Take me out

I'm not sure how I'm relating to this blog.  Probably more like a personal journal than a public newsletter.  So I did not finish that thread about going to New York, coming back to work, and starting to date through okcupid.  Well, I guess that gets us all up to speed...

I'm pondering what this is to be dating someone, the second guy I met off okcupid, and how it goes.  I think I'm getting the hang of not freaking out about the future and what will be.  And the guy I've been seeing is actually quite adept at talking about things and wanting to hear how I am feeling.  Imagine that?!

But tonight I was on my own and the friends I called were all busy and rather than stay home alone I decided to take myself out--on a date.  I went and got dinner at a Thai restaurant in Berkeley, then went to see a movie, the Easy A.  When I go see movies by myself it is usually out of feelings of extreme anguish and loneliness, but I must say lately I've really enjoyed it.  No waiting around for someone to see what I want to see or scoff at my low brow selections.  And I can take as much or as little time as I want whereever I go.

Which brings me to my contemplation about dating.  It's funny to hang out with someone in the hopes you will develop feelings of like and eventually love.  I've been finding that I really like hanging out with myself.  I like my interests.  I like how my clothes and hair look.  I like the books and comics I read.  We have a lot in common, myself and me.  If this okcupid love affair ends, I think I will be content with this love affair with myself.

So then after the movie I went to a bookstore and bought way too many books.  There were still a few I was totally lusting after but reasoned that it would have to be for another tryst of mad book-buying.  I got the following books and comics:

- Just So You Know #1 and #2 by Joey Alison Sayers (self-published comics about the author transitioning into a woman.  They are great!)
- The Vagrants by YiYun Li (she is compared to Chechov and Tolstoy on the cover.  Woah)
- The Real Thief by William Steig (like Abel's Island.  Aw)
- Mariscal Design (a collection of the artist's designs.  only $1)
- The Animal Story Book by Andrew Lang (I was obsessed with his fairy books when I was in elementary school.  Maybe one of those things where it will be shocking how culturally incompetent the stories will read to me now.)

A father of somesort

I'm taking my big vacation of the year now in Maryland, visiting old friends and seeing some relatives.  I think I forget how relaxing vacations can be.  We've done a little sightseeing and a lot just chilling.  I've plunged into reading Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee and have been savoring the joys of chopping through a book pieces by pieces.  Especially one as good as this one, an Asian American thriller of sorts.

The other day my friend and I went to Mount Vernon, the plantation of our first president.  His home is a bit like a cross between museum and tourist villa.  At least there is no animatronic George and Martha, but there were mini theaters throughout playing mini videos like a short film narrated by Glen Close about George and Martha's relationship.  As much as the place tried to sanctify Washington, it still felt to me like they were grasping at straws to create somekind of American royalty.  Unfortunately, I think American royalty is vested still with the super weathly, not necessarily those with lucky birthrights.  That was hightlighted clearly enough to me that just two generations or so after Washington, his family was selling the property because they could not afford to upkeep it and it was in horrible disrepair.  So much for sacred ground.

I came away with a big dissapointment in Washington though.  The writers of this George Washington story tried to give respectful concession to the fact that Washington was a slave owner, and though he freed his slaves he didn't want to rock the boat by pressing slavery as an issue in the founding of the nation, nor did he try to free his slaves before his death or do anything to free the slaves under his wife's estate.  He thought it was an evil practice, but not evil enough to sacrifice the butt-loads of money he was making off the free labor.  As much as they'd like us to think he was hopefully a kind master, even his very skilled chef who cooked for him in the White House eventually escaped.  Owning people is bad news.  Their ain't no respect to be had in it.

Tomorrow we head out to spend 3 days in NYC.  I'm excited as this will be the first time I really get to experience the city.  Albeit as a tourist.  But that is something I expect to live up for my three days.  I planned for us to see a simulcast of Carmen in Lincoln Center Plaza.  Aw, now there is so good music to be had.  Entertaining anyway.

I leave you, my like two faithful readers, with a passageabout Flushing, Queens from Native Son:

"The people were thin, even when they looked almost fat they were thin, drawn as they were about their necks and faces.  Even this early they were smoking cigarettes and cigars.  The steam of fumes, other fires.  Breathing it in.  They were always loading and unloading the light trucks and cube vans of strapled wooden crates and burlap sacks, the bulging bags of produce like turnips or jicama as heavy on their sloping shoulders as the bodies of their children still sleeping at home.  They were of all kinds, these streaming and working and dealing, these various platoons of Koreans, Indians, Vietnamese, Haitians, Columbians, Nigerians, these hrown and yellow whatevers, whoevers, countless unheard nobodies, each offering to the marketplace their gross of kimchee, lichee, plantain, black bean, soy milk, coconut milk, ginger, grouper, ahi, yellow curry, cuchifrito, jalapeno, their everytyhing, selling anything to each other and to themselves, every day of the year, and every minute."

New creations

I've decided that my newest endeavor will be an etsy shop to sell my pipe cleaner sculptures and customized cork people.  I've still got to hash through the business and tax issues, and build up and inventory to sell, but I think this may be my next adventure.  I will keep you posted for when that opens, but in the meantime check out my newest and most complicated sculpture.  This one took me hours to creat each brain hemisphere, then head and pedistal.  But I'm very happy with it.  And it was made as a gift so it is already claimed, but I'm thinking now I might want to try an acupuncture model  or the human body with all the inards...

exercising ladies

A friend is moving out and game me this awesome shower curtain.  So now when I am in my bathroom i start singing, to the tune of Beyonce's All the Single Ladies, "Exerising Ladies, exercising ladies, Exercising Ladies.  Now put your feet up!"

Bite me!

I just got fitted for a mouth guard at the dentist and the dentist let me keep the plaster cast of my teeth.  Isn't that cool and creepy at the same time?  Hopefully having a mouth guard will do something to alleviate my headaches.  I'm also trying an intensive, and expensive, regimen of chiropractic adjustments to see if this whole thing is a "structural" issue.  We'll see...

Ah, I want to leave you with some highlights from San Diego and Comic Con as well.  I'm actually working on a comic about my experience that I'll post once I've got it to where I like it.  In the meantime, enjoy some of these snapshots.

From Old Town San Diego.  Mariachis of the Dead!

A cool pottery shop where I got some cute Mexican tiles.

Little girl getting a wax hand cast made.  Like a velvet glove cast in iron...

Balboa Park!  Complete with its own soundtrack.

Ooo, an esplanade.

 Lust botanical garden jungle cage

A little biosphere in a plant.  Too cute!

Pretty leaf pattern.  It glows.

Alright already, the convention center for Comic Con.

The trolley that took us there.

The interesting characters start on the trolley too.

And continue inside...

And everyone gets into the spirit.

DC and Marvel collide!

R-2!

But not everything was a costume.

And there were some celebrity sightings to be had, like Draco.

And the still-kicking Ray Bradbury.

But mostly there were endless lines that required hours of waiting to see the big celebrities so I mostly avoided those panels.

I did enjoy seeing the profusions of toys.

I got five of these cute little suckers.  So simple.  Yet so cute.

And in our downtime, I put some makeshift action figures in some harrowing situations in my friend Angel's hair.

Words, words, words

Last night was the book release party for the Oakland Word Anthology.  I didn't anticipate the excitment and warmth I would feel holding that bound book.  Wow, I'm published.  The paper, the font, the binding, I just loved touching it.  See something I wrote in a table of contents and typeset is an experience like nothing else I've experienced in my life.  Gratitude and thanksgiving to the Oakland Word program for making this all possible!

I got to read again, my story about my parents' acupunture clinic.  I think I'm getting better each time I read it.  At least I try harder to be theatrical.  If anything, I just hope to keep writing for the joy of it.  I realized that putting too much pressure on myself for some kind of recognition or success was the biggest buzz kill to writing.  Life is stifling to me with those kinds of contraints, as is writing.  Art needs to be an element for living, not a destination, tool, or objective.

Electric sky

picnic in Benicia's city park

spreading out on the waterfront of Benicia

festive spirit

war paint

pow pow

Oh, how pretty.

I had a lovely Independence Day, not celebrating so much unfettered patriotism, but the American past time of picnicking and taking in fireworks.  Maybe another kind of patriotism?  But it was delightful to spend the afternoon with my friend and her mommy, snacking on sausages and apple sauce.  And we took in the spectacular sights of the fireworks show and reveled the magic of it.  It seems like fireworks never fail to inspire wonder and surprise in people.  They are just too dramatic and beautiful, bursting color through a black sky.  And the pop of cannons, with scary shades of weapon fire, keep you looking for what will happen.  Thank you, 4th of July.

Pablo said it better

I found this poem by Neruda that captures the idea of my poem, Secret, but in such a fuller way.  Everything to be said has been said before.  But tell me, so sweetly, again.
-------------------------------

I Like For You To Be Still 

by Pablo Neruda

I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not touch you
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth
As all things are filled with my soul
You emerge from the things
Filled with my soul
You are like my soul
A butterfly of dream
And you are like the word: Melancholy

I like for you to be still
And you seem far away
It sounds as though you are lamenting
A butterfly cooing like a dove
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not reach you
Let me come to be still in your silence
And let me talk to you with your silence
That is bright as a lamp
Simple, as a ring
You are like the night
With its stillness and constellations
Your silence is that of a star
As remote and candid

I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
Distant and full of sorrow
So you would've died
One word then, One smile is enough
And I'm happy;
Happy that it's not true

Something to make the heart sing

Lately, I've taken to retooling how I see my life.  I'm very much used to living off of the cortisol of my anxiety and frustrations.  It is an effective means, certainly, to feel like I'm being productive by worrying about what I'm not doing or what i should be doing or what will happen tomorrow or next year or three years from now, as if it will make the present and the future that much clearer.  But I've been thinking about and practicing the act of living my life for myself, not my future self or the self I think I'm supposed to be.  I think trying to do things creatively has gone a long way with my feeling more like myself than I have...maybe ever.  Harking back to the days when I made art out of construction paper with middle school kids.  Those were the days.

Granted, I still catch myself freaking out about my creative projects.  Like will this turn into anything?  Should I try to market this?  But I think I need a critical mass of things to do anything with, and really a critical mass of time growing into my creative pursuits.  And really more time just being me.

But art must shared, I think.  Art is an act of communication.  So let me know your thoughts!  I'm including two poems and two new pipe cleaner animals.  Enjoy!

--------------------------------

Badger.  He has been named Earl

My mantis!

-----------------------------------

Curry Puff

  

My aunt made curry puffs

For church sales every week;

And when she had enough,

She gave the spare to me.

Short, she was, and body round.

She stood wide-legged with toes splayed.

With bread roll arms she’d pound

The pastry dough fillets.

“Your mommy’s puffs don’t taste

As good as mine.  You know

She works too much to waste

Her time on that, although

It’s not her fault your daddy

Works her like a dog.”

Though what she was true –

They worked most days,

Vacations overdue –

I tell you there’s no way

I’d let her say such slander;

Yet shyness sapped my spunk,

To piety I pandered.

But aunty is a punk!

And justice must be served,

So finger in my nose,

I found what she deserved:

A morsel that I chose

To spice the yellow curry,

Then break for home –

I got out in a hurry.

 ------------------------------

  Secret

  

i feign my sadness to mask my joy

when i see him packing

i fold his socks and count his underwear

for each day that takes him away

because i can’t admit out loud

the selfish relish in which

i will miss him

when he is gone

the empty space cries out his absence

through which he is called into being

all over again

when he returns

Pipe Dreams

I've continued exploring the out-of-shape creative bits of my gray matter.  I'm taking a poetry class now through Oakland Word in a desire to try writing poetry, something I haven't really concentrated on since the fifth grade.  It's still intimidating and sooo hard, but it's been a joy too.  I'll post some poems once I workshop them in my writing group.  Ah!  Another creative exercise I'm thrilled to be part of is a writing group that meets every other week.  A kick in the butt to practice what I've wanted to try, writing more regularly.  Though, my challenge to myself to write everyday slacks in proportion to my feelings and energy level, which is erratic at best.  Fantastic.

Another new creative endeavor has been the creation of pipe cleaner sculptures.  I began making these in my LCSW group supervision, as the supervisor brought then in as fidget toys to occupy our hands.  It has turned into time of excitement for me less for hearing about tragic family situations than for a change to make cute things.  I'm playing with the idea of trying to make things to sell on etsy.com, though I wonder if there is a market for cartoony pipe cleaner sculptures.  They have brought me great joy to make, nevertheless, and my coworkers have started making requests for them.  Ah fuzzies!  Now is only store sold yard-long pipe cleaners rather than just the footlongs, I could really get busy...

The first one.  Must have intestines!

Here I suddenly had access to a variety of different kinds of pipe cleaner.  Oh the possibilities!

This one has a circulatory system and a heart.

I was very excited to try to make a bird.  What kind of bird this is, I don't know...

I was listening to a particularly sad case when I made this one.  Externalized frustration?

It was difficult getting the balance right, but the bananas are soooo cute.