HadashiWorld

maybe i need GPS

since the show i am currently working on is an NBC Universal property, we shoot quite a bit on the Universal Studios backlot. now, if you're a normal human, you probably would love being there -- you get to see cool things like the phenomenal carnage of the giant plane crash site from War of the Worlds, or the Bates Motel from Psycho, which, very oddly enough, immediately adjoins the cartoony marshmallow-looking snowy world of Whoville from How the Grinch Stole Christmas. however, if you're me, you do not love being there. no, i am not some crusty jaded below-the-line crew person who does not care about movie magic; it's because the place is best seen by professionally-driven Universal Studios Backlot Tour trams. it is not meant to be navigated by innocent non-crusty crew members in their own car, as i learned last night.
now, the last few times we have shot there, crew parking is at the gate, and we're shuttled in to location, usually becoming completely disoriented by the time we get there. however, for reasons still unknown to me, we were told this time to drive all the way into the depths of the backlot to "Falls Lake" (most recognizable as the giant artificial lake where Jim Carrey ends up at the conclusion of the The Truman Show), where our big nighttime shoot was going to be. the gate guard told me (and i quote) "follow James Stewart here straight into Six Points Texas, turn left at Steven Spielberg, and go up the hill to Falls Lake." um, okay. at this point i should explain that Universal Studios is huge (230 acres or so) and old (been there since 1915) and pretty much built into wilderness land (so it's an incredibly confusing, hilly, twisting layout that is random film sets surrounded by brush). so yeah, these directions were pretty much useless.
but off i went, hoping to actually just find "Steven Spielberg." luckily, a tour tram turned right in front of me. sweet! i thought, i'll just follow that! this turned out to be an amazingly bad idea, as it was only at the last second that i realized i was about to drive straight onto the Jaws dock and get attacked by a giant rubber shark. i awkwardly reversed, ignoring the stares of the tourists, and squeezed around the tram, humiliated.
T.T. will be the first to tell you that when it comes to being directionally challenged, i am VERY directionally challenged. i admit this freely. so is it so surprising that next, i managed to somehow get stuck driving in circles around Jurassic Park? when another tram passed me, i wretchedly hoped that it wasn't the same one that watched me almost follow them into the gaping maw of Jaws. quickly becoming a tragic tourist attraction myself, i finally found a nice security guard on Wisteria Lane at Desperate Housewives, who told me he'd been there only a few days, but that Rosa down the hill and to the right could help me. thankfully, Rosa did, and i managed to barely make my call time.

now, remember that i said this was a nighttime shoot ? we wrapped sometime around 3am, and boy was it DARK. you'd think i'd have been more nervous about finding my way out, given how much trouble I had getting in, but i was cold and tired and just wanted to go home. instead of waiting to follow a less directionally-challenged person out, i foolishly peeled out of the parking lot thinking of nothing but a hot shower.
had I been starring in a horror movie, this is where the menacing music would have started. there were no streetlights. a light fog blanketed the roads, reducing visibility to barely a few feet. condensation was obscuring my windshield faster than my defrost could keep up, and i almost immediately took a wrong turn. a very wrong turn, as i found myself suddenly trapped... in a tunnel.
not just any tunnel - a claustrophobic "stone" tunnel from The Mummy, only as wide as my car, with no way to turn around, and ditches on either side. i stopped the car in disbelief, thinking oh craptastic, i have to actually drive through this. i slowly crept forward.... and my headlamps illuminated NOT the end of the tunnel, but a huge, riveted iron door. great, i thought, if this was Indiana Jones, right now would be when the giant boulder would start rolling towards me and i'd be crushed in my faithful wee Honda and dear God how am i supposed to get out of here? i had to inch my way backwards, visibility almost zero, out of the evil tunnel. despite the cold, i was sweating when i finally emerged and turned around. and that's when the coyotes started howling.
no, seriously, there are packs of wild coyotes that roam free on the Universal backlot (remember this is wilderness land) and when they start baying, it pegs the creep-o-meter right off the scale. completely spooked and exhausted, i blindly drove ahead, just wanting to put the tunnel behind me. as I passed the massive wreckage of the crashed War of the Worlds 747, i thought oh please do not let me get lost near the Psycho house where is Rosa when you need her?!?! only there were no Rosas. not even at Desperate Housewives, which i thought ALWAYS had security around. apparently not tonight, because after aimlessly weaving around Wisteria Lane, i began to completely resent Universal Studios, all stupidly named roads of Universal Studios, and any show or film ever shot on Universal Studios. oh yeah, and all coyotes of Universal Studios.
somehow, thank God, i miraculously popped out into Six Points Texas, the western town, which blessedly signaled to me that I was close to the gate. after making my way through saloons, wooden clapboard houses, and hitching posts, i emerged, exultant, at the exit gate. i knew i had just escaped certain creepy death by fog tendrils and coyotes, and cheered quietly for myself.

too bad i then spent the next 35 minutes pathetically trying to find my way onto the correct freeway going the correct direction...

connection

some of you may remember that about about a year ago, T.T. had to undergo neural reconstructive surgery to repair the damage from a botched outpatient procedure in which a major nerve was severed by a surgeon we'll call Dr. X. he had lost all use of his left trapezius muscles, and his left shoulder was caving in from the atrophy. initially, we were told we would know in about six to eight months if it was a success -- what was actually meant was that it would be a minimum of six to eight months before we'd know anything. for there to be any hope of him regaining movement and usage of that shoulder, several things needed to happen. first, the graft would have to "take," then the nerve would need to "wake up," and then the slow growth process would have to begin: nerves grow at the snail's pace of one millimeter a day. if all that happened, THEN we would have to wait and hope that the deadened trapezius muscles would not be so atrophied beyond repair that they could not begin to regenerate with the newly firing nerve.
in these long intervening months of waiting, T.T. has been doing physical therapy to try to keep his left shoulder in the best condition possible, but there has been no conclusive evidence anything was happening. this is when we really appreciated everyone's patience and concern: you would ask "how's the shoulder?" and we'd have to say: "no news yet." meanwhile, i watched T.T. struggle with the new reality of the landscape of his body: men relate to theirs so differently than women, and there were many times when i could simply feel him grieving, or letting it go...again, or even gathering himself for battle against the creeping dread that there was nothing happening under his scarred skin. there was nothing i could say, though; no magic words of consolation that would do any more good than simply putting my hand on his ruined shoulder, or gently kissing the white, twisting line that now runs down his neck.
my own private grief would sometimes bubble to the surface in odd ways, but mostly i have kept it to myself, because hope is much shinier and easier to carry like a shield in front of your tender parts. my faith tells me this is not self-delusion; this is how life is and i can either choose to trust that there is some kind of good even in the smelliest cesspool of circumstance, or i can give up and wallow. (honestly, wallowing could be easier, but i'm just a stubborn ornery girl sometimes and that's saved my sorry arse more than once from despair.) we're still fairly newlyweddish, i think, enough so that it has been scary learning to navigate the big wide chasms of soul distance that yawn wide when you look at your beloved and realise: as much as i could drown in these eyes, i will never, never see the world through them and thus i am essentially alone. but, cheesy as it sounds, love does build a bridge over those pits somehow and we have learned to be closer through this. i still can get a little emotional when he comes back from surfing -- rehab in and of itself -- and i can tell by the way he holds his face a little too steady, that he desperately misses the days when paddling out to the break wasn't the Herculean effort it is now. but i've seen his back become less hollow; he can put shirts on now without contorting to get his left arm in the sleeve, and his range of motion has improved. we've remained hopeful -- he's a stubborn ornery guy too -- yet subsequent visits to the neurosurgeon have been inconclusive. so it was decided to schedule another neural conductivity test.

]]> now, an EMG, or neural conductivity test, basically involves sticking an electrode into the affected muscle (looks like acupuncture) and seeing waveforms and hearing feedback as to whether or not there is electrical activity (nerves firing) to it. when T.T. was initially diagnosed as having had that major nerve severed, his trapezius was literally flatlined -- no electrical activity going to or from it whatsoever. the screen showed a straight line, and just white noise emanated from the speakers. i remember feeling like something was flattening my insides so i couldn't breathe. i remember T.T.'s face going cold and steady. i remember thinking somewhat detachedly: wow, this is the worst air gap situation i've ever experienced. ("air gap" is common audio-tech speak for "not plugged in or connected." as in: "why can't i hear anything on this mic?" [pick up disconnected cable end] "uhhh... it's an air gap. sorry.")
i tried not to think about this the morning of the test. i deliberately did not apply any eye makeup, knowing that if i heard that white noise again, knowing that if that flatline saying: all this, this whole year, has been for nothing came up on the screen, i would utterly dissolve in tears. the night before, we had held each other and talked about hope and about the future and about simply looking forward. "it's no use praying for a result," said my wise husband, "prayers should be for the ability to accept and face whatever the results are." we thought about all the people who have been our supporters, cheerleaders, concerned askers, pray-ers, sources of humour and comfort and encouragement. as we learned in the immediate aftermath of the surgery, our community is trusty and amazing and are the grace of God in visible form: we are far from alone in this.
we arrived early at the hospital, and as we passed the coffee cart at the main entrance, T.T. squeezed my hand in surprise. "that's him!" he said. "that's Dr. X." he kept walking. i pulled my hand out of his and doubled back: i'd never seen Dr. X, and in my mind he was a shadowy figure of destruction that i had more than once envisioned as a recipient of a good strong kick in the head, courtesy of my hadashis.
and there he was, in his white coat, putting sugar in his coffee, unaware of me staring at him. i was surprised by the total lack of anger i felt, now that i was looking at him. he was just another man who had made a horrible mistake that we were paying for. he didn't start out that day intending to destroy T.T.'s body like he did, just as T.T. didn't walk into that appointment expecting to lose his left shoulder. bad things happened that day. in some ways, both were victims. i took one last look at Dr. X, who was taking that first tentative sip of hot coffee, and realised that no matter what was about to happen on the 4th floor Neurology department, i was not going to have any bitterness or anger towards this man. i felt oddly buoyant about that as i rejoined T.T. in the lobby.
the buoyancy was short lived, once we went into the examination room. the EMG hulked in the corner, all wires and hardware and for now, a blank screen. we took deep breaths. we kissed. and then we held hands, silently, waiting for the neurologist to come in. he did. T.T. took his shirt off. the neurologist made small talk. the EMG was connected up. and then the needle went in. i literally held my breath. T.T. closed his eyes.

the screen now filled with lines; huge, jagged peaks of electrical activity, and the noise of that nerve firing, over and over, into newly repaired muscle was constant. "fascinating!" said the neurologist. i felt like an entire garden inside me was bursting into bloom. T.T. opened his eyes. "does this mean it's alive?" he said.
yes, the nerve has re-connected, woken up, and started repairing the muscle. the neurologist was very certain that we were seeing the formerly damaged muscle and not healthy muscle underneath, as apparently muscle that has been dead and is now reconstructing has a very distinct electrical signature. while the muscle repair has just begun -- it's a radius of about three or four inches around the graft site -- and has a long way to continue to go, we are incredibly, relievedly thankful that it is there at all.
we are thankful for healing, and for hope. while T.T. will probably never have full movement of it again, he may recover a good deal of it eventually, and we all know that Anything is a good deal better than Nothing! we realise we're no longer holding our proverbial breath, and just to know for sure that there is resurrection and regrowth going on gives us a great deal of optimism for the unknown future.

two things i do know: one: without God and without our community -- you, our family and friends and even strangers -- we could not have withstood this. thank you for being our fireworks of hope. and two: good that i left off the eye makeup -- after we walked out of the office, we fell into each other's arms and then i bawled anyway.

relieved

i didn't realise quite how much i was invested in the presidential race until tonight, when T.T. and i were having a nice boba milk tea and the tv monitor in the coffee shop suddenly started flashing the words "Barack Obama" and "presumptive Democratic nominee" together. i suddenly realised i'd been more or less holding my breath ever since Super Tuesday.
i don't normally wear my politics on my sleeve, or my (woefully-underposted-to) blog, but this election feels like such a crux for the state of affairs not just in America, but for this weary globe, that i'll go ahead and just plead:
please, if you're an American citizen, get informed. be part of the dialogue. get registered. and for heaven's sakes, VOTE.
if you're not, do as T.T. does and get informed. be part of the dialogue. get other people registered. get them to vote.
as exhausting as this year's election cycle will now continue to be, don't opt out.

(yes, i've been an Obama supporter from the beginning, ever since i read Dreams From My Father and later, The Audacity of Hope. but i've continued to solidify my position over the course of the long Democratic primary slog, especially after that speech on race in America that i think should be required listening for all American highschool and college freshman. there, now you know.)

of baths, baklava, and balance

as some of you may know, we once again ditched the country -- and this time we went to Turkey. why? because, well, we could. since we're still working on the kids thing, we don't have a mortgage, and we're both freelancers, we figure while we have this freedom of time & finance, we'd be foolish to waste an opportunity to see more of the world.
but why Turkey? honestly, ever since i was a small wee Hadashi, i have had the map of Turkey floating in my head as a Land of Wondrous Culture and Mystery. it's been at the top of the Places To See list for ages...and i trace the allure back to being a child sitting in a hard pew on a Sunday morning, trying not to fall asleep. as those of you who had childhoods in church will know, one of the Approved Activites During a Boring Sermon That Will Not Incur Your Parents' Wrath is to look through the pew Bible. now, at the back of any Bible worth its proverbial salt are maps. they sport fun titles like "Palestine in the Time of Christ," or "The Twelve Tribes of Israel." but for some reason, these did not interest me half so much as the one entitled "Paul's Missionary Journeys." perhaps it's because Paul, quite the nomad, did three of them, plus a one-way trip to Rome, so there were lots of colorful lines criss-crossing the page. perhaps it's also because since i was living in Japan, i was attracted to the large label that said "Asia Minor." i would pore over the map and try to impress myself by pronouncing tough words like "Smyrna" or "Pamphylia."
in any case, i made it to adulthood with the map of Asia Minor still lurking in the corners of my travel mind. the glowing testimonials of people who'd been to Istanbul plus genuine curiosity as to what East meets West really looked like made the answer to "where do you want to go next?" easy. i have to hand it to T.T. -- he wasn't immediately sold on the idea of Turkey, but he agreed to it when he knew how excited i was. to him, Turkey was this murky land of overpriced beach resorts and home to the largest population of Germany's guest workers -- basically, Turkey is to Germany as Mexico is the United States. if your whole idea of Mexico is Cancun and an immigrant workforce, you'll understand the initial reluctance. however, when you travel in a country and get to know it on its own terms, instead of through foreign perception and prejudice, it's a really freeing experience -- which is why he got excited too. so off we went, for three weeks.

]]> the thing about any travel - and probably why we love it so - is that it utterly resets your sensory receptors. you step from the familiar into a metal tube that flies and you step out of it into a place you don't know and no one knows you. there's a heady freedom in all that newness and anonymity, and it gives one a certain weightlessness of being - on one hand you float on the edges of this new place, a stranger - and in some cases, to the locals, just plain strange - but on the other, you are never this fully aware and present when in the familiarity of home.
so we flung ourselves into Turkey with that excitement, exploring back streets, eating street food, talking to random locals (Turkish people are exceptionally friendly and curious, and many speak english), going to big tourist spots and small off-the-beaten-path destinations. we ate fresh baklava and giant legs of mutton, experienced a public Turkish bath not once, but twice, and T.T. even got an old-fashioned shave and haircut in a tiny barbershop somewhere in Cappadocia.
what we found was a country that is at once ancient and modern, secular and sacred, and yes, East and West. after awhile you just get used to seeing women in full chador on the street next to girls in big earrings and miniskirts. you become accustomed to the 5-times-a-day muezzin call to prayer, beginning at 5am, but also to seeing happy groups of late-night revelers crowding into taverns for shots of raki, a particularly potent local liquor. you realize it is not an anachronism to be walking down a cobbled street and see a woman in traditional Anatolian dress chatting on a cell phone.
Turkey has long prided itself on being a democratic, secular country that is still officially 99% Muslim. the constitution calls for freedom of religion, the government is heavily involved in making sure that radical branches of Islam do not flourish (imams get sermon topics from the Ministry of Religious Affairs), and separation of church and state is taken seriously (no overtly religiously affiliated political parties, faith-based public schools, no religious garments in government offices, etc.) we saw that while many people take their faith seriously, they are almost more serious about their role in being the public face of a modern, more moderate Islam -- and they are now in the middle of a huge struggle with what that entails. the current prime minister and the government's ruling party are pro-Islamist, and there are actually lawsuits filed against them for being the "focus of anti-secular activity." Turkish people we spoke to were very worried about the religious direction that Turkey is heading in: afraid it would become another Iran, afraid they would lose any chance of ever joining the European Union, and very afraid that the last hundred years of progress gained from establishing itself as a modern, secular state would be undone.
i think this is what struck us the most about our time there: that as rich as the culture and history of the country is, it cannot be viewed only on the merits of its past. it can't be dismissed as simply another country striving to find its place on the 21st century global stage. increasingly, that region of the world and its dominant religion --Islam -- influence and bend world affairs to its demands for attention. Turkey occupies a highly unique position with its connections to the West and its secular, modern constitution. for example, only in Turkey could a project like this one take place -- a huge step towards reforming the world's perception of Islam, both by Muslims and non-Muslims.
so what's my point? i'm not sure myself -- originally i thought i was going to talk more about another naked with strangers experience (sorry Turkey, Germany & Japan's public baths are better) or the joys of a tiny glass cup of hot Turkish tea, but instead i got all serious. i think we were caught by surprise, though. we went expecting a fascinating cultural immersion -- which we got, and then some -- but we also came to really care about this country and its people and what will happen to them in the near future. some of the world's most intense, vexing forces -- questions of religion, democracy, freedom, economic expansion, ethnic identity -- coalesce here. perhaps the world would do well to pay better attention to Turkey: after all, in these global times, we are all neighbours with much lower fences than we might think.

A hui hou

he was driving home from work, so they say, when he fell asleep at the wheel ten blocks from his house. when his car hit the tree, he was instantly killed. i'd known him for almost ten years; we'd adventured our way together through the crazy world of making television. he was a camera operator; as an audio mixer, i'd been paired with him before, and our jobs together were always more fun than work. he loved life with a fierceness that made people take notice; a native Hawaiian, he truly embodied that famous aloha spirit. he was generous too; with his time, his smile, his possessions. sometimes we would talk about what we were going to do after we retired from tv production. he was re-launching a clothing line he'd started, and would lament that he was a bad businessman because he just wanted to give everything away.

his sudden, unexpected death has hit our little community of production folk really hard. T.T. knew him too; when he was with me on a job in Hawaii, they'd gotten to know one another over the generous lending of a surfboard. it seems impossible that someone so alive, someone whose life burned so bright and strong, would be gone, in an instant, without warning.
i struggle now with why his story had to end now, so swiftly. i struggle with seeing the grief of my work family. i struggle with knowing that we daily live life on the razor edge; it takes not much at all to tip our fragile selves into the end of our earthly existence. i struggle with my deeply-held belief in life after life; "i know that my Redeemer lives and i will stand with Him on that day," but what about THIS day? what about the gaping loss and all the questions and whys now?

and so this weekend, at the memorial service, i waded into the Pacific Ocean, tore the lei i had made from around my neck, and tossed the flowers into the water. as i watched the waves take the blossoms out to sea, i said A hui hou -- until we meet again -- to my friend.

Keoni, thank you for all you gave to so many; if we can live life with even just a little more aloha, a little more fearlessness, it is because of you.

reduce, reuse, recycle...resell!

when T.T. & i got married, thus not only adding our lives to one another, but also our worldly goods, we tried to pare down all the Stuff we'd accumulated. we thought we'd done a pretty good job of it, but the garage was still pretty full. this began a saga of three years of being embarrassed by our garage and then talking about Having a Big Yard Sale. the key word here was Talking.
T.T.: we should just have a yard sale and get rid of this Stuff.
Hadashi: great idea!
T.T.: maybe next weekend?
Hadashi: no, i'm working. how about the weekend after that?
T.T.: i have a huge deadline.
(silence)
Hadashi: well, you're right! we should have a yard sale!
eventually, as time passed, this conversation would degenerate into:
T.T.: we have to have that yard sale soon!
Hadashi: um, i have to wash my hair.
-or-
Hadashi: we need to have that yard sale!
T.T. um, i have to organise my DVDs.
then we would generally moan about our accumulated Stuff and sometimes make a pathetic attempt to sort it some more. in a massive effort, we got plastic bins to "organise" everything, but that basically meant the garage stayed full of Stuff in Plastic Bins, as opposed to Stuff in Random Cardboard Boxes.

]]> now, my big excuse is that since i don't have a childhood house intact anywhere, all my tangible history lives with me -- this includes the baby scrapbook, those handprints on construction paper projects from age 5, old report cards and schoolwork -- you know, all that Stuff one's mother saves, thinking "someday my grandkids will want to see this!" however, most people i know have all that Stuff, along with the stuffed animals, speech trophies, yearbooks, etc. stashed at their parents' house. my parents have had about a squillion houses since i left home at age 17, so this option has never existed for me. in fact, since i'm the one family member with a semi-permanent garage, i've accumulated quite a bit of family history.
but i digress. the History of Hadashi section of the garage notwithstanding, there was still way too much -- dare i say it? -- total crap cluttering the place. okay, not total crap, because then we'd just recycle or throw it away. no, this is that special class of crap that We Might Someday Use, or worse, is Potentially Useful to someone else. you know, an old CD player (we're all iPod, all the time now). a pair of rollerblades (going to the beach now means surfing). a toolbelt that T.T. will never, ever use (we don't think his skill set will extend to contracting work). nice picture frames (enough artwork on the walls already). a hookah pipe (no wait, that was the neighbours).
ah yes, the neighbours. thank God for them. we've had dinner a few times with our fairly new next-door neighbours -- we'll call them the NDNs -- and consider them friends. we were rather surprised, however, to get a call from them saying they were having a yard sale This Very Weekend and did we want to join them? yes, they'd already put ads on craigslist and in the Pennysaver and gotten neon posterboard for signs and yes, even a permit from the city. what? why yes, you have to get a yard sale permit from the police department...
thanks, NDNs, for the kick in our sorry pants! now we had no excuse. T.T. managed to do all the heavy lifting of assembling the Stuff to get rid of towards the front of garage, and i spent a long afternoon pricing and cleaning it. i was vaguely aware of the ridiculous nature of some of these objects -- why had we held onto a jellybean dispenser for so long? -- but it wasn't until Saturday morning, setting up in the yard, that i was fully aware of the absurdity of what we'd been keeping.
for those of you yard sale veterans, you know that the first hour is the busiest, when the True Yard Sale Believers swoop upon you and scrutinise your offerings for the choicest deals. some bargain, some don't -- i think the ones that don't, see your low low ignoramus price and just grab & go before you realise you just sold a bazillion-dollar angel figurine for a dollar. (eh, whatever; it was ugly beyond kitsch.) T.T. had pulled an all-nighter -- literally; he hadn't slept at all -- for someone who needed a rendering at the TED conference (yes, i'm client-name-dropping), so he was sort of wandering around in a dense fog of sleep deprivation. this left me to handle the swarm of buyers who seemed unnaturally interested in our enormous collection of USB hubs. cash exchanged hands, items went into strange cars, cries of pleasure upon spotting the black-and-white Nintendo GameBoy still loaded with SuperMario filled the air.
when the proverbial dust settled, i felt strangely exhilarated. i had an almost-empty yard, a box of cash, and a seriously loopy husband. i made the husband go to bed, took the two small boxes (!!!) of unsold items plus some clothing straight to Salvation Army, and came home to count the loot.
i was utterly stunned. we'd made almost (drum roll please) $250 in a few hours, selling things that literally had no value to us anymore. now, you yard sale vets are probably pooh-poohing our take - i bet you guys rake in the cash -- but to us newbies, this felt like winning the lottery. i mean, all this Stuff that started the morning as Special Crap was suddenly now someone's new Special Treasure. and i realised: this is sort of the ultimate recycle. the guy who bought the CD player now has no need to go to Best Buy. the woman who was so overjoyed to take all our unused picture frames won't need to hit that Aaron Brothers sale. only hours ago, the jellybean dispenser was collecting dust; now it was bringing a lot of joy and a serious sugar high to a couple of excited kids.
there's a big empty clean space now where boxes of Random Special Crap used to be. it's the perfect size for parking my bicycle and stashing the spare chairs we only pull out for parties. it feels like a new land to discover, this blessedly-almost-clean garage. it makes me seriously consider the objects i still own: do i really need it? do i really need to acquire another one? can i reduce my Stash O' Stuff? reuse something instead of purchasing a new one? our yard sale, i think, is making me a much more thoughtful consumer. which is a good thing.
and by the way, if my parents are reading this: don't worry -- i didn't sell the family silver. at least, not yet...

(new year's) resolutions vs. goals

i've written before about how i hate the idea of New Year's resolutions, but i can't deny that a new year rolling around does motivate one to think about changes, growth, and goals. i realise this may sound like semantics -- goals vs. resolutions -- but there is a difference. "resolutions" tend to be big, unfocused, and possibly, ultimately out of one's control: common ones involve losing weight, getting a better/new job, paying down debt or saving money, or even finding a mate. it's just setting oneself up for failure -- conventional wisdom says people make resolutions simply to not keep them.
however, "goals" are incremental, realistic, and potentially fun. i wasn't originally planning to post about this, but after a phone conversation with a good friend who challenged me to do so, here goes with making them public:
1. give up the coffee.
2. cook at least one recipe from every cookbook i own.
3. take at least one -- maybe two -- trips to visit & catch up with old friends.
4. finish my self-study German language lesson book.
5. and one secret goal that i just can't share. sorry!

so far, number one has gone really well. it helped that i was ridiculously ill the first few weeks of January and had no desire to drink anything stronger than chicken broth, but i still miss the gorgeous aroma of fresh-ground coffee. sigh. one day i will maybe go back with decaf, but for now, cold turkey is cold turkey. i'm glad we got some really good teas in China!
as for number two, it's more of a use-it-or-lose-it goal. i want to cook more, be more creative/adventurous in what i try cooking, and also cull out the cookbooks that are useless to me. this seemed to be a good way to go about it.
number three is why my friend wanted me to blog this: i've said so many times i'd love to visit friends of yore, and yet haven't gone because of schedule issues, sheer inertia, or a false sense of how complicated it would be. so with T.T.'s blessing, i've decided that if i just go for a few days by myself, i could start doing one or two...dare i say three? trips a year to visit far-flung friends that i'd just love to have a cup of coffee with. oh wait. i guess it'll have to be tea.
numbers four and five are pretty self-explanatory -- i really want to continue to improve my German language skills, and it's just laziness that has kept me from doing so. as for number five...well, a girl's gotta have some secret skills up her proverbial sleeve.

so there you have it: my goals for 2008/Year of the Rat. i challenge you to come up with five realistic, positive goals that are actually achievable and go for it! and any encouragement for me is welcome...

happy Year of the Rat!

i'm thankful to report that we are fully recovered from the stealthy attack of flu that descended upon us, and now we're just working our tails off on various jobs (for me, a dog grooming show, of all things). i've just finished making a batch of what my family calls "mudoi," but are more commonly known as bao, in honor of the Lunar New Year. it's the Year of the Rat, which means that supposedly we'll get to enjoy financial success, romance, or perhaps a tsunami (seriously). around this time i try to celebrate my Chinese heritage in some way, and that way usually involves eating...of course... there have been a few years when i've made a big feast and had people over, but at this point, making the steamed buns is the extent of my effort.
i have, however, been thinking a lot more about China. it still feels so immediate, our whirlwind 2-week trip there. although it was immensely foreign, there was still a feeling of familiarity that i couldn't explain, except to say it must be in my blood somehow. while there were the outward senses that felt comfortable -- smells i knew, food that i loved, faces that looked like family members -- there were also these inner flashes of comprehension that i can only describe this way: as much as i have longed to see China for myself, maybe China wanted to see me again too.

]]> my mother's family left many years ago, mainly to escape the Communist regime under which they certainly would have lost everything, possibly even their lives. my grandparents never really returned, deciding to establish themselves and their children as Americans. over the years, members of the family have returned to visit, and their experiences seem to be similar to mine: an odd kind of acceptance of heritage and blood you already knew but always struggled to internalize. i'm hardwired to need to Feel Things to understand their reality; i think this is why for so many years after returning to the USA from Okinawa, where i grew up, i didn't think i was really American: nothing inside me Felt American.
so. going to China was a great vacation and a fantastic adventure for us, but more than that, i've realised it became a way to take some blurry parts of me and bring them into better focus. i can't say that i Feel More Chinese; i just know that i have a much more internalised emotional bond to that part of my family than before. (see, here you thought you'd just get a travelogue of sorts but no, this has become a big navel-gazing post instead.)
okay, the trip itself: we hit the two big cities, Beijing and Shanghai, and visited four smaller cities in between: Ji'nan, Tai'an, Suzhou, and Qufu. i'd read plenty about the intense pace of modernization & industry in China, but seeing it was jarring. it's like a gangly adolescent who has a man's size but a boy's voice: the nation constantly is presenting itself to the world as a smooth-talking 21st-century flashy grown-up, and yet it seems more comfortable using the easy slang of a developing nation within itself. an animal-drawn cart piled high with scrap wood from the latest bulldozed house ambles down a street choked with newly-purchased Audis. the old woman selling sweet potatoes roasted in a handmade tin oven has set up shop in front of another new highrise condo complex. workers in simple canvas shoes and shirtsleeves labour in the light snow to complete the $100 million Olympic Park in time for the Summer Games.
the highlight of the trip for us was climbing to the top of Mt. Tai, or Tai Shan, the holiest mountain in China. due to the snowy conditions, all buses and cable cars to the top were shut down. the only way to the top was to walk all 6,600 stone stairs, which was over 5000 feet straight up. as the only foreigners past the "Middle Gate" (which was around stair #3,400), we were the recipients of much encouragement and friendliness from fellow aching-leg pilgrims. T.T. delighted many a local with his calling out jaiyo! jaiyo!, which in this context means "although our legs feel like blocks of aching stone, i am rooting for you, yes i am!" the landscape was like a beautiful remembered dream, the stillness of the snow and stone and trees a meditation. when, a few days later, we were at the Shanghai Museum, the many landscape brush paintings suddenly had deeper resonance -- the Chinese blending of poetry, nature, and painting felt like our experience captured on scroll paper.
speaking of remembered dreams, when we were in Beijing & places north where everyone speaks Mandarin, Chinese did feel like a foreign language. however, once we got to Shanghai, the city my mother was born in, what i was hearing suddenly felt comfortingly familiar. it's like walking down a street in a strange neighbourhood and then hearing a song you used to love, years ago, wafting through an open window of a second-floor apartment. you stop, grasp at the threads of memory, smile, and start singing along. the neighbourhood suddenly becomes less unfamiliar.
despite China's frantic push to industrialize, modernize, and McMansionize, there is still a strong undercurrent of simplicity to the everyday lives of her people that exerts a powerful pull on me: i am curious to see more of those lives, experience what the everyday is like, how change at this kind of exponential speed affects a country's very cultural fabric.
we'll be back, hopefully before anything we just saw becomes unrecognizable.

this is why we don't have to drink at our house

i promise to write something about the wonderful trip to China, but right now i'm just trying to stay sitting upright without being too dizzy. a stealthy, swift bout of flu decided to hit me two days ago and i'm still attempting to convince myself that dry toast and Pedialyte are actually quite tasty.
yesterday afternoon, due to my general weakness/vertigo/fact that i had no sleep due to stomach cramps, i somehow managed to badly pinch my hand and give myself a nasty blood blister right in the middle of my fourth finger. T.T., who has been a very creative and patient nurse throughout, decided it needed some character enhancement. luckily, there is always a Sharpie lying around the house within easy reach. the results are brilliant, don't you think? we of course had to sing:

Rudolph the red-nosed Handdeer
had a very bloody nose
and if you ever saw it
you would even say it's gross...

then we laughed so hard T.T. fell off his chair and snot came out of my nose.
i swear, we always act like this whether or not one of us is running a high temperature...

season's greetings...

in a few hours, T.T. and i will be on our way to China for the holidays. we figure we should travel when we can, and now seems a good time what with the dollar getting weaker and the 2008 Olympics on the way. we're excited for our adventures to come -- we think it's a good way to ring in another year.

it's been a very full 2007, and especially the last few months have been packed, mostly with work. i've also switched over quite recently from PC to Mac and am getting used to this. i'm hoping it'll improve my computer habits, including blogging frequency...

may your holidays be full of love, laughter, and good memories in the making.

free rice for the hungry = a smarter you

quick! what does "alimentation" mean? is it a) sustenance, b) misconduct, c) a fanatic, or d) truthfulness? would it help if i told you that just by guessing, you could provide alimentation for hungry people through the United Nations?
FreeRice.com is the brainchild of John Breen, the programmer who gave us The Hunger Site (if you don't already click there, please bookmark it now and go daily!). he got the idea for FreeRice.com while watching his son prepare for the SAT. it's another click-to-donate site, but with a genius twist: you get to become smarter while doing some good.
when you take a multiple-choice vocabulary quiz, every correct answer "donates" 10 grains of rice that is distributed via the U.N.'s World Food Program. major donors that fund the rice have small ad banners on the bottom of each page. it's easy, fun, and ridiculously addictive, especially for language nerds like me. it adjusts to your existing vocab level, so even "ESL people" like T.T. can enjoy it and learn. the site is nicely designed and easy to navigate.
so please, do yourself AND hungry people around the world a favour and play every day! i've made it to level 46... i'm committed to getting to at least level 48, even if i have to donate thousands of grains of rice to succeed!

running out of excuses

as most of you know, much of my Southern California surroundings went up in smoke this week. although i live in an area that was not actually burning, the air was heavy and acrid most of the last few days, and all our windowsills disappeared under a fine layer of ash. the cars are filthy, and i have noticed poor Iku expending much more energy than usual trying to clean himself in vain.
today, strong cool winds swept in and cleaned things up a bit. i have been really restless, and honestly not feeling all that great lately. there has been an advisory to stay indoors when possible because of the soot and ash, which of course produces a great desire in me to be not indoors. yeah, i'm the girl who would never think of touching something until she sees the "DO NOT TOUCH" sign and then is overwhelmed by a burning need to just, uh, sorta, uh, lightly poke it...
so despite my general ~~disdain~~ hatred for jogging, i decided i was going to run to the top of the hill next to our neighbourhood and back, darn it all. at first, when this crazy idea popped into my head, i tried to make all sorts of excuses as to why this was a terrible idea, from pretending that i needed to tend the simmering chicken stock to imagining my kneecap popping out of its proper patella place. but i can't stand being so jumpy in my own skin, and i needed desperately to feel more alive. and if i had to wreck a knee to do so, by golly, i would.
ok fine, i'm just being dramatic. there were no hadashis harmed in the making of this run, and i can honestly say... (gulp!) i enjoyed it. there. i said it. i enjoyed the run. it did make me feel more alive, more vital, just having the sensation of wind flowing over my skin. i smiled at a lot of dog walkers and baby stroller pushers along the way. i saw a lot of kids taking advantage of the last hour of light, playing outside. i saw a lot of stressed-out people commuting home (except the guy driving the Domino's Pizza car. he was super happy. maybe because he always has the smell of warm fresh pizza surrounding him?). i passed a lot of houses with stunningly elaborate Halloween decoration, including one house that looked like an entire shipping container of cotton webbing had barfed on it. i smelled more than one barbeque in progress. and i witnessed another spectacular sunset, most likely courtesy of a half-million charred acres of SoCal land.
watching that sky, i realised there are a finite number of sunsets i will ever get to see, and so it would behoove me to savour each one. this led me to think about the finite number of steps i will ever take, which made me wonder if it was really necessary to run through this particular chunk of them so quickly. i generally move too quickly, and have recently begun trying to be choicefully more present in my little bubble of personal space -- probably why i was better than usual on this run at noticing the details of my 'hood. all the stories of loss and lament this week have revealed as important truths ideas that masquerade during better times as simple platitudes: "don't be possessed by your possessions." "never save something for a special occasion; every day in your life is a special occasion." "that (wo)man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest." maybe even "savour every sunset..."
in any case, as i now am trying to flex my creaking knees after coming home and making a butternut squash risotto, i'm annoyed to admit that there are meditative benefits to an evening run that an hour of kickboxing does not provide. they say your tastes can change as you get older, but seriously, what's next? might i actually start liking snow?

by the way, please excuse the broken archives and comments; due to a recent upgrade in templates, even i cannot comment on my own blog. i have told my very generous hostess that this is not a huge priority to fix, since she has a lot of other things (like making rent, or having lunch with me) that are more important uses of her time. don't worry, it'll all be back up & running sooner than later.

old farts

these days, with this current show i'm on, my work days don't start until late afternoon. this gives me time to do other things like sleep in, volunteer teach adult ESL, get tedious errands done, and generally put off doing anything that involves the computer for even longer. yesterday, i decided to tackle the Tedious Errands thing, and carefully plotted my route so that i could get Four Whole Tedious Errands done in one trip. i was heading home, feeling very pleased with myself about my efficiency, when i pulled up at a red stoplight. being that this is season-indifferent Southern California, it is still quite toasty and so my window was rolled all the way down. my smug little reverie was interrupted as another car with all its windows down, came screeching to a halt next to me.

Woman Driver: [shouting at the top of her lungs] SHUT UP LEROY YOU OLD FART!
Man Passenger: [shouting at the top of his lungs] I WILL NOT! YOU LISTEN YOU OLD WINDBAG!

they were so loud, they sounded like they could be in the backseat of my wee car. i carefully slid my gaze to the left. beside me was a battered old white Corolla with tangles of bright cheap Mardi Gras plastic beads wound around the rearview mirror. the passenger was a Santa Claus look-a-like, but wearing a faded Hawaiian shirt and a red trucker's cap. of course his name would be Leroy. the driver was a small African-American woman with glasses larger than her entire face and with a large bead necklace thing.

Giant Glasses Lady: WHY SHOULD I LISTEN TO YOU LEROY! YOU JUST TALK TO HEAR YOURSELF!
Faux Santa: SO DO YOU! AND YOU'RE THE OLD FART!

i attempted to mind my own business, but with them yelling like that, it was impossible. instead i stealthily adjusted my mirror so i could see them. hey, don't judge! you would've done the same.

GGL: I AM NOT AN OLD FART! YOU ARE!
FS: WHATEVER, OLD FART! YOU'RE THE ONE WHO WANTS TO ARGUE!
GGL: SO DO YOU LEROY! SO! DO! YOU!
and with that, she snapped the radio on to drown out whatever he was going to say.

Fuzzy AM Radio: AND THE LAWD SAY-YED UNTO HIM, DO YEW TRUST ME? NOW WHEN THE LAWD SAY-YEZ DO YEW TRUST ME, WHAT SHOULD OW-WAH RESPONSE BE? ALWAYS YES LAWD YES!
***i blink rapidly in disbelief***

although Southern Baptist preachers often can drown out everything around them, this particular use of Christian talk radio was not effective at all. as they drove away from the light i could still hear them, along with the blaring radio: "PRAISE JAY-SUS YOU OLD FART!!!"

all rainy in a day

it's raining, quite beautifully, here in parched Los Angeles. it began to fall late yesterday evening, and the scene outside this morning is the complete opposite of that classic Ray Bradbury short story, "All Summer In a Day," where kids anxiously wait for the sun to come out after seven straight years of rain. here, in the perennially dry city, where no one ever makes alternate plans "in case of rain," the sky is pure blue with enormous, puffy clouds. still, the rain is coming down in a steady patter, and the air smells newly, softly clean, like the top of a newborn baby's head, as Bono would say.
the street outside my window is full of neighbourhood children who are deliriously splashing around in puddles, giggling their heads off. watchful parents make sure they are staying close to the sidewalk. all of them are wearing brightly-colored galoshes and one is carrying a giant umbrella that is bigger than his entire body. one is running in circles in his driveway, yelling, "it's rain, Mommy!" T.T. points out that for some of these kids, including the small boy with leprechaun-green rubber boots determinedly jumping over and over in one puddle, this may be the first serious rain they know. he called me outside yesterday when the first drops started falling, and we stood on the sidewalk, arms around each other, grateful faces upturned. "it's like a first snow," he said. "it should be acknowledged."
i'm tempted to go join the kids, but i don't need to. they are having good, safe, kid-version rain frolic. i already did the less-safe grown-up version last night. this consisted of bursting outside at midnight, no shoes or coat, and running all-out down the middle of the street, palms upstretched to the falling rain, and then having to abruptly swerve into a neighbour's lawn when an unexpected pair of headlights suddenly appeared in front of me. i had first jump of all those puddles the kids are now splashing in, and this makes me feel inexplicably smug. "ha!" i think. "i already jumped in your puddles and i was BAREFOOT! ha!"
of course, because i am a grown-up, i know what's in that water. when i went back inside i promptly scrubbed my feet down with hot water and plenty of soap. sometimes you have to be practical too...

dear Madeleine,

i'm sorry i didn't write this thank-you note to you a few weeks earlier, because now you'll never see it. when you were alive, it seemed quite silly to write to a popular author to tell her how much her work has meant to you. now that you've gone Home, it seems even sillier that i didn't.
like so many other young children, the first book i read by you was the now-classic A Wrinkle in Time. i was excited that not only did it feature a girl hero, but that what saves her brother/the world, after all, is simply love. as a small person, the idea that love was powerful enough to save the world was not sappy or idealistic to me. it was a very real and true thing in my life, because my parents loved me and my sister loved me and my friends and my grandparents and lots of other people loved me and i felt very safe about all that. plus, i knew that you loved Jesus too, and since He is the embodiment of love saving the world, i felt like your creative imagination and mine were quite compatible.
i spent a lot of time looking up things you wrote about in the big set of World Book Encyclopedias that lined the bookshelf in our hallway. i would sit on the cold black tiles of the floor, because tropical Okinawa was very hot, and pore over the things you had the Murry family deal with: mitochondria, tesseracts, stories in Genesis, astronomy, organ regrowth, kything, unicorns and dragons, Venezuela. as i discovered your other books, my world grew larger and my imagination felt like it could stretch out and relax into your stories. some stories were dark and bloody and frightening, yet there were always the threads of light that won out in the end. some stories introduced me to the truth that by loving others, you opened yourself up to a really complicated life. most importantly, though, you helped me realise the God i loved was a God of imagination too, one whose creative powers had flung the millions of stars into their places and set down the wild and untameable laws of nature; that He was a God Who loved myth and story and beauty and adventure, Who could not be contained. i loved Him all the more for it. i loved me all the more for it -- and that is not a small thing, to help a young girl finding her way actually love herself.
as i grew from girl to tenuous woman, i discovered more truth and struggle and holiness in your nonfiction books along with the fiction. i saw how needful it was to cultivate friendships of deep trust with other women. and any illusion that finding, loving, keeping, and making a life with a man would be simple was dissolved by your insights. you gave me a good template to refer back to as i carved out my place, learning how to be my own person, clinging fiercely to my faith, my imagination, and my sense of humour. you taught me that i could gracefully move into adulthood without losing wonder or fun or simplicity. and i'm not that old now, but i'm old enough to have experienced the truth of something you said: "I am not at all convinced that life without conflict is desirable. There's not much conflict in the grave, but while we're alive the only creative choice is the choice of conflict." when i read this for the first time, it was an electrifyingly novel concept that ran counter to everything i was being taught. you helped me understand how to welcome conflict and complexity without fear -- again, no small thing to affirm a young woman's dreams and selfhood.
but what i have to thank you for the most is that you articulated, over and over and over again, the deepest struggles and truths of my faith. there were many times i almost lost it, and each time it got the most silent and the darkness became the most dense, something you wrote would scamper across my path, leaving that thread of light behind it. i still take refuge in The Rock That is Higher to codify and remind me of who my spiritual self truly is when the clamour of both people of faith and those who think i believe in nonsense challenge that part of me. i did not grow up within a liturgical tradition, but your prayer and poetry books helped me frame my conversations with God in ways that no devotional ever could. you not only helped me find my voice, but then also gave me words -- beautiful, honest, lyrical, stark, vulnerable, strong words -- with which to use it. no small thing, to be sure.
so thank you, Madeleine L'Engle, thank you for not believing the teachers who said you were stupid, for not wallowing in the two dozen rejections you got before finally being published, for doing crazy things like going to Antarctica after almost dying in a car crash. thank you for being courageous and unflinching and curious and generous and funny and human and a mighty woman of truth spoken in love. and thank you for giving this small girl the vision to be all those things as well.
goodbye, Madeleine. i can't wait to see you when i get Home too.