds of filters.

We exited the giant’s castle and entered Walmart, the giant’s dollhouse. We went looking for the vacuums section and I lost my father. I had turned around to backtrack and look at something and when I turned around, my dear father was gone. I looked and strolled and gave up after three minutes. I had no cell phone on me, but I knew that I would find him—by his coughing or the way he talks to himself as he analyzes prices or by the fact that he just yells my name when I’ve disappeared for too long.

I went over the posters section, because I wanted to find a movie poster of Heavy Metal, because of the gorgeous warrior chick featured on it. I should have known a 1981 movie poster would not be there, but I hoped. Instead, I saw posters with babes in bikinis, Twilight, messaging shorthand, Twilight, guitar fingerings, Twilight, babes in bikinis, Twilight, wrestling champs, Twilight. And heard my father calling my name and so used my powerful sense of echo-location to locate my father, who was standing in the vacuum section. We shrieked furiously at the prospect of spending $20 or $15 for a new vacuum filter. Then my father used his considerable find a cheaper solution powers and we ventured forth into the air conditioning filters section. It was here that we combined our powers of bargain detection and found a $4 filter which could be cut up to fit vacuum’s filter compartment. Triumphant, we exited Walmart and went home. Our dear vacuum still coughs a little dust, but much less.

I think the reason I do not like to shop is that I can expect to spend a lot of money. I can expect to enter the store, grab a shopping cart, and if I want panties or soap or jello, I roll my cart to the shelves labeled thus, and then I have to stand there among numerous brands and look and look and read labels, trying to calculate the benefits of cost verses how carcinogenic is this brand of soap? Booorrrriiiiinnngg!! Stuuuuupidd!! I don’t want numerous options—I want to learn to think. I want to escape the system. I want to stand there and say—Ha, so you companies think you can make me buy your $30 vacuum filter or your $5 teeth whitening tooth paste or your $5 soap that can peel the dirt off of me—well, I have another solution! I can fix up an air conditioning filter to fit my vacuum. I can brush my teeth with tree bark. I can use dishwashing soap to bathe in.

2009-06-02T22:50:00.000-07:00

It began when I watched the SouthPark episode “Major Boobage”—afterwards which I decided that it was my favorite episode ever because it features—animated—a statuesque shaggy haired blonde woman with slim waist, long, long legs, and a pair of spectacular breasts. It is so wrong and yet so right that I would be mesmerized by her breasts. Plot goes like—Kenny, high on cat piss, enters an alternate reality—enters riding a rocket powered 1981 shiny black Pontiac Trans Am. He encounters described goddess, and next sequence reveals him riding shotgun with goddess driving—and one of my favorite activities in life is sitting shot gun to a goddess with one hand on the wheel. Kenny, pre-adolescent boy that he is—watches the bobbing and dancing of spectacular breasts. They proceed to her kingdom, where the prize will be that Kenny will proceed to the pool with goddess and where he will rub soap suds on spectacular breasts.

As she uncovers—Kenny is interrupted.

Blah, blah, blah goes the plot, and then Kenny finally returns and he finds the goddess trapped by brutish villains who have imprisoned her in a metal frame. She is naked—the metal bars barely covering her nipples and her privates, and the villains are laughing with ill intent and holding a mean whip over her. Then—this is my favorite part—goddess gives Kenny a look. The look is calm, but it conveys annoyance and forbearance and displeasure at the stupidity and beastly behavior of brutish villains. She is not frightened, she is simply annoyed. The look says—Can you believe these idiots? Kenny cannot, and he proceeds to kill the villains. Very bloody. Then next sequence features Kenny riding in front of goddess on winged creature. Kenny—short pre-adolescent boy that he is—gets to enjoy the nice sensation of spectacular, heavy beasts bobbing up and down against his shoulders as he soars magnificently through the skies.

Is it wrong that I enjoyed this episode very, very much? As a feminist, should I feel outrage that goddess is a silent sex doll who must endure soap suds being massaged onto her breasts by pre-adolescent boy? I think not. There’s a nice innocence about this adventure story. Heck, I want to be the one riding shot gun, soaring through skies, and floating in pool doing the massaging.

Week in Review

2009-06-02T15:40:00.000-07:00

Alas, I have ended my spree of oily overeating. Instead, this last whole week, I have begun a dizzying spell of no sleep, oversleeping, no writing, overwriting. I have written about immigrants, love-obsession, Beauty and the Beast in space, and quiet letters to my grieving aunt. I have read books about death, depression, suicides. I have started reading a fantasy which will have a happy ending, but I have stopped, not wanting to reach a resolution. I have discovered that happy endings bore me.

I have mocked and screamed at my little sister Kim until she cried. I bonked her on the nose until she went running to my father. Then I slept. Having woken up groggy and foul-moody, Kim and I out on the baby swing, onto which she squeezed into a corner while I plumped my huge body down, squishing her even further. I am fascinated by how easily children forgive our mature immatureness. I told her—Hmm, it seems like I am squishing you. Kim replied—You’re big. A good seat belt. First, I proceeded to swing us both, until the metal squeaked and sawed and the metal legs of the swing came off the ground. We smiled and screamed and pondered the likelihood that we will be dumped onto the ground. Then I got bored and said—Alright, I’m tired. Now you swing me. Kim set her skinny, skinny legs on the ground and tried to swing us both. Alas, my Asian obesity is too much against skinny seven years old legs. Oh, but look here. Kim’s determination has set us a-swinging, and we are laughing and hollering and pondering if my weight will ever break the baby swing.

And then, oh beautiful night, we went to watch Up at The Great Escape, a minor theater in our backcountry of Fenton. My tender-heartedness overcame and I wept during a silent sequence—[SPOILER ALERT) beautifully rendered with snap-shot quick successions of a marriage—running up the hill, buying a shack and making it a home, buying two armchairs, one low and squatty for the husband, one pale pink and elegantly tall for the wife, putting a big glass jar on the table, placing coins in it for the great adventure, laying on the grass together, pointing out pictures in the sky, the car breaking down, smashing the glass jar, pointing out all the clouds and all the babies in the clouds, setting another glass jar, sitting in grief next to a doctor, the doctor’s hand on her shoulder—a life childless but full of love, smashing glass jar again and again, growing old, husband thinking back on his dream, husband buying two plane tickets for grand adventure, husband hiding plane tickets, wanting to surprise wife, wife is now is bed, dying, and they are looking at one another, realizing that one has to leave and one has to stay for now, and now husband sits on his low and squatty chair, and next to him, the pale pink and elegantly tall chair remains empty.

Sigh. I have no idea why I just wrote that, but I needed to.

2009-05-25T19:34:00.000-07:00

Dad’s birthday on the 24th. We ate together as a family, and even though my brother and I fought, everyone else have been getting on well with each other. We went to Walmart and brought two kinds of cake—a rolled up carrot cake and a German frozen chocolate cake. First we tried the carrot cake. Overall consensus was that it was too sweet. Little sister Kim said—let’s try the chocolate cake. Since I had devoured two platefuls of carrot cake roll, I had no room for chocolate cake. Dad and sister approved of chocolate cake.

Now, a day later, it is raining hard, thundering right now and sister Kim is whimpering. I feel hungry, but I am hesitant about eating. These past weeks, I usually feel bloated because once I start eating, I don’t stop until my brain realizes that it is freakin’ hot, I’ve been eating oily foods, and I feel mighty uncomfortable because of the combo of the two.

My sister—after staying for a week by herself at our college townhouse (it is lovely to say—ah yes, our college townhouse)—has returned and told me how great it feels to control her eating.

During dad’s dinner party, when I looked greedily at her slice of carrot cake, she said—you want to eat it, don’t you?

Yes. [Looking greedily at cake]

Oh, you can have it. I don’t want it.

After eating that slice, I of course felt bloated and awful. Henceforth, I will endeavor to control my portions.

I feel guilty and sad for not making my father’s birthday more of a big deal. He has been feeling poorly and ill lately, and I wish I was less withdrawn and more able to celebrate life. I asked dad—how does it feel to grow older? Is it good? My sister Christine sneered at me, sending evil brainwaves at me—why ask such a question? Maybe I’m an idiot conversationalist—I don’t mind being one—but I was asking that question earnestly, thinking my dad has gone through a lot in his life, and he should feel content to celebrate the variety of such a life. But no, my dad had disappointment in his eyes and shook his head.

I am not one for making gestures, but I wish I was capable of expressing how I feel. Life—such as it is—should be celebrated for all the things that went wrong as well as went right.

Uteri

2009-05-25T19:11:00.000-07:00

Brother’s birthday on the 23rd—none of us had gifts. We ate—it seems to always be about the eating—hot pot, which is a boiling pot (on the table) of coconut juice and chicken broth. There are various things to dip into gently simmering broth—slices of beef, mussels, clams, shrimp, mushrooms, octopus, the usual . . . and this time, a new delicacy. I looked at the new container of pinkish, interconnected globules. It’s pretty, like gently waving sea anemone, only pinker and rounder. The package says—uteri. My dad says—baby pig intestine. I think—hmm, okay, intestines, familiar. Then I think—uteri is the plural of uterus. I start laughing and snorting—it’s uterus, it’s uterus, I’m gonna eat uterus. My sister and brother look at me in irritation, because they don’t think it’s funny, because there’s no way they’re going to eat uterus or intestine or whatever it is. I, on the other hand, am fair game for it. I eat a few pieces, and there’s a fishy smell to it. Not to mention the texture makes me feel sickish. And I feel, as a should feel, that there is something wrong with eating uteri—I’m eating womb—I’m eating the thing in which babies grow. No, only two servings of uteri for me, and I’ll be okay with the other offerings.

I behaved atrociously during my brother’s birthday dinner. Looking back, I am confused about how badly I behaved; however, considering the fact that I was drinking my father’s homemade rum, I am not 100% surprised. There’s always someone behaving badly during special occasions, and I always seem to be the idiot of the party.

2009-05-22T15:40:00.000-07:00

DREAM (FRAGMENT) #8

I am holding a container of plants. It is gross because there are pieces of meat in it. I am mournful about the meat because I would like to salvage that meat, and I wonder what possessed me to put meat in with plants. It smells delicious and edible even when soaked in plant water. I seriously consider taking the meat out and washing it off. I dig my finger inside the container and find lots of bean sprouts and a large plant with fresh green leaves. Excitedly, I pull the plant from the pot and am horrified that its stem is a rib cage. A rib cage! Ew! Is it going to breathe?! I am absolutely disgusted by now, feel nauseous, and decide to give up my quest to be a gardener.

Pianist

2009-05-21T22:35:00.000-07:00

I am watching/listening to Martha Argerich, pianist extraordinaire, play Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto. She is old and a bit dumpy, but the black dress contrasts nicely with the demure display of her white bosom. Her face looks old and tired, but her hair is magnificent—black with the shine of brown. White strands near her temples and along the parting of her hair. I like her concentrated, frowning look.

There is also a fetching picture of her younger years. Her chin is held high. Her body is facing right, but her head is turned to the camera. Her eyelids are slightly lowered. Her mouth is closed, corners held low, a beautiful mourning look. Her lower lip is fetchingly full.

The first few minutes of Piano Concerto are magnificent. Her white hands depress the chords, and then fly up again. Straight off the keyboard. They remind me of white frightened birds. She seems to leisurely strike out the deep, thunderous notes, her hands touching the keyboard on three specific places, down the keyboard—one, two, three—and then moving her hands swiftly to do it again—one, two, three.

Dreams

2009-05-21T19:20:00.000-07:00

Wrote this yesterday. Was too bored to post it.

Whenever I try to write a story, I feel absolutely bored with my lack of imagination. Author blogs that I read [Robin McKinley, Malinda Lo, Sara Ryan] often explain that writing—real story writing and not blog writing—is like a job, where I need to have goals and keep at it day after day no matter how I struggle to form a coherent story-line. I’m still an adolescent-apprentice writer, which means that when I get kinda good ideas, I slap them all together and then forget about them for months (while I go to school/work), and then look at them again when I’m on vacation to see if they’re salvageable. None so far have been salvageable. I have dozens of little story projects going on, and I think I should focus on just one, but when I focus on just one, my imagination dies.

Since I’m a failure as a storywriter right now, I like to explore my dreams, because I seem to have plenty of imagination when I dream. I take my dreams very seriously, i.e. when I wake up from a dream worth recording, I spend my whole day returning to the dream-world, trying to remember tiny details and straighten problematic plotlines. I try to stay true to the dreams, i.e. not making stuff up or resolving details when the dream was cut short or when I don’t remember. Some dreams, I write down months after I dreamed it. Geez, am I self-absorbed or what? But no, I like writing about my dreams not because I want to interpret them but because they’re little stories. Maybe over time, I can look back at them, and make them into real stories. Which reminds me—

DREAM #7

I am running with a woman who is wearing a red dress. She has long black hair and white, white skin. She is tall and slender. She is so beautiful, and I am mesmerized. We are running along hallways carved exquisitely with birds and trees. When I look at the birds, they take flight and their wings are made of multicolored textiles. A story forms in my mind—there is a man dressed in black robes looking for the woman. He has grey hair and a pale face. Suddenly, we are on a cliff and looking down on a waterfall. I see the glitter of golden scales. The man grabs the woman and makes her look down at the waterfall. I do nothing but watch. The man pushes her off the cliff and she falls, silent. I watch the way her dress ripples as she falls. I am horrified and sad. I say—You murdered her. You are guilty. He looks at me calmly, and I notice how grey his eyes are. He says—Yes, I am guilty. I need to pay for my crime. He walks to the edge of the cliff and falls off. Before he falls away from my sight, his body suddenly curves upward and he is floating, circling me, flying. His flight is joyous. I ask—Why? Why does she die and he lives? The answer comes—Because he has been forgiven. She was too afraid, and that’s why she fell.

Sunny Day

2009-05-19T18:50:00.000-07:00

It feels nice to have plenty of time to get caught up in my correspondence and to talk again to the people I stopped talking to a year ago. For the first time in a long time, I feel peaceful and in control of my life. A life out of love is swell, like I’m in my mind and heart again. Like I pulled back the pieces of my soul, glued it back together, and shoved it back in my chest. Pretty soon, I’ll be able to see people again and not feel panicky. I’ll see my friends again, and tell them—Yep, I’ve been out of commission for a whole year, been going through some rough times, but I’m ME again. Well, maybe I won’t be able to see my friends again soon—still have some weak moments—but maybe in a few months.

This is the person I like being. Not that love-sick, pathetic other creature. I hate being crippled by my emotions.

We three are sitting outside half in shade and half in sunlight. Me, little sister Kim, and bunny. Bunny is on loan to us for a few weeks—we are bunny-sitting. I will miss bunny when she is gone. She is tawny and feisty, but there are times when she lays quietly in my arms with her head tucked into the crook of my right elbow.

I’m tanning my legs. It’s embarrassing when my legs are so white, they glow. Flies and bright yellow bugs are landing on the white expanses and walking around. Kim is next to me drawing trees, honeycombs, and sunlight. In between some grass blades, the sizeable torso of a worm glistens. Maybe the worm is sunning too? The worm arches its torso, and I wonder what would happen if I slice it perfectly in half. A fly has landed on the heel of my right foot. The calluses on my heel make it strange to watch the fly walk along the side of my foot.

In the distance, bees are hovering, dashing down from flower to flower. The fly walks nearer my big toe. I flex my foot. The fly doesn’t mind. The ice cream truck is making its rounds—absolutely stupid music—a few trumpet blasts every few seconds. Most annoying. Tawny bunny is feasting on strawberry leaves. Kim and I stand up and play kick ball. Every time I glance over at bunny, she glances at us between the strawberry leaves.

A red-breasted bird hops about on the grass. Should I tell bird about fat worm? I think not. The shadows of larger birds pass overhead. The trees are dancing in the breeze. Sounds like the pitter patter of gentle rain. The sunlight sparkling on the leaves makes me think that it’s a party and the trees are waltzing with each other.

There’s so much life in a trailer park on a warm summer day.

Loss of True Love

2009-05-18T19:57:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, my aunt’s husband passed away. They had been married for thirty-nine years. They were truly, deeply in love. He had a stroke, lost consciousness, and never woke up again. No chance to say good-bye. My aunt was inconsolable—her husband once said that if she died, he would die too—he would not know what else to do. My aunt feels the same way.

Two years ago, I was corresponding with my aunt, and then I stopped—because I was too lazy, too sad, too busy, too self-absorbed maybe. I have never spoken to my aunt on the phone—only ever wrote her letters. My mother went to Los Angeles for one week, and during that time, she called me twice, telling me that my aunt would like to talk to me on the phone. I refused. Why? I was selfish. I was too scared. I was too concerned about myself. Even though I didn’t know my uncle well, I feel for my aunt. I regret my inability to offer comfort—I regret, I regret so much. My mother told me yesterday that my aunt would like a letter from me because it would comfort her.

I finally wrote my aunt a letter tonight, trying to offer comfort, feeling with each word I wrote that everything I said was inadequate. Such a loss—the loss of true love—there is no comfort someone else can offer. My mother told me that when my aunt is home alone—in the home where once she shared with the love of her life—she walks around, calling for her husband, wishing that if he had become a ghost, he would come back to her.

The only thing that I could think to offer to such loss was my own loneliness. I have never known true love, and I cannot imagine the devastation such a loss would cause. I’ve made a promise that I’ll write her a letter every week, no matter how busy, how depressed, how wretched I am. It is going to be difficult to write those letters.

If I were a character in a fairy tale, I would be the hard and bitter old witch, sitting in my tower room, brewing my potions, reading my spell books, weaving dark spells. I have spent my life avoiding people, because I always get hurt when I get too close. Something always goes wrong, and each time something does go wrong, the deep and dark forest around my witch’s hut becomes more and more impassable. Loneliness becomes my bad addiction. It becomes my way of life. It is so difficult to care about someone else.

A year ago, a friend told me that my life would be guided by love. Of course I laughed bitterly—I’m chained to love, more like it. I’m addicted to love. Most of the novels I read each year are love stories. The stories I tell myself before I go to sleep are all love stories. The stories I write are all love stories. The most bittersweet dreams I have—the ones that I dare not write about—are all dreams of love. Every year, I tell myself—it’s over, no more of this pathetic letting-love-guide-your-life nonsense. Find something else. Let ambition guide your life. Or the quest for knowledge. Or hope for peace. Or your need to understand religion. Anything but love. I tell myself—living like this—longing for love, hoping for love—this way of living will kill you. If I knew which part of my brain is love, I would cut it out, with no regrets whatsoever. I would cut it out and throw it away. That may seem harsh, but I know—surely as I know anything about myself—that my cyclic bouts of depression are because of unrequited love. Every time I fail in my quest for love, I shut down—I lose the ability to function, I lose the will to live. My emotional stability is pathetic. My loneliness becomes a monster crawling inside my mind.

That is why I fear writing to my aunt. For only one precious month so far this year, I have not suffered because of love. I have been free of hope, of fear, of desire for love. I have been functioning like a normal human being. I have been okay, and I have been feeling that I will be okay forever because I know my weakness, I have made the same mistake too many times, and I am stronger than this sick need for love. I feel like I am being tested. Am I strong enough to write to my aunt and hear her stories about her true love? Am I strong enough to offer comfort, even when I feel awful, just plain awful, that my aunt, who has suffered so much in her life, has just endured the worst loss in her life? I think I am. I am so angry, so sick, so freakin’ bitter about the way love makes me feel that I think I am strong enough. I am strong enough on the strength of my negative feelings. If it helps to be a bitter, hard, lonely old witch, then by Thunder, I will gladly take on this persona. Am I closing myself off to love? Yes. Yes. Love belongs in my stories and my imagination, but longing for it in real life is akin to seeking my own death.

[Self-Commentation: Whew, I seem to be having a bad day. Where’s my sense of humor today?? Actually, it’s a relief to write all this out, because that’s really how I have been feeling for three years—been too afraid to admit these things to myself, I suppose. The truth surely hurts, and I hope my sense of humor is back tomorrow.]

2009-05-18T17:14:00.000-07:00

DREAM #6

I was watching a lesbian movie—two women in the desert loving each other. I think—must be Desert Hearts, and it is. I am watching the movie with my mother and wondering why because there is a lesbian love scene and I don’t want my mother to see it. I leave, hoping my mother will leave too, and she does. I go to the bathroom, and the floor is covered with seaweed, and the toilet is gross, as though it has flooded with the ocean. I try to fix the toilet. I lift it, and it is suddenly cleaved into two perfect pieces, and the water in the top portion collapses onto the floor when I touch it. [Dream time shifts] My father is with me, and he asks—Do you want to see where I hide my things? It is the safest place in the world. We drove into violent white rushing water, and my father opens his car door. Somehow, we are not soaked by the water. I cannot feel the water. He reaches into the water and I can suddenly see into another car. There is another car under the flood waters and it is locked into place. My father looks at me and says—This is the safest place I could find. I look at his treasures and I see old, ragged, tattered books, carefully placed on a makeshift shelf hammered on the dashboard. How sad, I think, these are all he has, and they will be swept away. This place is not safe.

2009-05-18T17:13:00.000-07:00

DREAM #5

She said she had come from another world to release the animals. I said, cool, because I liked all the animals, loved to go down to the zoo, gawked like everyone else, and yet felt a little bit of pity for these wild creatures locked in cages. So I took her down to the zoo and showed her the animals. She was fascinated, but I knew these were not the right animals. I had shown her the wrong kinds of animals. She was waiting for me to see the world, truly, so she made me look into darkness, into mirrors. She put pieces of glass near the window and made me look at them as the sun colored them, but I saw nothing. I took her to see fireworks, and the strangest thing happened when the first burst of light took place—everything stopped. The sparks in the sky stopped, frozen, like the outlines of a glowing umbrella above our heads. I told her—let it go, let everything go, it is alright, the fire is harmless. She let go and the fire in the sky fell, glittering, and disappeared around our shoulders. All I can say is—the fireworks were weird that night—they pulsed and stilled and flared strangely, a strange pattern like a creature breathing, and I turned to the woman next to me, and saw them reflected in the expression of her eyes. I felt as though I was looking into her mind, falling, like those sparks of fire falling from the sky. She wanted me to trust her mind. She wanted me to follow her, and we went back into the caves, deeper and deeper. At some point, she turned off our flashlights, and for awhile, we stood still in the darkness and breathed next to each other. But I couldn’t help it, and I began to cry in terror. Trust me, she said. I told her, I trust you, but I don’t trust the dark. But I knew, I could not escape, because after all, she is the dark.

2009-05-17T10:37:00.001-07:00

DREAM #4

I am trying to pick up our tawny rabbit. I reach one hand under its chest and lift while my other hand curls around its hind-quarters. [Dream time shifts] There is a university where the official flag is two black crossed blades on a background of red. There is a trial going on for the local superhero. He is not in disguise. He wins his case and now there is a long row of cars—rich college kids in their jaguars, corvettes, porsches. They are all ready to race and at the far end is our superhero masked and dressed in red. Everyone is laughing at his car, a red toy car which encases the lower half of his body. As the race is about to begin, his car vibrates, time-shifting quickly and its edges are no longer definable [Dream time shifts] Couples are trying to pirouette, where pirouette is two partners, the ballerino holding the ballerina to his side, his arms wide and flipping her upside-down and around. One couple is having an especially difficult time because the ballerina is too heavy. The superhero comes up to them and asks the ballerina—what are you going to do about it? The ballerino becomes violent and takes her away to another room. There is screaming. [Dream time shifts] I am in a bathroom. There are two books on the floor. One of them is Wild Child. I go into the next room and it is a library. I look around and it is my high school library—I look around and I see my high school best friend—the librarian. She has grey hair and she is smiling, serene and happy to see me after all these years. I’ve missed her so much and I have so much to tell her . . . [Dream time shifts] There is an Asian guy and he is trying to poison our tawny rabbit. We are sitting around watching him. He grins at us and puts his hand in the rabbit’s bowl of water, flicking the water around. He takes out a bottle and pours green fluid into the rabbit’s food bowl. He is still grinning at us. My father comes into the room and nods.

Raccoons

2009-05-16T22:41:00.000-07:00

I didn’t go to sleep until 7:00 AM this morning. Before I went to sleep, I packed for the bus trip at 1:30 PM, emptied the fridge, and took out the trash—listening to PokerFace all the while. When I opened the front door, lunging upwards of fifty pounds of filth, I looked over and saw a raccoon, about the size of a small dog. It had seen me half a second before I had locked eyes with it.

There’s a six foot tall reddish brown wooden fence surrounding our row of townhouses—no way to climb or dig a hole quickly.

The raccoon, utterly shy and panicky, kept glancing my way as it clawed and pushed at the fence, as though by the sheer force of its jumpiness, it could scale the heights. Of course fascinated, I stood there gripping the trash bags, wondering how to offer it choice pieces of refuse. Raccoon finally gave up on the wall and—I don’t know how else to describe this—sneaked towards the side of the end-townhouse. It wasn’t scurrying. It was sneaking, as though by putting itself into sneak mode, it would render its body invisible to my human eyes.

I went on my way, walking towards the other end of the townhouses, towards the parking lot where the dumpster sits on one corner. Now, I despise lunging trash to the dumpster, so I was looking around, trying to entertain myself, thinking—ah, the magnolias are still in bloom, a bit brown around the petal edges, but still deeply pink . . . hmm, my violet irises are all dead, stupid darn lawn mower guy plowed into them . . . yellow irises are still looking lively, better water them before I leave . . . darn stupid college kids and their parties, looks like beer cans everywhere, gotta complain one of these days . . . here we go, almost ther—Holy moley!!—

Remember Raccoon? Seems like its target, before I interrupted its peaceful dawn prowling, was the same dumpster where I was headed. I, burdened by the heaviest trash bags on earth, was slow enough to intercept it as it made its way around the end-townhouse and through six backyards and towards me. I don’t know who was more shocked. Raccoon recovered sooner and scurried under a hole in the wooden fence. I blinked a few times, dumped my trash, went back inside, sat for awhile thinking about Raccoon, and finally collapsed into bed.

I like raccoons. I know they bite, and they’re dirty, and they’re trash-pickers, but so am I when I’m in my natural state. If I could talk to a raccoon, I know it would understand me. There’s something indescribably appealing about the way a raccoon looks at you. Maybe it’s the bandit eyes, but that doesn’t account for how it can express embarrassment and shyness with its whole body.

Two years ago, when I was still living in an apartment complex on the edge of campus, one day, I was crossing the street, and there was a large raccoon crossing the street—crossing a busy, busy street, with cars honking and dozens of college kids everywhere. It was a beautiful raccoon, very large—size of a large dog, and finest fluffy tail I have ever seen. The poor dear was obviously scared out of its wits. It looked like it was surprised to discover itself in such circumstances and that all of us were being inexpressibly rude by gawking at it. It was ambling sideways, or maybe moving diagonally—imagine a large creature trying to glance on all sides—trying to keep its eyes on everyone as it tries to also move in one direction—hopefully a direction away from everyone. Also, if you please, imagine a ballet dancer—a large, furry, overweight ballet dancer—slowly trying to pirouette, but not succeeding, and so trying again and again. Or maybe imagine a furry train falling off its tracks and skidding sideways . . . It was the most painful, awkward gait I have ever seen. I don’t remember what happened to Raccoon-Crossing-the-Street. I was too busy cataloging its expression.

Raccoons look the way I imagine I do when I’m caught leaning on my tiptoes with my two arms dug deeply in a dumpster.

John Donne

2009-05-15T19:17:00.000-07:00

I had my last final today at 8:00 AM. I was exhausted until three hours ago, when I napped, woken up thirty minutes ago by thunder and rain. When you open your eyes to a darkened blue room, your mind groggy, and the rain is pounding away incessantly, it feels like the world is drowning. I am now refreshed, ready to listen to music for the next 12 hours, take my heart out, lay it on my sleeve, and write.

Good news! There is an ant next to my keyboard. My sister cooked yellow cake yesterday, so there are plenty of crumbs. Have at it, ant!

I will be going to my parents’ home tomorrow and staying there for three weeks until summer school starts. Two nutritional science classes this summer. My father is also interested in this stuff, so I hope I get some interesting tidbits to tell him. Next school year will mark my sixth year on my journey to get my undergraduate English/Science degrees. As of now, it will be my last year. I will walk next May. Most of the time, I feel like a loser for being in college for so long. And what have I learned all these years? Sometimes, though, I know I am in the right place. This is the only place where I can explore all my options.

How about some English Renaissance poetry from my final this morning? These dead dudes—Shakespeare, Donne, Milton—they were all interested in only two things: love and death. If they weren’t moaning about unrequited love, they were tearing their hair out about the fact that we all return to dust. Most of them weren’t kind to women. For example, dear, dear John Donne had this to say:

Hope not for the mind in women; at their best
Sweetness and wit, they’re but mummy, possessed.
~Love’s Alchemy

My reply: Well, excuse us if we seem a tad bit embalmed while in your delightful company. Perhaps it’s because of your very witty conversation that makes us want to have our brains sucked out of our nose holes and encased safely in a jar. The Good Lord preserve us from the likes of your wit.

Donne on women’s fidelity:

Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.
~Song

My reply: Huh, so all women are whores, are they? Well, God bless them for enjoying themselves with two, or three lovers at a time. Can’t stand a little orgy, can we? I like nothing better than a woman with a ravenous appetite.

Donne using peer pressure to get a woman naked in bed:

To teach thee, I am naked first; why then
What need’st thou have more covering than a man?
~Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed

My reply: Why? Why? Well, you’re kind of desperate, aren’t you, if you’re willing to bare that hideously puny thing!

About Donne: So, he ran away with his true love, married her, and during the sixteen years of their marriage, proceeded to impregnate her twelve times! Twelve. As my sister Christine would say—ouch. Did she ever leave her bed? And guess how she died. In childbirth. Surprised, anyone? Couldn’t put the darn thing away, could we? What’s interesting is that after her death, Donne, for all his vast sexual appetites, swore off women and turned to God. He then proceeded to write his Holy Sonnets. Let’s take a look at one:

Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
~Holy Sonnet #10

For those of you confused, me is Donne and you is God. Huh. Seems like he wants to be raped by God. Or, if not that, to have very, very good sex with God. Donne seems to be a bit of a sado-masochist, especially since earlier in the poem, he wants God to o’erthrow me, and bend / Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.

My reply: So that’s why you turned to God! Well, Donne, old boy, if you got into Heaven, then by all means try to seduce God. God knows, God needs a little relaxation away from all his ruling and everything. But I warn you, if your dear wife got into Heaven too, she won’t take kindly to your infidelity! What’s that? Til death do you part? Okay, okay, fine, but don’t come complaining to me when she hurls your ass down to Hell.

I’m just poking good fun at Donne. If my humor’s a little offensive, I blame South Park. Donne’s a good poet. Gave us some of the best lines about love:

Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name
~Air and Angels

I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
~The Good Morrow

This one’s for us queers; the [Blah, blah, blah] are skipped lines; however, let’s pretend that the [Blah, blah, blah] are the idiot Prop 8 people and let’s imagine that Donne is speaking for us:

For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
[Blah, blah, blah]
Alas, alas, who’s injured by my love?
[Blah, blah, blah]
Call us what you will, we are made such by love.
[Blah, blah, blah]
We can die by it, if not live by love.
[Blah, blah, blah]
And thus invoke us: You whom reverend love
Made one another’s hermitage [place of refuge];
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
Who did the whole world’s soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses [lenses] of your eyes.
~The Canonization

The last five lines are confusing, so here’s my take on it: You who revere the power of love, you made refuges for each other and for your love. If you can love with deep passion, if you can understand what love is, how can you not understand us? How can our love enrage you, when we too love with as deep passion and reverence as you do? Look into our eyes and you will see the whole world’s soul reflected back at you. Look into our eyes and you will see the grief and violence you have created reflected back at you.

[Sigh] Thinking about Prop 8 has made me blue.

Ants

2009-05-13T22:49:00.000-07:00

Before my sister set poison, our townhouse was crawling with ants. Set out a cup with residual soda in it and minutes later, there are ants crawling all over it. Set out a cup of water, and minutes later, all the ants in the vicinity have decided to go swimming. And just because the ants are floating still on top of the water does not mean that they’re dead.

I kinda miss them.

Ants would crawl around on my desk. During my morose, listless moods, I would sprinkle bread crumbs across my desk and watch the ants lug the crumbs around in their orderly little lines. Sometimes, there would be an ant crawling on the page I was reading, and when I needed to turn the page, I would have an unholy need to slam the book on the ant, but I never gave into my killer instinct, and more often than not, I would not turn the page and just reread, which is not a bad option if the book is good and I want to linger on the anticipation.

Sometimes, (well, quite a few times really) I would carry a few ants around in my bag. I would take my books out during class or at work and see the ant crawl out and crawl across the table. Now, when ants are a common sight to you, and you are so used to being friendly to them for so long, you can forget that squishing ants is an automatic human habit. At work one day, after I reached into my bag to get a pen, and saw an ant crawling along the length of it, I placed it gently on the table—on the table where two other tutors (I tutor) were sitting too. I set it gently down and thought—how about you go play while I finish writing this sentence. The ant crawled across my paper and I gently brushed it toward the center of the table, thinking—no, no, honey, go play. A few seconds later, I see the tutor across from me slam down her hand really hard and sweep it quickly off the table. I said (or yelled quietly, since this was the library)—Noo!! You killer! You killed my ant! I explained, but I guess my explanation sounded a little crazy, because she felt no remorse.

Sometime, when I get annoyed, I flick the ant away, and imagine the ant flying away on wings of glory. My sister, in her ant-killing craze, would stand next to my desk and squish my ants. No! I usually cry in alarm, My desk is an island of refuge! Get your killer hands away!!

Ants aren’t bad. They bite, but—this sounds gross, but it works—I lick the bite and it disappears in a few hours. It really works. For mosquito bites too. Hey, cats and dogs and other animals with tongues lick themselves better. Why can’t Homo sapiens? I’m not stupid enough to lick myself if I have a gun shot wound, but for bites, there’s no harm in licking myself better.

I need to go steal some ants from an ant hill, because our townhouse is sadly ant-free right now.

My Chem Professor

2009-05-13T21:52:00.000-07:00

He actually makes chem interesting. I’ll miss him. Every few lectures, he would have a “Tidbit” about something real-world related to the chemical reaction we were studying. He’s discussed Viagra, fake sugar packages, chemicals bees give off, the chemicals plants give off, how coal causes cancer, how ultraviolet light causes cancer, why it’s not a good idea to eat the chemicals you make when you’re a grad student. He often ends his Tidbits with—Well, there you have it. If you can find the answer to [whatever chemical problem is puzzling chemists], then I assure you that you wouldn’t have to worry about another paycheck ever again. You would be so filthy rich. And you know what? You can find the answer with everything you’ve been learning in this class. Think about it! Someone among you is going to someday find the answer. And you will do it all with what you learned here in sophomore chemistry. Let me tell you, if I figured out this chemical reaction, I would not be coming back tomorrow. Sometime, he talks about the chemical reactions that plants or animals can perform in their bodies that we can’t figure out in our labs. For example, the bees—These stupid little bees can do this reaction in a few seconds. They can do it without thinking. And chemical laboratories with machines and money at their disposal, they can’t do it. They can’t figure it out. It’s impossible! We’re so smart, and no matter what we do, we can’t do what the stupid bees can do.

He is quite hilarious. He puts me on the edge of hilarity quite a few times. He has deep grey eyes, grey hair streaked with white, but he is not old. His language and manners of expression are youthful. When I go to chem lectures, I often feel like an old hag—chemistry makes me feel tired, like I have to lug around the weight of all the chemicals and reactions I have to memorize.

I wish I could feel as excited and enthusiastic about chem as he does. He often wears colored T-shirts tucked into a pair of jeans. He walks with his belly slightly leading him. Or his chest puffed out. It’s not as ridiculous as it sounds. You get used to his manner of striding around. He doesn’t have a beer belly, just a slight bulge that lets me know he enjoys eating, fun nights out, etc. When he lectures, he writes on the chalkboard, and he uses a HUGE piece of yellow chalk. That piece of chalk is half the size of my wrist! His own words—I love chalk! I will probably die with a piece of chalk in my hand. I’ll probably be buried with a piece of chalk. His hand must be really strong and flexible if he can write so quickly with that huge piece of chalk. And he writes fast. It’s incredible how fast he writes. He also talks really fast. He’s always misplacing the blackboard eraser, and he would stride back and forth quickly looking for one of them. Then after he has found an eraser and erased the board, he glances over at his other hand and says—I’ve been holding the eraser in my hand all this time! I give up! When he makes a mistake on the board, and a student points it out, and he doesn’t see the mistake, and the student points out the mistake, and he still doesn’t see the mistake, and more students keep pointing out the mistake, and he finally sees the mistake, he turns to us, throws his eraser in the air really high (not at us) and says—I give up!

He’s got a lot of self-confidence when he stands up there. He also has a lot of restless energy. He’s a cool geek, the kind of geek that makes you say to yourself—Gosh darn, if I have to be a geek, that’s the kind of geek I wanna be.

Depression

2009-05-13T19:46:00.000-07:00

I should be studying for my poetry final on Friday, but I don’t want to. It’s storming outside. My desk is in our dining area, pushed back against a window, which I open sometimes when it’s dark and I’m writing. The pitter-patter of rain is soothing. The rumbles of thunder are . . . ominous. A nice kind of ominous, because I know I am safe. Depression has been on my mind lately, because for the first time in three months, I feel like I’m not depressed.

My symptoms of depression: can’t get up before noon, shun the world, hide away from friends, no energy, no incentive to do anything, always feel like I’m on the edge of tears. I give up. I do not pursue Death, but if she did come for me and kissed me on the lips, I would not mind. I would lay down my pen, fold my hands demurely, and say, Ah, so you are indeed my one and only true love. I should have guessed it. All right then, let us dance away to thy kingdom of sweet oblivion. Or some such nonsense. I should say that when I am depressed, I don’t write. When my depression is on remission, one of the first things that happen is that I write. Hence, I’ve been writing a lot lately. Also, the tiny humorous tone of some of my sentences lets me know I still have a sense of humor. My writing is what lets me know that I am returning from my half-death. Years ago, I thought, ignorantly, that admitting to myself my love for women would mean an end to my cyclic bouts of depression, but no, I’ve realized that my depression is a constant companion, waiting for me. See that shadow behind the door? Yes, that’s her. She is a sorceress and her spells are lethal. Will I ever find the antidote to her poison? I don’t know. I don’t take pills, I don’t go to counseling, I don’t do anything to try to break the vicious cycle. Coward? Yes. Also, I have a sense that I don’t want to bother anyone with my problems. Comes from my Asian culture.

Hmm, how to describe my depression? How about a story? There is a dead squirrel on a mound of dirt along the path I walk to the bus stop. The first time I saw it, perhaps a month ago, it was freshly dead, sprawled on its back with chubby belly to the sky. Its arms and legs and fluffy tail sprawled wide, spread eagled, like, if it were human, it had drunk itself to the final stupor, laid down on this side of the road, and given itself up. Last, but not least, just before death, it had shat on itself. There was a wide black spot on its nether regions. You might say at this point in the story—Oh, how tragic! You buried it, right? Well, no. Maybe a heroine in my imagination might weep over it and give it a touching funeral, but I am nothing sentimental. Over these few weeks, I have watched the squirrel decay. First, the black area on its nether regions widened until there was a black hole. Look closer at that black hole and you would see things crawling around, feasting. In the first week, the golden brown fur was lustrous. It was beautiful in life, I’ll bet. April showers have pummeled it for weeks, and the fur has slowly lost its sheen. Its chubby body then became thinner and thinner, until its carcass was flat, its shape lost. Then, one day recently, its face was gone. Not eaten off or decapitated. No, just gone, like it had never had a face in the first place.

Well, this is what my depression feels like. Like I’m road kill, just unconsciously laying there while small creatures chew on my insides until there’s nothing left. There are days when I’ve felt like I’ve lost my face, my identity, my deepest Self. And just like death for some creatures, depression comes on suddenly, for no reason, no explanations, and there’s no way to prepare myself. Every time I pass by that squirrel, I am reminded of how precarious a life spent with depression is.

Well, I think that’s enough morbidity for one night. My depression is over. For now. The next step is a fun, delightful step: I need to remember how to be happy.

Chem Final

2009-05-13T18:09:00.000-07:00

Today, I had my organic chemistry exam at 8:00 AM. And guess what time I was able to drift off to sleep? 4:00 AM-ish. I couldn’t sleep because I screwed my internal clock by doing what I enjoy best: reading, watching movies, eating, laying around daydreaming—doing all of these between midnight and dawn, which arrives at 5:00 AM-ish. Which means I end up sleeping until 2:00 PM, which means the whole vicious cycle continues into the next night, which makes me feel like a failure.

After three hours of fitful sleep, I wake up so groggy that I am almost weepy. I was also panicky—the “I wish I had one more day to stuff my head with chemical reactions that don’t make sense anyway” panicky.

I go in, sit down, and I don’t remember much of what I studied. And there’s 14 pages to the exam. Good news, though. While I was studying late into the night, I was listening to Lady GaGa’s PokerFace over and over again. I listened to acoustics, instrumental, vocal, and radio versions. I can listen to Pokerface for two hours at a time. So for the two hours of the exam, my analytical skills were reduced to: Hmm, which sugar-sugar linkage is 1, 2 Beta? Let’s see, glucose P-p-p-pokerface, P-p-p-pokerface Okay, okay, the linkage is obviously horizontal, so is it option A or maybe [Clenching my teeth] Can’t read my Can’t read my No he can’t read my pokerface. Ah! No, the oxygen bond is over here! Is that even glucose? Maybe it’s fructose?? P-p-p-pokerface, P-p-p-pokerface! Gosh darn frickin’ chem! la-la-la Russian roulette is not fun without a gun. With my muffin! With my muffin! Gosh, how does it go? Okay, what about option five? Let’s see Mum mum mum mah Mum mum mum mah. ARGH!! The linkage looks okay. It’s Beta and there’s the two connection. Looks stupid, but the stupid one is always the answer. Oh, oh, oh, oh, ohhhh, ohh-oh-e-ohh-oh-oh [Deep breath] The answer is option five! She's got to love nobody She's got to love nobody . . . Gosh darn it, it better be five.

All this to say, I got a good enough grade on the chem final that I’ll pass with a C and won’t be kicked out of college! All thanks to Lady GaGa for keeping me company during the final.

My English Professor Who Makes Me Feel Like A Fool

2009-05-11T01:56:00.000-07:00

He has cold blue eyes. He pronounces his opinions decidedly. He sees the weak arguments. He is kind, but a condescending kindness, which lets me know that he is lowering himself to be kind to me. It is amazing to listen to him speak, because his words sour, sore, soar, which makes me want to tell him that I understand, my intellect and spirit understands what he says about humanity. I tried, but his sharp intellect sees nothing reasonable in what I say. He has white hair, a white beard, a long face. When I am not in his presence, I think about his teeth and I think that he has very bad teeth, brown and croaked, crooked, but I do not know. When I see him again, the rest of him makes his teeth unnoticeable. He is impatient with stupidity. He makes me want to utter eloquence, and I am ashamed when I can’t speak a good, reasonable sentence. I want to discover revolutionary ideas about the nature of humanity. Instead, I stumble and discover inadequate thoughts. I discover the ragged holes in my mind. I discover how stupid I am. He makes me want to go back and relearn everything. He makes us laugh, from the horror of what he says, because how he dared to tell us how stupid we were, how stupid other people are. He’s not making fun of others from spite, he recognizes the funny. He makes us laugh out loud the laughter he feels inside, about how poor the English Department is, how beautiful the life sciences building, Once, when a student asked how he was, he answered that there were ants crawling in the drains of his office.

He shares new ideas, shows us the clarity of his mind, because I can see how new pieces of knowledge fits within the vaults of his mind, rich treasure indeed, his mind. How sad that he is not able to stoop, make his opinions more palatable. He is too honest, his standards are so high, how could I like him, when I am raised to be deferential, to hide my thoughts, especially when I think rudely and meanly. It is refreshing and frightening to hear clear thoughts. I cannot look straight into his eyes, because I feel blinded, his intelligence is frightening.

My mind has been raised by women, who teach me demurely, and they cannot tell me about that unemotionally, strict force. I am so used to thinking with my emotions, letting my thoughts pitter patter, shallow, unrestricted. And even then, that’s not right either. Water, falling from a great height, plunges faster and faster, and does that not mean also that the drop hits forcefully?

I have too much romanticism, too much wide-eyed wonder, and so I throw all my hopes together, obsess endlessly, think myself happy because I am so alive and I anticipate so much, that the fall from hope is unbearable. My character is molded by disappointment and I seem to always be losing bits of the future.

Lady GaGa

2009-05-11T01:40:00.000-07:00

People call her scary, insane, psycho. How can I not love her extravagance, sheer individuality? Underneath that makeup and those clothes, I have an idea that she is ordinary. Long face, long nose. Regular face. Nice voice. And then, she makes a wig, a personality, a new self for herself. She makes herself so unique and so grand that I cannot help but think her beautiful.

Watch the first few seconds of Pokerface. She rises like Venus from the water, but she is in black and she is masked, hiding her eyes behind sparkles. She rises and then she crouches like a tiger and you know she is no Venus. She dances with one hard, widespread, ready to move in front of her face, move away. Her hand like a flashing fan, here and away.

She wears costumes. She is her costumes. Her costumes are like armor. They can call her names and the names slide off her armor. She says she is a commentary on people who want fame. She is a commentary on herself.

2009-01-21T18:53:00.001-08:00

DREAM #3

I entered a room and there were two Asian ladies, giantesses who towered over me. They were kind and guided me through their home. Later, I met a blond man and I asked him, "Do you enjoy living with your aunts?" He replied, "I would love to live on my own, but I am not free." Then there commenced preparations for a large Asian gathering. A long table was set with small golden statues. The Asians filed into the room and sat in rows on the floor. The ones in front had huge eyes and pupils that wandered, as though they were blind. And I thought with relief, they can't see me, so they don't care how ugly I am. In the front of the Asians, on the stage, there were tall banners to end the Vietnam War and to free the war veterans. The Asians talked and their conversation was displeasing to me, I do not remember why. Suddenly, there were other rows of people around the Asians and I see my friend Erika. She stands up to save us and she shouts Kinsey! Kinsey! It is about sexual liberation. There are outraged mutters from everyone and I know that Erika must find a way to escape. Out of the crowd comes a war veteran, but he continues to morph, so that sometimes he is a businessman. He is distinguished and handsome/he is bent and ragged/he is worn and carefully clean. He morphs, but Erika recognizes him. He walks to Erika and bends down on one knee to talk to her, because she is suddenly a young girl. He picks her up in his arms tenderly and dances with her. She whispers to him, "I am not comfortable. Can we leave?" And suddenly she changes. She is older, and he is holding her in his arms, and they leave.

HAPPENINGS

In English class, our professor made us fill out a form with basic questions pertaining to our grade level and class experiences. The last question annoyed me: Describe something about you that no one else knows. A question to that effect. I despise this species of questions because I feel like I am bragging about myself. After thinking for a long time, I finally wrote something like this: "For many months, there was this ugly mole on my hand. It was large, pinkish, ugly, and tattered. It was disgusting. Then, over a matter of time, it shrunk and now it is completely gone. I was so amazed. Not a bit of mole left."

OBSERVATION

In Organic Chemistry class, our professor talked about a certain chemical reaction that we thought we knew backwards and forwards. We knew the reason for its existence and we knew why it reacted the way it did. Then, our professor drops this bomb: Wrong! Absolutely wrong! We had been lied to because the lie made it easier to teach the reaction. We had been lied to since Chemistry I! Thought: I love science because of these particular hilarious moments.

2009-01-20T21:09:00.000-08:00

DREAM #2

There is a man in a wheelchair and there is something wrong with him. He cannot walk, as though he is missing legs. He glows a menacing orange/red. I and a team are trying to fix him, make him whole again. He watches us and comments on our work. My job is to bring him food every day. We are finally able to make him better again. We put him in a chamber. We stand outside in a hallway, pressing our bodies against the wall. I watch, and suddenly, rays of bright light shoots out of the chamber, and it hurts, as though I am burning away. The light stops and there is still pain on my arms. We enter the chamber and he looks fine. He is smiling widely and staring at me. I am scared but I smile too. I approach him and ask him what he wants to eat. The usual, he replies. He stares. The usual. He touches his ears. And these, he says. I touch my own ears. Yes, he replies, I want your ears, and a little of your cheek too. I go to prepare his meal. I have not refused.

HAPPENINGS

First class of the day is lyrical poetry. *snore* The professor makes jokes. He passes out a paper and we have to put our names in the location we are sitting, a ploy to learn our names. When the name sheet is passed to me, and I've looked at it, I snicker. The thing about English majors: we can analyze dead poetry, but we cannot seem to make a map of our own seating arrangements. When I look around at us, I recognize the shared characteristics of all English majors: we are all pale, sad-looking, and daydreaming. Some of us sprouts full beards, some of us wear the long black coats of the intense artist, some of us scribble furiously in our notebooks, as though the meaning of life were spouting from our pens.

A few minutes into class, the class "genius" breezes in. Every English class has one, and they have each been a complete bore. How to recognize one: he (usually a he) raises his hand each time the professor asks a question, he makes side comments about some ancient literary theory that the professor recognizes but no one else does, he talks about his "research project," he talks really fast, he uses a lot of hand gestures, he talks so much that you wish someone would gag him. I respect the intelligence of these class "geniuses," but I also wish they would respect the fact that they are not the most interesting person in the class.

THOUGHT

I don't respect English majors as I should.

2009-01-19T21:43:00.000-08:00

DREAM #1

There was something wrong. We were all restricted. I went through a line for food. We each got a container, some two containers. We each had brown rice and meat. I was sneaking through the city, frightened and dirty. Dream time changes. There is more color--the green of grass, and I am walking among broken columns. My writing teacher is here. I wish to avoid her, so I am walking among the grass, picking flowers. Violets with thin, thin petals on stems long as my arm. Then, I know she is watching me, so I paint. It is a beautiful painting, but it is not an original. Somehow, it has morphed into the Mona Lisa, and I know I have failed.

HAPPENINGS

My sister and I went bike riding today. Cold. I wore a read wool sweater, and the wind cut through sometimes, like pieces of ice on my arms. Started out at perhaps 1:30 PM, when the sun was still out, a dulled yellow sunlight, as though the wind were blowing the light sideways. An hour later, among leafless, stark trees, the sun disappeared. Peering into the sky, we saw stormy clouds moving away, all in one narrowed direction, like they were sucked away, my sister said. Like into a black hole, I said.

The cold began to seep into my thin purple gloves, three fingers on each hand going numb. Uncomfortable and cramping. Then, what I dislike the most--my big toe was going numb.

When we first entered the trail, birds were chirping on the dead ground and taking flight among the naked branches. After that, inside the trail, it was quiet, hushed, broken by few lonely walkers here and there. Many beautiful dogs.

We came to a frozen lake and approached by foot. We struggled through stiff yellow grass blades tall as my shoulders. We stood on the icy, muddy edge, looking upon a white, light blue lake. The edges of the lake was uneven, gentle waves frozen.

We turned our tired, cold bodies and went back home.

SUPERHEROINE CHRONICLES

She walked along the cracked sidewalk, hands shoved into coat pockets. So cold. She had passed the wounded body of a rodent, curled into the gutter. The bleeding body had quivered. She passed it. She wished she had taken a rock nearby and killed it. Just a sharp blow to the head and that's it. No more pain. Too late. She's reached her apartment. Up some steps. Opens door. Warm now. Dark. Maybe tomorrow. If it's still alive tomorrow, she'll take that rock and end it.