Hàng Ngày

Nathan and I went out to lunch about two weeks ago. No reason in particular, it was a Friday and we both needed to get out and the weather was nice, so we walked across Market Street and went to a cheap Indian restaurant with free chai tea. After adding about a gallon of sugar to each of our cups of tea, Nathan asked me “the big question.”

“So, Lillian,” Nathan said, as we sipped our sickeningly sweet tea, “What do you think changed about you most, coming back from living in Vietnam for two years. Name your top five.”

Well, obviously, the first one was “I like to drink things with sugar.” A symptom of living in southern Vietnam, for sure. Even milk with sugar in it sounds good to me right now!

The second one was that I appreciate little things more than I used to. I laugh at little things. Life is amazing. No matter what, no matter how “bad” or “hard” the day was, I realize that it was actually amazing because I am alive (may also have something to do with the recent passing away of my grandmother). I smiled as I told Nathan this, thinking about standing uncomfortably on the Muni as I ride to work, crunched with other bodies, all annoyed, trying to tune-out, read, listen to music, except me, who revels in the “closeness,” and confinement, who looks around at all these perturbed faces and just smiles. I soak it up. I love it.

Today’s little thing: after 2 hours and 1.5 glasses of wine, I finally figured out and streamlined my method of uploading images and placing them on VIA’s website. I updated the page about current posts. I uploaded photos I like, and am now thinking about which other photos I want to upload. I figured out what an ftp server is (ok, I knew this before, but learned more about its functionality). I feel like a total nerd, and I love it.

I was taught to “label jars, not people,”

A corny kindergarten cliche,
But they forgot to tell us that before you even have time to notice the label on that jar,
You have noticed its shape.
It is tall.
It is fat.
It is old and rusty, or it is blindingly new.
It is male. Or it is female.

I am not your jar,
Can never be your plaster statuette.
I refuse to be seen for merely the coating of my figure, my words,
Or even solely my actions.
I am all of these things and something more,
An intangible sensation that you can only know if you see my faults,
My imperfections,
My wounds and scars,
My idiocy and my confusion,
My ability to drink, to swear, to laugh in your face,
My goals and dreams, and my independence.

Do you not see that by holding me to this image of perfection,
This barbie-doll figure, some cookie-cutter image,
You are strangling me, choking me, and erasing me all at once,
Until there is nothing left inside or outside of me but this little colorful pin-up,
Paper-thin,
Helpless,
Smiling sweetly back into your eyes that can not see?

So take me off of your fucking pedestal,
I refuse to be your desktop background,
You can own the picture, the image is yours,
But it is nothing but that: just an image.
An illusion.
A lie that represents a person who does not exist,
Except as the collective memory of years of systematic racial and gender-based oppression,
Sustained cultural domination,
And the inevitable human attempt to find perfection in the mortal,
(I mean, in the female)
The desire to hold on to a tangible relic of a being that existed for a mere static moment in time.

Today is the summer solstice. 2:06 pm, to be exact. How do I know this? From talking to a guy named Matt from San Jose who I met randomly in a neighbor’s backyard party while listening to a blues/jazz band and sipping a glass of wine. WAH?A!? yes, that’s right.

I was riding my bike home from tutoring this evening. It was almost 8 pm, it is amazingly warm here, the sun was starting to set, but the night still seemed young. It’s Friday, I thought, what do I want to do? Well, all I really wanted to do was be in St. Louis (believe it or not!) or somewhere else sitting outside on this absolutely gorgeous un-San Francisco evening, sipping a drink, with friends, watching the sun go down. I got home to the usual Friday night: Mike on the couch watching TV, Hilary gone with friends, hungry, and tired. No food in the kitchen. OK, I thought, I’ll go to the grocery store, I’ll get something to cook, and I’ll come back home and open my windows and pretend I’m eating dinner outside. On my way to the grocery store, however, I passed by this house a block away that seemed to have its patio open. Interesting. Apparently they were having a party. OH! I remember seeing signs for this: Free neighborhood party tonight. OK, well, haven’t had dinner, don’t have friends, there’s music playing, let’s check this out…

I stayed until the party was over at 11 pm. I met neighbors, particularly a woman who invited me out to a barbecue with her and her fiance tomorrow, really interesting woman who used to teach in Japan and live in New York and now runs her own business and loves her life. I talked to the band, this cool jazzy-blues-ish string band (bass, two guitars, violin) and actually was bold enough to ask if they needed a singer (!!) They said maybe. I got their number and we’re going to talk. Don’t know if it will come to anything, but hey, they were great to listen to, and maybe there will at least be some jam sessions in the park.

So this couple (maybe my parents’ age?) owns this house, just moved in last year, renovated, and now decided that they want to share their wonderful patio with the neighborhood. They hired the band and a magician (?), they bought drinks, they made cookies, and they opened their home to the entire neighborhood. They created bonds that should already exist but don’t because of coolish weather and closed doors and ipods in ears as people walk down the street. Folks who had seen each other countless times on the Muni were talking. And it only took a little space, a little food (aka money) and a lot of trust in humankind to not exploit their kindness. Maybe it’s a California thing? I can’t imagine anything like this happening in New York (ok, maybe in Brooklyn or the Bronx). It made my day, maybe even my week, and certainly renewed my hope in finding community in a new and foreign place.

So wait a minute, this was going somewhere? Oh yeah, radical localism.

On Wednesday I met a man named Chad. Chad used to work for VIA as one of the directors for our Stanford Programs that bring Asian undergraduate students to the US for short-term cultural and service exchange programs. Chad now works on a farm in Santa Cruz and teaches people about agriculture and sustainability. After an extended in-office happy hour, several VIA employees, Chad, and I found ourselves at a local Indian restaurant eating palak paneer and drinking beer out of a five-gallon keg lodged under our table. At some point I turned to Chad and asked him how he had gone from coordinating VIA’s Stanford Programs to working on farm in Santa Cruz. This launched him into an explanation of his meta-philosophy of radical localism and launched us into a long conversation and debate that ranged from the internet and its use as a tool of both education and destruction, the state of the American population’s health, and the most effective framework for education, to name a few.

Radical localism, as Chad termed it, means the focusing on one’s most local community as a source of sustenance, knowledge, and support. It means not turning on the internet in search of the answer, but instead opening a door and walking down the street and knocking on another door (or whatever the situation may be). It’s a really simple concept in some ways, and I have heard of this idea before, but what I found interesting about Chad’s argument was that he sees this as a solution to a lot of other problems America is facing these days. Take health, for example. If we know our farmers, because they are our neighbors, they are much less likely to use harmful pesticides on our vegetables. Why? Because we know where they live. But if we rely only on the local, my argument, what about cross-cultural dialogue? What about maintaining relationships with those who are far away in time and place? What about the basic premise behind my job, the job that I moved across the world for? I mean, there has to be a balance between the two, and we both agreed on this, but how much is the proper balance? I remember good old J-Shap mentioned during our commencement speech at Barnard that we shouldn’t look too far to cultivate relationships when we had a wealth of knowledge and friendship at our doorstep. I think in her case it was a little bit skewed as she was clearly trying to turn us into future Barnard Fund contributors, but the words do still ring in my head for their power and meaning and truth.

Now my thoughts are shifting to the calculus of “how much” localism is appropriate and healthy, and does that level vary for each person. Is one person’s “radical” localism just another person’s everyday existence? It’s almost like going back in time to me, to say that we don’t want to use the internet or other cross-continental media that connect us to so much knowledge and potential for growth. However, I do think that those connections diminish my interest in investing in and cultivating local relationships and knowledge. And here’s the thing I was really debating with Chad about, is there a way that the internet, this awesome tool that we have yet to fully explore and exploit as a race be used to facilitate localism? Or is it just another case of society banking on the tool (ahem, Television) to educate and globalize the masses when all it really becomes is another forum for people to entertain themselves with mindless drivvle?

The loneliness creeps in on quiet weekend afternoons, just as the fog is rolling through the neighborhood and settling over the backyard in a thick cloud. It weighs heavily on my body making my breathing labored and my eyes sag in their sockets, longing for the darkness to set in so that I can sleep. Sleeping eases the loneliness, although it is not a solution during the day. I’ve tried so many things to rid myself of the loneliness, but its presence lingers by my side, crouching by my feet, waiting to swallow me whole. I try to starve it away, but in a moment of hungry weakness I consume till I am full and as the pain in the pit of my stomach subsides the loneliness emerges again. I try to drink it away, drinking until I can barely see the screen mere inches in front of my face, drink until I fall asleep and dream fitfully of those I miss, waking up with a headache, thinking for a moment that the loneliness is gone, only to realize that the little gremlin is perched on my bedpost watching my eyes open and close, my chest rise and fall with the labored breating, and my eyes sag and roll back in their sockets as I pray for sleep to continue to no avail, my head aching and my mouth dry. I try to run away from the loneliness, and find that I am fast than it, but it doesn’t need speed, because its stamina is beyond my capacity, and as I slow to a walk and stretch my tired legs, the loneliness catches up to me and squats down by my ankles once again, staring up at me, laughing at my weak attempt to thwart its presence. I walk one afternoon, thinking that maybe if I walk forever in one direction the loneliness will get bored, or better yet distracted, and it will follow another unsuspecting sucker on the street, forgetting about me, it’s favorite companion. I walk, listening to music plugged into my ears, trying not to hear the footsteps of loneliness behind me; quickly, but not quite running. I walk for blocks and blocks, crossing streets, people, cars, dogs, and homes until the sea stretches out before me and the wind has chapped my face bone dry. I stop for a second and sigh, my lower lip billowing out and my hot sticky breath clouding the panes of my glasses. I smile a little and sigh again, this time with a more deliberate lower lip, fogging my glasses until I can barely see. This is a funny game. I give it one more try before continuing on my way down to the beach, crossing the road, the bike path, the highway, and finally letting my feet rest in the thick sand, sinking several inches into the ground with each step as if the dunes want to swallow my legs whole but don’t dare. The loneliness is there with me, it is my shield, my protection, I kneel down and reach for it, my arms outstretched, grabbing it with my fingers and pulling it to me, holding the loneliness tightly, the only thing around me accept for the wind and the waves tearing at the sand below. I hold my loneliness firmly in my arms and walk down to the waterfront where I sit on a piece of driftwood covered in sand and stare out at the ocean for how long, I do not know. A long time. The sun is setting and the waves lapping at the shore, threatening my piece of driftwood more and more with each subsequent rush. The clouds are rolling over my head, and if I look directly at the sun it seems as if I am the only thing that exists on this earth, the only animate object on an entire planet of wind and sea, and the suns rays stretch their fingers to touch the clouds and my eyes begin to tear from the wind, the salt of my tears mixing with the salt of the ocean spray on my face and running down to the corners of my mouth where I inhale them, quenching my thirst. The loneliness is my only companion, and I set it free from my arms, release it to the violence of the sea, and my loneliness tiptoes down to the water’s edge, toying with the waves, running in and out of the cold ocean water, up and down the shore while I sit on my driftwood and watch it with amusement, like watching a puppy finding the ocean for the first time. With each wave the loneliness ventures deeper and deeper into the water, finally plunging its head under and disappearing for a few seconds at a time while I sit, staring at the sun, watching it fall on the horizon, feeling dizzy, like I am sitting on a giant spinning orb that could halt or change directions at any minute, yet continues in its steady path. And the clouds rush overhead, and the waves nearly touch my feet, and finally the sun disappears behind the next thick wave of fog, and all I can see is its rays spanning out in every direction, thousands of them, millions maybe, touch each teardrop in each fluffy cloud that passes overhead, dying them brilliant shades of pink and lavender. Then it is gone. The wind picks up and I shiver slightly as I watch the loneliness dancing in the water before me. As I turn to leave, it shouts to me, inaudible above the roaring of the waves and the whistling of the wind, and the pounding of the music in my ears, the lonely screeching is something I can not hear but only feel, and as I walk up the sand dune, back across the highway, back across the bike path, back across the street, the lonelines is calling for me to wait, to turn back, to take it along, and it follows me, soaking wet, hopping along making footprint-shaped puddles on the pavement.

I have so many memories of saying goodbye. And you know, people say that saying goodbye gets easier as you get older. They’re full of shit, or else somewhere in the aging process they also became hardened and callous to the point of not caring about their friends and loved ones. Or so jaded that they can already see the future of the goodbye: it means forever. Today while riding the J-streetcar down Church street, past Dolores park, with a magnificent view of the city where I now live stretched out before my eyes, for some reason all that I could really see were echoing shadows of the countless goodbyes I’ve said in my life: some more like “see you laters” to families and friends who will come in and out of my life; some in tears; some with slammed doors and clenched fists; some without knowing they were really goodbyes.

I am on an Amtrak train in Penn Station, New York, bound for Newark airport. I am standing in the doorway, my large heavy bag resting on the floor by my left foot, and a hand reaches out from the platform and touches the side of my head, pulling my face close, hugging me tightly, but so briefly and then it is gone, the door has closed me inside, and the car is slowly pulling out of the station while warm tears well in my throat and I bite my lips to keep them from exploding out of my eyes in public.

I am in New York again, but this time on the corner of 116th and Broadway. This time there are tears, an immense flood of tears, but they are not mine. The heart-wrenching sound of a close friend’s sobbing as we hold each other standing in the chilly evening wind coming up from the river. I try to comfort her to no avail, and the sound is like a dull spoon digging persistently at my heart, turning…

The hot sun beats on our heads as we wander aimlessly through the streets of the city, finally coming to our destination and crouching in the shade of a measly six-foot potted palm tree while the buses come and go and the traffic is deafeningly loud around us. The heat rises from the sidewalk and there is a stench of urine, cigarette smoke, gasoline, and exhaust fumes. The bus arrives and my friend and I wrap our arms around each other, stealing a scandalous public hug before he is hustled through the bus’ doors while it is still in motion. I walk away while the bus is still in the intersection, not looking back. The others never looked back either. If you look back, you’re dead meat, or at least that’s what they tell you.

Where was this going? I feel like I’ve been asking myself that a lot lately. I had reached a point where I was writing nearly every day, and for the past week or so I’ve felt absolutely paralyzed when I sit down at the computer or lie down on my stomach on the floor in my room, pen poised in my hand, notebook open in front of me…nothing. I used to write poetry. I used to write essays. I used to write about people I saw on the streets, weaving the stories of their lives from threads of imagination, but now. Now, all I write is grant proposals and grant reports; objectives, goals, outcomes, evidence, numbers of students, numbers of classes, and quotations about how people’s lives have changed because of the work that I’m supposedly doing, but I feel so disconnected from them sitting at my large cluttered desk in my cluttered little office that they hardly seem like people’s real words at all, and I have to get up and take a walk outside of the office, a long hike to the elevators or sometimes even to the bright outdoor sun to ask myself, “Now wait a minute, where was this going?”

I read letters, long letters, from people I have said goodbye to and I sit idle at the computer for hours on a Saturday night trying to respond in a way that is most appropriate, most honest, and most perfect, and I am blank. I begin writing and regurgitate a few paragraphs of misplaced rants and have to ask myself again, thirty minute later, “Hold on, where was this going?” And then I delete the entire thing and have to read the long email again because I forgot what the purpose of my response was to be. What am I really trying to say? Goodbye. But somehow I want to dress it up, to make it more beautiful than that word, to make it more meaningful and more powerful, but maybe I can just leave it with that one word that is so quaint and simple, yet so…so…final.

So, I’ve been tutoring this Vietnamese family in English for the past few weeks. I meet chi Hue, chi Ngo, chi Ty, and anh Minh every Friday from 5:30-7:30 in their little in-law apartment kitchen in the Outer Mission. Their nieces (2 and 4) sit on their laps while we go over the pronunciation of the words “children,” “brother v.s father,” and “George” (they had a terrible time with this one!)

Today we talked about family. I introduced family vocabulary and we all told a bit about our families. Their ancestors were immigrants from China and they didn’t even know the names of two of their grandparents. It was surprising to me that coming from a culture that places so much value on family and ancestor reverence, this family knows so little about their heritage. It probably alludes to the rifts and hardships of both their parents and their own generation.

On my way out the door, they always try to give me something to eat, in true Vietnamese style Today they gave me a little bag of jelly beans, brightly colored sugar nuggets like those I used to sneak from the little ceramic box in my g’ma’s guest bedroom in North Carolina. Then I realized while riding my bike to the bus stop, the bag of candy in my basket, that I in fact now have this ceramic box with a lighthouse painted on the cover. Guess what I did first thing when I got home? You’d better believe I have a little ceramic lighthouse box full of jellybeans right now

Started writing this a while back. Haven’t gotten around to finishing it, but it’s on my mind a lot…

One of the things I’ve been struggling with upon coming back to this country is a distinctly American need for constant stimulation and maybe even over stimulation to the point of ridiculousness. I witness it in so many ways, and am a perpetrator and a victim of it myself as well. Yesterday was a gross reminder of the worst of American culture, what I imagine my students in Vietnam would look at and drop their mouths in dismay at Americans’ wastefulness, gluttony, and promiscuity. I won’t even say what kind of event I attended, because I’m embarrassed to admit it, but let’s just say there was plenty of drinking, loud music, and scantily-clad rugby players.

I’ve been trying to figure out why Americans are this way, and when did Americans become this. Now first of all, I have to say that it is not all Americans who get drunk and parade themselves around in costume, this can take many other forms. Professional sports, or non-sports like Nascar and the frenzied nature of people’s involvement with these activities is another example. Obsession with having the latest and most sleek-looking electronics, clothes, kitchen appliances, etc. is another. It is a focus on these material things and an overload of things that plays into the problem as well. I can’t really separate the materialism from the need for over stimulation, they are one and the same. And so many of my country’s physical and mental illnesses are the results of these two cultural elements as well: depression caused by a feeling of inadequacy, or loneliness despite this overstimulating environment; eating disorders, including obesity or its opposite are the extreme in needing to have everything, needing to say “yes” to everyone who asks you if you want to supersize. We say yes to the point that we no longer know how to make decisions about right and wrong, and we no longer know what it is we as individuals or as society really want. We are having a collective identity crisis brought on by this mountain of wealth, opportunity, and material resources, with no clue what to do with it. And so we simply indulge it. We indulge it without any thought of the consequences, the impact we have on the world, or on ourselves.

Where did it all begin? Was it a part of America from the beginning, from Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and all of those other old dead white guys who framed what would become the most powerful nation in the world? Or was it something that developed later, as we expanded our fingers first across the continent and then across the world? Is it something that we can be cured of, should be cured of, or even want to be cured of? What are the consequences of spreading such an indulgent philosophy across the world?

To be continued…

The sun began to poke its smile out of the overcast sky and heat the drops of newly fallen rain on the grass so that a warm, wet muggy atmosphere settled over the scene. No one was wearing beach towels, as I had jokingly suggested, but not many people were wearing black either. It was a formal occasion, a solemn occasion, but also not unlike any other family gathering: people greeted each other with hugs and handshakes on the narrow roadway through the cemetery, small children tumbled around the legs of their parents and oohs and aahs of how tall/beautiful/adult people had become in the last 5-6 years. John as right, G’ma would have been proud to see all of us together like this: it happens so infrequently.

The eldest of her sons, according to some tradition whose origin no one knew, was the designated orator at this event. He had prepared few words. He spoke quietly and slowly, like a school teacher speaking to a captivated audience of seven year olds. He invited others to speak and one at a time, several people came to the front to stand by the small wooden plank covered with green astroturf with a small container the size of a shoebox sitting on top of it.

Several of their words echoed in my mind throughout the evening, after we left the graves of my grandparents, one on top of the other, after the cemetery attendant dropped a pile of sea-shells and the first handful of dirt on top of the box, after everyone got in their cars and drove slowly out of the park, after my dad and his older cousin and I were the only three left in this vast sea of green grass and gravestones, after the party at my aunt’s house, the distribution of G’ma’s old knick-knacks, after sitting on my aunt’s porch as the sun set behind the park, the tinkling sound of my cousin’s piano playing ringing in our ears.

Some of the words were from a poem that G’ma had wanted to be read at her funeral. She had planned for this occasion for years, had kept multiple copies of this around her house in discreet places, had carefully labeled many of her knick-knacks with stickers bearing the names of children and grandchildren. The poem was short and a little bit corny, but completely appropriate. It talked about the leaves, the wind, and the grass; it commanded its reader and listeners not to cry, for “I did not die.” It reminded me that she lived for 47 years, a complete life, a full life, and a happy life, without the person she had pledged to live it with to her last day here. This poem, I wondered, was it for us? Was it to comfort us in her absence? Or had it been for her? Was it perhaps her way of coping with death, by looking around at everything on earth and seeing him, knowing that the world is a wonderful place worth living in because he had lived in it?

The other words that I remembered were those of my parents, because in hearing them, I came to a new understanding of my parents’ intentions in raising my brother and I, and how well they have done in this endeavor. My mom spoke of the creativity that my G’ma inspired in all of us. “Good Dog Carl,” remembered as one of my favorite books, and spoken of often by my mother, is a book with no words. I had forgotten this. My mom talked about the first time my G’ma gave the book to her and told her to read me a story. I was a toddler. My mom opened the book and was horrified that there were no words, only pictures. How to read a story?? My G’ma, according to the story, took the book and proceeded to read me the most vividly imagined story one could create from a book with no words. My mother was in awe. This creativity, this love for the imagination, my mother would try to instill in us; I think she did a pretty damn good job.

My dad also had a few lessons from his mother. Besides his ability and love for cooking (read: nil) which he acquired from her, my dad talked about his pleasure, or at least, contentment with being alone. Having few friends is characteristic of my father, my brother, many of the men in my family, and the women as well come to think of it. G’ma lived alone for years, spending most of her time with her knitting needles and her 12-inch TV-screen image of Tom Brockaw (who looked a bit like her husband). She was content to have few friends, my dad added, because she reserved her time, her energy, and her love for her family. The few who were around, both family and friends, were valued above all else.

I have been thinking about these things and others and don’t really know what else to write. I have bullet points in my journal for things I want to write about: self-sufficiency, the nature of friendship, what it really means to love someone, family and tradition, grieving and coping, the resiliency of the human spirit. Too many to write down at one time. And I don’t know how to finish this post, want to have a short quip of some sort, but am completely drawing a blank. How about a picture? This is the only picture I took all weekend:

Here’s the poem:

Do not stand at my grave and weep.

I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on the snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush,

I am the swift, uplifting rush

of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry.

I am not there. I did not die.

~Anyonymous

Now I know how to end this (a day later): the funeral/service/memorial, whatever you want to call it, was exactly what a funeral/service/memorial should be, in my mind. It was a time for us to be together and to put our arms around each other (figuratively and literally) and remind each other that we will go on loving this life and experiencing it in all its fullness despite the loss of someone we love…or maybe because of the loss of someone we love. The fact that someone we love so dearly existed at all means the world is a pretty damned amazing place.